There are many treatment programs offer spiritual guidance as part of the healing experience. One of the experts specializing in Christian rehab explains how faith is an important factor in one’s journey to healing and recovery. This is especially true for people, especially men who were once addicted to alcohol and drugs. Faith-based rehabilitation centers provide the necessary power and purpose to fuel the journey to recovery. Their primary objective is to deliver the highest-quality treatment for physical, mental, and spiritual wellness.
There are many benefits of a faith-based approach to recover. Among them are:
- Motivates Recovery
Many addictions are triggered by people trying to fill a void. Faith-based recovery puts the God of your understanding front and center in your recovery; therefore, many of the tools that you learn will revolve around God. Faith-based treatment will teach you that God has saved you from the grasps of addiction, which will motivate you to fight even harder to maintain recovery, and that God can help you fill the void you were trying to fill when you became addicted.
- Decreases Risk of Relapse
Statistics show that members who practice a religion that prohibits or at least discourages substance use are less like to abuse substances. On the contrary, adults who do not practice a religious faith are more likely to abuse various substances. Even though substance use disorder does not discriminate, the numbers show that faith plays a huge role in reducing substance abuse. Practicing religion in recovery will help decrease your risk of relapse.
- Promotes Holistic Life Changes
Abstaining from addictive substances is a significant part of recovery, but it is not the only part of recovery. Recovery requires a change in lifestyle, cognition, and behavior. Religion changes your perspective on life. Many religions teach that the unfairness in this life will be amended in the next life. Religions set a list of guidelines for behavior, which will help you reduce selfishness and other defects of character. Believing in a God who has a plan for you and forgives you will help you make peace with your past.
What are the Factors that Make Faith-based Recovery Successful?
- Hope
Fear and addiction typically go hand-in-hand and people live with the fear that there is no hope for them to beat an addiction. A faith-based recovery program provides hope, which is one of the main distinguishing factors to this type of approach to healing and recovery.
- Support from the Church
Another key factor to the success of faith-based programs is the support of the local church. Faith-based addiction programs can serve as a bridge between the local community and the local church. Having a church family that loves and surrounds these individuals helps create a support network of family that the addict can rely on when the pressures of life hit. Many people who fall into addiction have burned bridges with their families and loved ones and do not have a support group on which they can depend.
- Accountability
Also, a key to faith-based programs is the infrastructure to lovingly hold these individuals accountable. With faith-based programs, you have individual volunteers and staff that genuinely care about people and will go out of their way to hold them accountable while showing them real love. Since most faith-based programs do not receive insurance money to pay for treatment, they are very inexpensive and run at minimum cost. Money is certainly not a motivation for the staff and volunteers of these programs. Their main incentive is to help people in need.
- Faith to Jesus
The main determinant of the success of faith-based programs is teaching students to have a personal, dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ. Faith-based recovery programs help people realize that they are not alone in addiction—and if they place their trust in Jesus Christ and depend on Him, they can beat whatever addiction it is that has them in bondage.
You cannot argue with a changed life, and in faith-based addiction recovery, change is seen every day. Placing all of your trust in Jesus Christ may be a new and foreign concept but if change can happen to others, change can also happen to you!