“We have nothing left,” the woman told me. “Absolutely nothing.” She looked at the floor and shook her head. Her husband, Chip gambled at the horse races and bought countless lottery tickets. He blew his paycheck, their money in the checkbook, and their retirement fund. “My parents lent us money, but he gambled that away too.”
When we struggle with addiction or any other challenge, we may say and do things we wouldn’t normally. We may choose to disobey God as Jonah did in the Old Testament. When we run from God, we have preferred our will instead of God’s.
The issue of control was pretty new to me. For the first time in our marriage I was forced to realize that I had absolutely no control over my husband's actions. I could cry, scream, bargain, manipulate, but in the end my husband's choices were his alone. At one point I did symbolically give my husband to God while praying with his parents and my Mom. I asked God to take hold of his life because I knew I was helpless to change him. - James 5:16