1 Corinthians 6: 12, Romans 5: 8, Galations 5: 22

Come to the Father, eating 50 packets of crisps, smoking, with your shopping bags, with all the filth inside, just come!

Fall into His arms, weep, beat His arms, howl, tell Him everything. Don't try to change yourself, He'll do that and lead you in it when He's ready and knows you're ready.

Know the freedom of being accepted just as you are and not as you should be!!!

Just so you know, every time as a teenager that I would say to God, "Look God, see, I've changed", you could guarantee the next day I would get drunk again. I would then feel incredibly guilty like I'd failed God and that He wouldn't want me until I could try to stop again.

Nothing ever worked until I stopped trying to make it work and just simply fell, a mess, into Gods arms and cried "Help, this is me, I can't do it anymore, will you take this mess and do what You want with it".

Or as Matt Redman sings:

'In surrender I must give my every part; Lord receive the sacrifice of a broken heart.'

If you suffer under the grip of an addiction, whatever it is, the likelihood is that underneath the grip of drinking, masturbating, watching pornography, smoking...you are damaged. Your emotions and soul were damaged before the addiction and have been further damaged by the addiction. On top of that you will have felt condemnation, guilt and you will have felt dirty and helpless.

Oh how God loves you, how gentle He is towards you, what dignity He will give back to you. You need to be ravaged by His love, have those gentle hands with holes in them shown to you. You need to feel the warmth of His light and love and hear those words, when you feel afraid of Him, saying "I don't want to tell you off, I just want to hold you".

Ok, now for another scripture that's part of the journey in getting free of addictions:

'But the fruit of the Spirit is...self control.' Galations 5: 22

Yes, it's the fruit of the Spirit, He gives it to you. He doesn't say control in your own flesh before you come to Him!' Once we've come to Him and know that sense of acceptance and being in the palm of His hand, loved, held, safe, then He gets to work on us, as He wants us free of the things that harm us and separate us from Him. He doesn't want us to have any landing pads the devil can stand on to spew the sick of condemnation and shame and guilt. And so He gives us the fruit of Himself, self control.

Sometimes it will mean you have to walk out of a room so as not to watch something on the TV, sometimes it will mean not going out of your home so you don't buy cigarettes, sometimes it will be agony...but He is there, He will show you a way out...and eventually, perhaps a few years later, you will come to a point of knowing you are free...not just free of what you were addicted to, but free and healed of what was underneath...He will have freed you and you will be free indeed!

My sister, my brother, those of you beautiful people who are at this moment living underneath the cruel grip of an addiction, know how much you are loved, those voices and those feelings you have of self hatred, of loathing, of fear, of condemnation, of guilt, of shame, they aren't the voice of God, they are not how He sees you, they are not what He would say to you, no matter what you have seen, what you have done, who you've done it with or to.

Come to Him today...

If you would like to pray now, you could pray in the specific Cross Rhythms Prayer Room for addictions.