There’s almost a sparkle in Joel Griffin’s eyes when he discusses the help available for those struggling with drug and alcohol addiction.
“It’s a complicated disease,” Griffin said. “But the deal is, fortunately, the solution for it is not complicated — but you’ve got to want it and be willing to make the effort to get it.”
Believing he’s found just the medicine the doctor ordered, Griffin formed New Hope Ministries, a Christian-based drug and alcohol recovery center situated on 23 acres in Dadeville.
Griffin knows firsthand about life as an addict after recently celebrating five years of sobriety, “through the power of Jesus Christ.” Now he’s working to help others realize that freedom.
New Hope Ministries is a 10-week residential program for men that places an emphasis on recovery through a relationship with Christ. The program includes working through the 12 steps of recovery, daily Bible study, devotional time and a study establishing your identity in Christ. Griffin keeps the ministry to a maximum of six people to provide a more intensive program. He said he will work with anyone who is willing to go to any length to get well.
Griffin said he is now on a spiritual high far better than that which he got from drugs and alcohol.
“I love to watch these guys find a personal relationship with Christ, recover and then change their lives,” Griffin said. “I love to let God work through me, there’s nothing else like it in the world. No high — and I’ve experienced some big ones — no high is like that.”
The work Steve and Marilyn Yarbrough are doing in northeast Alabama also offers hope for addicts through the power of Christ. Operating a 24-bed, six-week residential recovery program in Attalla called Rapha, the Yarbroughs are working to lead men into a new life by depending on God.
Stressing Rapha works with men who profess to have a relationship with Christ, Steve Yarbrough said the program offers a ministry to those who have lost the focus in their lives.
“We’re dealing with the individual who has a church background,” he said. “They think they’re saved, but they’ve never had a personal relationship (with Christ).”
“The basis for our program is finding out who you are in Christ,” Mrs. Yarbrough said, adding Rapha uses LifeWay materials to teach recovery is not about drugs and alcohol but having a personal relationship with Christ.
“Unless God changes your heart, it’s not going to last,” she said. “Our main teaching is having a one-on-one relationship with Jesus Christ.”
“What the Holy Spirit can do to you — it blows drugs away,” Griffin said.
“If I could get that across to every addict in active addiction, I could solve the drug problem,” he said. “In helping people find God and recover, I have seen God change people so dramatically.”
Sharing how he stole wine during his days as an addict, Griffin said someone who is desperate for a high is to be feared. “He’ll hit you in the head and take your money.”
Both men said their nonprofit organizations have benefited enormously from the support of many donors, businesses and their churches, with Griffin crediting efforts of his church, Camp Hill Baptist Church, and Yarbrough thanking his church, North Glencoe Baptist, Glencoe. Griffin also noted The Church at Brook Hills, Birmingham, and Central Baptist Church, Newnan, Ga., have been major players in his ministry.
For more information on New Hope Ministries, call Joel Griffin or Rod Cauldwell at 256-825-4357.
For more information on Rapha, call Steve Yarbrough at 256-538-7458.
____________________________
Joel Griffin and Steve Yarbrough use own stories to reach those struggling with drugs
Joel Griffin knows all about triumphing over a wasted life. Today, he’s in a successful marriage, a deacon in his church and is heading up a Christian-based drug and alcohol recovery center.
But Griffin can never forget the dark skies that plagued him a few short years ago. Now 46, he spent half his life as a functional alcoholic and drug user.
“In that 28-year span, it would be much easier to tell you the drugs that I didn’t use, rather than the ones I did,” said Griffin, executive director of New Hope Ministries, a residential drug and alcohol program in Dadeville.
Steve Yarbrough, director of Rapha Christian Home in Attalla, offers a similar story in relating how he went from the life of an addict to helping others recover.
Sharing how he was raised in the church, Griffin said he began using drugs as a youth.
“I was told at church that I’m not supposed to do a lot of things, but they looked like they’d be fun and I wanted to do them,” he said. And at that time drugs looked like one of those “things” that would be fun.
As the church’s influence on Griffin weakened and he dealt with his parents’ divorce, he soon dropped out of church.
“As far as ever being sober, I don’t think I was totally sober for more than three to six months straight before I would always return to drinking, even though I wanted to stop until the time I finally got sober (five years ago),” Griffin said.
During that period of on-again, off-again drinking, Griffin went through two divorces and lost his job as a college educator.
For Yarbrough, the abuse also began when he was young, eventually resulting in a total of seven years in prison for drug-related offenses.
But both men said the key to their recovery came through embracing the gospel, Griffin through a Christian-based program then offered by Covenant House of Birmingham (The Farm, located in Camp Hill) and Yarbrough through a prison ministry. Upon recovery at The Farm, Griffin became the program director there before beginning New Hope Ministries.
Yarbrough offers three words in describing what set him free. “Salvation, true repentance,” he said.
Yarbrough spent several years ministering to addicts in prison following his release, before starting Rapha with his wife, Marilyn, three years ago. He said he was prompted to begin his ministry after seeing the reaction from those he shared with in prison.
“They responded, because I had been there,” he said.
Griffin agreed that the power of his own testimony can’t be dismissed.
“One of the things that I think makes this program work so well is the fact that the people who are delivering the message have been there, and they have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind, spirit and body — that’s direct evidence that recovery is possible for anyone,” Griffin said.
Share with others: