DISCIPLESHIP AND ADDICTION
Alcoholism and drug addiction or drug dependency lead to all manner of misery for those near to the addicted person. The litany of crime and violence, domestic abuse and neglect, workplace underperformance and unemployment prompt children to be ashamed of their home, and spouses to shelter the user from public scorn. Divorce with its consequent stress, weakened immune response, and diminished income can be a contributing factor on the road to poverty. When we minister to the struggling class, we will be compelled to urge an addicted person to accept Christ and begin a new life. The Apostle Paul wrote, “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?” (Romans 6:16). We see what is happening even though the user may deny it.
When addicted people come to the point of realizing that they no longer have control over their actions, they are ready to seek help. Here is where a 12-step program like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is vital to a person’s recovery. However, AA is not automatically a part of discipleship to Jesus Christ. I say this because AA does not promote any particular faith in the true God, only an acknowledgment of “a higher power, however you understand it.” Some participants of AA will go to the extent of professing that their higher power is a cup of coffee. A person can practice the twelve steps through the mutual accountability that AA provides and be free from alcohol, and yet never enter a relationship with Christ and enter his eternal kingdom. For those who have received Christ, and who believe in the true God, and have surrendered to Jesus as Lord, the twelve steps are a vital part of discipleship and recovery.
Ideally, the alcoholic who has received Christ should be able to be part of a small group where the participants confess their sins and hold each other accountable, as they study the word and pray together. In a small group, however, the application is to a myriad of sins and ills, whereas AA is a gathering of people who are battling one major addiction, which is alcohol. Both have their strong points. While we may encourage someone to be part of a focused 12-step program, we will also encourage the person to join a small group at church so that he or she may start to love and be concerned with the weaknesses of others no matter what those may be.
Even if we cannot be part of AA because we do not have an alcohol addiction, we should be familiar with the twelve steps. We can reference them in a myriad of situations.
The following Twelve Steps are copied from https://www.alcohol.org/alcoholics-anonymous/:
Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Step 8: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
The Twelve Steps are a set of guiding principles in addiction treatment that outline a course of action for tackling problems including alcoholism, drug addiction and compulsion.” Substitute “Jesus Christ” for “a Power greater than ourselves” (Step 2) and “God as revealed in the Bible” for “God as we understood Him,” and the twelve steps become the steps of discipleship for any believer. In fact, the twelve steps have their roots in an evangelical Christian organization, the Oxford Group, whose main focus was to promote peace and reconciliation through a relationship with Jesus Christ. It was founded in 1931 by a Lutheran minister, Dr. Frank Buchman. Four years later AA was founded as a fellowship of alcoholics working together to overcome their drinking problems.
We have met an alcoholic or a drug addict and we immediately recognize the problem and know the solution. If only the individual recognized it! Right here we need to confront our own addiction to sin. What is the thing, or habit that we obey and that we cannot seem to shake off? If we are disciples of Jesus, and if we profess it, we have also pledged ourselves to identify the sin in us, confess it, and ask forgiveness and reconciliation with God and man. We understand that this is a way of life, not just a one-time event. Therefore, I ask, “Are we addicted to nicotine? Are we overeating?” What does the Bible say about gluttony? Isn’t that what overeating is? Have we made excuses like, “I tried to quit, but it made me irritable, impossible to live with?” Or, “I just couldn’t sleep with hunger pangs.” Or, “I’m under a lot of stress and I compulsively reach out for a can of pop or a cookie.” When we talk like this, aren’t we doing the same thing that an alcoholic or addict does: make excuses, blame shift, or minimize the consequences?
Once we have learned the outline of a Biblical presentation of the gospel, we should be able to illustrate it by references to the lives of people as recorded in scripture. In addition, we should be willing to expose our souls to the people with whom we are talking, “I’m a living example of someone who was a slave to sin. I was blind to my own faults. When I became aware of the evil inside of my heart, I discovered that I was powerless to free myself. That was when I turned to Christ. That was when I began to seek God and receive his power. That was when someone from the family of God came to me to encourage me. That was Christ’s messenger to help me.”
Supposing that we have financial, family, social and spiritual well-being. Let’s not kid ourselves in thinking that we do not struggle like those of the struggling class. In fact, if we cannot share our struggles with sin, we will not be able to help those who are struggling. The so-called losers of this world are quick to recognize spiritual smugness. How shallow is our comfort if we have done everything possible to avoid all trouble, especially suffering for professing and obeying Christ! But if we have embraced Christ and what it means to suffer for him, we receive his comfort and are able to share that same comfort with others (2 Corinthians 1:4).