Jeni Lambel
Salvation Experience
I have been a believer nearly all my life but back in 2005 something went wrong. My husband of 30 years passed away to be with our Lord. I had already experienced the pain of my dear father’s passing a year earlier. I was not prepared for either of the two most important men in my life to join our Lord.
A friend suggested a glass of wine would help me sleep. Long story short…one glass turned into a bottle then a box. Over the next ten years, I found myself drunk 3-4 nights out of every week. I kept a good job but many mornings I went to work hungover, if not a little buzzed.
Time after time I prayed to my God to help me stop drinking. I thought He wasn’t listening. I remained a “good Christian” attending church and praying every night for His help. It didn’t come.
A doctor I was seeing asked on many occasions, “when do you think you will stop drinking?” or “don’t you think it is time to stop drinking?”. Well, this just went in one ear and out the other for years. Until one day he asked his usual question and it was the “last straw”. I said to him, “sure, how about now?” He picked up a phone and called CDRP at Kaiser (Chemical Dependence Recovery Program). At the same time, I was advised(required) to join AA.
In AA they asked me to “get” a Higher Power. Well, I already had my Lord, and He wasn’t doing much to help me. But I played along with the commitment I had made to my doctor and myself. Well, week after week went by and I wasn’t drinking. Then weeks turned into months and months into years. Today I have been clean and sober for five years and counting.
Somewhere in the last five years, I realized God wasn’t ignoring my pleas, he was waiting for me to work with Him and not to expect Him to work another miracle and take this ailment from me.
He was with me the entire time. He just knew it had to be my decision to help myself. My requests, although I thought sincere, were really empty. When I decided to work with God, He helped me.
How many times throughout my Christian life have I asked God for something, sat back, and expected Him to take care of it?!
Now I understand what it means “with God’s help I can do almost anything”, with God’s help.
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