The Social Christian Drinker

I was delivered from drinking alcohol when I made the decision to follow Christ again in 2009. Once I rededicated my life back to Christ, I was struggling with letting go my worldly friends and maintaining a faithful relationship with God. One evening, I went on an outing with some friends and let’s just say I was sloppy drunk by time I made it back home. A cranberry drink turned into cranberry and vodka drink real quick. I was a fresh newbie and I thought I could handle being around my old friends and maintain some type of holiness. The next day which was a Sunday, I called my mom after church and I cried to her confessing what I had did. I didn’t think God was angry with me, but I believe He was showing me why I had to let my friends go and why I must separate from my past. I felt like I let God down and I disappointed Him as a child to a parent, but I felt His grace and love for me. Fast forward in life; I started struggling in 2010 to stay faithful to God. I started to believe the enemy’s lie and I started telling myself I was lonely.

The devil tried to make me feel that my old friends was having more fun than me. He told me I started out to fast (giving my life to Christ) and that I should take a slow approach to “being” a Christian (yes! The devil is cunning and deceitful! The father of all lies.) so I started to waver in my mind to eventually backsliding in my mind. I started making my way out of church and picking up my old habits, smoking (I tried to go back to smoking but when God delivered me from nicotine a year earlier, He took the taste out of my mouth and He reminded me about the 7 evil spirits returning, so smoking was an epic failure) drinking, sex, and back to the clubs. I was doing all this while trying to leave the church, but God was way smarter than me; He setup me up so when this day did come, it would have been extremely hard and let me tell you, IT WAS.

I was a part of a phenomenal media team and serving in ministry kept me in church. About a few months later, God shook and delivered me through a Pentecostal Fast. I have not been the same since.

From that moment in life, I never touched alcohol, but I still had my minor struggles with it. I wasn’t sure if God would okayed drinking wine was fine for me, but I really didn’t want to know what He thought to be honest (I didn’t verbally say that, but my actions did. I shut down the thoughts of the “what ifs”). I started drinking wine with other Christians to eventually we became Christian social drinkers (oxymoron). My mom would nag me about the priests in the bible God told not to drink and the preachers posed this question and through all this, God was convicting me. I know because I was uncomfortable while listening and I would sit and reason with my justification. FINALLY!!! I gave the desire to God and told Him if He didn’t want me not to drink that He would have to take the desire away and He did. Through that, I realized that I loved God more and I wanted Him more so if not fitting in with the Christian social drinkers, then so be it.

“I have the freedom to do anything, but not everything is helpful. I have the freedom to do anything, but I won’t be controlled by anything.” (1 Corinthians 6:12)