God’s Desire for Your Life
God’s Desire for Your Life
A major barrier for those in need of drug and alcohol addiction treatment is visualizing their life after addiction. All they can focus on during addiction is their next drink or their next hit. They don’t want to consider what life will be like when a person is not controlled by a substance or when they don’t have to be at the mercy of their cravings.
If you are considering getting help for your drug or alcohol addiction, consider this: God desperately wants you to follow him and to align your decisions and actions with his will for your life. Think about that – God has a desire for your life. This has far-reaching effects. This means that you don’t have to feel alone in your struggle because God promises to be with you. It also means that God has rules and expectations he wants you to follow, but he also gives you the resources you need to fulfill his desire for your life.
You are wanted. Addiction is a lonely disease. It gets tiring trying to put on a good show, salvage your reputation, and have meaningful interactions with family and loved ones. Most of the time, you probably feel like you fail at those things. You feel like those closest to you are disappointed in you because you have not lived up to their expectations. This makes you want to pull away from loved ones even more, in order to save yourself and them the embarrassment of seeing your addiction control you.
As lonely as addiction is with relationships in this world, the good news is that God will never leave you. Even when you fail to meet his expectations day after day, God still welcomes you back, day after day, as his forgiven child. You don’t have to worry about whether or not God can and will still forgive you for the things you’ve done. He already has given you full and free forgiveness, regardless of the times you continue to mess up.
You may have heard it a million times before, but it is still 100% true; God loves you. He wants nothing more than for you to praise him and pray to him, repent of your sins, and live a renewed life in his forgiveness and love.
God has expectations. Just because God forgave you doesn’t mean you should go and continue to live the kind of life you’ve been caught up in. God expects you to make changes, to cast off the old sins and wrongs, and begin a new life. This means he wants you to stop using drugs and alcohol and work to rebuild your life: your career, your health, your attitude, and your relationships.
God doesn’t want you to try to hide from him. He knows your past, and now he wants your future. Study, go to church and learn God’s expectations. Then, pray that God would guide you through recovery and help you succeed in sobriety. A recovered life will be drug and alcohol-free, and will be full of thankfulness for sobriety.
God also desires that you dedicate your life to praising him and encouraging others who are struggling. For the recovered addict, a perfect opportunity is to help others who are in recovery. Volunteer your time at a rehab facility, contribute to a support group, or even just encourage friends and family who are dealing with addiction to get help too.
God gives us tools to succeed. Thankfully, God gives us resources to help us follow his will for our lives. Treatment and rehab are valuable means available to you that will help you understand your addiction, learn how to deal with triggers and temptations, and address the demons of your past that make you want to turn away from God and go back to your addiction. A Christian rehab program is the best option for those who want to learn God’s will for their lives and are committed to renewal and sustained recovery. Enrolling in a Christian rehab will help you see God’s desire for your life, and will give you the tools necessary to continue living as a child of God, even long after your rehab is done.
As you work to overcome addiction and begin a renewed life, look to God to guide you. You can find his guidance through Bible study and prayer, and through a Christian rehab program. You can also learn God’s will by talking with other believers and spiritual leaders whom God has put in your life. Don’t underestimate the power of human interactions with a spiritual focus. God uses relationships with other Christians to offer support and encouragement and will use these associations to help keep you sober.
Find a Christian treatment facility that offers clinically proven therapies for addiction recovery, but one that also focuses on sharing God’s word and helps build relationships between Christians who can support each other. You will find that God’s desire for your life has become clear and that he will give you the strength to begin a new life.