An Even Higher Priority Than Work?

“You write about work like an alcoholic talks about his love for bourbon,” my friend Gregg told me after reading my article on work. 

Busted!

Yes. I love work. But I do have a higher priority. 

It is God.

I know you’re thinking, “Really? Come on.”

No. Really. Allow me to explain.

Twenty-seven years ago I was sitting in my living room watching the Atlanta Braves. At dinner that night, Kathy had enjoyed a glass of wine. I’d finished the bottle. Now here I was drinking beer watching TV. 

I realized I was all alone. 

I looked up and every bedroom door in the house was closed. Nobody wanted to be around me when I drank. I said, seemingly out loud, “You’ve become your father.”

When he drank, I wasn’t sure. Was he going to be the most supportive and loving father? Or was I going to be the object of his frustration? Would I become the embodiment of all the things that were wrong in his life? I hated the emotional abuse. I hated being the relief valve. So when he was drinking, I stayed away. 

Fast forward, here I was being avoided by the very people I loved. It was then I had a vision of where my life was headed. Keep doing what you are doing and you will lose it all. That’s what I heard so clearly. Or maybe I just thought it. Wherever it came from, I was immediately convicted. It was true.

This led me to call a former neighbor who was a businessman. A few years before he was the pariah in the neighborhood. He was told by his employer, “If you don’t get help with this alcohol problem of yours, we will have no choice but to fire you.” This would end a successful 25-year career in sales. He chose to go to rehab.

I called the neighbor.

We met for lunch. He told me his story and invited me to AA. I went. There were over 70 at that meeting. I was not the only one with a drinking problem.

At the close of that meeting, a man stood up and went to the front of the room. He turned and pointed to me as I was sitting in the back of the room, head down. He said, “I don’t know who you are, but if you want to stop drinking one day at a time, you’ll do two things every day. First, you will come up here and take this white chip which means you agree to stop drinking one day at a time. Second, you will hit your knees every morning and ask God to keep you sober. And each night you will thank God for keeping you sober.”

That man, who died from colon cancer two years later at the age of 43, gave me the secret to accomplishing what I wanted to do most in my life and couldn’t. He told me how to stop drinking alcohol. He gave me permission to talk to God and ask for his help.

Six months and 180 AA meetings later, I didn’t have a desire for alcohol anymore.

I remember the first week of meetings thinking, “There is no way I can go without a drink for the rest of my life.” Some of the people in the meetings would claim 25 years of sobriety. “Impossible,” I thought.

The question asked by the leader of the meeting that night was, “Who is your higher power?”

AA invented the 12 Step Program. And the first three changed my life forever.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

I realized God did a miracle in my life the night I was six months sober. Six months. For ten years prior to that I would wake up every day saying, “I will not drink today.” And every day I would break my promise to myself and drink. And now six months had passed and I hadn’t touched the stuff. It was a miracle, a real miracle.

I asked myself this question with great seriousness, “So who is this God who did this miracle in my life?”

Within a week, as if I’d screamed this question in the public square, tech business people who claimed Jesus as their Lord and Savior were inviting me to events. I don’t remember ever being invited in the past. Was it because I asked this question? Was God sending these people to me to answer the question I asked myself?

I accepted these invitations. 

This led to two dinners and two prayer breakfasts. In each of these events, I heard a businessman tell his life story. And the story always started with optimism, then struggle, then brokenness, then Jesus, then forgiveness, and finally rebirth and hope. None of these men were alcoholics, but we shared the same story. At some point in our lives, each of us said, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” 

And there stood Jesus, knocking.

On I-16, on my way to Hilton Head to join my family, I was listening to one of these stories on the cassette tape in my car. Adolf Coors IV, the man with all the beer in the world, ended his story and asked me a question. “Why are you continuing to hold on to your sin and guilt? Jesus stands ready to heal you forever.”

Right then, right there, I prayed, “Jesus, I am yours. Forgive me. Lead me.”

But old habits die hard.

Sometimes I forget to do what that man in AA told me to do every day. I skip talking to God in the morning, asking him to keep me sober. I skip talking to God at the end of the day and thanking him for keeping me sober. After all, I’ve kicked this alcohol thing. I haven’t had a drink in over 27 years.

It is easy to get back to who I was before I submitted my life to Christ. To be back in control. To think I did it with my superior self-control. To live life on my terms, thinking again I am my own man. 

And when I get there, God reminds me. Every time he reminds me. He says to me, “Let’s go back to the living room. What would the last 27 years look like without me leading your life?”

And that’s when I drop to my knees and say, “Thank you, Jesus.”

So every morning I get up and the first thought on my mind is what I have to do that day. The second thought is, “Not without Jesus.” So I sit in my office and open the Bible, which I believe is God’s word, and read it. Every day God speaks to me with a message just for me. Every day. Then I pray. I talk. I ask. I listen. I thank him. I then go on with my day and all I have to do.

Yes. God is first. 

I came from God. 

I will return to God. 

And in between I need to spend time with Him first thing each morning. This is my highest priority.