Is there truly a one-on-one personal relationship between God and man??

Hi all. I am seeking answers in a BIG way. All my life I've believed that God sent His son to die for me. I accepted Jesus, trusted Him to save me, but now, after 30 years I doubt that there is any such thing as a "personal" relationship with Him. I believe He died for me, yes, but it ends there. Please bear with me as I ramble on. I've just got no where else, or no one else to ramble to at this point. Maybe, just maybe, someone out there who is a professing Christian, can help me. PLEASE help me!! I will try to be brief. Just the facts at this point, unless some brave soul out there is interested in hearing my story.

Five years ago I had surgery. Had to take pain meds. About a year ago God convicted me that I should stop with the pills. "OK, God, no problem." Wrong... BIG problem. Couldn't quit. I knew I could not serve Him the way He wanted me to while taking the narcotics. So I begged Him to help me stop. I prayed, read and studied like I never had before, sought help... you name it, I tried it. I have literally BEGGED God to help me beat this thing. But guess what? ZIPPO, nothing, God is no where. If He truly desires a personal relationship with me, why won't He direct me in the right way to go? Why won't He help me? When I say I've begged Him, I mean I have literally been on my face in the floor pleading with Him to help me... and there's nothing. No help, no peace that He's with me like He said He would be. It's like He could care less if I just died right there in my own tears.

Please understand I DO NOT want to feel this way. Maybe, just maybe, someone out there can say the right thing that will get me where I need to be to serve the God I have loved for so many years.

I do understand that I got myself in this predicament, and it's not God's fault by any means. I just want to know why He has left me all alone. Can anyone help?

Betty

First off, God has never left you. He said He would never leave, nor forsake you. And we know that God cannot lie.

I would say you are fighting a war between flesh and spirit as Paul wrote of in Romans 7.

I struggled much the same way with cigarettes. I asked God to take the desire, and yet, I still found myself picking up and smoking cigarettes. One day, I questioned God why He was not true to His Word when He said if we asked He would answer.

Guess what? He asked me a question. 'Have you been true to me?' What?? Then He revealed to me that I had not given the cigarettes to Him totally. Oh yes, I asked Him to take the desire, but I did not ask Him to take the habit away as well.

Once I asked Him to take the habit and desire both away, and to fill that empty space with more of Him, He granted my plea. I laid down a 2 pack a day habit right then and there. Yes, there were a few times when the devil tempted me and told me I needed those cancer sticks, but it was then when I turned to God and admitted I was weak without Him.

The Word of God teaches us in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that no temptation that comes upon us is too much to bear. God will with that temptation make a way of escape. That way of escape is prayer, His Word, His Son. He said in 1 Peter 5, 'Casting all your cares on Him, for He careth for you.'

Is your all on the altar? You know, Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane cried for the Father to remove the cup that He was about to go through if it was His will.

It was God's will for Christ to go to that cross, to shed His blood for mankind.

Betty, I encourage you. Pick up your Bible and read Colossians 2:14. Also read Hebrews 11:6. If you truly want a release from the narcotics, Go to Him in prayer, give your all to Him. The habit, the desire, your will.

Philippians 2:5 says 'Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus.'

Can you truly go to God with the same prayer, 'Not my will, but Thine'?

Thank you for responding so quickly! I'm going to read the verses you mentioned in Col. and Hebrews, and I'll be back tomorrow. I have pleaded for Him to take away the desire. I don't know that I've ever asked Him to take away the habit. That will be my prayer as I lay down to sleep tonight. Maybe He'll hear. I pray so.

THANK YOU!

You are most certainly welcome.

I do understand that I got myself in this predicament, and it's not God's fault by any means. I just want to know why He has left me all alone. Can anyone help?

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Be patient Betty:

James 5
10 Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience.
11 Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.

1 Peter 2
19 For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.
20 For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.

HankD

From what I've read about drugs, they alter your thinking processes to some extent. Maybe your focus is incorrect. It isn't a spiritual problem it is a physical problem. The Lord told the sick to seek a doctor (Luke 5.31). Go to the doctor and ask for a treatment center.

Heavenly Father, we lift up Betty before you for help. Please intervene in her situation and give her the help she needs. Let her find the right and caring doctor who will help her, if that is your will. Let her find within the spiritual and physical resources to do what You want her to do. May she be fully healed. Thank you for what you are doing for her.

God does not relate to us as humans. By this I mean when a loved one visits with you, you can see them before you and touch them and visually see them. But God dwells with us BY HIS SPIRIT. He INdwells us by his spirit and speaks to us THROUGH HIS WORD. Romans chapter 8 brings this out very clearly. The more we pray and meditate on his word the more we draw closer to God. God must be approached BY OUR SPIRIT and not by our physical senses.

Matthew 15:21 ¶ Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon.
22 And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.
----23 But he answered her not a word.----

If your sincere, you read the rest of this text and find out what that women did after Jesus ignored her and perhaps you will see what gets the Lord moving.
Also read Luke 18:1-8 "men ought always to pray and not to faint"

Betty,

There is a lot to the problem you are facing and there is not a simple answer or one or two Bible verses that can solve it for you. There is definately a spiritual aspect to it, and repentance and forgiveness is vital to your recovery. But there is more to it than that. The drugs you have taken have altered your body and caused it to be dependant on them. one way of saying it is that at some point you stopped doing the drugs and they started doing you. It's every bit as much of a physical illness as cancer or any other disease. No doubt it's caused by bad decisions you made, but that doesn't change the physical apsect of it at all, so don't deny that part of it. And like any other physical condition, God may or may not remove it. Not everyone who has cancer and prays for healing has the cancer removed, and not everyone who recovers from drug addiction automatically loses the dependancy or cravings just because they repent and receive forgiveness. Drug abuse and addiction affects you spiritually, emotionally and physically, and your recovery has to deal with all three. In fact, it can be physically dangerous to stop taking pain meds without help, so talk to your doctor about what you're going through. The main thing is, you can't do this by yourself, you need others to help you through it.

You need people who will help you by holding you accountable and by encouraging you. I highly recommend Celebrate Recovery, but there are other Christ centered step programs out there.

I spend a lot of my time working with recovering addicts and alcoholics, and I am a former drug abuser myself, so I know something about what you're going through. If you need help finding the support you need, email me at guitarpreacher@earthlink.net and I'll help you get in contact with someone in your area who can help you out.

The good news is God has a plan to get you through this, and you can come out the other side a much stronger person than you have ever been. Let me know if you need the help.

Dear Betty,

I totally understand. I have had a number of major surgeries in my life and because of a funny inherited disorder called 'paradoxic drug reactions', I cannot take most pain medication. So I got morphine. Morphine is highly addictive and the last time I had it (over 20 years ago now)was after a surgery where I was not expected to live. The morphine did not touch the pain. I passed out from pain and woke up from pain for three days. All in all, I was on as much morphine as I wanted (after all, I was dying...) as often as I wanted it. For five days.

Coming off of it was one of the absolute worst experiences of my life. Only five days' of addiction and then two entire days and nights of dt's and horrid, horrid everlasting minutes of disorientation, a head too heavy to lift, vision going in and out -- so much else. It was monstrous.

I'm telling you that so that you know I understand what it is you are fighting.

You have been on some kind of addictive pain medication for FIVE YEARS now!

Here is what an addiction is, physiologically: your own body will make certain substances to help you control pain or otherwise function. Addictive substances are those substances which are so much like what your body makes that your body will quit making its own version and depend on what you are taking instead. So when you try to come off, your body is no longer manufacturing the original the way it used to and oh brother do you feel the lack! You NEED that balance back, so you feel you must go back to your addictive substance.

There are two simultaneous approaches to this and I think they will help. You will need your doctor's cooperation. First, cut your pain meds in half -- don't try to cut them out altogether yet. And don't do anything your doctor doesn't know about and approve of. Then ask him if he will prescribe something called Trazedone for you. In small amounts it is an anti-depressant and in larger amounts a sedative. The great thing about this particular drug is that your body makes nothing even remotely like it and so you cannot become physically addicted to it.

With your doctor's guidance, try week by week to decrease the pain meds and increase the Trazedone until you are off the pain meds entirely. Then you can gradually ween yourself off the Trazedone while your body learns to make its original chemicals in the amount you need again.

Now, about God! He is right there with you. He is holding you tighter than you know. Your brain is all nutsy with the pain meds, as excentric mentioned. Don't worry about that. God understands.

But there is something else very important going on and I have learned this from my own walk with the Lord through the years. When you come out the other side of this time of feeling abandon, and you realize you weren't abandon at all, you will be in the exact position God wants you to be in to reach out to someone else, the way I am reaching out to you, and reassure them that God is very much there and very much personal and loves you individually more than you can imagine.

Please do read Psalm 139. And something else I read that always does me good from the inside out is Paul's letter to the Philippians. It's lovely encouragement.

Hang in there. PM me anytime if you like. Like the others here, we will be praying for you a lot. Let us know how it goes.

Oh, and if your doctor doesn't like the Trazedone plan, don't worry. It may give him an idea of how to get you through this, and that will be worth the discussion anyway, eh?

Thank you all for the responses!! Before I say anything else, I need to take the time to read and study the scriptures you have all mentioned. I did tell my personal physician about my problem and he thinks I need to get into counseling. I'm sure he's right; that's just a very difficult thing to do. For those of you who have been there you can understand because of all the crazy thoughts going on in your mind all the time. If I'm out of pills, just getting out of bed in the morning is a major ordeal. I can't even begin to think about all the red tape I need to go through to get help. That's just so overwhelming.

But I'm going to try. I don't know what I will get accomplished, but somehow, I'm going to take this a day at a time, and hope and pray that God is still really here with me and will direct my actions.

Again, thank you. I need to go read some now. Please hang in there with me for a while. These posts have given me a little more confidence that maybe this thing can be beat.

We're with you all the way, Betty!

Originally posted by Helen:
We're with you all the way, Betty!

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That's right.