Dan
- humansofsurrender
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
“I've had one brother pass away from addiction. My 47-year-old nephew overdosed, it took eight days to find his body. They dumped him on the side of the road in 105-degree weather. My brother, his son, and his grandson have been in prison with addiction. Three generations. It's hard on the family to watch it. That's addiction.
I tell the men and women of Adult and Teen Challenge in St. Louis what their family is really thinking. They do love them. If they're cutting them off, they're cutting them off for the right reasons, most of the time. If they're enabling them, there's a problem that we want to help the family with. But if they've shut the door and said, you need to figure it out, that's really a statement of love and not hate. I try to help the family to understand, if they are enabling, there's better ways to help them. The addiction is not really the problem. There's a root cause. We don't want them to keep focusing on that. We want them to focus on what needs to change inside of them so they can experience that full life after. Addiction's no respecter. It goes so much beyond just the addiction. “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”
I am not a person that can say, ‘Hey man, I used to be on the street corner.’ I think there's value in a 60-year-old guy who didn’t grow up with drugs. I don't see broken, I don't see flawed. I see a person. I said, ‘God, I want to see people the way you see people.’ I don't want to see them with preconceived ideas. It's just a different perspective. I get to be that dad role or grandpa, however that fits. I get to speak to them and make sure that they know they're a real person. I tell them, ‘When you leave here, you're going to walk into a church. When you walk into that church, I want you to be able to shake that pastor's hand and say, hey, my name is……………..., I've had a year of Bible classes and I want to serve here with you. How can I help?’ I said, ‘If they don't want to shake your hand and they don't want to use you, you need to turn around and you need to go find someone that does, because you have value! You have value that other people don't have.’ I share that with them so many times because they fight with that. Ephesians 3:20 says: “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us.”
At age 15, I came to Christ. Holy Spirit didn't change my personality; He exposed my personality. I responded to the Holy Spirit that day. It changed my forever. I went from thinking about myself all the time to thinking about: ‘How do I get other people to experience what I've experienced?’ A person should ask, 'God, if you're real, show me.' Be ready to be shown. Many times, we say things, but we don't open ourselves up. We have to be ready. We're closed off sometimes. We have to be open to hear and to see. Everybody has a story. Sometimes those stories cause us to not hear. There has to be a moment where we say, ‘Where I'm at is not satisfying and I need something different.’ Maybe the Creator of the Universe said, ‘This is a mess, here is My Son, and He'll take care of it.’ My name is Dan, I'm human, and I surrender.”
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