Imagine yourself hanging off the side of a cliff, or trapped inside of a dark cave, or possibly chained up and bound to where you cannot move. Any one of those scenarios would cause most to feel powerless. A definition of powerlessness is being “devoid of strength or lacking the authority or capacity to act and being powerless to help.”
In most cases of those who choose to use substances, including drugs or alcohol and become dependent upon the substance will get to the point of losing control and becoming powerless over the substance. In the Interactive Journal published by The Change Companies 2007(c) it gives some quotes of real testimonies of people who realized that they had become powerless over a substance. One stated, “So many mornings I would wake up and say to myself, Today I will not take a drink, today I will stay on track. But by evening my hand was wrapped around a bottle.”
One way to look at powerlessness is when the urge to use a substance; or do an activity takes priority over the rest of your life. The Interactive Journal reports that “when your family, your health, your work, and your social life are put aside because of your using, you are powerless.” When using drugs, drinking alcohol, playing video games, or staying on the internet interferes with your ability to manage your life, and you don’t quit or can’t even reduce the amount of time doing those things then you are powerless.
You have lost your strength and self control to handle what you deceived yourself into thinking you could. Being powerless means that you have loss of control. One who is at this point has allowed their choices and behaviors to be in conflict with what they really know and believe to be what is right. The addiction has taken charge. It has become the master and you are a slave. It is not until you come to the point of admitting your powerlessness that healing will ever come.
Honestly looking at those things that have rendered us powerless in areas of our life and having the courage to face it as a problem will be the first step in overcoming what has paralyzed us. 2 Corinthians 12:9 lets us know that God’s “grace is sufficient for you, for HIS power is perfected in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, or powerlessness, so that the power of Christ may rest on me.” There is always hope no matter how powerless of a situation you find yourself in.
~TRS 9-25-21 Originally published in the Wayne Weekly
Rays of Hope 