We are getting close to New Year’s Eve and fans of the holiday are preparing for a night full of revelry and drinking themselves into a drunken stupor which will lower their inhibitions to a point of causing them to demonstrate behavior they would otherwise never exhibit.
What a way to welcome a fresh new year. I hope you will not be among those nursing a terrible hangover and trying to remember what you did and said. I’ve had my fair share of those experiences and don’t miss them at all.
I once had an employee that confided in me that she had a drinking and an illegal drug (marijuana) problem and she asked for some ideas of how to bring it under control. I asked her why she felt the need to alter her mind and without a moment’s hesitation she responded, “Well I have to have something!”
I understand that concept very well. There was a time when I didn’t like to face the world without some sort of mind numbing substance. The problem was whenever it wore off my problems were the same or as was often the case were much worse, dependent upon what I might have done while inebriated. My solution was to get stoned again and this time take more. Eventually I found myself taking more and more to get less and less.
So, I finally learned that this type of behavior was taking me nowhere I wanted to go and I stopped. I’ve had numerous well-meaning folks try to get me to have a glass of wine and even had a couple that tried to get me to smoke a joint, but I don’t want it or need it. I’m happy to face the good and the bad in the world sober.
This is not to say that I believe the Bible instructs everyone not to drink. It doesn’t, it tells us to do everything in moderation. I spoke at a church one time and afterwards I saw a woman making a beeline for me in the parking lot. She lit into me like an angry hornet saying I should not be selling alcohol at my resort during weddings. I told her that drinking was not a sin, provided it was not done to excess.
She told me that it just tempted people and I was a party to it. I happened to notice that she was very short and very overweight. I looked at her and quoted Proverbs 23:20 – “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat.” I asked if she believed gluttony was a sin. She turned red and said, “Well yes.” I said, “Should I also quit selling food at weddings at my resort lest someone be tempted to gorge?”
At some point folks must take responsibility for their own actions, but I say that with a word of caution. The reason I finally quit drinking for good was because of an incident that occurred at a grocery store. I was having a pool party at my house and we ran out of beer and wine, so I went to the grocery store to buy more. I had filled an entire shopping cart with cases of beer and bottles of wine and came wheeling around the corner and ran smack into a man who I had been counseling for his addiction to alcohol. He slowly lowered his eyes to my shopping cart and then back to look me square in the eyes and I could read his mind, HYPOCRITE!
Ugh! It was the very next weekend that I quit drinking for good. My witness to this struggling brother was not what it should have been. I didn’t want to ever see that look again.
I know I haven’t convinced anyone to quit drinking and partying on New Year’s Eve, but I hope you will be safe. I cannot even remember the number of inmates I’ve met at prison events through the years that were incarcerated for vehicular homicide and serving long sentences of 20, 30 or even more years for crashing their car and killing some innocent victim while stoned out of their gourds. Take a cab, or better don’t drink and make a fool out of yourself.
Romans 14:21
It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything else if it might cause another believer to stumble.
Have a great weekend and go to Honey Lake Church or somewhere this Sunday and start the New Year off right – Worshipping our Lord . . .
December 30 2016 – Click here to listen