God Can Free You From Addictions...Your 1st Step Is to Believe
Have you lost your hope? Hopelessness comes in all kinds of situations: addictions, serious illness, abusive spouse, rebellious children, a dead-end job, bankruptcy. Does a person without hope do anything to improve their situation? No. But we know that as long as there is a God, there is hope.
When you seek God for freedom from your addiction He will speak to you through a word from the Bible. When God speaks His word into you, it comes in the form of hope. The purpose of hope is to become a reality. When God gives you hope/or a desire, in your heart, that is His embryo of reality because God is a gardener [Remember the Garden of Eden?]. However, you may abort God's plan for you because you don't feel capable or deserving of it.
Decide to believe
You have to make a conscious decision to embrace the hope and believe that it will come to pass. In order to believe, you need to have trust in the source of your hope. When you have hope, you say, "I wish God would help me stop doing drugs." But when you get a word from God and you believe it, you say, "With God's help I know I'm going to stop doing drugs."
The best way to change hope to belief is to look at what the source of your hope has done in the past. Let's call it touch-stoning (remembering God's goodness, His track record). The idea of touch-stoning comes from the Old Testament. When God moved on behalf of His people, they would mark the place with a pile of stones. Then every time they went back to that place they would remember what God had done.
You're touch-stoning when you're worshiping God for who He is and praising/thanking Him for what He has already done for you. As you do this you're building trust in God as the source of your hope.
A good example is when Joshua and the people of Israel saw God stop the waters of the Jordan River with an invisible dam. Joshua told a representative from each of the twelve tribes of Israel to take a stone from the middle of the dry riverbed and carry it to shore. They piled up the stones as a monument to what God had done. Joshua explained, "In the future...when your children ask you why these stones are here and what they mean, you are to tell them that these stones are a reminder of this amazing miracle--that the nation of Israel crossed the Jordan River on dry ground!" (Josh. 4:21-22, TLB).
How long do you touch-stone? Repetitiously--until you trust God enough to believe in the hope He gave you. Therefore, if you can't believe what God has told you, then your level of trust is too low, and you need to continue to touch-stone. You need to study the Word of God and remind yourself that He is able, willing, and will do it for you just as He did it for them.
Copyright 2011 Danielle Wise All rights reserved. You are free to use this article in part or full provided you include the author bio and a live website link.
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