As Iron Sharpens Iron: A Journey through the Valley of Death

By Jeff Drinnan

For decades, the drug abuse epidemic has been growing. The government has declared opioid addiction to be a crisis. But with all the money and effort spent, we are not winning the war. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put the drugged up Humpty Dumptys back together again. The church offers the solution to the drug problem.

As Iron Sharpens Iron opens with “Katherina,” a woman struggling with drug addiction who is crying out for help, she experiences the horror of the drug world and how it is destroying her life, including her relationships with others. She becomes isolated and looks for guidance to stop her out-of-control life.

Katherina meets the author and reluctantly asks him for help to conquer her voluntary slavery of addiction. He takes her to faith-based meetings, to church and church functions, where she was ministered to and shown the light. The people, including the author’s parents, are a good witness to her and brings her away from the dark drug world and into the light of Jesus. Katherina accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior, and his work is evident in her life.

After God calls Katherina home, the author connected to a faith-based ministry for drug addicts and those suffering from other hurts and hang-ups. The story of Katherina’s struggle with drugs and her victory, through Christ, is interwoven with an in-depth look at the root of the problem.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638858805

Book preview

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As Iron Sharpens Iron

A Journey through the Valley of Death

Jeff Drinnan

ISBN 978-1-63885-879-9 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63885-880-5 (Digital)

Copyright © 2022 Jeff Drinnan

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

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Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another (Proverbs 27:17). There is mutual benefit in the rubbing of two iron blades together; the edges become sharper, making the knives more efficient in their task to cut and slice.

In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, like the rest of the country, drugs are destroying lives. In 2017, there were 231 opioid overdose deaths in Bucks County. The Bucks County district attorney reported 747 overdoses between August 2017 and August 2018. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s Philadelphia Division found that 5,456 drug-related overdose deaths in Pennsylvania in 2017. The number showed a 64 percent increase in overdose deaths from 2015 to 2017. Increased fentanyl availability and misuse contributed to a 65 percent to this increase. Fentanyl is bad stuff!

The March 25, 2016, edition of LevittownNow.com reported forty-nine heroin overdoses so far that year, of which five died, as reported by the Levittown-Fairless Hills Rescue Squad. And it got worse! To help rescue people from their destructive behavior, the voluntary slavery of drug addiction, the faith community has been reaching out with events, regular meetings, and other resources. The Faith Community and Addiction—What You Can Do was the subject of Faith Summit II held at Cairn University in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, on October 13, 2018. There were testimonies from redeemed drug users and appeals from various speakers for the Christian community to reach out and welcome addicts into their fold to help them. A speaker related how he started a Bible-based group where addicts help one another then brought the program to a church.

The initiatives in the faith community entail people helping one another, redeemed addicts helping those still struggling with the problem and others who have had other issues (as we all do to one degree or another) and want to help. I started attending programs and events of one such organization, Conquering Life Prison and Recovery Ministries (CLPRM), headquartered in Feasterville, Pennsylvania. I told more than one person there that I came there to help others, but they have helped me. This is the way it works, Jeff, they responded.

A speaker with TruthSpeaks.net, which presented Faith Summit II, spoke on how to treat people with addictions. He said not to identify them as an addict; that’s not who they are. They are people with a problem that needs to be addressed.

As was the case with other faith-based events, there are representatives from groups and government entities whose view on the subject differs from the faith-based consensus. One speaker at the Faith Summit II said that her group goes with whatever works. When she said that someone may conquer the addiction by hugging a tree, I was incredulous. I shook my head and rolled my eyes. The guy who was interviewing her seemed to notice my reaction. He mentioned to her that the consensus with the faith community is that faith works exclusively. She replied that she’s not against faith and that her group would entertain that view. She concluded that there are different views they would entertain.

Sometime after that event, as I was entering a coffeehouse hosted by CLPRM, I talked with the guy who interviewed the tree-hugging remedy speaker. He said that the organization she represented has moved away from a faith-based ministry.

At yet another CLPRM event, during a conversation about counseling people with someone in the event, I brought up Jay Adams, the founder of biblical counseling. He’s extreme, she declared and didn’t go into detail. Dr. Adams has spoken against integration counseling, where Christian counseling integrates secular principles when they contradict Christian teaching. I mentioned this conversation to my pastor, a fan of Jay Adams, who replied that people sometimes water down the Bible. The Bible is God’s Word, and it’s not up to us to decide what parts of the Bible we want to believe and practice!

The network of faith ministries is a page right out of Jay Adams, who argued that believers, armed with the gospel, can help one another overcome their problems better than any psychiatrist.

An Ounce of Prevention

Across the river in Burlington, New Jersey, the Riverfront Coalition is working with the youth to help prevent substance abuse problems. As the cliché goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. With all the bad influences out there on kids, The Riverfront Coalition is trying to help them get on the right path so they don’t go down the wrong road of addictions. Although my companion with a drug problem got clean after she was with me two months and was clean for more than three months, her past thirty years of substance abuse caught up to her and took her out at sixty. This is why it’s critical to get people when they are young before they get into bad behavior patterns only to have to say, It’s too late. Baby, it’s too late. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good folks to do nothing.

A Cry for Help

Mid-January 2018, about one and a half month after God took my Sandi home after battling stage IV lung cancer for almost three years, I met Katherina, a fake name chosen to compare her to the Katherina in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. Shortly after I started seeing her, she admitted she had a drug problem and needed someone in her corner to help her. Katherina was reluctant to tell me. I was afraid you would walk away from me, she said.

I told her that drug addiction is not who you are but what you do. I really like you, Katherina, and I want to keep seeing you. I just want you to get clean, I assured her. I promised her I’d walk right alongside her in her journey to sobriety, every step of the way. And I did.

Early on, Katherina told me, I need guidance, that her life was spinning out of control.

I told Katherina I don’t condemn her and related the story of Jesus confronting the Pharisees who were about to stone a woman caught in adultery. Jesus bent down, straightened up, then told them, Let any one of you who is without sin throw the first stone at her. Jesus bent down and wrote something in the dirt. The Pharisees fled! Only Jesus and the woman were left. Jesus straightened up and asked, Woman where are they? Has anyone condemned you?

No, sir, she said.

Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared. Go now and leave your life of sin (John 8:3–11).

People committing the besetting sin of drug addiction should not be treated like lepers. Before God, we are all lepers. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). We first respond to Jesus as sinners, and he turns us into saints. All believers in Christ are saints.

I signed the papers to enroll Katherina in an outpatient methadone center. During the transition, she slipped up. On one occasion, Katherina literally started crying on my shoulder. She exclaimed, almost hysterically, I can’t stop this destructive behavior! I can’t act responsibly! I’m ruining my life. I realized that I had to stick by Katherina. With God’s divine intervention, I was determined to do everything I could to help her conquer her addiction.

In Romans chapter 7, the apostle Paul addresses the conflict between knowing and trying to do what’s right but failing to do what’s right. He writes,

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

So, I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law