Situations that are out of your control will show whether you’re operating with pride and self-sufficiency, or with humility and dependence on God. If you’re willing to humbly depend on God and recognize you inability to handle everything on your own, you’ll see the power of God bring great changes in your life.
The experience of a man named Naaman illustrates how this is true. Naaman was a powerful military and political figure, a man of wealth, position, and power. He also had leprosy, an incurable disease that would slowly destroy his body. Lepers were made outcasts from their families and society. Ultimately, they faced a slow, painful, and disgraceful death.
Family is important. It provides relationships that will be your foundation through thick and thin your entire life. What’s more, families are where we get our foundation spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually. In short, families are the cradles of character.
Imagine you are hiking in the mountains and you slip off the edge of a cliff. You grab hold of a bush with your hands, but you’re now dangling over hundreds of feet below. You’re safe for the moment, but you can’t hold on for long. You must have help that is immediate, good, and adequate.
An addiction is an illegitimate means of meeting a legitimate need. We use many things to fill the needs we have in our lives: money, shopping, gambling, drugs and alcohol to name a few. The ‘drug‘ of choice takes away the pain we are experiencing, even when we don’t acknowledge that the pain is real. Sometimes the pain isn’t even in our consciousness! Pain from past wounds is buried under the mounds of whatever it is we use to avoid the pain — money, shopping, and food.
Exodus 33:19, “And the Lord said, ‘I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.’ ”