Addiction: How to Help Hurting PeopleSample

To help others, we must understand the common storyline of human brokenness.

Do you want to help someone but don't know how? Does your heart carry a heavy burden when you see people who seem stuck in a broken place? On this journey, we will talk about how God uses us to help restore His children.

I often find myself wanting to help others. I feel a deep calling to help people. However, I too had a problem. I was trapped in my invisible prison cell. I could see through the bars to the people I wanted to help, but my cape was hanging from a hook on a wall outside of my prison. That cape represents my purpose. I thought if I could get out of that prison cell, I could put on that cape of purpose and help others.

Every day in my prison, I felt I was letting people down. I hated my problem and felt that I had to fix myself before I could get out of prison. I felt that my problem was holding me back from helping people. I want to clarify the belief I once had because I find that many people struggle with it. I believed I had to get rid of my problem in order to leave the prison cell and go help people.

Inside my prison cell, I was an addict. My substance was food. Hating my problem did not give me the power to change. Hating my addiction only made my frustration grow worse. And that frustration forced me to eat more. The more I tried to fix my problem, the bigger it became.

In this short study, we will read the parable of The Prodigal Son. From this simple parable, we can see God's pattern of how to help hurting people. Our redemption in Christ offers us complete freedom. Even more, Jesus has empowered us to become ministers of reconciliation. We were all prisoners, but Jesus rescued us and gave us the keys to the Kingdom - keys we can use to proclaim freedom to other prisoners.

We at MoreThanWarriors want to thank Mark Delaney for providing this Bible plan.