To the regular man, it might look weird to mention that God’s love is powerful in helping us cater for our mental health, but it is the truth. God is all-powerful, and having a close fellowship with him is a big advantage.

If you’re having mental health issues, here are some ways how God’s love comes through for you

• It provides hope

When you read the scriptures, you will see different places that remind you of how God’s love provides hope in times of despair. One of such despairing moments is when you are having mental health issues and it looks like there is no way out.

Understanding God’s love helps you see light at the end of the tunnel. You will be certain that things will always work out for you.

• It reminds you that you’re loved

Sometimes, having mental health issues could give you the impression that no one loves and care about you.

This assumption can make you take some unfavorable and drastic decisions. However, even if no one loves you, God’s love is encompassing.

He cares about you even in your low state. And the truth is, understanding this helps you recognize those around you who also love you.

It might not look obvious at first, but you can experience genuine love through people around you when God’s love shines radiates through them.

• It provides direction

You might be confused about how to get started when receiving treatment for mental health problems. By experiencing God’s love, you can know what to do at the right time without getting confused.

• It provides strength to pull through

When you eventually start receiving mental health treatment, you might feel discouraged at some point.

God’s love comes in at this point to provide you with the strength to keep forging ahead. Not everyone remains the same after addiction treatment but God’s love changes your life’s story positively.

There is no condition in life that cannot bow to God’s power. Many believers know this by reading the Bible.

However, when it comes to real-life situations, some believers do not remember this. They leave God out of the equation as they try to figure out a headway for themselves.

Here are some steps to conquer addiction with God’s power

• Revisit your fellowship with God

One of the first things to remember as an addict is, your addiction does not affect your relationship with God, it only affects your fellowship. Therefore, you will continue to remain a Christian, but your fellowship with him will be strained.

You need to keep up with constant prayers, meditation, and study of the word of God for you to get back on track with God.

• Trust in God’s power

As your fellowship with God gets better, you will begin to realize the supreme potency of God’s power. There are several verses in the Bible that you can meditate on to ingrain this truth into your consciousness.

Over time, your faith and trust in God will begin to grow, and you will know within you that he can help you nip addiction in the bud.

• Seek help from an addiction treatment center

While you trust God for strength and willpower to defeat addiction, it is important to take a bold step by visiting an addiction treatment center. With God’s help, it would be easier for you to follow through with all the treatments and come out sober and healthier.

• Get a profound support system

It could be difficult to pass through addiction recovery all by yourself. You need people to support you every step of the way. With God’s power, he can bring the right support system your way.

They will hold your hand to ensure you don’t relapse. And they will motivate you to keep applying healthy habits so that you will get better by the day.

Addiction is one of the toughest life battle that an individual can face. Due to the fact that it is an obsessive and compulsive disorder, it has a way of keeping the individual in bondage. An addicted individual usually finds it difficult to remain close to God because of the feeling of guilt.

If such person can recover successfully from addiction, there is an important need to draw closer to God and remain in tune with them than ever before.  

Below are tips on how to live a Godly life after addiction recovery

• Improve your prayer life: One of the best ways to draw closer to God is by improving on your prayer life. Prayer is the basic way to communicate with God. Even though he is all-knowing, he craves that we communicate with him like a son does to a father.

When you step up your prayer life, the Godly character begins to reflect in your life and dealings with people around you.

• Studying the word: The word of God is the Bible and it is one of the quintessential elements for living a Godly life. Reading and studying the word of God helps you know more about God. In reality, it is difficult to know more about someone that you did not read about.

When you study more of God’s word, your dealings with men begin to change and you start to manifest the Godly character that would make God proud.

• Preach the word: One of the best ways to step up your relationship with God is to tell others about him. You will be doing them a favor by telling them how amazing and surreal God’s love is. With this, you are fulfilling God’s mandate and your Godly character is built up.

• Spend more time with Believers: Hanging out more with Believers simply suggest that you should spend more time with people who are Godly. It does not however understate the importance of spending time with other people. However, it should be known that the people you move with more, determines how your Christian experience would be.  

People who are addicted have the belief that God does not care about them. They believe that their addiction lifestyle has taken them far away from God, and he does not love them anymore.

The truth is, even though they have strayed from God, he would never stop loving them because it’s his nature.

It would interest you to know that God is interested in everyone being saved. And he is waiting patiently for people to retrace their steps to him.

Due to the obsessive and compulsive nature of addiction, the addicted individual is forced to believe that he is no longer under the coverage of God.

The love of God is what addicted individuals need to defeat addiction once and for all. The love of God is so powerful because it births unimaginable results that you would not expect. When you enter in for addiction, the extra advantage you have is the love of God which reigns supreme.

Believers who smoothly pull through their addiction treatment find it easy to do so because they have acknowledged God’s love. One of the primary reasons why God’s love is quintessential in addiction treatment is because it is difficult to achieve sobriety on your own.

You might have the support of your loved ones, therapists and counselors, you still need the love of God to crown your treatment and ensure it’s successful. God’s love is the purest form of love, and this love is devoid of any form of prejudice or stigmatization.

After addiction treatment, you still need God’s love to remain sober. Based on statistics, some people are likely to relapse after completing addiction treatment because there was no aftercare treatment.

However, coupled with the love of God which births power, you will be able to defeat addiction and remain sober. In addition, it becomes easy for you to live a healthy life because of the light and guidance that God’s love provides.

Acknowledging God’s love makes you stand out and God brings the right people your way, who will care for you and help you find you find your footing.

Addiction recovery is not an easy journey due to the fact that, there is a possibility of relapse, and there are various encumbrances on the road to sobriety. Now, not everyone is aware of the benefits of turning to God for full addiction recovery.

Each day when we wake up, and make a decision not to continue in our addiction. We turn it over to God by praying, and trusting him to help us heal.

However, when we do not make attempts to let go of our addiction, we stand the danger of causing damage to our lives. Surrendering fully to God does not seem easy, but it would interest you to know that, even the best of Christians still have issues with the concept.

One of the best ways to turn to God for addiction recovery, is to avoid distractions. Addictions are distractions, and they soil our relationship with God. Hence, this is the first step to ensuring you turn over your addiction fully to God.

Whenever you are faced with any form of distraction that can trigger your addiction, remember what it does to your relationship with him.

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Another way is to follow peace. When we have made the decision to prevent the addiction from ruling our lives, it would be easy for us to focus on God. One of the best ways to do this, is to pray on a regular basis.

This prayer comes in handy because you will be asking God to strengthen the relationship you have with him, so that you will be able to focus on what gives your life peace.

In addition, another profound way is to keep your eyes on the goal. It might not be easy to do this because you will find yourself wrestling with this decision. However, you always need to remember that on your own, you are powerless to become sober and clean completely, you need the help of God to see you through.

You should understand that he does not want to control your life, neither does he want to make each decision for you. However, he wants to guide you all through the process of focusing on achieving sobriety.

Whether you are aware of it or not, God’s love is the meaning of life. God’s love is a gift to us that blesses and enriches our lives, changing and molding our lives from the inside out. The gift of God’s love is powerful beyond all measure and capable of affecting us in ways we would not think possible. For example, God’s love is so powerful that it is capable of defeating substance abuse through the gifts it gives a person.

Purpose is a central gift that is given to us through God’s love. Those who have felt just how amazing God’s love is know that it is so profound that it fills us with a sense of purpose. We feel that it is our purpose to share God’s love with others by telling them about our God experiences and giving to them selflessly. We feel the desire to incorporate this practice into our talents, our jobs and our vocations. This marriage of our worldly purpose and our divine purpose is a major part of our identity, and reward us so fully that we do not feel the need for substance abuse.

God’s love benefits our mental health immensely. No matter what a person’s mental health problems are, God’s love is the answer. God’s love tells us that we are beautiful and precious and worthy of love. God’s love promises us an identity in Him and a life of adventure and passion, as well as never-ending provision and fortitude. A person’s mental health depends on feeling secure in these things, and all needs are met through God’s love. When these needs are met, substance abuse does not interest a person.

Every person has spiritual needs, whether they know it or not. Mislead spiritual and emotional needs are actually what get a person mixed up in substance abuse in the first place. Seeking down the wrong road for fulfillment in these areas can lead to trouble in your life. God’s love obviously provides spiritual fulfillment in that it enables a person to recognize God as creator and have their spiritual needs met.

And lastly, God’s love meets our need for relationships on many levels. He becomes the most important relationship we have in our lives through how he provides for us, and he blesses and enables our relationships with fellow believers, who we share an incredible bond with.

God is capable of anything, even things that we think are impossible. Those who battle substance abuse and addiction may very well believe that it is impossible for God to inspire their sobriety, but they would be wrong. It is common of those who do not know God to doubt his power. God is God because he does supernatural things. They play out through natural circumstances of course, but those who have tried to quit addiction and substance abuse on their own know how pathetic our human efforts really are. And those who have invited God into the situation know how miraculously he works to defeat the things we could not manage on our own.

People abuse substances to fill a hole in their hearts that only God can fill. Perhaps the substance provides dopamine to someone who does not know how to generate feelings of comfort and happiness on their own. Perhaps it opens up their minds to metaphysical possibilities. Whatever it may be, people use substances to essentially transcend into a plane of existence that they could not achieve on their own. Every truly spiritual theologian will tell you that this is the purpose God serves in their life. They will also tell you that everything else we try to use in place of God has very watered down and dysfunctional affects in comparison to God.

When you discover God, He completes you on a level you did not think possible. You interact with His spirit and receive His word, which leaves you feeling fully alive and in sheer amazement. Many people, in dreams and in near death experiences, have even been in God’s presence or walked with Jesus and their lives are never the same again upon return to consciousness. This incredible new way of living and loving completely negates the need to abuse substances. Abusing substances removes you from your immediate consciousness, but if you are actively conscious of God, you crave only Him, not the substances you abuse. This is not to say that you are incapable of losing sight of God. There will be times you are less able to sense him, and there will be times you are lured back into your old ways. Remember to seek His face and you will find your way back to His perfect love and provision.

It is a fact that many of the most successful addiction treatment programs are based in spirituality; spiritual guidance, spiritual counseling and spiritual philosophies. There are a number of different religious addiction treatment centers, particularly Christian, that bring their own spiritual insight into addiction treatment. The reason for this is it is a commonly agreed upon theory that a root cause for addiction is broken spirituality.

To fully understand this reasoning, we must first understand what spirituality is. It is not the same thing as religion, despite popular misconceptions. Spirituality is an awareness of and a care for one’s soul. A person’s soul is complex and requires a balance of self-care and altruism to feel whole. The old adage “You must love yourself before you can love someone else” is very applicable to the human soul. A person must be healthy and careful enough to meet their own intrinsic needs before they can meet the needs of someone else and form healthy relationships.

The problem with addiction is that it destroys the state of one’s soul. An addicted person is not a spiritually healthy person. Addiction indicates an inability to cope with life and a preference toward escapism due to emotional, psychological, environmental and biological problems. A spiritually healthy person, on the other hand, practices positive, sound thinking and is able to confront challenges and obstacles with a clear mind, or leave situations that are toxic.

Spiritual addiction treatment is beneficial to recovering addicts because spiritual thought naturally addresses the problems that are thought to spawn addiction. Spirituality encourages us to find strength and acceptance of our unique identities through an infallible higher power who does not judge or lose patience with us, as people do. Christian addiction treatment in particular derives its strength for recovery from God’s perfect love that does not fail, but endlessly encourages us to our full potential.

Addiction is difficult for anyone to overcome, but when it affects the lives of Christians it can come with an additional set of challenges. Sometimes Christians can feel ashamed of their flaws and think that they cannot let anyone see the side of themselves that is ungodly. This thinking needs to be turned on its head, as it is the opposite of everything the bible calls us to be. The Pharisees were ones who cared only about their godly images but neglected matters of the heart. We are called to be child-like, honest and vulnerable, bearing our sins and letting God heal them. Our faith is meant to be a tool for conquering addiction, not something that makes us hide our addiction. The love of God and Christ his son can end addiction and restore peace to our hearts.

When we apply faith practically to ending addiction, there are several methods we can employ. There are a number of things a person can do for themself in order to end their addiction. First and foremost, prayer to God and meditation on his word are the most important things a person can do to better their lives. There are a number of Christian addiction self-help books and workbooks available to those who read and apply what they read to their lives. It is important to reach out to your support system for help, so tell friends, family and your church community what you are going through so they can pray for and support you. Filling your life with Godly activities, such as ways of using the talents God gave you and caring for your body (what the bible calls His temple) through nutrition and exercise.

When addiction has become so deeply engrained in a person’s life that they do not know how to separate from it, professional assistance is recommended. This can come in one of several forms. Professional Christian counselors who specialize in addiction are available on an as-needed basis to help lead a person out of their addictive thinking. Often times, their services are available through an outpatient rehab program, which uses several kinds of therapies and exercises to help addicted people recover. There are also support groups and sponsors available to addicts in many communities to offer encouragement and camaraderie to addicts.

And for the most severe cases, Christian inpatient rehabilitation is the best option for beating addiction. When a person’s addiction is so out of control that it has become dangerous, the best thing they can do for themselves is to place themselves in an inpatient rehabilitation facility for a minimum of 30-days to separate themselves from the source of their addiction, detox thoroughly from the harmful effects the addiction has had and receive intensive group and individual counseling to eradicate the underlying causes of their addiction.