IF YOU NEED DELIVERANCE FROM ALCOHOL, DO THESE THINGS

Heavy alcohol use can damage all organ systems, but it particularly affects the brain, heart, liver, pancreas and immune system. 

Alcoholism can result in mental illness, delirium tremens, Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome, irregular heartbeat, an impaired immune response, liver cirrhosis and increased cancer risk.

Drinking during pregnancy can result in fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Women are generally more sensitive than men to the harmful effects of alcohol, primarily due to their smaller body weight, lower capacity to metabolize alcohol, and higher proportion of body fat.

In a small number of individuals, prolonged, severe alcohol misuse ultimately leads to cognitive impairment and dementia. 

In this article, we will be sharing with you 5 ways you can deliver yourself from the spirit of Alcoholism.

1. Admit that you need help

No person receives healing of any illness until he admits that he is sick and needs help. God provides deliverance for us but we must ask Him in faith for it. We must realize that the answer to our problem is not within ourselves... and then in humility turn toward God.

Vantrice Burkes started toward deliverance when she faced herself. She realized that she was a hopeless alcoholic, that she needed help. She admitted that she could not free herself. Genuine inner strength is found by coming to the end of ourselves and making Jesus Christ master of our total lives. Only as we live in the power of One greater than ourselves can we be strong.

2. Turn toward God

When you turn toward God, you are turning toward the One who is able to deliver you.

God has all power... "With God nothing shall be impossible" (Luke 1:37). The same God who created the human body can restore that body, mind, and spirit to wholeness.

God Loves You and Believes in You Do you feel that no one really cares, that no one really understands? God loves you ... and He is ALWAYS going to love you! Even when you don't like yourself, God loves you. When you are hurting and afraid, God loves you. When you fail, God loves you. When you hit bottom, God loves you.

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10).

God believes in you. Your family and friends, knowing your condition and past failures, may not have faith in you, but Christ does. He sees beyond your weaknesses and into the depths of your soul.

He knows what you can become in Him.

The Bible says, "Ye are bought with a price" (1 Corinthians 6:20). You have been purchased "with the precious lifeblood of Christ" (1 Peter 1:19, TLB) - a cost paid by God himself. How great is your value to our Lord for Him to have paid such a price! So before you start putting yourself down or giving up on yourself, think of how meaningful your life is to God and the tremendous price that He paid for you.

You are God-bought, God-owned, unique and irreplaceable!

Christ Can Change You

Christ is the answer to your problem because He can change your nature. He knows the way you are built, how you think, the habits of your life, and the struggles you are having. He sees beyond the bottle of alcohol that has enslaved you. He knows what you can become when this habit is broken.

If you will let Him, He will shatter the bonds of that bottle and set your feet on a brand-new road—the road to a new life. The Bible teaches that YOU can be a changed person. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

God longs to free you to become the person He wants you to be. All you have to do is ask Him.

3. Accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord

When we fully yield our lives to Christ, when we make Him our Lord, then everything else loses its power over us. The power of alcohol cannot stand against the power of God.

There is only one cure for alcoholism and that's the cure that comes from God (the Calvary cure). God sent His Son Jesus Christ to Calvary to break the power of sin over us and set us free.

Jesus not only forgives us of our wrongs and blots out our sins but He also delivers us from sin's control so that we can live a new kind of life, with a new direction where we don't have the old desires we once had.

If you want the very longing for alcohol taken away, if you want the appetite destroyed, turn to God. Try the Calvary cure. It works.

A new life will begin for you when you ask Christ to come into your life. This is not complicated; you do not have to understand theology or go through a long ritual. Just pray this simple prayer asking Jesus to come into your heart.

And as you pray, mean what you say with all your heart and believe that God hears you: Jesus, I come to You just as I am—a sinner and an alcoholic. I invite You into my heart. I believe that You died for me and that Your blood cleanses me from every sin.

Forgive my sins and make me Your child.

Deliver me from the bondage of alcohol and make me whole. Lord, I give my life to You.

Guide me and teach me how to live for You. I believe that You save and deliver me now.

Thank You, Jesus. Amen.

When you accept Christ, you belong to Him; you are a child of God. His Word says so. "As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name" (John 1:12).

Sin no longer has dominion over you, for Christ has conquered sin. And, as you commit your life and your problem to Him, Christ will give you power to overcome.

4. Live by Your Faith

Romans 12:3 assures us that "God hath dealt to EVERY man the measure of faith." That means that God has given YOU a measure of faith, and that faith is your fighting power, your conquering power. It is the tremendous force God has given you to battle with life. It is His power to stop the devil's power against you.

Your faith is the power God has given you to fight alcoholism, to fight conflicts, to fight frustrations, to fight defeats, to fight failure, to fight anger, to fight compromise, to fight weakness, to fight anything that would diminish you or destroy any portion of your life.

But to be effective, this faith must be used—it must be released to God by an act.

One of the greatest aids for releasing your faith is the point of contact. A point of contact is your believing crystallized into a single act. It is something you do, and the moment you do it you let your faith go to God for your need to be met.

There are many points of contact honored by God.

Jairus, a man in the Bible whose little daughter was dying, used the laying on of hands as his point of contact for the healing of his daughter.

He said to Jesus, "Come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed" (Mark 5:23). The instant Jairus saw the laying on of hands, he released his faith and his child was raised up.

There are other wonderful points of contact with God's power that you can use to receive your healing. These include searching the Scriptures ...receiving Holy Communion ... praying for someone else ... giving to God.

But whatever your point of contact is, it sets the time for the releasing of your faith—not necessarily the performing of the miracle. At that moment you release your faith for your miracle to begin.

It sounds simple, but the most wonderful things are simple.

5. Take One Day at a Time

Each morning God hands us a package of hours. We have no promise of tomorrow nor can we reclaim the lost hours of yesterday. We have today— with its challenges, its problems, and its opportunities.

Learn to take one day at a time. Believe God to give you deliverance TODAY ... daily.

After all, you can't go back and refuse that first drink which started you on this road, and there is no use worrying about tomorrow. Today is all you need to focus on. Right now is your challenge.

Strengthen yourself for each day by being faithful to read your Bible and pray. When the devil tempts you throughout the day, don't rely on your willpower; instead, lean on God's Word.

Fight Satan with the only weapon that defeats him—the Word of God.

This is how Jesus dealt with temptation. After He had started his public ministry, He went into the desert wilderness and there fasted and prayed for 40 days. The devil came at Him with a temptation. "If you really are the Son of God," said the tempter to Jesus, "command that these stones become loaves of bread" (Matthew 4:3).

Notice that the devil did not come to Jesus at the beginning of His fast. He waited until Jesus was weak from hunger, he waited until Jesus was at His lowest ebb. Then Satan approached Jesus and tried to tempt Him into turning stones into food.

In the hour of temptation, Jesus turned to the Scripture. He refused to dwell on His physical weakness and hunger. He did not meditate on how good a loaf of bread would taste; He turned immediately to God's Word.

He answered the devil by saying:

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).

Whenever a man takes a stand for God, Satan will be there to buffet him. When you accept Christ, when you determine to allow Christ in you to conquer alcoholism, there will be a battle.

But you don't face this battle alone. Jesus Christ is there to give you His strength and power.

You have the Word of God—the weapon which Jesus used to conquer Satan.

Determine in your heart to follow Jesus completely. Each one of us has to learn for himself the meaning of Christ's words: "If any man will come after me [be My disciple], let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me" (Luke 9:23). FOLLOW ME. The only way to live an overcoming Christian life is to come under the authority of God ... to be in obedience to Him. It means you take on Jesus' own life and life-style and discover daily His way of doing things and do them joyfully, continuously.

Every day is a new day. Every day you try to give God your best then ask Him for His best.

Following Christ is a continuous daily act of becoming more than what you have been.

Make new associations. Spend your time with those who love the Lord and not with your old drinking buddies. Find a spiritual church—one that believes in the real Jesus, in His power to save, to heal, to bless, and to keep you every day.

Get busy working for God and stay away from those old drinking haunts.

Trust in the Lord. Remember His Word, and the promise He makes you. "Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world" (1 John 4:4). God, who lives in you, is greater than the devil who is in the world!

Christ can set you free. You can know the joy of sins forgiven; you can know deliverance from alcoholism. You can have a new life in Christ.

Credit: Wikipedia, Oral Roberts.