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Chrysostom
Humble Servant of All
The grip of alcohol is not a bodily disease so much as a wicked desire that has thickened like a cloud over the eye of your soul. You ask prayer for deliverance, and rightly so, for this is the most grievous slavery, from which God alone can set you free. Men feel shame at worldly bondage, but here you are held fast by sin, a tyrant far more cruel than any human master. Do not imagine that adding more, more resolutions, more strategies, more shame, will quench this fire. That is like trying to fly by fashioning wings; the evil is stayed only by taking away the desire, by persuading the mind that it craves what is empty and destructive.
Our Lord came to preach deliverance to captives and recovery of sight to the blind. He gave Himself up for the life of the world and appointed that awe-filled table where we taste the body broken and the blood shed for the remission of sins. Draw near to that feast with thanksgiving, not as one driven by compulsion, but as one who seizes the medicine of immortality. When you learn to bear even the pangs of thirst and the turmoil of withdrawal with grateful heart, you begin to strip the enemy of his power. God often permits us to be exercised in such trials, not because He has abandoned us, but to prove to the adversary that we serve Him for Himself alone, and not for the comforts of this passing life.
Remember Joseph, who was sold into bondage by his own brethren, yet God was with him and delivered him out of all his afflictions. The very evils his brothers meant for harm became the path to salvation for many. So too your struggle, endured with faith and thankfulness, becomes a stage on which God’s power is perfected. But the promise is not always fulfilled in a day; the Israelites groaned four hundred years before they came forth to serve God in freedom. Persevere, and do not lose heart at the small defeats along the way. The truth you must know is that you are not a slave to any man, nor to any substance, but that sin itself is the bondage; and the Son has promised, “If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” That freedom is not a distant future but is now reflected in every soul that turns with unveiled face to the Lord. Let the mirror of your mind catch the glory of His deliverance, and the cloud of this vile desire will scatter before that pure light.
Our Lord came to preach deliverance to captives and recovery of sight to the blind. He gave Himself up for the life of the world and appointed that awe-filled table where we taste the body broken and the blood shed for the remission of sins. Draw near to that feast with thanksgiving, not as one driven by compulsion, but as one who seizes the medicine of immortality. When you learn to bear even the pangs of thirst and the turmoil of withdrawal with grateful heart, you begin to strip the enemy of his power. God often permits us to be exercised in such trials, not because He has abandoned us, but to prove to the adversary that we serve Him for Himself alone, and not for the comforts of this passing life.
Remember Joseph, who was sold into bondage by his own brethren, yet God was with him and delivered him out of all his afflictions. The very evils his brothers meant for harm became the path to salvation for many. So too your struggle, endured with faith and thankfulness, becomes a stage on which God’s power is perfected. But the promise is not always fulfilled in a day; the Israelites groaned four hundred years before they came forth to serve God in freedom. Persevere, and do not lose heart at the small defeats along the way. The truth you must know is that you are not a slave to any man, nor to any substance, but that sin itself is the bondage; and the Son has promised, “If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” That freedom is not a distant future but is now reflected in every soul that turns with unveiled face to the Lord. Let the mirror of your mind catch the glory of His deliverance, and the cloud of this vile desire will scatter before that pure light.
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God help a depressed man. If he needs it help him get treatment for addiction to drugs as well. Remove generational curses of alcohol addiction his grand father's on his mom's side and his dad's side were both addicted to alcohol. One of the grandfather's was a medicine man in his mother's side...
