Ezekiel 34:16 – God’s Intervention

Daily Devotional Bible Verse

I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice. (Ezekiel 34:16 ESV)

My sobriety date is Valentine’s Day, 2015. By then, I had isolated and hid from the world. I knew that I was living in hell, and any place would be better than Earth. Self-pity and depression had overtaken my soul. I was too shamed and too prideful to ask for help.

For the first time in my life, I dropped to my knees and screamed out loud, sobbing, asking God to take away my addiction and heal me. I remember crying and waiting, expecting a miracle. But I felt nothing. With nowhere else to turn, I grabbed my Glock 40 and placed it in my mouth. I had given up on life and pulled the trigger. But for the first time ever my gun misfired. I placed it down and wept uncontrollably because I couldn’t even kill myself properly. I took the gun out of my mouth and hid it. I needed help so desperately but was too afraid to ask. I wasn’t aware at the time, but help was around the corner, and God had intervened.

At that time, I had doubts of a God existing, and if there was, I resented him for putting me in the situation I was in. I now am grateful and believe he was disciplining me because I had been living such a careless, prideful and destructive life. As parents discipline their children, I needed the same.

When I could no longer stand, I dropped to my knees. I prayed like I never had before. I’m thankful for that discipline. A.W. Tozer wrote, “It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.”

During the height of my addiction, I needed God more than anything else. However, I thought I had to get my life in order before I came to Christ. I was wrong.

Jesus says: “Come as you are.” He hung out with and healed the rejects of society. Jesus went directly and personally to call those he wanted to work with. He went to the man on the street. Jesus spent his whole life engaging the people most of us have spent our whole lives trying to avoid. Luke 5:31-32 reads, And Jesus said to them, “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous; but sinners to repentance.”

Do you feel like you can’t come to God as you are? Don’t wait a minute! Just run to him. Do you believe someone isn’t worthy of God? Go to them right now and tell them of the love of the Father!

Guest devotion by Jonathan Riffe. Today, he is a grateful & blessed addict in recovery. His mess has become a message, tests have become a testimony, trials have made him triumphant and he is no longer a victim. He is victorious! Learn how you can become a guest writer.