It is incredibly sad to see first hand the way that crack has destroyed the lives of so many people here in Granada Nicaragua. Life after life has walked through the doors at the mission base seeking help with their addiction to this substance. Stealing from family members, robbing people in the streets, beating and sometimes killing some in order to get their hands on more. Staying clean for weeks or even months only to slip, fall and then disappear. The cycle repeats. Over and over. It’s hard to make sense of it. It’s overwhelming and sobering for me at the same time.
Part of my job here is to teach the guys that their identity is not in their addiction, their identity is in Christ (I am in the process of learning this as well). We are not addicts – we are Christ-followers. Some of us may still struggle but that struggle no longer defines us, Christ defines us. Though often times we run back to our addictions, this does not mean that we have not been set free from our addictions. When this happens it is more of an identity issue than it is an addiction issue.
In the 9 months I’ve been here, I have seen God remove the false selves of several guys (including myself) and I’ve seen a couple of those guys pick them up again. But when this happens, it does not mean that everything they did was a waste. Putting on the new self is a discipline that comes with practice.
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. [Colossians 3:9-10]
…to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. [Ephesians 4:21-24]
