Psalm 30:1-2
“O LORD my God, I cried out to You and You Healed me.”
A little over 13 years ago that verse served as the foundation on which the One Step Ministry was built. The first time I ever read it I was so moved. It was my story wrapped up in one sentence. My recovery journey had been dragging on for the better part of a decade. My wife and I had decided to stay together but our lives lacked joy. I was absolutely white-knuckling my sobriety and although I wasn’t drinking, another consuming sin was controlling my life.
But then there comes a day when, in His perfect timing, God led us back to church and for the first time probably ever my wife and I realized the blessing that was attached to having a personal relationship with Jesus.
As we like to tell people, up to that time we had tried to find contentment through rehab and psychiatric counseling, medications…nothing managed to get us to a place where we felt whole and happy. So, we considered the fact that we hadn’t enlisted Jesus’ help in some time, so we gave that a try. We re-committed our lives to Jesus and He changed everything about who we were. He set us on a path to serving Him that, over the years has blessed us more than I could ever describe for you.
But the verse goes even deeper for me. It made a way for me to tell others whose lives were being decimated by substance abuse that life didn’t have to be that way. Addiction is first and foremost a sin, a rejection of Jesus coupled with the worship of something less than Jesus. That’s a choice that can lead to death save for the fact that Jesus doesn’t want us to die surrendered to sin. So…we cry out to Him. And the moment that we do that, a healing transformation begins. We slowly realize that addiction isn’t an incurable disease, it is a moral shortcoming that Jesus desires to obliterate from your life and leave in its place a new creation, a disciple. A reborn person who is now empowered to share this Good News of healing with the world around them.
It’s just a matter of having the desire to set aside pride and shame and anger and guilt and cry out to the Savior of the world to save you. Take that One Step, and He will be faithful and the doors to a new way of living will swing open and bring you joy that will comfort you in this life and then lead to you eternal joy in the next!