We must also address the stigma surrounding addiction within so many churches.

When we cry to the Lord in our trouble, he will send us a preacher with words that deliver us from destruction.

Only God's Word of Gospel can permanently help and heal the addicted.

There is true help in the midst of our pain. Someone who suffered as we suffer, who embraced all our pain in his suffering and death on a cross.

I’m a drug addict. Specifically, a recovering drug addict. More specific, a grateful recovering drug addict.

He barely wakes to find himself nearly dead; even so, he can’t feel a thing.

You matter so much to God that he would rather die than lose you. You matter so much to Jesus that no suffering was too much, no deprivation too burdensome, no punishment too severe for him to endure to have you as his own.

“Why now,” I said to no one, or to myself, or to God. Whoever. I was drunk, strung out, mostly dead, hopeless in the darkness. I knew I’d done it all to myself. I didn’t need God to drive the point home.

But I remember that that’s how it ended. Words. Wine. Blood. A sudden halt to the conversation.

For the less we tell these stories of sin, the more it seems we are ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for the salvation of bad people.

This chorus digs below the surface to reveal that beneath our chosen self-medications, be they alcohol or drugs or overeating or smoking or bed-hopping, you’ll unearth the real killer. And “it ain’t the whiskey.”

St. Paul talks about faith that is weak and by his description of what it looks like, I lived there; I've been the weak brother. It appears that a firm faith is that faith that trusts in the goodness of God for you based on something outside of you – not on some special, superior knowledge, but having your name known and loved by God.