Monday, March 15, 2010

The Holy Spirit and Christian Recovery from Addictions

The Holy Spirit is your personal guide in your Christian walk. In John 14:16, Jesus tells the disciples He will be leaving (meaning crucified) but someone better will take His place. “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever.” (NIV)

That Counselor is the Holy Spirit that lives in you from the point of salvation. Counseling from the Holy Spirit is divine. It’s also free and available twenty-four hours a day. The Holy Spirit overpowers evil and is your source of strength, wisdom, and inspiration. When you are guided by the Holy Spirit, you will not relapse or fall back into negative patterns of behavior.

The problem we Christians have is that the Holy Spirit doesn’t possess us. He doesn’t just spring up and take over our life. We wish He would. It would make everything so much easier, and much better. Instead, the Holy Spirit lives in us, but waits for us to empower Him through surrender and the process of emptying ourselves of our sinful nature.

As Galatians 5:22,23 explains: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.”

The Bible also describes the Holy Spirit as the abiding guest (John 14:16), Spirit of truth (John 14:17), teacher (John 14:26), testifier (John 15:26), guide, voice of God, the Prophet (John 16:13), Glorifier of Jesus (John 16:14), witness to sonship (Romans 8:16), helper in prayer (Romans 8:26), and power to witness (Acts 1:8).

Christians in recovery from addictions can count on the Holy Spirit to help at every level. The goal is to engage the Spirit so that it has control of your soul.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com and look for a book I've cowritten called Follow the Solid Rock Road: Pathway to Radical Recovery.

1 comment:

  1. This is so true. Christians have so much more help overcoming addictions than those who aren't. If you look at this thing called "Celebrity Rehab" I would say they have a very low rate of those who truly recover. Breaks my heart. God not only can help us recover--He can deliver us. First and most of all we have a divine counselor in the Holy Spirit. Relapse doesn't have to occur IMO

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