Drugs and Drinking no more, A 40 day program: Day 31
Regular life stress fuels addiction, disasters from overindulgence causes stress and leads to depression. We need to learn how to cope with outside stress in ways other than lust! Stress can come from too much of something or not enough of something. Our body will begin to break down if we keep it under constant stress.
Stress beaters are exercise, meditation and prayer and a new lifestyle. First meditation and prayer. Just sit in a quiet place and tell God that you worship Him. You can tell Him this many times as long as you are sincere. We are created to worship God and to fulfill our purpose. When we meditate we allow God to fill us up a bit with His power and joy. (Then if we quickly get back into sin the power goes right away). So also meditate with this statement – Father help me to turn aggressively from sin. Remember, John and Paul from the Bible virtually always obeyed the Bible and fulfilled their purpose and they virtually always had the Spirits power and help with them. Tell God that you praise Him and that He is the mighty and great God. Praising God is something we do during meditation as well as throughout the day.
Another great stress buster is to practice deep breathing exercises.
Getting addicted to regular exercise will help you to quit this habit easily. Physical exercise lowers depression and helps to fight stress and addiction. Once you get back in shape, exercise gives a natural high that will stay with you all day. Consult your doctor and start slow. Walk before you jog, lift really light weights for a week or two before you get aggressive. Make it a habit and it may be a habit that may help with your main addiction.
Change your lifestyle to lower stress. I keep track of my high stress activities and have goals of getting away from the stress at certain points. I am developing things I like to do that do not involve stress. What fun activities can you develop that will, distract you, lower your stress, keep you from addiction and help keep you balanced so that you can move forward to fulfilling your purpose?
Monkeys are sometimes trapped. The trapper makes a specially cut wooden trap that allows their narrow hands to go into the trap but once they grap the prize in the trap they cant pull their hand back out. Even when they know they are about to lose their freedom they still will not let go of the prize inside the trap. They can just let go and run away but they don’t. They want what is inside the trap so badly that they give up their freedom to get it.
With drugs and drinking addictions certain freedoms are given up but we still don’t get what we are trying to get.
When we live for Jesus Christ we start to have freedom and we start down a road to purpose and joy.
But many people have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior. Then they go their own way and become confused about everything. When we accept Jesus as Lord we receive goodness into our lives. Jesus went about doing good. If you are a Christian one of your goals is to live like Christ as much as is possible.
There was a little old lady who was struggling to mow her lawn every week. One day a young man came over and mowed her lawn for her. She began to cry. She had had such trouble trying to cut it. He was showing the fruit of goodness.
We were created to be good people. Adam and Eve were created to fellowship with God and live in paradise. How can you bring back a little of this paradise? Live right and do something good for someone. No matter how much you have messed up your life, God wants you to have a little bit of paradise. Even if you are broke and have nothing just turn your life over to God. I felt the presence of God in my life in the most wonderful way on one of my hardest days of my life. I had just left a stock brokerage firm that I was one of three partners of. I knew I had just left behind a million dollars. I had messed up everything.
I told God that I didn’t know what I would do but that I would try to do what He wanted me to do. At that moment I felt like Almighty God was in the car with me and I felt an incredible love. At my lowest moment I felt joy and I lived for a little while the way God intended for us to live.
1 John 2 New International Version (NIV)
2 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. 3 We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. 4 Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. 5 But if anyone obeys his word, love for God[a] is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.
What if we made a commitment to be righteous for the next 24 hours? What if we also made a commitment to treat others with Jesus love? What if we also made a commitment to live as Jesus did? Would life be better or worse? Would our level of destruction decrease? Would our joy increase?
Many religious people say we can’t be righteous. But don’t believe them because their problem is they broke their commitment to righteousness and they don’t want to wallow in the mud all alone.
The problem is not that we can’t be righteous. The problem is that we refuse to do what Jesus wants us to do. This creates a void and the void is most easily filled with sin or addiction. But rapid repentance gives us a new chance to know Jesus.
Today pray about and make a commitment to righteousness, treating others with love and fulfilling your purpose or training to do so. Those who do this with a 100% commitment will love the results. In fact they will follow this up with a goal to live that way for a week. That will be so great they will extend it to a month and then a year.
You see, those who commit 100% will love this exercise and addiction will start to be a fading memory. The only thing that can stop you is your level of commitment. Lastly if you have already forgotten the “How to never stumble” article from yesterday – go back and print it out and review it daily. That’s what people who are 100% dedicated do.
Say 5 times a day: Addiction is a trap and it will take my freedom away.
We are His work. He has made us to belong to Christ Jesus so we can work for Him. He planned that we should do this. Ephesians 2:10Living Bible (TLB)
Try doing some good in the world and see what happens
Read Matthew 3, Proverbs 26 and 2nd Corinthians 12
Pray: Father give me wisdom to know what to say and do so that I can help other people.
Pray: Father help people to be delivered from addiction and to be saved today.”
- Pray: Father help me to continue to realize that 12 step programs and help from Pastors and sponsors are vitally important to my continued recovery.
- Checklist for avoiding relapse: Have an all consuming goal that will help other people and that will use up a lot of the time you used to spend on your addiction.
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Thank you for reading day 31 of this program: How to curb your drinking and drug use.
Index
Day 1: Overcoming cravings
Day2 : Is God real?
Day 3: Quitting addiction exercises
Day 4: Getting negative emotions out
Day 5: You can never increase the amount of pleasure that you can have for the month by going back to an addiction
Day 6: Sin leads back to addiction
Day 7: Worshiping God helps us overcome addiction
Day 8: What causes you to stay addicted
Day 9: Develop positive addicitons
Day 10: Overcoming negative emotions
Day 11: You have some self control
Day 12: Always have a list of alternate activities to do when temptation hits
Day 13: Only living water can satisfy you for good
Day 14: Learning form the story of Adam and Eve
Day 15: Blessings and curses
Day 16: Self Control
Day 17: Self Control continued
Day 18: Learning to pray
Day 19: What kind of prayers does God answer
Day 21: Finding a Church that can help you
Day 22: Why is it so hard to quit
Day 23: plan plan plan
Day 24: Don’t condemn yourself
Day 25: Get the anger and negative emotions out
Day 26: Attack your addiction
Day 27: The mad cycle
Day 28: Practice coping skills
Day 29: Why we need to find our purpose
Day 30: We were created to worship, praise and serve God