The French philosopher Pascal said there is a “God-shaped vacuum” inside every human heart. Since nature abhors a vacuum, if we don’t fill it with God, we will fill it with something else. So many of us have filled our hearts with the junk food of the world ¹. Some have gone past junk food and gone chemical to the point of addiction. Chemical cravings are as old as time. The Bible gives ample proof that excessive drinking of intoxicants was a common vice among the Hebrews, as among other ancient peoples (Noah, Gen. 9:21; Lot, Gen. 19:33, 35; Nabal, 1 Samuel 25:30; Amnon 1 Samuel 13:28; Elah, 1 Kings 16:9) ². Despite the long history, there is hope, help, and healing for those caught in the enslavement of substance abuse.

John 8:31–32 (KJV)
31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; 32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

ILLUSTRATION: Psalm of the Cocaine Addict
A police officer found the following typewritten note in a telephone booth.

King Cocaine is my shepherd,
I shall always want.
He maketh me to lie down in gutters.
He leadeth me beside the troubled water.
He destroyeth my soul.
He leadeth me in the paths of wickedness for the efforts sake.
Yea, I shall walk through the valley of poverty and will fear all evil.
For Cocaine art with me!
Thy needle and capsule try to comfort me.
Thou strippest the table of groceries in the presence of my family.
Thou robbest my head of reason.
My cup of sorrow runneth over.
Surely cocaine addiction shall stalk me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the House of the Damned forever ³.

• I am here to tell you boldly that this does not need to be your testimony. But in order to be free, you need a new hope and a new vision.

ILLUSTRATION: The Eagle and the Chicken
The Scottish preacher John McNeill liked to tell about an eagle that had been captured when it was quite young. The farmer who snared the bird put a restraint on it so it couldn’t fly, and then he turned it loose to roam in the barnyard. It wasn’t long till the eagle began to act like the chickens, scratching and pecking at the ground. This bird that once soared high in the heavens seemed satisfied to live the barnyard life of the lowly hen. One day the farmer was visited by a shepherd who came down from the mountains where the eagles lived. Seeing the eagle, the shepherd said to the farmer, “What a shame to keep that bird hobbled here in your barnyard! Why don’t you let it go?” The farmer agreed, so they cut off the restraint. But the eagle continued to wander around, scratching and pecking as before. The shepherd picked it up and set it on a high stone wall. For the first time in months, the eagle saw the grand expanse of blue sky and the glowing sun. Then it spread its wings and with a leap soared off into a tremendous spiral flight, up and up and up. At last it was acting like an eagle again. If you are bound, changing your vision from chicken to eagle is vital. There is no other way that you can become the eagle you were meant to be than by changing your outlook. There is a difference between receiving from God instantly and receiving as you go. Both are effective, both are of God and both are in the Word.

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Matthew 9:22 (ESV)
22 Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well.

Luke 17:12–14 (ESV)
12 And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance 13 and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” 14 When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed.

• Jesus ministered healing both ways. Some were healed instantly. Some were healed as they went, or with the passage of time.
• Deliverance from addiction falls under the umbrella of divine healing.
• The cravings of the body have to be reset to normal.
• God’s healing power accomplishes this.

ILLUSTRATION: Husband and Wife Delivered from Drugs
This one couple I know were both on drugs before they met Jesus. One day they gave their hearts to God and were born again. The wife was delivered instantly, right on the spot. The other was healed with the passage. Both arrived at the same place. They just took different trains to get there. You should not prefer one method over the other. You can’t put God in a box and use a cookie cutter method to help people.

• Do not despise any moving’s of God.
• Don’t assume that everyone will receive alike, in the same way or the same manner. Just come to Jesus.
• He knows how to deliver you. He is an expert in this area. He has thousands of years of experience delivering the righteous.

2 Peter 2:9 (KJV)
9 The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished:

How to Break Free From Addiction

• Admit You Have a Problem
• You cannot gain any help from heaven unless you admit to yourself and God that you have a problem and you need help.
• You can’t be saved unless you admit you need Jesus.
• We have this promise from heaven that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.

Acts 2:21 (KJV)
21 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

• Admitting you have a problem is a matter of locating yourself. If you want to go on a successful journey you have to know Where you are and where you want to go.
• If you are in a place called bondage, you want to go towards freedom.
• If you are not honest about where you are, you will not invest the time you need to develop faith to be healed.
• Clean, sober and delivered requires faith, commitment and conviction.
• Admitting you have a problem because someone else thinks you have one is not enough. You must be personally convinced.
• Your faith and your conviction will carry you.
• Your conviction will help you conquer.
• Your conviction will keep you stay clean.
• It’s one thing to get healed. It’s another thing to stay healed.

ILLUSTRATION: Conviction Will Carry You
Eric Liddel, a young Scottish ministerial student, the best sprinter in the British Empire, was favored to win the 100-meter race in the Olympic Games in Paris, July 1924. But a few weeks before the Olympics, he learned that the preliminary 100-meter races were scheduled for a Sunday afternoon. He considered Sunday sports wrong. For the few weeks before the Games he excused himself after evening dinner from the usual bull sessions with classmates, returning home hours later exhausted. A few weeks later the whole world knew his secret. He had spent those evening hours practicing for another event that was scheduled for a weekday and which required a different type of speed and endurance. On the closing day of the Olympics he stood on the winner’s platform and received the Gold Medal as 400-meter champion. Liddel, who became a missionary, died as a prisoner in a concentration camp in the Far East during World War II. His story was told in the film Chariots of Fire. I like Eric Liddel. Eric Liddel was a person of conviction. He went to great lengths not to violate his conviction and he became a winner none the less.

• Your conviction will carry you.
• This is not an easy first step.
• One of the reasons it is so difficult is that the reason why you became a user still exists.

Making A New Start

• You need to make a new start.

Make a New Start with God

• Start with repentance.
• Repentance is not works.

ILLUSTRATION: Repentance is Not Works
The thief had nails through both hands, so that he could not work; and a nail through each foot, so that he could not run errands for the Lord; he could not lift a hand or a foot toward his salvation, and yet Christ offered him the gift of God; and he took it. Christ threw him a passport, and took him into Paradise ⁴. Repentance is not working for forgiveness. The thief on the cross had nothing to offer but God forgave him and He will forgive you.

• Repentance helps you draw a line in the dirt.

Make a New Start with God’s Word

• Is God’s Word final authority in your life?
• Do you believe the Bible is God speaking to you?
• Do you believe God’s Word is anointed and has power to deliver you?
• Do you believe it is God’s will for you to be well?
• Start by reading, thinking and pondering healing scriptures. Quote these verses out loud to yourself.
• Here is a link to a vast set of healing verses.
  • Healing Scripture List

Make a New Start with Men

• Apologize to the people you have hurt.
• Be real with people.
• They may say to you that you’ve said that before. The proof is always in the pudding as the old saying goes.
• In the past, you may have been saying you were sorry because you felt the heat not because you saw the light.
• You have to be willing to develop a track record. Establishing a track record takes time and consistency.

Make a New Start with Community

• There is power in support people.
• There is power in your own company.

Acts 4:23–24 (KJV)
23 And being let go, they went to their own company, and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them. 24 And when they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and said, Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is:

• There is strength in numbers. Gang up on the devil.
• The devil thrives on isolation. Get into church and get around people who know the Word and love people.

Make a New Start with Willingness

• Willingness is about your attitude.
• Attitude determines altitude.

ILLUSTRATION: Attitude Sees an Opportunity
The March 1988 Rotarian tells the story of a certain organization offering a bounty of $5,000 for wolves captured alive. It turned Sam and Jed into fortune hunters. Day and night they scoured the mountains and forests looking for their valuable prey. Exhausted one night, they fell asleep dreaming of their potential fortune. Suddenly, Sam awoke to see that they were surrounded by about fifty wolves with flaming eyes and bared teeth. He nudged his friend and said, “Jed, wake up! We’re rich!” ⁵.

• Everything depends on your attitude. It would have been easy for these hunters to be afraid of those wolves. But instead of seeing death, they saw opportunity. You may be surrounded by hungry wolves, by cravings, by temptations to engage just once. But, if you’ll look at those wolves as opportunities to win, opportunities to beat this thing once and for all, you will come out on top.
• Your attitude must be “I’ll do anything”, and then do just that. Will you read and study and meditate on healing scriptures? Will you study faith and how it works so that you can believe God for your deliverance and keep it? Will you do it?
• Recovery is dependent on your willingness to stay clean and sober.

Isaiah 1:19 (KJV)
19 If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:

Make a New Start with Education

John 8:32 (KJV)
32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

• Educate yourself on faith and healing.
• You need new knowledge. What you have learned in the past is what has gotten you into difficulty in the present.

ILLUSTRATION: You Need New Knowledge
In his book “Folk Psalms of Faith,” Ray Stedman tells a story of a woman who had been a school teacher for 25 years. When she heard about a job that would mean a promotion, she applied for the position. However, someone who had been teaching for only one year was hired instead. She went to the principal and asked why. The principal responded, “I’m sorry, but you haven’t had 25 years of experience as you claim; you’ve had only one year’s experience 25 times.”

• During that whole time the teacher had not improved.
• Recovery is a learning process.
• You have to learn to choose real life instead of turning to drugs so you don’t have to deal with life.
• You have to learn to deal with grief straight up and not turn to pills. You have to learn to deal with disappointments, wants, disturbances, and sorrow instead of turning to chemicals to help you through. Educate yourself from God’s Word on how to handle these things.

ILLUSTRATION: Lille B. Yeoman’s Testimony
Was a doctor with a morphine habit. She had easy access to these drugs and was so addicted she took 50x the normal dose. She was a wreck physically and mentally. Dr. Yeomans tried to quit numerous times. She said that if she managed to go twenty-four hours without them that she would go into withdrawal where she had heart palpitations, hot and cold sweats, nausea, racking pain, mental delusions, intense cravings, and an inability to even stand. She made at least 57 attempts to break free of her addiction. She would throw away the drugs swearing to never use them again, only to be driven back into them. She sought medical help and attempted medical cures. None of which made any difference. Her health was disintegrating and one nurse described her as “a skeleton with a demon inside”. She prayed day and night to be delivered, but she did not believe that God really healed people ⁶. Lille says “Do you ask, did I pray? I came to the place where I did nothing else. I prayed and I prayed and I prayed and I prayed and I prayed. Night after night I walked up and down the long halls calling on God and sometimes literally pulling the hair out of my head. And you say, “Were you healed after that? No, I wasn’t healed because I did not believe the simple statement of the Word of God: rather my healing would not manifest because of my unbelief. I shut the door and I prevented the power of God from operating in my body ⁷. Dr. Yeomans came to the point where she was bedridden. Her doctors would not take away the drugs, for fear that she would just die. She came to John Alexander Dowie’s healing homes in Chicago in 1898. She was left alone for long stretches and turned to the Bible for solace. God began to speak to her, not just in a single verse but throughout the entire thing. She read in Job about healing, saw God’s heart in Genesis that God called us to walk in His image, saw in Exodus that there were “no feeble among them” in the wilderness, that Deuteronomy called for ritual cleansing of lepers, Numbers showed sickness being dealt with through prayer, sacrifice, and atonement, and many others. It became clear to her that the Word of God had healing as a part of every section, not just some but every section. She also came to the realization that she was healed. Her craving for drugs was gone and her health returned. She never again took drugs. The truth of God’s healing power became a reality, which she shared from that time on ⁸.

Call to Action:

When God says faith, He means faith. When God says, Whosoever shall call on the Name of the Lord shall be saved, He means just that. You can be free, that’s an absolute Bible fact. The words of Jesus sum this all up. “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (John 8:31–32).

Question: Do you have a personal testimony of how God delivered you from addictions? Please share your testimony in the comments section below so others may be encouraged.