Choices

Remnants

I’ve destroyed everything that was good in my life.
I’ve broken each vow that I made.
I’ve disgraced my two children, my friends, and my wife
For this mindless, relentless charade.

Think of the worst person you’ve ever known,
And I’ll wager he’s better than me.
Hell is a place I would hate to call home,
And yet it’s where I ought to be.

As a youth, I was favored, a virgin to sin,
A light to the wavering soul.
My thoughts were perverted and wrong now and then,
But I kept them in constant control.

In bad times, they’d soothe me and take me away
Like a Heroin dose to my brain.
I’d yield to their lure more and more everyday,
And my heart grew more selfish and vain.

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Are You Willing to do What is Right?

Isaiah 5:20 (NRSV).
Ah, you who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

Over the years, I have learned to try to analyze my thoughts and actions, to discover why I think the way I do or act the way I choose. I say “try” because I’m not always successful at doing it. I am greatly influenced by the society around me, a society which isn’t trustworthy and which, if I were wise, I would ignore when it comes to making choices.

I look back over my life and see many places where I should have made different decisions, where I could have made better choices. I see so many times when I have been (and still am) self-indulgent rather than obedient to God’s will. Just this morning, I read a snippet written by a dear Christian sister. It said, “Will I cooperate [with God’s plan] despite emotional pain?” Will I take the hard road?

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I am a Drug Addict

DRUG ADDICT

Yes me. Ashton. You should take this personally. I am writing myself here because everything I could tell myself out loud I won’t hear. Everything anyone says won’t help. All advice, admonishment, promises and pleas will fall on my deaf ears. And frankly, I don’t believe I even deserve the energy that all of that would take.

I know from this moment on that I will only call myself drug addict. I will not use my name because I have relinquished it. My name belongs to the person I no longer am. I am now…just drug addict.

I have surrendered my human identity, by which was no one’s choice but my own.

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Surrender

Driving down the freeway your left rear tire explodes.You gently pull to the side of the road to exit and see what happened. You begin to check to see why it popped.

STOP.

The problem with most of humanity is that reason right there. In the end, it doesn’t matter what popped the tire. It doesn’t matter that if you were in the other lane, you could of avoided it. It doesn’t matter that you will now be late. And it doesn’t matter when you say, ” I knew I should of called in”. Why? Because none of those things actually happened.

Work on the solution. Take it off, and fix it. There is nothing in this world that is good, nor bad that you can prevent. For there is only rules one can live by, for which when done, makes you accept when the unpreventable happens.

How many of you would go back and change an event in your life? Let’s say one would change their academic career. For which the only reason I can think of would be to have a better job, and obtain more money. They are not living by the rules given. Money is absolutely nothing. It buys fake rules for which leads people to think it is something. Money creates man to believe you can prevent. Money can not make one go back and prevent your flat tire. It can only buy you a new one. It can not make you sober, only get you into places that try to help get you sober. False: money controls people places and things. Fact: people places and things allow money to control them. Other examples are such; I would of not married that person, I would have said bye to my father before he died. I would of never used. I would of answered the phone. I would of been kinder. Would, should, could. Words I will never understand.

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Who Are You Serving?

Then Samuel told the whole house of Israel, “If you’re returning to the Lord with all your heart, then remove the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you, direct your hearts back to the Lord, and serve him only. Then he will deliver you from the control of the Philistines.” 1 Samuel 7:3, NET Bible

I have to look seriously at who – or what – I am serving. For I can be easily deceived if I am not regularly submitting myself to the Lord my God.

There are many things I can serve in this world, none of which honour Jesus: I can serve money, other people, addictions to various substances or activities – I can even serve an addiction to people if what they think of me, or if their opinion, is more important to me than His opinion or what the Lord thinks of me.

Something else that I can become a servant to is my emotions. It is so easy for me to become overwhelmed by my feelings, and when I do, I can begin to quickly bow down to them. When anger rears its ugly head in me, it is all too natural for me to lash out at my husband or the nearest loved one to me. However, the Lord says in His Word:

A gentle answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger. Proverbs 15:1, NIV84

When I feel discouraged and overwhelmed by a task that is before me, it is simple for me to say, “I just can’t do this!” But the Word of the Lord speaks differently:

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When We Run From God

When we struggle with addiction or any other challenge, we may say and do things we wouldn’t normally. We may choose to disobey God as Jonah did in the Old Testament.

When we run from God, we have preferred our own will instead of God’s.

The storm will come as it did for Jonah. Our storm may not be a physical raging sea, but it could be raging emotions, a storm in our marriage, rebellious children, financial chaos, loss of a job, or foreclosure of our home.

If our children rebel, we don’t stop loving them. They can still turn to us, their parents for love and support, and we’ll give them both.

In the same way when we find ourselves discouraged or convicted about sin in our lives, we can turn to God. No matter what we’ve done, God loves us with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3).

In speaking of God, 2 Peter 3:9 (NIV) says, He is patient with you not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

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God IS our Spiritual Counsel and Protector (Part 1)

If our marriage is in trouble the first place we should go is to the Words of Our Loving Father. We should seek Him with our heart and with our minds and with our soul. We should do NOTHING else, nor say NOTHING else without first asking our Father what it is we should do.

Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man loves me, he will keep my words: and my father will love him, and will come unto him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth me and not keepeth my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father which sent me. John 14: 23-24

Starting today, I will go to my Creator for the spiritual guidance and counsel that my marriage really needs! What did Jesus Christ say about marriage again? Let’s take a look at some very important principles for loving one another “in the LORD”.

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I Saw Religion Remake a Drunkard

The following article is from “Your Faith” magazine September 1939 and was provided by DickB who wrote: “It is an article which A.A. literature had said was lost. AAs speculated that Dr. Bob wrote the article. He didn’t. He was interviewed by D. J. Defoe in September 1939 for “Your Faith” Magazine. And the interview disappeared from view for years and years as far as AAs were concerned. Yet in the interview, Dr. Bob told how he read the Bible with patients. He told how they came to trust God. He told how he had been cured by prayer. He spoke about the healings of Jesus Christ. And he was talking about the many drunkards whom he had been able to help once he himself prayed, turned to God for help, and was cured–a priceless article free of the editing and revision of others who might have doubted!”

D. J. Defoe, “C,” in Your Faith magazine, September 1939, 84-88
http://silkworth.net/aahistory/drbob/drbob_interview_fm_0939.html

Through Liquor, this physician had lost his practice, his reputation and his self-respect. Then one night in a gathering in a private home, he found the way of escape.

WHEN a doctor starts drinking, he’s usually on the skids for keeps. His profession gives him so much privacy, so great exposure to temptation both from liquor and from drugs, and his need of a stimulant to lift him from depression becomes so extreme, that many a good doctor has dropped into oblivion for no cause other than his own thirst for drink.

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