Alcohol is like a slave's chain - All The Good Seed Daily Devotionals for 2026

He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and brake their bands in sunder.
Psalm 107:14

Alcohol - that common addiction (like a slave's chain)! How many are unable to free themselves from it nowadays! Many sigh under the strain, but getting free is the problem.
A man of a good age had degraded himself badly through drink. His wife had left him, unable to bear living with him any longer. He had lost his job, as is so often the case. All his friends had abandoned him; they simply couldn't get on with him.
Alcohol is an evil demon; it destroys all human relations. Nothing was sacred to that man. All he had was the bottle he depended on and a mattress in an otherwise empty room. Today's verse really applied to him: he was in "darkness and the shallow of death".
Our great God, however, saw his wretched state. He sent men who pitied him to fetch him from his room and took him to a rehabilitation centre run by Christians. Only there did he realise how far he had fallen and how much misery and trial he had caused himself and others. He also grasped that alcoholism is not just an illness or a misfortune that can come upon anyone through no fault of his own. It is an addiction in which guilt plays a part - guilt that needs to be confessed to Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
A miracle happened: the man confessed to God not just the hold alcohol had on him, but all that he had done. The good Lord saved him and pronounced him free of all sin. With the aid of Christian friends he broke free from his destructive obsessions.
Today's reading: Proverbs 11:1-15