When you got home, your wife was furious because you had promised her that you were going to take her to dinner and she kept on your case all evening long and again the next morning. So the next evening, you had an excuse to stop and have a drink to get your mind off your wife’s nagging and your problems and you got even more intoxicated before you headed for home and the fight you knew you were going to have with your wife. And she didn’t fail to let you know how she felt about it, either!

  It didn’t take very long for the problem to get out of hand. But you kept telling yourself that you really didn’t have a problem. You could stop whenever you wanted to. You got stopped by the police again and they put you in jail as a repeat offender. When you got out, your wife was filing for divorce and got the kids, the house and car. Now you really needed to get away from it all, so you spent your whole paycheck and had a real snort.

  You lost your job, your wife and family, your home and car, but most of all, you lost all self respect and soon resorted to mooching “seventy-five cents for a cup of coffee,” or quarters “to make a phone call” just to get your next drink. Your home became whatever abandoned car or freeway bridge you could find and you hadn’t shaved nor bathed in weeks. You knew something was wrong but the only answer you could seem to find was in having just another cool one. Still, you kept telling yourself that you really didn’t have a problem.

  A fellow street person told you about a place where you could go and, for the price of listening to some religious singing and preaching, you could get a bowl of soup with crackers and maybe some other food and a cup of coffee followed by a night on a bunk in a dormitory. You gave it a try. The minister was friendly, the singing not too bad, and, although you didn’t understand much of the sermon, between being drunk and never having been too religiously inclined, the food was pretty good and the bunk sure beat sleeping up under the freeway bridge. So you went back whenever you could get there before the door was locked.

  For a while, you kept insisting that you were OK, but before long you realized that you really weren’t in control of your life. Then you realized that you were a sinner and that you needed help, but what seemed more difficult was believing that Jesus Christ could help you.

 “God says that except for His grace, there is no way we could ever be saved, (Ephesians 2:5,8),” the minister told you over a bowl of soup. “But He was not willing that any should perish but all should come to repentance, so He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus, to pay the whole price for both your healing and salvation. That’s in John 3:15-17.

  “‘He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed,” (Isaiah 53:5). Notice that the price for your healing was paid even before the price for your salvation.

  “In order for you to feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit, you must first believe God’s Word, and therein lies the emphasis of John 3:16, Mark 16:16 and Acts 16:31. It is impossible for you ever to feel conviction until you have already believed the Gospel message. Then, when you have believed and become convicted, the command given by the Apostle Peter to the very first believers in the church was to REPENT. It is not a meritorious work to repent. You do not earn salvation by repenting. But you must have the Godly sorrow of having displeased Him up until now and reversing your course to hereafter seek to please Him because you now love Him. Jesus, Peter and Paul all commanded Sinners to repent. After repentance, or the dieing out of the old sin nature, you bury it in the watery grave by being BAPTIZED with Jesus Christ, as a proof of your death to the flesh, and being raised with Him to walk in newness of life. You then become a “new creature” in Christ Jesus, capable of living the POWERFUL and VICTORIOUS life of a Child of the Heavenly King. Alcohol will no longer be able to control you.”

  You give it a try, and it works. Your wife is skeptical about the new you, but as you pray for her, for your marriage and family, she sees the change and God brings you back together as a family and into a victorious new life in Jesus Christ!