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55 Sermon Illustrations on Alcoholism

55 illustrations Page 2 of 2

Alcoholism in Christian preaching often symbolizes the bondage of sin and the need for deliverance through Christ's grace (Galatians 5:1). Illustrations use vivid images of broken families, personal struggles, and the hope found in repentance and recovery, portraying alcohol as both a physical and spiritual enemy to be overcome (Ephesians 5:18).

Let Go and Let God

“He still thinks he can do it on his own!” another disappointed parent confessed.

The most recent bearer of this sad news was explaining why his son's name, which had been on the waiting list for admission to Hebron Colony, a Christian treatment facility for those hurting with drug abuse problems, had been removed at his son's request. The young man had slipped temporarily back into his self-made hole of agony after receiving a healthy paycheck.

We always try to reason with parents. “Why don't you refuse to employ your wayward son unless he gets help for his problem?” But the frustrated businessman was afraid his son would only find another job and wander further into the dark world that promised no certain return. “At least, he's near enough that I can keep my eye on him,” the man insisted. “And he's doing better right now!” But for how long?

A recent letter from a mother who has agonized through the loss of two sons to alcohol rejoiced in the improvement recently in the life of her third son, who also has struggled for years with alcohol. She acknowledged later in the letter that her pride was tempered by her own understanding that he was working toward the right goal (sobriety), but doing it the wrong or hard way. He has previously tried the meetings, the sponsors and the whole misguided routine of those who have been convinced that their disease can be controlled, but that they are doomed to wear their sad nametags the rest of their days on this earth.

This young man needs to try the surefire way to permanent recovery, the substitution of something stronger than the addiction, and that, of course, is a lasting trust and dependence on Jesus as Savior and Lord of life. At this dark point in life, he needs to let go and let God! Our Lord is still in the healing business.

This dedicated Christian woman has tried to convince her son that his personal efforts are meaningless without the Lord's help. Your authors finally realized the futility of their efforts at the gates of their own personal hells and grasped for hope. They found it in Jesus. And it is our constant prayer that these who seek recovery on their own will finally cry out for help. It's available, just around the corner.

Another father called recently to inform us of a son who had tried a stay at a Christian treatment facility. The son refused the full treatment regimen recommended that included a six-month stay at a Christian halfway house and had fallen once again. “This time we're determined to make him stay the course,” the discouraged father promised. “I'm insisting that he go through the primary treatment program twice before going to the halfway house. Every time he figures he can handle things on his own, he fails miserably. This time we'll insist that he get help and stay with the program.”

We pray that this is true, but one important ingredient still is missing. This young man must choose to get well. By God's grace, healing is available to those who take the first step to let go and let God have His way.

The other day a young man entered Bethel Colony. He had managed to hide his problem from family and friends for a time. But the truth eventually became obvious, and he soon admitted to himself that the problem was more than he could handle. For him, the future seems bright, even though it may be a long, hard road back.

He has turned to Christ for his help. Our Lord never promised us that things would always be easy, but He did promise us the strength to overcome. Jesus is the hope of a sick world. He is our hope!

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[Original illustration here was a duplicate in HolwickID 25837-26027]

Alcoholics Are Angry

Mark 3:5

Kenneth Hart, a psychology professor at the University of Windsor (Ontario, Canada), studied sixty-six recovering alcoholics. The individuals had one thing in common: They were all angry with someone. Teaching forgiveness, Hart found, is one way to break the cycle that causes recovering alcoholics to relapse. If they release their anger through forgiveness, they no longer have a reason to use alcohol as an escape. One of the former addicts said, “Forgiveness is more for yourself than for the person you’re forgiving. For me to forgive that person sets me free.”

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Source: Turning Point Daily Devotional

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #5029]

Bottoms Up!: Is Change Possible?

When it comes to controlling alcoholism among the homeless, one Seattle group is charting new territory. Last December, the Downtown Emergency Services Center opened a highly controversial facility, known as 1811 Eastlake, in order to house seventy-five of the city’s most inebriated homeless.

Taxpayers had grown weary of shelling out up to $50,000 a year per homeless citizen to pay for visits to the emergency room, jail, and recovery facilities. So, the city decided to redirect some of its funds — over $11 million to be exact — toward permanent housing for these hard-core alcoholics.

But here’s the catch — residents are allowed to drink to their heart’s content! While 1811 does not discourage sobriety, it does not require its residents to enroll in any sort of recovery program. Bill Hobson, the program’s executive director, says that the community needs to face the so-called “fact” that the most chronically intoxicated will likely remain that way. Hobson offers an example of a resident who was drunk ten minutes after spending sixty days in a detox facility. Referring to the worst drunks like this, he says, “Once you’re an alcoholic, you’re always an alcoholic.”

Well, the reasoning goes, if an alcoholic can’t change, instead of racking up taxpayer dollars to pay for jail cells and treatment, why not fund less expensive housing? Just keep them off the streets.

It might be cheaper, but it’s also immoral. You see, the idea that people can’t change is the result of a naturalistic, deterministic worldview. If people are truly the result of random evolution and their environment, and only the fit can survive, then indeed, homeless drunks don’t have a chance. Give them a bottle, wish them well, and just keep them out of trouble.

But Christians know better. In thirty years of prison ministry, I’ve witnessed time and time again the transformation of the most incorrigibly hardened criminals imaginable — drug addicts and alcoholics among them. And believe me, it costs taxpayers far less to promote the transformation of prisoners than to simply warehouse them and hope they won’t return to a life of crime. That’s why six states have now welcomed the InnerChange Freedom Initiative® (or IFI), a faith-based program launched by Prison Fellowship, which has proven to drastically reduce recidivism among prisoners.

Ironically, as many of you know, a federal judge has ordered the IFI program in Iowa shut down, charging that it violates the separation of church and state — this, while taxpayers in Washington state are financing a homeless shelter that practically enables addictive behavior all to save, so they say, a few dollars.

But so much more is at stake than taxpayer dollars. Hope is. The director of 1811 Eastlake says that we need to face the reality that some people will never change. Well, he’s wrong. Any society that just writes off a class of persons can someday put groups of people gently to sleep. The Nazis proved that so.

As Christians, we know that hardened criminals can be radically transformed by the saving power of Jesus Christ. We don’t write off anybody, including so-called “chronic inebriates.”

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Copyright (c) 2006 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Don't Give Up, America

2 Chronicles 7:14

Today we face what seems to be a hopeless condition in America. Gross immorality has engulfed the land. Crime has taken over the streets. Sexual promiscuity and perversion fills our society. Drunkenness and drug abuse is everywhere. God has been rejected by most of our citizens -- virtually kicked out of our government and our schools. A few years ago, Billy Graham issued a profound warning, that "If God doesn't soon bring judgment upon America, He'll have to go back and apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah!"

How far it seems that the United States has drifted from its rich religious heritage. But many may not realize, that despite our nation's Christian beginnings, in only a few short years after it's founding it had already declined to a level of moral decadence and depravity that would rival today's sad condition.

According to the late church historian, J. Edwin Orr, in the post-Revolutionary War years, drunkenness was of epidemic proportions - of a population of four million, three hundred thousand were considered drunkards. Bank robberies occurred daily. Street crime, rape and murder was rampant and citizens were afraid to go out of their homes at night. Profanity was the worst imaginable, shocking in its filthiness.

The spiritual climate of the nation was disparaging. The Presbyterians met in general assembly to deplore the ungodliness of the country. Both the Methodists and Baptists were losing more members than they were gaining. The Lutherans and Episcopalians were struggling, and even considered a merger for the sake of survival. Episcopal Bishop of New York, Samuel Provoost, had confirmed no one for so long that he quit the ministry. Samuel Shepherd, a pastor in Lenox, Massachusetts, said that he had not taken one young person into church membership in sixteen years.

A poll at Harvard revealed that there was not one believer in the entire student body. At Princeton, only two believers were discovered among the students. Christianity was generally ridiculed. A mock communion was conducted at Williams College; Anti-Christian plays were performed at Dartmouth; In New Jersey, a Bible was taken from a Presbyterian church and burned in a public bonfire. Christians were such a minority on campuses that they met in secret and kept minutes in code so they wouldn't be caught or persecuted.

The Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, wrote that the Church was "too far gone ever to be revived." Kenneth Scott Latourette, the Church historian, said, "It looked as though Christianity were a waning influence, about to be ushered out of the affairs of men." Indeed, it appeared that the church in America was an endangered species. By all indications, the nation had rejected the Christianity of their forefathers - sin and moral decay flourished. But something incredible occurred which changed what seemed to be an impossible situation. A revival of prayer erupted that changed the destiny of our nation.

The awakening of prayer seemed to first begin in the British Isles. In 1792, just a year after the death of John Wesley, a renewed spiritual hunger and revival began to take hold in Great Britain. John Erskine, a minister in Edinburgh, Scotland, wrote a little book on prayer which stirred the hearts of people, and sent a copy to the famed New England theologian, Jonathan Edwards. He along with another New England preacher, Baptist Pastor Isacc Backus, were instrumental in arousing a national interest to pray. In 1794, the spiritual climate in America was at its worst when Backus called upon the ministers of every American church to unite in prayer for the nation. God was with these efforts, and churches of every denomination responded to the national appeal. Soon, a network of prayer meetings emerged across the country, coordinated to pray in unison, beginning on the first Tuesday of January, 1795, and once each quarter thereafter.

Predictably, as people sought God, signs of revival began to be seen. It was first evident in New England, sweeping through Connecticut then on to Massachusetts. In Logan County Kentucky, where sin was somewhere on the scale of Sodom and Gomorrah, a Presbyterian minister, James McGready, held unified prayer meetings every third Saturday and at sunrise on Sundays. In a letter he wrote that most of the winter of 1799, was spent weeping and mourning with the people of God. Finally in the summer of 1800, great camp meeting revivals swept Kentucky and Tennessee, then burst over into North and South Carolina and swept the frontier.

Some years ago, I visited Cane Ridge, Kentucky where one of these great camp meetings converged for six days in August of 1801. It was here that the Christian Church denomination, as well as other fellowships, marked their origin. The historical placards described how over twenty thousand persons, from all over the country, came together almost intuitively, without any promotion or organized campaign.

At night, the hills and fields of the sparsely populated Bourbon County glimmered with torches as far as the eye could see, as smaller cells of hundreds gathered simultaneously around bonfires to hear rousing sermons by any one of dozens of preachers until the late hours. Spiritual fervor was intense. The distant sounds of revival were heard in every direction from the bonfire gatherings. The hollows and ridges echoed with the barely audible, medley of preaching, repentant weeping and joyful praises. This was typical of the great American revival spawned through prayer, which restored America's spiritual soul and brought God's blessing for about a hundred years.

Yes, today America looks hopeless. It appears morally and spiritually bankrupt. But as we have discovered, there is always hope if God's people will come together and pray. God has salvaged our nation before, and can do it again. As Matthew Henry once wrote, "When God intends great mercy for his people, he first of all sets them praying."

Let's not give up on America, but let us embrace God's great promise of prayer: He said, "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land" (2 Chron. 7:14).

Drinking Your Way To The Top

Joel 1:5

A few records stand the test of time.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Steven Petrosino is the Beer Chugging World Champion. On June 22, 1977, at the Gingerbread Man bar in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he drank 1 liter of beer in 1.3 seconds. This beat the previous record by 56% and has not been surpassed in almost 41 years.

Apparently plenty of people would like to challenge it.

A survey on alcohol consumption was conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. One researcher used the data to break weekly alcohol consumption into deciles, or groups of ten percent.

The bottom three deciles, or 30 percent of Americans, say they don’t drink at all. The fourth decile consumes .02 drinks per week, which works out to a single drink per year. The next decile consumes about 7 drinks per year. The sixth decile consumes 32 drinks a year. So, 60 percent of Americans aged 18 and over consume half a drink or less a week. Are you surprised?

Moving on:

The seventh decile consumes 2.17 drinks per week. The eighth decile consumes 6.25 drinks per week. While one daily drink could be justified for the heart health benefits of red wine, it still means they drink more than 70% of us. The ninth decile consumes 15.28 drinks per week, or 2 per day.

But if you’re a high achiever and want to be in the top decile, you have to consume almost 74 drinks a week, or 10 a day. That is almost 2 six-packs per day, with no days off. Put another way, the top 10% of drinkers account for more than HALF of all alcohol consumed in the United States.

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Adapted from the webpage "Drinking Your Way to the Top," by Alli Sands, December 17, 2013.

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