It had all started with painkillers. She had gone to the hospital for back surgery and came back with a prescription of really good painkillers.

Too good, it turned out, because she got hooked on them. When the doctor wouldn't fill the prescription anymore, she found someone to sell her heroine. It was cheaper, and she could get it more often. 

She was dying. Her addiction was killing her. You could see it in her sunken eyes, her drawn out expression. She looked like death, frankly. And her family couldn't watch it anymore. They were watching her die and it was killing them, too.

So they did something they never thought they would have to do with someone they loved; they intervened. Her sisters, her brother, her parents, her husband, her adult-aged daughter--they all joined together and did the single most loving thing they could do, and it hurt a lot. They took turns telling her how much they loved her, how much they cared. They took turns telling her what her drug use was doing to their relationship. They didn't want her to die, so they intervened.

God has intervened, too. A long time ago he sent Jesus Christ to preach some hard things to us. Jesus said, "Repent or perish! Turn away from sin or you will die." It's so easy for us to look out into a world that seems to be falling apart and point the finger of blame at all the evil "out there." It's so easy to do that and forget all the evil that lives in my own heart.

Jesus says repent because he is intervening in our life, too. He comes with a seriously loving message to wake us up to the reality of our sin. We need to take our spiritual life seriously. 

Then we can see how Jesus saves us. Jesus said "repent or die" and then he went and he died in our place. He perished under the wrath and punishment of God's justice. He died--and we don't. He perished--so we could live.

God's intervention isn't about a choice we need to make to go into rehab. God's intervention is about rescue. Repent and live.