Thought for the week: Having a clear mind and understanding of God

Early in the day, I had a telephone call from Tommy’s wife. “I need to explain,” she said nervously. “It’s about Tommy; He’s an alcoholic, He needs to do something about his drinking, and he has volunteered to seek help. He’s in hospital.”

I was somewhat shocked. Tommy and his wife, in their mid-fifties, were two of our most regular churchgoers. Tommy owned a profitable business, and I never saw any evidence of his drinking.

Later that day, I went to see Tommy. As I entered, the psychiatric ward, Tommy remarked: “ I don’t suppose you ever expected to see me here.”

Sitting together, he explained: “I would often drink a bottle of wine before going out to work, and a bottle of whiskey going to bed. There was a time long ago when I sought to follow Christ, but pressures of all sorts took over and drink became my soother.”

As I was leaving, Tommy invited me to pray and to ask the Lord that he would be delivered from his addiction. Suddenly, he got down on his knees on the bare wooden floor. In the quietness, there was a moment of wonder — a sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Tommy never drank again. He had a catering background and started up a drop-in centre at the Methodist Church, which eventually became the East Belfast Mission on the Newtownards Road. Tommy became one of its outstanding leaders.

Tommy spent the rest of his life looking out for people struggling with addictions. He had a fruit and vegetable van and sold his produce around the east Belfast streets, always telling others about the transforming power of Christ. Something had happened that night, when Tommy discovered that the Lord would forgive him and, through the power of the Holy Spirit, it was possible for him to be a new person.

After being filled with the spirit in the ‘Upper Room’ with one hundred and twenty others, Peter went out to address the crowd, some of whom considered they must be drunk. Peter explained they weren’t drunk; they were filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Unlike being drunk, it was the opposite; their minds were clear.

Peter’s sermon was so exceptional that thousands accepted the message to repent of their sins, turn to Christ and believe. The well-known English author John Bertram Phillips writes: “Every time we say, I believe in the Holy Spirit, we mean that we believe that a living God is able and willing to enter human personality and change it”.

Undoubtedly, that life-changing experience came to Tommy in May 1980 in the psychiatric unit.

His experience of drunkenness would change him to have a clear mind and understanding of the gospel and God’s purpose for his life.

I thank God for every memory of him and, at this time when Christians celebrate the day of Pentecost, I recall his answer to a question people would often ask him, “Are you still off the drink, Tommy?” To which he would say: “I’m drinking the new wine of the spirit.”