I'm not here to argue about what label someone in recovery should or shouldn't use. I'm not going to say anything like what you call yourself has power and so you shouldn't claim to have a disease you've been set free from. Paul said he was all things to all people. I'm with him on this one. It doesn't mean wearing a mask and pretending anything in order to fit in or be accepted. It means if you've been beat up by the church, then maybe I let you know I grew up the son of a preacher man, and I know a little something about being beat up by the bride of Christ and religion. If you're an alcoholic, then I can be the drunk who's just like you, except I haven't had a drink in nearly 7 years, or if you're looking for hope that there might be a way out, then I can be recovering and so can you, if you hear the solution, but if you're one of those who won't try if it can't be done?, well then I can show you someone recovered in mind and body and soul, freed from the obsession to drink.
And I can do the same with junkie/addict. It's not about labels, and I really don't care what you call me as long as you get this part right. Once I was a slave, doing certain things even when I didn't really want to, even when it not only didn't help me feel better anymore but made me feel worse, even when it wasn't in my best interest. I either couldn't stop doing these things, or, if I did stop, I couldn't stop starting again. Now, I don't do those things anymore. Call it whatever you like. I call it freedom.
And the thing is that you can be free. You can get free and stay free. Now, the truth is that I didn't suddenly figure out how to control things, how to stop what I couldn't before and stay stopped. Freedom is a gift. It is a bonus that comes naturally out of real relationship with God. Jesus came to set the captives to sin and addictions and the destruction of the fallen world free.
In one way, I believe the label matters. When you hear someone who had cancer but has had it completely go into remission, they don't say I have cancer. They say I had cancer, but now I am cancer-free. Yes, it is in remission, and it might come back. But it's not back now, and they don't have it now. Why does this matter? Because it gives the person who just learned they have cancer hope that they too can become cancer-free.
I get the reasoning behind once an addict, always an addict. If we forget the bondage we've been freed from and think that time in the wilderness means we can safely return to the land of our slavery, we'll be making a huge mistake. Once something has been my master, it's not a wise thing to ever give it the opportunity to take over again by trying to indulge without losing control. But I don't need to worry about that reasoning if I simply stay in and seek to improve my relationship with the One who led me from the land of slavery in the first place. He will not lead me to another master's house. He is taking me to the Land of Promise, where there is perfect freedom, perfect peace, and perfect joy all wrapped in perfect love and relationship with my Creator.
I don't need to remind myself I once was a slave to keep from becoming a slave again. But maybe someone needs to hear that they can be free. Truly free. That's you, by the way. You can be free from addictions, habitual sin, and bondage. And when I say free, I mean free. Not free but always running and hiding from the old escaped master, always worried about when the evil may find you and catch you off guard to carry you back to your chains. Not trying to stay one step ahead of the hounds of hell tracking you. Not constantly fighting and battling to defend yourself from temptation and situations and triggers and...... But free. Free to go about your day and the next day and the next, until it's your life, wrapped securely in the love of God to such an extent that old enemies and masters aren't a concern. The only reason you'll have to consider them at all is if God tells you to go back to your fellows in the same chains and call them out to the freedom you've been given.
There is a place of peace. You don't have to live in a prison of fear of the inevitability of stumbling. But that's because you didn't set yourself free, and you're not the one who will keep yourself free. If you stay in relationship with the One whose care and will carried you free from the bondage you were in, you'll never return to that bondage. On the other hand, if you try to stay free on your own, in your own strength, by the determination of your own will, it's only a matter of time. You are so screwed, because not only will you eventually fail, no matter what label you use, no matter what support system you have, no matter what triggers you avoid, no matter how many times you play the movie through, no matter what process or program, on your own apart from God you will go back to your Egypt or seek out its twin, same song different verse, but you will also be miserable in the mean time. That doesn't have to be your story.
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