This is probably like dropping a box of bullets on the floor as a topic, but so be it. I will dance and dodge if necessary. According to the scriptures, some things just need to be said.
As I look at our culture from a Christian perspective, I find myself frustrated when I hear things like drugs are an epidemic and the only thing for it is more suboxone, more meetings, more recovery houses. We have definitely seen more use and misuse in more people. I see people every week get dropped off at a bus station while they’re going AWOL from a recovery house. And so we have learned to accept it and help people cope with it. “Live a life in recovery with Jesus’ help.”
Really? Psalm 107:20 says He (God) sent His Word (Jesus) and healed them ( we are “them”) and delivered them from all their destruction.. No one would deny that drug use that causes breakdown of individuals, families, futures and lives is destruction. So, is the increased use an epidemic or evidence that “we the people” of God either don’t believe His Word, don’t trust that He has the power to deliver from drug use, or we just have bought into the scenario that what people are is what they’ll always be. So we, if we love them, have to help them live with this chain around their leg (and heart and family members) for the rest of their lives.
Do we tell people that Jesus saves but they have to live in a sin state the rest of their lives and as long as they work the process they will be okay? Most of us wouldn’t think of saying that, but when it comes to the bondage of addiction, people are told “It’s just what it is. Do this, and Jesus will help you stay clean. Keep coming back” Now governments are paying for people to go get suboxone to help them. They’re likely just changing drugs, but at least suboxone is less deadly. And the profits go higher and the families go deeper into despair.
The price of Jesus’ healing and delivering was shed blood, becoming sin and becoming the curse, destruction, damage and stain that sin brought wth it. Jesus took it all into His body, then took it to the cross, then took all that addiction and other destruction into hell, and three days later walked out free of it, so we can be free of it. He “worked the process” so we don’t have to.
Now our enemy lies and keeps us in fear so we say Jesus is all about recovery. But, the Bible tells us something different. Jesus healed a bowed and bent woman on the Sabbath day. He broke the law. In Luke 13, when Jesus was being yelled at by the religious leaders for healing on the Sabbath (not for healing itself), He called them hypocrites and said they wouldn’t even leave their animals in a ditch on the sabbath and went on to say, “Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”
Jesus healed her because He said she’d been bound by the devil and He was bringing deliverance and freedom. She was “a daughter of Abraham” and how much more ought the sons of God, those Jesus bought with His own blood, be set free? How is that possible that we don’t set people free by the Word? People are destroyed because they are not told Jesus is Healer. Jesus is Deliverer. He didn’t go through torment and even into hell, to help people manage their bondage.
So, are we unbelieving believers? Do we think bondage is “above Jesus’ pay grade?” Do we think His Word and His healing passed away and while He sent the Holy Spirit to comfort us, He must have wiped out the power of His Word to heal us?
Why do we tell people less than the truth that God sent His Word to heal and deliver from destruction? Then He said His word will not return to Him empty but will succeed and accomplish what He sent it to do.
It’s a simple reality. Either what He said is true or it’s not. How large do we believe God is? He said it like this, “All things are possible to them who believe” and then He said we believers will do the works that He did. He set people in bondage free. He’s not glorified when we do less.
For His Glory 