Kristal: Should CHRISTIANS be drinking? ALCOHOLISM, addiction & DEMONS

Should a Christian should be drinking alcohol? This question is explored; speaking from personal experience dealing with childhood trauma resulting from alcoholism giving you four points on how alcohol could be an open door  to the demonic realm, how impacts on your health & relationships and why when God may have a higher calling for you, may also be leading you to abstain from alcohol. 

Speaking on the two extremes of legalism around "not drinking" to follow rules to drinking in excess - both are wrong but is somewhere in between okay?

Links:

Derek Prince - Should Christians Drink Alcohol:

https://youtu.be/7kZu7NWTCE0?si=Mo3vMhi3-7m_8fL4

WHO on alchohol consumption:

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/alcohol

Carl Jung's letter to Bill Wilson (Co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous Recovery Programme):

https://aaforagnostics.com/blog/carl-jung-letter-to-bill-wilson/ 

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to Voices Unhindered. I'm Crystal Jenkinson. On this show, I give a unique perspective and listening air to voices that often go unheard. I want everyone to know that you are not alone and that your voice and story matters. This week I speak on whether a Christian should be drinking. The Bible doesn't say that it's a sin, but is that the right question? I speak on dealing with trauma from alcoholism in the home growing up, how it impacts your health, your relationship, and why God may be asking you to put the bottle down. I am speaking today about should a Christian be drinking? I know this is quite a controversial topic. I wanted to start off a bit about my background. I grew up with a solo dad and my grandparents, as some of you may know. I grew up with alcoholism in my family. I grew up with alcoholics on both sides of my bloodline. And also I witnessed it with my own biological parents, alcoholism. It's something that traumatized me as a child is witnessing the effects of alcoholism on those who were supposed to care for me and just the effects of what it did to them and how it was an open door to other demonic spirits. And that's kind of what I wanted to talk about today. So Christians like saying drinking is not a sin. Jesus had a wine, Jesus turned the water into wine. One of his first miracles was turning water into wine. The Bible does say wine. Some Christians argue that it was non-alcoholic wine and that it was grape juice. I don't personally believe that. I also think the wine was different that day. It was lower in alcohol. Like it doesn't say explicitly in the Bible that drinking is a sin. And that scripture was from John 2. But is this the right question to ask? Should we be asking is something a sin just so that we feel good about doing it? I think that is not the right way to live because that's not actually living to please God. It's just trying to live by the rules. It's like legalism, but it's the other side of it. You're just trying to follow rules and see what you can get away with. And that's what it does when you follow rules. Just because the Bible doesn't say that it's a sin, it doesn't mean that we should do something. Like a lot of other things, I can think of things, you know, that's debatable whether it's right or wrong. And it could be wrong for some and it might be okay for others. It's not for us to judge. It's between you and the Holy Spirit. It could be the vaccine, any vaccine, especially the recent one which caused a big division between Christians. And then it could be whether you eat vegetarian, the it's okay to do sexual things before marriage. So these are things that are like kind of areas that you need to seek the Lord about for your own life and make sure that you're right with him. Um the Bible says, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but not all things edify in 1 Corinthians 10 23. So um that was Paul writing that, and he was saying, like, I can do whatever I want, but not everything is gonna benefit me or benefit my walk with God or benefit me doing the will of God in my life, because that's what we're ultimately here to do. If you're a Christian, your aim is to please God and to follow God. So that's what he was saying, because alcohol can be a distraction, it can be a crutch, as I've heard people say, it can be something that, like a coping mechanism, escape mechanism from your problems, from reality. Instead of taking your problems to God, instead of dealing with them, with God, you are drowning them in alcohol or another substance. I just wanted to tell a story. So my granddad, I respected him a lot. He looked after me along with my grandma, most of my childhood actually, was with them, my grandparents. Um, and he would have a drink of wine or oh not wine, of like a whiskey or something now and again, just one glass, and he'd never get drunk. I'd never ever see him drunk. He was very wise in that area. And my grandma was the same, she just had one or two. But once I was offered it, I was like 15 or something. And I was like, Oh, should I try some? I went to smaller, I kind of felt sick, and then I tried a little bit, and then I was like, Oh, I don't feel like I should be drinking this. And he said to me, No, that's not for you. It's as if he was saying, like, that doesn't suit you. And I felt convicted, like whenever I'd drink, I'd felt like this isn't for me. And I'm not saying it's wrong for everyone, but for me, I felt it was wrong for me. And I still feel like that. And I think there's a lot of peer pressure growing up as a high school student or as a um young person. Uni, the whole culture is filled with drinking. A lot of what they do there is drinking. Um, when I was there, I did my studying and I went home. Like I did not engage in drinking. That is not something I enjoyed or wanted to be a part of. That culture. A lot of risky behavior, a lot of things can happen. You're vulnerable to a lot of things when you're drinking. It's an open door. The more you drink, the more the door opens to sin and to different spirits coming into your life. Back to the point I wanted to make was like there's a whole drinking culture in our country that is not helpful or healthy for young people. The rugby culture, sports culture, a lot of around like, you know, you'd have a drink while you're watching rugby, or, you know, they'd get drunk after winning a game or something. Like, to me, that's really sad. And yeah, the whole pressure, like, if you're around people that are drinking and pressuring you to drink, that's something is wrong. Like, you need to remove yourself from those places. If you feel pressured, if you feel like that's not for you, if you feel like God's telling you to not to abstain from drinking, you should follow what you know is right in your heart. And that's what I recommend to every one of you. Like, whether you're young or whether you're old, if your friends are influencing you to go against, or they're like offending you by drinking around you, that is not love. They do not care about you. The Bible says whether we eat or drink, we should do it for the glory of God. And it also says that we shouldn't cause a brother to stumble who feels that something's not right, whether it's eating meat in front of them, they don't eat meat, things like that for conscience reasons, to respect and to walk in love towards our brothers and sisters in Christ. The thing I wanted to also talk about was I went through uni, I got my journalism degree. I also did a a diploma in small business and project management. But there was a drinking like day on the last day of my journalism course where they'd all go drinking. It's funny because the teacher asked, like, does anyone in here not drink? I did not say anything. I'm a solo mother, like I I don't. I don't drink. Not to say that I haven't drank in before, I have, but I have chosen not to. The things I want to focus on in life, like it's a distraction. It's not something I that benefits me. It's not something that I even associate with good things in my life. It traumatized me growing up. Alcohol and the you um abuse of alcohol. So back to what I was saying, my daughter was with me on the last day of uni, and they were all gonna have a drink. And thankfully she wanted to go, so I didn't have to be in that environment where I was, you know, feeling like, oh, I'm the old one out, I'm not drinking, have to explain to others why I'm having juice or something. So yeah, like God, I have to believe that God just He makes a way when you want to please Him, He He honors that. You don't have to be like everyone else. When everyone else is doing something and you say, No, I don't feel right about that, like that's brave. And I admire those of you who do that. And I'm not just talking about with drinking, I'm talking about anything that you feel that isn't right for you. Because not everyone is on the same path or not everyone has the same calling by God. So I grew up witnessing the impacts of alcohol. There were substance abuses with other things as well. And I saw family friends that I actually respect males um that were close family friends. Um I saw the personalities change and I saw a lot of foolery happening when people were drunk and under the influence. And then waking up the next day and they act like, you know, nothing happened. And there were arguments that were a result of the drunkenness um that happened in my home, not with my grandparents. Uh sometimes there were little disagreements there um over it, but not there was no drunkenness there. So I just wanted to go through the points of what I'm talking about today. So my number one point, whether a Christian should be drinking or not, is that the motive matters most to God? So God doesn't look at what we're doing on the outside or what others see. He looks at our heart. What I wanted to pose, the question is, is why are you drinking or choosing to have a drink? Is it taken out of peer pressure due to like the influences, the friends that you have around you? Is it done to forget your issues, block out things that are troubling you, or is it like a crutch to help you deal with life? Are you considering those around you who don't drink, like in your family or around your friends for their personal convictions? Are you thinking like, oh, if I have this drink, it's gonna hurt them, or if it's gonna upset them? Because when you do that, you're actually loving your brother or sister in Christ when they don't drink and you respect their feelings, or you're just respectful around them because you're not causing a brother to stumble. And it says, therefore, whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God in 1 Corinthians 10.31. And then it says, Therefore, if food, and it could be drink as well, makes my brother stumble, I will never again eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble, in 1 Corinthians 8.13. So if something that we're doing is causing our brother to be to be tempted in a wrong way, to be upset, or just to be hurt by our actions, then it's not walking in love. I wanted to tell another scripture. And do not be drunk with wine and which is dissipation, but be filled with the spirit in Ephesians 5.18. So in the Merriam-Webster definition, it means it means degradation, a sinking to a state of low moral standard. Another word similar is debauchery, and we don't hear it much, but it's like immoral conduct or practices, harmful behavior, offensive to society. And the synonyms are sin, vileness, looseness, lousiness, dirtiness, indecency, and devilry. So these are all things that being drunk with wine does to you. It causes all these things. It even says perversion here. And often when a family member is addicted to drugs or alcohol and it's it's in your bloodline, it's your parents are both addicted to substances, there's often perversion involved as well. A lot of it is sexual perversion. There's just perversion as in like they're not following God, they're crooked, their behavior's crooked. So I wanted to tell another story. So my grandma, just before my second point, my grandma would have a drink now and again, just one or two. And she must have felt convicted because she would make an excuse. She even admitted to me like she knew that it wasn't good for her. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2020. Um, she'd had it for a few years before that because she'd had um bleeding and things like that um internally. She'd have a drink and then she'd say, I feel like it was God telling me to stop drinking. That's why I've been bleeding. And I remember her saying that and it made me sad. Didn't help anything, at least. You know, everyone has a different opinion. But I I really feel like she was convicted about it. She'd have a wine now and again, and if someone came to the door, she would hide it and she'd tell me that it was because she didn't want to make a brother stumble. And I didn't understand that because I was like, you're rushing away, like as if you're trying to hide something. And then I'd come down. There'd be nothing I'd say. But she knew I didn't like her drinking or drinking. And then she'd be like, Why are you looking at me like that? Or and I hadn't even said anything. But I just felt like that's kind of like she was getting defensive about it, and I was like, that's kind of a sign that she felt convicted about it. And I wanted to add, she was a special woman. Um, she had a special calling of God on her life. And I believe people with a specific assignment, he doesn't want you to be like everyone else. Sometimes he'll tell you to abstain from drinking because of the call of God on your life. It doesn't edify, it doesn't build you up, it doesn't help the will of you to fulfill the will of God in your life. And not because you're holier than they are, not for legalistic reasons. But sometimes uh God has a greater responsibility and a weight for you to carry in the kingdom and in your personal life. She looked after me as a mom did, and uh the two don't really go together. Yeah, like you can have a drink. Like it didn't suit her, that's what I mean. Like she's such a beautiful, like pure Christian woman, and I'm just like, doesn't suit her. Just like what my granddad said to me. And she raised me from from her late 70s to 90 when she died, and then the last few years she was really ill, and um the role switched, whereas I was looking after her and when I was my uncle was there too. So biblical examples of those who didn't drink or were asked to abstain from alcohol by God were John the Baptist and Luke 1, 15, and he was called great in the sight of the Lord, that he wouldn't drink wine or fermented drink. That was a vow. That was actually the angel telling his dad that before he was born, as he was conceived. Samson and Nazarite from birth in Numbers 6, 14, he also was asked not to cut his hair. That was part of the covenant, and so was abstaining from fermented fermented drink and wine and grapes. Um the Recabites, Samuel and Daniel, and then there's a Swiss psychiatrist called Carl Jong. He studied dreams, collective consciousness, and in a letter to Bill Wince Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, he said to Bill the Latin word for spirits is the same as the word for the highest religious experience, arguing that the only way to defeat a lower level search for the divine spirit is to replace it with uh a more authentic one. This provided the foundation for the AA recovery programs to acknowledge that there is a higher power. So all AA programs, um, you would have probably heard that they need to acknowledge that there's a higher power to even start to heal, to be delivered from an alcoholic addiction. And Carl Jung also said, all addictions are a low-level search for God. I really like that quote. Now, number two, I wanted to go on to, which leads me to that, is what I just spoke about is having a greater responsibility or personally convicted about drinking in the kingdom of God and to others. Like I just mentioned about my grandmother. She had the responsibility of being my mother in her 70s up to the 90s when she died. She was like a mum to me the whole time. I just wanted to talk from my own experience again. Because because I'm a solo parent. I don't have family support physically. I don't share care for my daughter. She's continually in my care. I have no contact with her biological dad, and he's never been in the picture. He was actually deported from New Zealand. You're literally doing it all on your own. You don't have shared care or anything like that. So you don't have a mother or you don't have a dad that's there that's, you know, helping with the kids. All the responsibility is is solely on yours or my shoulders. So you have a greater responsibility to God, to steward, um, and be a better parent with the child he's given you. So this should make you consider whether drinking is a good idea, especially when you're solo parent of the definition I just described. The child is totally dependent on you as their role model, their example to meet their emotional needs, to care for them. They need your attention all the time when they're not at school. Nurturing and alcohol can be something that creates like a barrier and a wedge between you and your child and even cause them to disrespect you when they grow up. Do you want your kids to remember you as an alcoholic or as someone who used to have a drink every night? Yeah, I don't at all. This was my experience with biological parents growing up. It wasn't something that I felt comfortable about them doing. Um, not that I grew up with my biological mum, but my solo dad, he did drink regularly. And I just wanted to put that question out there. How do you want your kids to remember you? Where do you differentiate between drinking and getting drunk? So if you're drinking to see how far you can go before being drunk, that's the wrong motive again. Um because it's kind of like any sin, like you're trying to go as far as you can before it's called a sin. Whether it's, you know, leading up to fornication or whatever it is, like it's not the right question about like how far can you go before it becomes a sin. Sin is in Hebrew, it's the word oh gosh, I katah. And it means missing the mark or failing a goal and falling short of the glory of God, it's also called k. So I just wanted to say that some God has higher standards for some of you. Like you that's a good thing. Like if you feel like you shouldn't be doing things that everyone else is doing, um, that's the Holy Spirit saying like He has more for you. Like He set you apart for a specific call. That's why you don't feel comfortable doing everything that everyone else is doing. Um, you're not a weirdo. And I felt like that a lot of my life, you know, for having those convictions and things like that. And a greater responsibility means God has entrusted you with more weight and you ki and you carry more than the average person. And it's important how people under your influence, like your kids, those under your ministry, whether you're pastoring, worship leading, and how they perceive you. Um, because sometimes it can cause a reason for people to lose respect for you or an open door for offense, um, depending on the context. So if someone sees, like, I'm on a worship team at my church, I just I wouldn't like people to see me having a drink or I and being a mother on my own. Like, I wouldn't like my daughter to see me having a drink. I just think that's not right. I don't want to repeat the cycle that I grew up seeing, and that's where it starts. Like you are the cycle break when you change the script that you will dealt with as a child. And that's how you heal as well. The motive for drinking or not drinking, it should be love, love for yourself, love for God, love for yourself, and love for others. Because our body is called the temple of the Holy Ghost, and anything that like comes into our body that is stopping the Holy Spirit being able to communicate with you, being able to convict you. That's not a good thing. And the other thing I wanted to raise was like those of you who listen to my podcast who have come from family bloodlines and have parents that are addicted, have been addicted to alcohol and drugs, it was a stronghold in your life growing up. You saw the damage of those drugs on their life, you saw the violence, you saw the arguing, the dysfunction caused that was all intertwined with this mix of substance abuse and sexual perversion and all that mess. It's all to in my mind, it all goes together and it can put you off drinking for life, or you can run towards that. So it's like it can create you're just following in their footsteps, or you have an aversion to it. And I I I have an aversion to drinking and because I'm like I saw the damage that it caused growing up. And you have to be really careful because those who have been through um who have come from families and witnessed that growing up, the damage from alcohol and drugs, oftentimes it's better that you abstain because the enemy knows like where you're weak and where he can get an an open door, where he can get a foothold into your life. And if he can get it through these things where he knows you have a tendency, a stronger tendency to become addicted to, he's gonna use that. So you just have to be on your guard more. And the Bible tells us like be sober, be vigilant, um, because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. In 1 Peter 5, 8. And that just leads me to where it says sober in the BLB, the blue letter Bible app I use to look up the definitions of words and the strong concordance, it means calm, collected in spirit, temperate, watchful, and abstaining from wine. So oftentimes when we're drinking, thinking about we're not on our guard, we're not thinking about how's the devil gonna get a foothold. We can often be caught off guard when we're drinking because we're kind of like not that I have been in that state like for a long, long time. I had a few when I was a teenager, but that's about it. Um I didn't enjoy it. Um and like I said, I felt convicted. But it's very hard to be drinking and to be so uh to be sober and to be collected in your spirit and like be watchful. If the Bible says that the devil walks about like a roaring lion, that's another reason I don't drink as a solo parent. You gotta have your like wits about you, you gotta have your eyes open. There's a lot of like um a lot of adversaries as a solo parent um on your own. You know, I gotta watch like if someone's trying to get through my front door, I gotta watch like be praying for my house, I gotta be looking after my daughter. Like there's so many things to juggle, and it's like, how can you do that when you're um you know, drinking? Um and I just wanted to say that If you put something above God, um if it's something that's coming between you and God, if God told you to drop it, drop the drinking completely, would you do it? And if you feel like the answer is no, um, there is a problem. Now, number three is drinking alcohol can be an open door to demonic spirits. Yes, I said it, but I don't want to downplay um the the negative in my mind, I always associate alcohol with negative experiences because I grew up seeing the effects of what it did to people in my family, how it caused such tension in a household. Not to mention it's a waste of money. Um, and you shouldn't be doing that, especially if you're a single parent. Um, so it can be an open door to demonic spirits. The more you drink, like I mentioned before, that analogy about the more you drink, the more the door opens on its hinges to allow something to come through where it's no longer just you, it's something else that's influencing you. That's why being um drunk is called being under the influence. And some um alcohol is called spirits. Don't you think that's interesting? And I'm not being legalistic, but it should be a choice made out of self-respect and conviction and love. Love for yourself and love for others, and mostly love for God. And what I wanted to go into was my third point still, is some people, it's more obvious than others that they have turned into that they are being controlled by demons. Because obviously you can see that some people become very crazy, that they're loud, they're obnoxious, they start to become really rude. And this is what I saw in my family, um, with people who got drunk. I had a few family friends, like I mentioned before, they were males and they were older, and they both are people that I respect. And I'd seen them get drunk around me growing up. And this scared me. I felt very uncomfortable around them drinking so much, and I didn't feel protected. Um, because men are supposed to be a protective influence in a family and in especially to daughters, because they need more protecting. And I didn't, um, including my own dad. Um, I didn't feel protected when he was under the influence. I felt like he could blow up any moment, he could turn on me, drag up, you know, things that he felt were mistakes in my life. All these things just um it's like the enemy starts whispering in their mind when they're under the influence of alcohol, he starts putting little seeds in their mind, and then they just speak it without even thinking. They probably don't even know what they said the next day. They wake up thinking, like, oh, I don't even know what I said, but the damage has been done. Those word curses, those things that they said when they were drunk, they have been put out in the atmosphere to your children. And it's not easy to recover from those things that were said. As I said, the damage has been done. Um, unless they do their own inner work and healing as they grow up. Things that happened when these male figures, um, like I said, I respect these men when they were drunk. They acted like lunatics. Um, one of them blocked me in the kitchen, um, and another one was chasing me up our path when I lived in Wellington. Um, and I was actually scared. Like I was like, what is he doing? And I don't think they'll mind me saying this, but yeah. So it lowers your inhibitions and it numb your conscience the more alcohol you consume, and it can make you more vulnerable to abuse and violence or abusing others. Um, many prostitutes need things like drugs and alcohol to do what they're doing because you can't sleep around and be a whole person um unless you're numbing the abuse with a substance. Like I mentioned to many of you, my m my biological mother was a prostitute, so I know not that I lived with her, but I'd seen her, you know, parts of her growing up. I knew these things from a young age. Dad, he couldn't relax or open up. Um, I get it, like a solo parent is not easy. Like you're working or whatever you're doing, and then you come home. Um, he was stressed from work, you know, he had to deal with people all day. And he couldn't open up or talk until he'd had a, you know, a few drinks, usually after work. And I didn't want to talk to him when he was drinking. It was like talking to a brick wall, like I say, to people. It's it changes the person. If you can't talk to people without having a drink, there's something wrong again. And often the talk that would come out of, you know, in the conversation would not be something I'd want to talk about or it'd be carnal talk, you know. I wanted to tell a story, not my story, but Derek Prince. Many of you know, um, he said that he used to have a wine with his dinner figures. Then one night he woke at 2 a.m. after having no more than two glasses of wine, he was sober, he said, and he felt pressure on his brain. He heard the Holy Spirit say stroke, so he started rebuking the spirit of stroke and concluded that the wine opened the door, in brackets, I'm just saying, it made him vulnerable, to the spirit of stroke, and he made up his mind to not have a wine again, and he had a new diet. And he said that quote from the Bible, My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work in John 4 34. Like I said, I remember my grandma saying, like, she felt God told her to not not to drink, and it came out of her own mouth. Like, I didn't say anything. So there are two extremes. There's a legalistic side of judging others who have a social drink. Like, I don't I don't condemn others to hell because they have a drink. I'm just saying my own experience with it was so bad that I choose not to drink. And also for personal convictions, I feel that the Lord doesn't want me drinking. I'm happy without having a drink. Like I don't need a drink to talk or enjoy my life. And then there's those who have no restraint when drinking. So there's two sides that God doesn't isn't pleased with. Um, they're both um sinful. So yeah. Like I said, it can become an idol. Um and it is an idol for a lot of people. They can't relax without having a drink, they can't come home after a stressful day without having a drink. Um, and number four is drinking alcohol is actually classified as a toxin and a group one carcinogen. This is from the World Health Organization's website, and you can look it up. The links will be below. Alcohol is a toxic psychoactive and dependence-producing substance and has been classified as a group one carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer decades ago. This is the highest risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation, and tobacco. And it also says on the website, end of quote, the it also says on the website that there is a greater risk of cancer the more alcohol is consumed. Um, ethanol in alcohol needs to be broken down by the liver to detoxify it from your body. And oftentimes people are drinking more than they should at a faster rate than your liver can detox it, and that can cause um a lot of issues in your body. When it comes to alcohol, this is another quote. When it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount that does not affect health. End of quote. This is the World Health Organization. And that um scripture, I think I read it before, but I'll just say it again. All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything. In 1 Corinthians 6 12, um, an enslave in the Greek strong concordance is do low, and it means to bring into bondage. Is alcohol bringing you under its control? Is it bringing you into bondage? Is it the thing that speaks to you when you're stressed? And why one more thing I wanted to put out there is it's called intoxicated because it's poison. It's poisonous to your body. Your body sees it as a poison. It needs to detoxify it from your body. When you drink more than your liver can process um and remove from your body, this can cause cancer, it can cause brain problems, um, memory loss. There's a lot of things that can cause liver damage. The list actually goes on gangrene, all those things that you've probably heard of that are disgusting. Insulin resistance, because there's sugar there um in the beer. So I just wanted to end with a quote. Um, and you've probably heard of this quote before. So there were two boys, two twin boys raised by an alcoholic father. One grew up to be an alcoholic, and when he asked what happened, he said, I watched my father. The other grew up and never drank in his life. When asked what happened, he said, I watched my father. Two boys, same dad, two different perspectives. Your perspective in life will determine your destination. And the quote is from someone unknown. So that's so interesting. I like that quote because it shows like you don't have to be like what you grew up with. Um yeah, there's a greater resistance, um, there's a greater struggle to overcome those addictions and those things that were in your bloodline. But I believe with God, all things are possible and you are on the right path when you choose to stand up for what you believe in, even though the culture says you should do this, it's fine, everyone's doing it, it makes it look fun, it makes it look attractive. Like the things like I can think of like sex outside of marriage, drinking, getting drunk, people think it's all normal, it's all part of the culture growing up as a young person, but it's it's all a facade. And it's so good when you're free and you realize that you don't have to be like that. And I'm not condemning anyone who has a drink. Like I said, it is not a sin to have a drink with your dinner or something like that. Um, but I do think it's interesting to even with Derek Prince's testimony, um, that he felt that it wasn't helpful for his ministry. He wanted to do the will of God, and obviously that wine was something that he he wasn't even drunk. He still felt like it was coming in between his relationship with God and his ability to fulfill God's will for his life. I mean, he was a man of God, and I know that he's very credible in the body of Christ. And I just wanted to say that those of us who grew up, like many of you who listen to my podcast, you've come from broken homes, you've come from families with dysfunction, with addiction, you've seen the the effects of alcoholism. When you grow up seeing that from parents or caregivers, you can associate you're one of those two boys, like I just mentioned. If you're the boy that doesn't even want to drink in his life or doesn't drink, you associate drinking with something ugly. Like you saw that your dad was wasted, your mother, caregiver. You saw them vomiting in the middle of the night. You saw them wake up pretending like nothing happened. You saw them lose their senses, they lost their mind when they were drinking, that start talking about the past and start like bringing contention into the house, that start accusing people of things. Um there was no peace when they were drinking. The house was filled with strife. And you just knew the atmosphere changed. You felt the atmosphere change when that person started drinking or there were drugs in the house. That is when a demonic spirit comes in and starts stirring things up. Because your caregiver or parent opened the door to a demonic spirit when they started drinking. When you're drinking in access, when you're getting drunk, it doesn't just affect you, it affects your children, it affects everyone around you. Um, just like any sin, you think it doesn't hurt anyone, you're so wrong. Um, because I witnessed it growing up. I lived through it. And just like I said, when you see this um growing up, you can either become the brother that never drank in his life, or you can become someone who just follows the crowd, someone who just follows what you saw your role model do. Um, if you consider that a role model getting drunk. And it takes more courage and more strength to not be like your parent than to be like them. And I admire all of you who are breaking generational curses off your life and for your children. You're doing such a great job. And like I mentioned, somewhat I grew up with a solo father, and when he would drink, it would make me feel abandoned, and it'd make me feel like he wasn't actually there. He was there, but he wasn't there. He was either at work or he was having a drink. That's what I felt like. There was no in-between time where I could just sit down and talk to him about what I'm going through or what I feel, or I felt like there was just those two options, like busy at work, like can't talk, busy, stressed, and then come home drink. And um, for me, that made me feel emotionally unstable. It created that like desire for wanting a man, like to feel love from a man, um, and obviously the wrong relationships growing up. Not being able to relate what not being able to connect to a man in a healthy way like that, apart from friends. I'm talking about in their relationship way. Not being able to bond with a man or struggling to. I remember my dad would say that he needed a drink because me and my brother were fighting, because we were in a financial hard sit financially hard situation because of his relationship issues. There was always an excuse. And if there's an excuse, um that person needs help. I know your pain. I was raised by a parent that did this. You saw how lonely and depressed this parent really was inside. They they looked like they were having a great time at the pub with their friends, making sick jokes. Maybe they were like I grew up, um, a lot of my life was spent at a club, which is kind of like a pub, um, with my solo dad. And a lot of the jokes and the friends he friends he had around his life were at the club, not close friends, they were just drinking, you know, they're they were connecting over drink and they'd make like sexual jokes about, you know, women or men or it was just really degrading. And as a like little girl, I was like, this is disgusting. Like I do not want to be around this. And and that put me off even going, like, I don't go to pubs or clubs with my daughter if I can avoid it. Like anywhere where there's alcohol, I try and avoid it. It's like you hate, you hate the sin, but you love the the sinner. You hate the you hate the thing that's destroying this person's life. You see it destroying this person's life, but you love this person. Um and that's why you hate it, because you see the damage. I see the damage that alcohol has caused. I see the negative effects of it more than I see the positive, more than I've seen the positive in my own experience. And it's made me despise um alcohol. I hope you got something out of this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Look, I'm not here to condemn anyone who has a drink with their dinner. If the Holy Spirit, it's between you and God at the end of the day. If the Holy Spirit hasn't convicted you, if you sought God about it and you believe there's nothing wrong with it, then that's fine. And it's up to you. Um, just like anything else we eat or do, um, it's up to you. But um I just wanted to say, like, to those who who do feel that um weight from God or do feel that they're um a cycle breaker in their family, or those who feel like they're um, you know, they're pushing against the grain, they're not doing what their parents did. Oftentimes kids who drink at uni, they haven't seen like they haven't seen the the extent or they haven't processed the extent of damage that alcohol causes. Um or they didn't grow up in like homes where there was um such abuse, substance abuse and um things like that. And I guess when you've been through that, it's like you see things differently. You see the um you see not the the good times, you see the pain that it's caused, you see the pain that it caused you as a child, um, and you want better for your children. Um bless you guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you for listening. And I just want you to know that if you could please subscribe to my YouTube and my Patreon, and the links will be in the description box below. Reach out to me with questions or like if there's anything you wanted to share, like your testimony or something, you can email me, send me a message on my buzzspray, which is my website, and it will be in the link below where the podcast is. It's great hearing from my listeners. Reach out with questions and comments through Insta or Facebook. Just search for Voices Unhindered. I'm interested to know what other topics and voices you'd like me to bring on the show. Subscribe to Voices Unhindered on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode.