Hope in a hopeless situation
- Kyle Snyder: Live on Purpose
- June 19, 2023
- 456
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” —Ephesians 6:12
Almost 16 years ago, I met my friend Paul at New Grounds Cafe. He is a very funny guy who loves the Lord. I learned his passion in life is to help people whose struggle is addiction. He began a drug addiction rehabilitation center. I didn’t know at first why he was doing what he was doing. One day I was at breakfast with a friend of mine, and Paul came over to our table and started to talk to us. In the midst of our conversation, I found out Paul spent some time in prison on drug charges.
I came to find out that when he was 15, he tried drugs for the first time. He described it as filling a hole in his soul. From that moment on, he thought about doing drugs every day. Over time he knew it was wrong, but the hook of drug addiction was in deep.
Then one of the best days of his life came when he was arrested. He described that first night in the county jail, when he fell to his knees and just worshiped God. Over the course of his prison sentence, Ephesians 6:12 was seared in his soul. Hence the name of his drug rehabilitation center, Operation 6:12. The motto of Operation 6:12 is “Armoring families for the battle of addiction.”
One of the things I love about Paul’s story is he gives people hope out of what was his own hopeless situation. We all have situations in our lives that we think are hopeless — it could be cancer, loss of a job, financial difficulty or, like Paul, drug addiction. I know in my own life I tend to magnify things more than necessary. Instead of taking one day as it comes, we like to forecast out into the future. You would think we would all know better by now, but most of us never learn that lesson.
I am a big advocate of counseling. One of the amazing things I found out about counseling is how they break down a big situation into small, manageable pieces. When we are in the middle of a terrible situation, we need people who can see the whole situation and can help navigate us through it. It is like when you put your hand over your eyes, we know there is more to see than just your hand, but until you remove your hand, you don’t see anything else. People who are outside of our situation can begin breaking it down for us.
That is one of the problems that stem from a lack of personal connections. We may have a thousand friends on Facebook, but many of them are at arm’s length. All of us need people that we can physically see and touch. Think about a baby’s smile. I know my heart gets a lot of joy out of that. When we know other people are willing to invest in us, it makes all the difference.
One of the biggest weapons of hopelessness is we think we are all alone. If you can look to the left and to the right and see people who are willing to go into battle with you, that makes all the difference. Life may be a war, but hopelessness shall not prevail.