Evangelizing Addiction Through Scripture

Evangelism
Written By Jake Williams

Introduction

Churches have long struggled to effectively speak into the lives of, and connect with, those struggling with addiction. Addiction ministry can be painful, costly, and time-consuming. Also, many people within the church do not feel equipped to help addicts if they have not themselves struggled with the same addiction. God’s Word, however, equips us to help others with anything that enslaves us.

This post will model what it looks like to use Scripture evangelistically within the church context in serving addicts. Numbers 11:4-20 will be used as an example to show how God’s Word can be used to interact evangelistically in the context of addiction.

Biblical Example

Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving. And the people of Israel also wept again and said, “Oh that we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.”

Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its appearance like that of bdellium. The people went about and gathered it and ground it in hand mills or beat it in mortars and boiled it in pots and made cakes of it. And the taste of it was like the taste of cakes baked with oil. When the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell with it.

Moses heard the people weeping throughout their clans, everyone at the door of his tent. And the anger of the Lord blazed hotly, and Moses was displeased. Moses said to the Lord, “Why have you dealt ill with your servant? And why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? Did I conceive all this people? Did I give them birth, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a nursing child,’ to the land that you swore to give their fathers? Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they weep before me and say, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat.’ I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me. If you will treat me like this, kill me at once, if I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness.”

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them, and bring them to the tent of meeting, and let them take their stand there with you. And I will come down and talk with you there. And I will take some of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them, and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you may not bear it yourself alone. And say to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat, for you have wept in the hearing of the Lord, saying, “Who will give us meat to eat? For it was better for us in Egypt.” Therefore, the Lord will give you meat, and you shall eat. You shall not eat just one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days, but a whole month, until it comes out at your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have rejected the Lord who is among you and have wept before him, saying, “Why did we come out of Egypt? – Numbers 11:4-20

God had miraculously saved the Israelites from slavery and had graciously sustained their lives. (Exo 14) He had also provided manna from heaven for them to eat in the desert. (Exo 16) The Israelites, however, dreamt and longed for the food they had eaten while in slavery in Egypt. It is almost as though they had forgotten their enslavement and longed to be back in that dire situation to have a drumstick.

Addiction functions much like the plot of the Israelites in this passage. Like the Israelites in Egypt, the slavery of addiction takes everything from relationships to health and well-being to finances, to freedom. Shockingly, for many addicts in active addiction, the negative consequences are forgotten but the strong remembrance of the effects of the chemical remains.

God, however, listens to his chosen people’s plea for meat and brings a covey of quails to them. The Israelites cannot control themselves and begin to gorge themselves with large quantities of meat, some to the point of death. The dead are buried in a place which in Hebrew means ‘the place of desire’. This sad passage may seem ludicrous to some. But are we able to see ourselves in the Israelites? We all struggle, like them, to do the right thing. When it comes to behavior, there is almost universal agreement in the world religions about what is right and wrong. We all know right from wrong because God has written the requirements of his law on our hearts. (Rom 2:15) We are not meant to be slaves to chemicals. We are not meant to prioritize a substance in the sacrifice of all else. We are not meant to worship anything or anyone but God. (Exo 20:3; Due 5:7) Why do we still do these things when we know at our core that they are wrong, and could cost us our lives? Most of the problems within ourselves and the world are caused by us doing the things we know we should not, just like the Israelites did in this passage. What is it about our addicted hearts, the human condition, that we continue to do over and over the things that have such detrimental consequences? Definitions of addiction, popular therapies, and philosophies of treatment, all come and go, yet addiction in the United States is growing rapidly and more and more are dying of overdoses every year. Just as some of you may have realized your slavery to a chemical, Scripture affirms that our hearts are sinful, and we are slaves to sin if we are not slaves to God. (Rom 6:20-23) R.C. Sproul said, “We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners.” The Bible explains that sin is not just an action, like using, that goes against God’s design for us and his purpose, sin is also a power. Every time we allow the thought to germinate, every time we decide to act on that thought, we sow the destructive power of sin in our lives and the lives of others.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”  Sin is an enslaving power that destroys freedom, all the while posing as the means to our expression of freedom. It is a suicidal act of the self in contradiction of itself. We see this repeatedly in the Bible, including in the passage above. Sin caused the Israelites to long to go back to Egypt, where they were hopeless slaves. They remember the ‘free’ meat in Egypt but forgot the forced labor and whippings that it cost them. They remembered the tasty food but forgot the voices that screamed, “Go get the bricks…without straw.”

We read this passage and say, “What fools!” We think, “Anyone can see the correct response in this situation would be to just eat the God-given manna.” It’s clear that they would be treated far worse if they went back to Egypt, or worse, be totally killed off. They, however, cannot think rationally. They are freed from slavery in Egypt but now, they are spiritual slaves. To be a political or economic slave means you are completely powerless politically or economically to act in your best interest. For example, Frederick Douglas likely knew he was gifted by God to speak and write, but for many years he was forced to work on a plantation as a slave. He knew that picking cotton and doing manual labor was not the best use of his gifts. The children of Israel had been freed from their political and economic slavery but were spiritually powerless to do what was right.

If you have struggled with addiction for any length of time, you are familiar with the feeling. What once started as a seemingly harmless activity on occasion has developed into a life-controlling obsession. We try and block out the great cost and cling to the thought of the high. We convince ourselves we have some level of control when the onlooking world sees none. We watch as relationships, finances, health, and sanity decline but always go back to the chemical like it’s an old friend, always there to comfort, or celebrate, always there. Scripture tells us that every person on earth is a spiritual slave in the same way. The Apostle Paul in Romans 7 puts to words what every addict has felt. Paul says,

“We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” – Romans 7:14-20 (ESV)

Some of you may be thinking, “I have never felt this powerless over my sin, I’m not actually addicted but could stop if I really wanted to.” But what Paul is saying is not just a preacherly hyperbole, he is saying the more he aspires to do good, the more he tries, the more awareness he has of his spiritual slavery. If this has not been your experience, your moral ambition may be too low.

I challenge you to live out Jesus’ command in Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31, “And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.” Do it for just one day. Treat others with all the strength, joy, passion, and heart with which you meet your own needs. Spend as much time thinking of them as you do as you think about yourself. Spend as much time caring for others as you spend thinking about, procuring, and using your drug of choice. Within a few hours you will sense that the more you try to do good and love others as yourself, evil is right there with you. You will likely feel as Paul did when he exclaimed, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24) 

The next thing to notice in verses 4-6 of our passage is the structure of this sinful slavery. Scripture tells us that when we do a sinful action it has a powerful negative effect on our freedom. Our freedom to want the good, think about the good, will the good, and understand the good is being weakened, so the more we sin, the more we lose our freedom. Sin weakens and undermines our minds, will, emotions, and freedom. In verse 4 we see that the Israelites began to ‘crave’. They started to crave the food from their time in slavery. Their emotions start to change when they start their craving. In verse 5 we see that they, “…remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing…” The Israelites are in denial. Their cravings are overwhelming their rational thinking. They are selectively remembering their food and blocking out their slavery.

In verse 6 we see that the Israelites’ cravings have now led to their loss of appetite. The Hebrew literally translates to, “But now our strength is dried up…”. The Israelites do not want the manna and now they are left hungry and without strength because they denied the truth. The Israelites have no strength, they refuse to see the blessing of manna they have been given, and they won’t eat it. They rejected the Lord. After God gives them the meat they want, the more they get, the less they enjoy and, in the end, they loathe it, and it is coming out of their nostrils. (Num 11:20)

The Relationship Between Addiction and Sin

What is fascinating about this passage is that the Israelites are going through the cycle of addiction. Every sin, if the offender does not repent, has the potential to become an addiction. Chemical addiction is slavery and every sinful action, if repeated, becomes an addiction. All sinful actions come with a power that functions just like the addiction cycle. All sinful actions, whether it is drug use, alcohol use, materialism, adultery, overeating, gossip, or any other sin, all function in line with the addiction cycle.

The National Institute of Health describes the three stages of the addiction cycle in this way,

“Addiction can be framed as a repeating cycle, with three stages. Each stage is linked to and feeds on the others. These stages primarily involve three domains: incentive salience, negative emotional states, and executive function. The domains are reflected in three key regions of the brain: the basal ganglia, the extended amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex, respectively. A person may go through this three-stage cycle over the course of weeks or months, or progress through it several times in a day.”

Also, a person can enter the cycle at any of the three stages. Someone may start like this: they experience the rewarding effects of the addicting “agent” like drugs or alcohol. As time passes, they remember the rewarding effect of the ‘agent’ when they encounter distress of some kind. The addicting ‘agent’ promises to quell the distress by offering a sense of freedom, a sense of escape, a sense of well-being, or a sense of being in control. A trap is set when we use the addicting agent as a way of coping with life. The addiction cycle begins.

The first stage is the intoxication stage. During this stage, a person experiences the rewarding effects of the addicting agent such as euphoria. Repeated activation of the basal ganglia’s reward system reinforces the addicting agent which increases the likelihood of repeated use. After repeated use, the repeated activation of the basal ganglia ultimately triggers changes in the way a person responds to certain stimuli, which can trigger powerful urges to come back to the addicting agent. Repeating the behavior results in changes in the basal ganglia that lead to habit formation and ultimately contribute to compulsive use.  This is also the time when tolerance is built. Repeating the addictive behavior results in less and less effect over time. This is what addicts refer to as ‘chasing the dragon’. Always trying to replicate the experience or high of initial use to no avail. The more you try to get that feeling, the more of the addictive agent you need, and the emotions begin to shrivel up. The thing that brought the desires effect today will not tomorrow. And you need more and more until your emotions are numb and the addictive agent is coming out of your nostrils.

The second stage in the addiction cycle is the negative effect stage. When a person stops returning to the addicting agent, they begin to experience withdrawal symptoms, opposite to the effects the addicting agent offered. These negative effects can range from physical, like sleep disturbances, or feelings of illness to emotional, like irritability or anxiety. These negative effects are thought to come from two sources. The first is a diminished activation in the reward systems, otherwise known as a reward deficit, of the basal ganglia which makes it harder for the person to experience pleasures of everyday life. Secondly, there is an increased activation of the brain’s stress systems, otherwise known as stress surfeit, in the extended amygdala which contributes to unease, anxiety, and iterability. During this stage, a person may be seeking the addictive agent to escape the low feelings instead of seeking the high feelings.  This stage may also come with significant denial. Addiction patterns and changes in the brain lead to rationalizations and justifications. There is often selective reasoning and selective memory. There is also a diminished ability to think clearly and objectively.

The third stage is the anticipation or craving stage. In this stage, the person seeks the addicting agent again after a period of abstinence. The person becomes preoccupied with the addictive agent and how to get it and use it. The person will also look forward to the next time he or she will use the addictive agent. The prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain responsible for executive function, including the capability to organize thoughts, prioritize tasks, manage time, and make decisions, is compromised in people who are trapped in the addiction cycle.  The willpower is severely diminished if not destroyed. Addicts will attempt to deal with adversity with the very thing that caused the adversity in the first place. Do you see this in your own life?

The Bible is showing in Numbers 11:4-20 and in other places that sin operated much the same way as the addiction cycle. When you think, “If I disobey God, I’ll get freedom,” the same act that promises freedom is diminishing freedom. The very act you think is giving you control is giving you the illusion of control but taking control from you. Freedom is not doing whatever you want to do. Freedom is having the power to do what you know you should do. If I think to myself, “I’m not going to listen to the doctor and restrict my diet. I’m going to eat whatever I want, and I’m going to be free from that restriction.” In exercising that perceived freedom, I eat KFC and drink soda every day. Over time, my weight starts to restrict the activities I’m able to participate in and my diabetes starts to threaten my life. The freedom I thought I was expressing in continuing to eat things that were bad for my body was limiting and the doctor’s advice really led to greater freedom.

Some have struggled with a specific addiction for years, even decades. You may feel hopeless, like you may never experience the freedom from the slavery of addiction. You, however, may be in a better place than someone who is denying they have an addiction. Admitting there is a problem is the first step in most 12-step recovery models.  Some of you may be thinking, “I have seen addicts, and I am not one, that’s not my experience.” The Bible says that addiction is part of every person’s experience to some degree and here is why.

The Nature of Sin

Sin is not merely breaking rules, it is living for anything besides God, it is putting yourself in the place of God. The first way that people generally think of when they consider sin is by moral rebellion and breaking God’s law. The less obvious way of sinning is by keeping the moral law and being very good. Religious people often live very moral lives, but their goal is often to get leverage over God. It is to put God in a position where the sinner thinks that God owes them in some way. Instead of obeying God for who He is and what He has done, they are in rebellion against God’s authority. When suffering comes, and it will, this person will blame God. They say, “How could God do this to me, I have done everything he has asked.” Do you see it? Which category do you generally lean towards? (Luke 15:11-32)

Sin can also be described as craving something more than God, like the Israelites craved meat in our passage. Sin is prioritizing something above God or making something more central than God. If God does not hold the central seat of your heart, if he is somewhere in the periphery, that is the essence of sin. Martin Luther said, “Sin is essentially a departure from God.”

This departure from God can happen without us realizing it. In most cases, when something usurps God’s rightful position as the first chair of our hearts, we are not actively saying to ourselves, “Okay, now this is more important than God.” We only realize we have dethroned God in our hearts when the thing we have enthroned fails us. And anything or anyone on which we place that crushing burden of heart fulfillment on that is not God, will, in the end, fail us. If that thing or person does not fail us in a specific instance or a crash-and-burn sort of way, then the tolerance effect takes over and it will fail us slowly over time. That new promotion that was everything became the norm, and the next promotion became the dream. That new car that you have been saving for, and eyeing for years eventually becomes old and outdated, ready for the landfill.

This is the reason why we are never satisfied, never truly happy, and always empty. When we live for anything but God, the addictive dynamic is at work and we find the more we get, the more we need, and the less satisfying it becomes. Just like the addictive chemical, the idols of our hearts shrink our heart, emotion, and mind Famous English writer and philosopher, Aldous Huxley, writes this about why he chose to believe in atheism during his college years,

“I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently, assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning - the Christian meaning, they insisted - of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.”

Instead of choosing a religion or philosophy based on it being true, he prioritized his sexual freedom and based his thinking around that priority.

What will happen if I choose to not forgive someone? I know it is the right thing to do to forgive but I choose to seek revenge or hold a grudge. That decision will end up rotting my mind. To not forgive, I need to feel ethically above that person. I am unable to think of myself as deserving of anything that person has done to me. If there is any evidence to show that I am not perfect, I’ll shut it out to hold on to my craving for vengeance and still consider myself rational. Anything that suggests that I am a sinner just like the other person, or any evidence that suggests that person is not as bad as I thought they initially were, I need to shut that out too. Anything nice or kind I see that person do, I will rationalize it by saying, “They’re likely profiting from it somehow.” Sin not only destroys emotions, like the chemical, through the tolerance effect, but it also destroys the mind.

In the end, sin also destroys the will. In verse 4, the Israelites, in their craving, are saying, “If only we had meat to eat!” That was their burning desire, in their heart of hearts, above all else. Jonathan Edwards addresses this when he says,

“Sin is the ruin and misery of the soul; it is destructive in its nature; and if God should leave it without restraint, there would need nothing else to make the soul perfectly miserable. The corruption of the heart of man is a thing that is immoderate and boundless in its fury; and while wicked men live here, it is like fire pent up by God’s restraints, when as if it were let loose it would set on fire the course of nature; and as the heart is now a sink of sin, so, if sin was not restrained, it would immediately turn the soul into a fiery oven, or a furnace of fire and brimstone.”

Jonathan Edwards is saying what sin does to the heart is like what fire does to fuel. There has never been a fire that has ever had enough fuel. The appetite a fire has for fuel is unquenchable. The more fuel you put onto a fire, the more oxygen it needs sucks and the more fuel it needs. The appetite of a sinful heart has never been quenched by indulgence of sin. However much money, success, approval, comfort, and things one gets, the capacity for more increases. Just like an addict who needs more and more of a drug to deliver the same effects. Irish poet, Brendan Behan, once creatively encapsulated this truth when he said, “One drink is too many for me and a thousand not enough.” Sadly, Behan died a slave to alcohol.

Here is a diagnostic for you to see if the fire of sin is kindled in your heart. The next time you are anxious, down, hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, ask yourself what you are seeking or telling yourself for happiness. Is this when you long for a chemical for relief? Is this when you tell yourself, “If only I had blank, that would make things better.” Whatever that thing is, will become your slave master because you are a slave to whatever has mastered you. (2 Pet 2:19) The enslaving power of sin creates an illusion that everything will be okay if only… things would be good when…it can also convince us that feeling good is the ultimate goal.

Using a chemical for relief necessitates using more chemicals for relief. All sin works like this. The first time you tell a lie, you still may have an inclination for the truth, but the more you lie, the more you will be bent towards lying. No addict ever said, “I think I’ll become a heroin addict.” It happens over time, by giving more and more of yourself and your will to the power of the chemical and the power of sin. We are all addicts, just not all toward chemicals. How do we break free from the enslaving power of sin? How do we break out of the shackles of addiction?

Breaking Free from the Power of Sin

Numbers 11:4-20 show us that we need an intervention from God, and we need to worship God. At the end of the pericope, in verse 20, God tells the Israelites, “…you have rejected the Lord who is among you…” But the Israelites just wanted some meat…. right? The Israelites needed God to come and tell them that their true problem was not the lack of meat, but their rejection of God. They thought their problem was one thing, but it was actually something else.

As addicts, we often need someone to come into our lives and tell us what our problem is, because often we cannot see it ourselves. If your addiction is a chemical one, often people who care come and say, “You need to stop, you’re destroying yourself and your life.” Sometimes the addict is unreceptive, self-justified, unwilling to see their problem. Sometimes the addict needs to hit ‘rock bottom’. Sometime addicts die before any change can take place. 

We need an intervention. We need someone to come and say, “You have a problem, you’re sleeping, awaken!”. The problem that lies below all your problems is that God is not burning at the center of your heart. You may think you do not have a problem. You may think something else is the main problem. But your problem is a spiritual one. Scripture tells us that if God is not your life’s center, you are a slave and you are unable to see it. No one can be more hopelessly enslaved than the person who does not know he is a slave. Every 12-step program knows this reality well. The person who says, “I’m in control, I can handle this”, is an enslaved, powerless person. The person who says, “I need help outside of myself, I am powerless” is the one who has a shot and may be getting actual power for the first time. We can apply this same principle to our spiritual lives. The person who says, “I am a good person, I wouldn’t call myself lost, hopeless, or wicked.” is a hopelessly powerless slave. They are the most hopeless of slaves because they are unaware of their enslavement.

Numbers 11:19-20 says, “You shall not eat just one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days,  but a whole month, until it comes out at your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have rejected the Lord who is among you and have wept before him, saying, “Why did we come out of Egypt?”’”. God is telling the Israelites that they will loathe and reject the meat because they have loathed and rejected Him. They will lose their craving for meat because they have lost their craving for God.

It is not enough to tell yourself that you will stop the enslaving habit today or tomorrow. It is not enough to beat yourself up, grit your teeth, and white-knuckle sobriety day after day until the pressure leads to relapse. The true reason that the enslaving habit goes down so easily so often is because you have lost your craving for God, your appetite for God. You are not experiencing God; you are not tasting Him.

To taste God is to worship God. We must worship God in order to break free from enslaving addictions. Worshipping God is the key to freedom. We must sense the awe of his greatness. Sometimes worship will move you to tears and sometimes to laughter. You need to be moved by who God is, by what He is, by what He has done for you. The truth is that God loves you so much He lived perfectly on your behalf. He took the punishment you deserved by dying a death that He did not deserve. He experienced the ultimate cosmic enslavement so you could experience eternal freedom. These truths need to capture your heart and imagination. Meditate on these truths until they move you to worship the only One who will not enslave you for worshipping Him.

If this seems utterly foreign to you, start with a little prayer. Invite God into your life. That is how relationships start. Great, lifelong personal relationships do not begin by delineating a half hour a week and assuming quality time will manifest in that half hour. Quality time is a result of quantity time. Intentional swaths of time generally have to be devoted to a relationship before quality time happens. Before someone is willing to open up, so be known, to say, “I love you”.

This is also how it works with God. We spend time with Him, spend time seeking Him. We spend time reading His Word. We spend time in weekly corporate worship. If you give God time, if you seek Him, if you reflect on His Word, if you pray to Him, if you are doing these things, there is no guarantee you will get glorious swaths of weeping worship, but if you are not doing these things, it is guaranteed you will not. God is the only one who will douse the flame of enslaving addiction and give you something that truly satisfies, Himself.

When you are able to taste and see that God is good, that He cares, that He is in control, that He satisfies the soul, the grip of addiction begins to loosen. You become empowered by His Spirit, you become more and more like Him. Wants, circumstances, problems, that once drove you to your addiction, lose power. You begin to recognize God’s sufficiency and instead of running to the substance you run to the one who actually helps, not the addiction that gives the illusion of help but actually enslaves.

Worship God, and He will change you. Develop an appetite for God and you will taste and see that He is good. If life seems tasteless to you right now, it may be because you have not tasted and seen that the Lord is good. The tolerance that addiction brings does not apply to God. God is faithful and His mercies are new every morning. (Lam 3:23) God is the only master who will not enslave you. God is the only master who forgives you. God is the only master that loves you so much that He sacrificed His only Son so he could be with you.

Lastly, there is someone you need. You need someone who was better than Moses.

“Moses said to the Lord, “Why have you dealt ill with your servant? And why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? Did I conceive all this people? Did I give them birth, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a nursing child,’ to the land that you swore to give their fathers? Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they weep before me and say, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat.’ I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me. If you will treat me like this, kill me at once, if I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness.” – Numbers 11:11-15 (ESV)

Moses was burdened by the Israelites. He complained about their immaturity. He held himself to a higher position than them and said he would rather die than be responsible for taking them to the Promised Land.

Hebrews 3 describes the person you need. The One who was greater than Moses. The One who actually died in order to bring you into the Promised Land. The One who took the wrath of God for our sin on Himself. Moses would have rather died than take on the Israelite’s burden. Jesus said, “I’ll die and take the burden.” Jesus gave up His freedom so you could be free. Jesus was chained so that your chains could be broken, every chain. You need a person who was better than Moses and you have one in Jesus. Instead of continuing in the enslaving addiction, turn to the only One who will set you free, Jesus.

Bibliography

Jake Williams

Jake joined Orchard Hill staff in September of 2023 after serving as Director of a Christian drug and alcohol rehab in Cheswick. Jake has also served as Director of Student Ministries at a church in South Carolina and was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic.

Jake received a bachelor degree (B.S.) from The University of Pittsburgh, a Master of Divinity degree (M. Div.) from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Ministry (D. Min.) degree from Westminster Theological Seminary.

Jake is a Pittsburgh native and met his wife Kristin in 2014 in Shadyside at a mutual friends’ house.  They now live in Glenshaw with their son, Micah, and dog, Belle. Jake enjoys sports, being outside, reading, and fellowship.

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