by Timothy Whalen | Nov 25, 2018 | Addiction
In this world of hurting people, there are not nearly enough people offering help to those without hope. In our community, we are averaging one suicide a month and others are overdosing on drugs or just committing the slow suicide of drinking themselves to death. I have been ministering in the jail system both at the county level and the state prison for well over seventeen years. Ten years ago our church started the Reformers Unanimous addictions ministry in the local jail. The jail admin said they would allow twenty men to sign up and over thirty men actually did! The chaplain said he has never seen a ministry launch so big and so fast.
It has been a thrill to see people set free from addictions and destructive behavior. The opioid epidemic is not confined to Michigan or even to Shiawassee County. It is now a nationwide problem and America has the stigma of being the largest drug consuming country in the world. I try to remind people of this when they want to criticize Mexico and the cartels. We are creating the demand and they are simply supplying it. I am looking for like-minded people who want to address the underlying problem, namely that of the consumer, the drug abuser who lives across town, or in your neighborhood or maybe even across the table from you.
Curse the Darkness? or Turn On The Light?
The Bible says we are blessed (happy) if we are not sitting in our seats scorning or despising those who are addicts. I have no use for that attitude! To be sure the addict has made bad and even sinful choices to get to where he or she is at. There are some who are responsible for their actions and others who are victims. I asked one man who had been a drunk for many years how long he had been drinking. He said, “My mother used to put beer in my baby bottle to keep me quiet!” I am sure there are many who have never heard his complete story and it makes me grateful for my precious parents. I was asking another man in his thirties how he had to come to use marijuana and he said his relatives forced him to smoke dope when he was still a young boy of six or seven, thinking it was cute. Yet another man, my good friend from high school had his drunken father take him to the bar when he was four or five years old and had set him on the bar stool to help him have his first drink of beer. Would you like other examples? Sadly I have many more. I am sure you see how scorning these people is the wrong thing and helps no one but to inflate our own egos.
Let’s stop kicking people who are down and be sure we have all of the facts before we sweep them to the side of the road of life and wait for the trash man to pick them up for a one way trip to the human landfill. Will you criticize and complain about our drug epidemic or will you partner with me to offer a hand of help to those in bondage?
It Takes Prayer, Love and Time to Help
I used to think that it took a lot of love to help people and to be sure it does. You will work really hard for their family and kids and then not have the loyalty or appreciation always paid back to you. I live by the maxim to do what I do as unto the Lord, knowing that ultimately it is Him that I serve.
My background is one of drug and alcohol abuse and I am grateful to be alive! With all of the dangerous things I have done and the people I associated with, I should have been killed many times over. I have been a lawbreaker, both God’s law and man’s law, and I am now on the other side! The Lord saved me from my sin, including that of abusing drugs and alcohol in the year of 1980. By His grace and power, I have been set free for thirty-eight years! It is a lie from the devil to say that once a person is an addict or drunk that they are doomed to a life of abuse. It a wonderful thing to experience sobriety, which I prefer to call victory from bondage. I so desire to see others join me in this walk of life that I have led our church in establishing Reformers Unanimous in our local church. Reformers Unanimous was established by Steve Currington and now has chapters in every state in the US and many foreign countries. I was quickly reminded of how much love it takes to love the addict, how much patience it requires to help with her baby steps toward victory and yes, the great rewards to have them testify, “I have been free from shooting heroin for over a year now!” or, “I have been tobacco free for two years!” or, “I have been anger free for three weeks!”
What Do You Want From Life?
“There is a way which seemeth right unto man but the end thereof are the ways of death.” (Proverbs 14:12) I attended a concert in San Francisco and remember chanting with the whole crowd, “We’re white punks on dope! White punks on dope!” I was deceived. I was blind. I was on my way to destruction. I had become the person my parents warned me about. Then I was set free with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Will you join me in setting others free?
We Have a Worldwide Problem
This blog is intended to reach around the world. I may never meet you but please stay with us and help “Set The Captives Free!” I appreciate your input and feedback, because none of us is as smart as all of us.
by Timothy Whalen | Sep 7, 2018 | Addiction
I Am NOT A Sober Drunk!
I Am Not A Sober Drunk! Thirty-eight years ago I was reading A Gideon’s Bible to find out where I was going after I died. I was concerned about where I would spend eternity and being raised Catholic, I was not familiar with the basic message found in Scripture. I quickly found out that I was a sinner under the condemnation of God. After finding out that salvation was a gift through the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus I asked Him to forgive me of my sin and give me a new life. Since the Bible was not important in my former religion I had to start from scratch. What a thrill it was when I found that God declared me to be a new creature (creation). In 2 Corinthians 5:17 we read, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.” Note that it does not say, “You are still a drunk and will have to manage your addiction for the rest of your life.” No! It says that the person who is in Christ is a new person and the old things are passed away! I am thrilled the Lord has given me victory over alcohol, weed, LSD and other substances for over three dozen years now.
The problem that needs to be dealt with is a spiritual problem that will not be solved by endless aa meetings in the Shiawassee County or anywhere else for that matter. I have to freely admit that a nebulous “higher power” will never help me or you but a vibrant relationship with the risen Savior, the Lord Jesus will! I love to claim that, “I am crucified with Christ:” (The old Tim Whalen, the sinning, cussing drunken sailor has been defeated at the cross). “…Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me!” That, my searching friend, is the answer! Christ through His Spirit will live in your heart and control you if you will let him. He is the reason for my victory over alcohol, pot, hashish and immorality. His victory is permanent and does not need endless open or closed meetings.
QUOTE:
Lynn Appleton says that “Despite all public pronouncements about alcoholism as a disease, medical practice rejects treating it as such. Not only does alcoholism not follow the model of a ‘disease,’ it is not amenable to standard medical treatment.” She says that “Medical doctors’ rejection of the disease theory of alcoholism has a strong basis in the biomedical model underpinning most of their training” and that “medical research on alcoholism does not support the disease model.”
Lynn M. Appleton. Rethinking medicalization. Alcoholism and anomalies. Chapter in editor Joel Best’s Images of Issues. Typifying Contemporary Social Problems. NY: Aldine De Gruyter, 1995, page 65 and page 69. 2nd edition
Lynn M. Appleton
I Called The Doctor And The Doctor Said…
Is addiction a disease, or is it a choice? To think clearly about this question, we need to make a sharp distinction between an activity and its results. Many activities that are not themselves diseases can cause diseases. And a foolish, self-destructive activity is not necessarily a disease. Psychiatric Times, Modern Medicine Network It becomes very clear when we do a contrast and compare of the two possibilities. If you compare addiction with a true disease we see that in addiction there is not an infectious agent to be found (as in tuberculosis), no pathological biological; process (as in diabetes), and no pathogens can ever be found as a causitive agent!
One study found that only 25 percent of physicians believed that alcolohism is a disease. The majority believed alcoholism to be a socail or psychological problem instead of a disease. [57]Mignon, S.I. (1996). Physicians’ Perceptions of Alcoholics: The Disease Concept reconsidered” Alcoholism treatment Quartly. 14 (4): 33-45. doi: 10.1300/j020v14n04 02
Only The Truth Makes Free
Reformers Unanimous is a faith-based addictions ministry that points people to an intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ as the cure for addictions and destructive behavior. I was set free over thirty-eight years ago and the old Tim Whalen seems like another person. In fact, that is the truth! I am NOT who I was before I met Christ. Like we read in 2 Corinthians 5:17, I am a NEW creature (creation) in Christ. The life which I now live is an exchanged life. I have exchanged my sin, lifestyle, and attitudes for the Lord Jesus Christ’s character in me. You see this program (RU) is not a self-help program. It is a God Help program! I freely confess that anything good concerning me is a work of God’s grace in my life. I was sad to hear recently of a person who kept saying, “If I can do it, so can you! Just believe in yourself and try harder!” When we praise ourselves we actually set ourselves up for failure! Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” (1 Cor 10:12) Pride truly goes before destruction. I hope the person stays sober and clean but even better than that is to have victory! There is a difference. We are not talking just having victory over substance but having eternal life beginning and continuing when we die. That ONLY comes through the new birth found in salvation through Jesus Christ.
Friend, may I ask you this simple question? When did you become aware that you were not in a right standing with Almighty God? Have you come to the point that you had to admit you were powerless to change your life because of your sin and that you could not work your sin debt off? The Bible says that, “… the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23 A gift cannot be worked for nor earned. It is simply received by faith. This gift is so needed because it is true, “…all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23
Searching friend you must come to God on His terms, not as you understand Him, but as He presents Himself in the Word of God! “…we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 5:1b To do this simply call it what God calls it, Sin. Turn from your sin and know you cannot change yourself but Jesus Christ can! Call upon the Lord, asking Him to save you from the sin and its power and its pull over your life! “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Romans 10:13
You may want to pray something as simple as this: “Lord Jesus I have come to realize that I was born a sinner and that I have no power to save myself. I believe that you became sin for me and died in my place on the cross. I believe you were raised from the dead and now offer me this new life and freedom from sinful addictions. I turn from my sin and ask you to come into my life and deliver me from ALL of my sins and give me your forgiveness in its place….Thank you, Lord Jesus, for salvation. Help me to give you the glory as you have now set me free! Friend if you have just now trusted Christ for salvation, please leave a comment or contact us at the end of the website for further help. Also, please see reformu.com for further resources.
