Christian Recovery: Death to Your Sin Nature

God is love, but He also has all the characteristics of an ideal father. Those who live by the Spirit have both natures as well. In fact, many books have been written about loving the lost and spiritual parenting.

Spiritual parents are responsible for the souls of their spiritual children. That’s why God gives them the ability to understand and deal with certain people, along with a father or mother’s heart of love. Therefore, the people God has assigned to you have a special anointing for the work.

If God was only love, then the Bible would promote co-dependency, but it doesn’t. We could cite scripture after scripture that tells Christian leaders to teach and disciple people, but to warn those in spiritual danger and to pull back from those who aren’t putting Biblical instructions into practice.
Other scriptures ask leaders to have patience, and still others say to pray and fast. Even though God uses many methods to get Christians to listen and obey, He doesn’t encourage leaders to support never-ending sin cycles. Instead, He asks them to assist in the death of the sinful nature.

If you are a Christian with a long history of relapse and continued abuse of drugs or alcohol, you can count on God’s love, but you can’t expect him to ignore your continual rebellion. Romans 6:1,2 says this: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?”

We don’t doubt that in your addiction you have either been loved to the extreme or felt unloved and abandoned. In either case, you have seen yourself as a victim. But we can assure you that anyone who cares about you has made hard decisions based on your actions and behaviors.

Your loved ones, including your spiritual parents, have probably tried every available method to help you get sober and live a better life. If they are distant from you right now, you should assume they had to get out of God’s way and let the chips of your life fall wherever they will.

My challenge to you right now is to stop and take a long look in the mirror. If you don’t like what you see, it is time to turn things around. And this starts with you coming to the end of yourself. It starts with you making the decision to say “no” to your addiction and “yes” to God.  In other words, you must agree to die to yourself -- to kill the part of you that has control of you.

If you need help, you can read our book, talk to your pastor, turn yourself into rehab, or give us a call at 541-778-8680. If you want to get clean and sober, the Bible says you can! God offers you a way of escape. Please visit our website where we have more articles and information. www.thesolidrockroad.com.