How to Find Recovery and Faith

If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Esther 4:14

When I go to the local jail for Sunday morning bible study, I would love to say that it is simply out of some noble desire to share with those in need. That is part of it, but in my recovery efforts, I discovered that sharing God’s love has a profound impact on my own faith. In jail, every week, I get the chance to tell those in need, what Christ has done for me.

If I didn’t go, would God’s work remain undone? I doubt that I thwart God’s ultimate plans for the world when I disobey Him, but when I disobey, the effect on me is disastrous.

This was Mordecai’s message to his cousin Esther. In today’s passage, Esther, an Israelite in Persian captivity, had been chosen as queen. When Haman, a powerful official, manipulated the king into a plan to kill all the Jews, Mordecai insisted that his cousin use her influence with the king, who didn’t know that Esther was a Jew.

Esther feared that approaching the king or revealing her ethnicity would endanger her life and was reluctant to get involved. Mordecai replied that if she stayed silent, God would still save His people, but in her disobedience to God, Esther would plant the seeds of her own destruction.

I’ve done this. I’ve known right, yet chosen wrong, and in doing so, traveled further down the path of self-addiction. I didn’t start out using drugs. My first step towards disaster was simply following my way. In my disobedience, I sowed the seeds of my own misery.

Thankfully, the opposite is true as well. When we choose to do what it takes to turn our eyes to God, making our feet follow, we participate in the growth of our faith. As we follow God, He fills us with the faith, life, joy and purpose for which we were made. If we want to know God, and if we desire recovery and faith, we must daily choose to obey.