Recovery

"Dear brothers and sisters, if another Christian is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back on the right path." (Galatians 6:1)
Too often, churches have given up on the black sheep.  People make mistakes and bring chaos into their lives.  We don't have the right to give up on them.  Our role is to help them back on the right path.  Without approving of their sin we want to always approve of the person.  I've often said, the only person we cannot help is the person who doesn't want help.  A person who doesn't want to change, who doesn't want to work on their issues, who rebelliously refuses counsel--that kind of person is hard to help. 

My greatest joy as a pastor is to meet regularly with people who want to work on their issues.  Over the years, I've seen a host of people find freedom from their hurts, habits, and hangups.  If you think you might want to start work on your issues, feel free to connect with me.  I'm safe and everything you share is confidential.

In addition, we're in the process of launching a couple of Celebrate Recovery small groups.  The first will be just for men and will meet on Tuesday evenings at 6:00 in the TBC fellowship hall.  Text me, call me, or email me if you want more details. Otherwise, just show up on Tuesday. 

“Wisdom is knowing the right path to take. Integrity is taking it.” --M.H. McKee

Step Seven

Step Seven: "We humbly asked God to remove all our shortcomings".

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).

I can't think of too much harder than becoming willing to give up the very things that I have used my entire life to cope with life's difficulties.  "God, would you take away my comfort.  Please remove my support and my coping mechanisms.  Exercise out of me the very things that I substitute for you."  Step Seven is a prayer for change.  It is to beg God to do whatever is necessary in order to transform me through and through.  Step Seven requires great courage and a willingness to embrace great pain.

"Step Seven goes beyond confession and asks God to change us....When we repent, we turn from our sins.  At the same time, we turn to God.  We turn from self-will to his will" (Don Williams, Jesus and Addiction).

This kind of prayer requires courage and but it also takes a great deal of trust in God.  He does not strip us naked of our unhealthy shortcomings just to leave us barren and alone in some far off desert.  He takes away the garbage that we have put our trust in for perhaps our entire lives so that he can replace it with something better--Himself!

"God loves us.  God accepts us.  We are his.  We are no longer worthless and alone, bouncing around in a meaningless universe" (Don Williams, Jesus and Addiction).

Step Six

Step Six:  "We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character".

"Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up" (James 4:10).

In my view, Step Six, may in fact be the hardest step to realize when one is honestly working through the steps to realize authentic and transformational life change.  Jesus asked the lame man by the Bethesday Pool, "Do you really want to be healed?"  In the same way, step six causes us to internalize the question, "Do I really want to get better?"  Do I really want to be done with all of the maladaptive coping mechanisms (those things that I do to keep from dealing with life)? 

Step Five

Step Five:  "We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs".

"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed" (James 5:16).

Step Five is maybe the scariest of all of the steps.  The thought of confessing sins can intimidate just about anyone.  I've been in the middle of several confessions-gone-wrong and I so I completely understand why the thought of confessing sins would be frightening.  People don't always keep confidence.  People don't always extend Christ's grace and forgiveness.  People don't always represent the gospel very well.  Though scary, confession remains essential and a fundamental biblical principle.  James 5:16 concludes, "Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.  The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much".

Don Williams in his book, Jesus and Addiction, writes, "Confession is the only way we can be free from captivity.  Through confession, we're not only admitting our sins, but also giving ourselves to God to be brought into a right relationship with him through the death of his Son".  It's the sharing of our stuff with Jesus and with His human representatives that allows the murky shadows to become brilliantly cleansed.  It's not an option--it's essential in our spiritual development.  We must confess our sins to each other.  Williams continues, "If we don't seek others out in confession, we will miss an important spiritual, relational, and biblical truth--God ministers to us through others.  They are often the means through which Jesus makes his intercession and mercy effective.  As we confess, our hypocrisy will blessedly melt.  We will no longer be religious but real.  After people see our brokenness and tears they will extend their love and mercy in Jesus' name."

"To be freed from fear is to be free to face our sins and acknowledge our pain before God and each other"  --Don Williams, Jesus and Addiction.

Step Four

Step Four:  "We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves".

"Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord" (Lamentations 3:40).

Step Four is perhaps the hardest of the steps to accomplish.  It involves taking an honest and sober look at everyone and everything that has happened in one's life--the good and the bad.  For me, it is a detailed record of my sins, my relationships, my failures, and my successes.  It is to answer the question, "Who am I?"  What have I done?  What has been done to me?  Don Williams writes, "Jesus comes to free us from the past.  This includes our bondage to Satan, this fallen world system, sin, the law, and the flesh.  As we make our 'searching and fearless moral inventory,' much of this will be specifically exposed.  It will include the hurts that we've inflicted on others as well as the hurts that have been inflicted upon us".  The fourth step takes time, it takes courage, it takes honesty, and it takes the searchlight of the Holy Spirit shining into the dark places of our heart that we would rather avoid.  It's also a step not to take alone.  It's advisable to have a counselor, mentor, or accountability partner that you can share your stuff with.  A moral inventory can be extremely painful at times.

To find a Celebrate Recovery group in your area click here.

Step Three

Step Three:  "We made a decision to turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God".

"Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship" (Romans 12:1).

Turning our lives and wills over to the care of God means meeting God on his terms--not ours.  "Jesus doesn't beat us until we give up.  On the contrary, he took the punishment that we deserve.  Out of his undying love, he woos us to himself.  As Jesus humbles himself before us and washes our feet, he breaks our pride.  Through his acts of mcercy, he crushes our hard hearts and fills them with his love and compassion.  Once this happens, at the very core of our being, our abandoned shame base starts to heal." (Don Williams, Jesus and Addiction).  Jesus doesn't beat us into submission--he loves us into submission!  The Gospel IS NOT the frightening news that God is angry and that he is going to hurt us if we don't straighten up.  The Gospel IS the very good news that God loves us and that He has already made a way for us to be reconciled with Himself through the sacrifical death and victorious resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Step Three involves a conscious and heart-felt decision to trust God.

Don Williams writes, "I must confess that as a Church addict, becoming detached requires a lot of grace.  At times God has had to separate me physically from the Church--once when I resigned and once when I was fired.  At other times, he has worked on me through the Spirit by wedding my heart to himself in new ways, freeing me to love him once again.  Whatever the means, we must be separated from our addictive attachment to the Church so we can really love and care for the Christian community in freedom rather than with compulsion. . . . As the attachment to our addictions is broken, we will be free to deal healthily with the things that have bound us, including the Church."

Step Two

Step Two:  "We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity".

"Everyone is an addict, suffering from personal, environmental, and generational sin.  Everyone masks shame behind proper costumes and false selves.  We need a Power greater than any self-help group.  We don't need another codependent rescuer.  This Power can't be another addiction in the form of drugs, relationships, or church.  This Power can be found in God alone, the only one who has never abandoned us, however lost or lonely we have felt.  This Power is no abstraction; this Power is a person we can trust.  That person is the Lord Jesus Christ, who brings eternal, unconditional love from God's heart to ours."  --Don Williams, Jesus and Addiction

The question is, will you believe that Jesus can and will break you free from your insanity?  Will you believe that Jesus can provide the fulfillment and the purpose in life that you have been searching for?  Those of us who have become desperate enough have found new life through Jesus.  Don't confuse Jesus with a nice-looking religious addiction.  Jesus is no religion--He is a person!  He is God!

SHAME

"Shame is a kind of soul murder. Once shame is internalized, it is characterized by a kind of psychic numbness which becomes the foundation for a kind of death in life. Forged in the matrix of our source (family) relationships, shame conditions every other relationship in our lives. Shame is total non-acceptance. Shame is a being wound--in other words, it has to do with who we are at the deepest level--and differs greatly from the feeling of guilt. Guilt says I've done something wrong; shame says there is something wrong with me. Guilt says I've made a mistake. Shame says I am a mistake. Guilt says what I did was not good; shame says I am not good" (Don Williams, page 35-36, Jesus and Addiction).


"Our response to shame is to try to cover up, for fear of exposure. We fear facing the results of abandonment: depression, aching loneliness, and the loss of our true self. In place of God's image in us, we create the false self, a Hollywood movie set behind which we hide. This screen is made from our own fears and fantasies. The scripts are written by other people. If we are honest, it often seems that we are acting in someone else's movie. We have become people pleasers, trapped by performing in order to gain acceptance" (Don Williams, p36, Jesus and Addiction).

Celebrate Recovery

Well, it's Friday--one of my favorite days of the week.  I love Fridays because it's CR day.  CR stands for Celebrate Recovery.  I started attending CR back in September when I was in the early stages of an excruciatingly painful three-month process.  CR became a sanctuary for me--a safe place where I could go and find acceptance, love, and support.  Five months later--I still love to go.  I jokingly refer to it as our date night.  Whenever possible, Tina goes with me and we make it a night out.

Celebrate Recovery is a Christ-centered 12-step recovery ministry.  You'll find people at CR recovering from everything from drugs and alcohol to anger, codependency, and relational issues.  I've found that there are two kinds of people:  those who know what their issues are and are working on them and those who are still in denial.  I am convinced that EVERYONE has issues.  CR is a wonderful environment in which to come clean, get honest, and start to find healing.

Tina and I (and many of our friends) attend the CR at Crossroads Church in Loveland every Friday night.  There are other CR programs in the area but Crossroads is the only one that I have ever attended.  One of my patterns is to find something that I like and then to stick with it.  The Crossroads CR website is here.  Feel free to check it out and if you live in the area--come and join us.