Christ Can Deliver Us from Our Addictions

I was asked by a reader of this blog this: “Do you help with addictions?

I wrote the following…

I can only tell you about how God cured my addictions [grass, acid, tobacco, booze]. I was looking for answers after surviving the war in Vietnam. Through Christ’s wonderful mercy, He saw past my drug-fueled life, and showed me a sign to look for. The religion or philosophy that had the old self dying and dead [with the body still living], that would be finding the truth. I would follow that, for I knew that the truth would cure me of an early grave.

I searched for four solid years. I could not find the “death of the old self” in any religion; I was slipping into nothingness, nihilism, when I finally found my sign.

It was a Bible study out in the piney woods of East Texas. I was visiting my mother who asked me to attend. I went with her, just to “get her off my back.” It was in a humble little cabin, 15 people there. My attitude was, “Okay. Show me what you got.” The teacher then read from Romans chapter 6 these words: “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.”

Right then, I stopped him. “Are you saying that the old self, the old sinful ego has died with Christ?”

“Yes, that is exactly what has already happened in God’s eyes. All we have to do is believe it. It is done. ‘He that is dead is freed from sin.’”

It was that night that I learned about identifying my old self with His death, burial, and resurrection. I took a leap of faith and believed that He gave me a new sinless life. [Read Romans 6:1-11.] Believing this changed my life. It was like all my addictions fell off me like shedding a corrupt system that had me trapped for so many years. I was 24, and I never looked back–through the lean and the fat years. That was 53 years ago.

I am my own greatest witness that Christ and His love is real and very forgiving. I am living proof that He can deliver us from addictions. Addicts are the most selfish people on earth. To be delivered, they must believe that their old sinful selfish heart is “crucified with Christ.” It is put to death. Then it is buried with Christ; then by believing Christ’s resurrection, they are “raised to walk in a newness of life.” The addicted must only believe that the old sinful self is gone and that they now receive a new heart.     Kenneth Wayne Hancock