How Does God Help?

Then hear from heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their pleas, and maintain their cause and forgive your people who have sinned against you. 2 Chronicles 6:39

I wrote yesterday about our responsibility to do whatever it takes to stop our addictive, self-destructive behavior. As Christians, it’s tempting to expect God to do all the work of transformation, but in the passage I used yesterday, King Solomon spoke of our responsibility to repent with all our heart and soul. If we’re stuck in an addiction, it’s because we’ve not been willing to do what it takes to cut it out of our lives. This may make it sound as if God offers no supernatural assistance and that it’s all up to us to get ourselves out of an addiction. If we must do whatever it takes to abandon our addiction, then what good is God anyway?

Today’s passage, I believe, answers that question. In the passage, King Solomon continued his prayer, beseeching God to recognize his people’s repentance, sustain them, and to forgive their sin. In wandering from God to worship foreign idols, his people encountered painful consequences. In their misery, they did what it took to abandon their idols and return to God. They had to do that work, but God provided the only adequate solution to their life’s greatest needs. They needed something to worship – something to follow. God forgave their sin and gave them what they needed – a new life in him.

When we wander from God, indulging in porn, drugs, or even shopping, we use that behavior to fill a void in our lives. Whatever our thing is, we use it for relief, release, or comfort. That thing can’t satisfy though, because God created us to find life, joy, and peace only in him. Our thing, whatever it is, may entertain us for a moment, but it can’t last and then the consequences start to pile up. At this point, it is our responsibility to do whatever it takes to abandon the behavior, but God doesn’t leave us alone. He provides the only adequate replacement – the only adequate solution to that void we were trying to fill. God doesn’t leave us to fight our addiction alone. Rather, when we repent, he forgives us, embraces us, and provides us with the new life that we’ve been searching for all along.