Go Tell the Church!

An important excerpt from Jesus and Addiction by Don Williams

In my former church a couple vanished for several weeks from a large adult Sunday school class. Finally, some concerned friends went to their house and were met at the door by the wife. After an exchange of pleasantries, she revealed that her husband was suicidal and had admitted himself to the psychiatric ward of a local hospital. While his wife appreciated the visit, as it ended, she gravely asked, "Please don't tell the church. It would be too embarrassing, too humiliating." Rather than crying out, "Please tell the church, we need prayer and love now as never before," she silenced these friends out of her fear of exposure and judgment. She was more afraid of the self-righteousness that plagued the church than she was of suffering alone.

A new Church, however, is emerging: a Church that welcomes suffering people just as they are. The new Church lives grace, grace, grace. In it addictions to substances, processes, and people are confronted. Codependency is admitted rather than admired. The new Church is found where God will fill the hole in the soul with himself. This is a Church where generational sin is broken, environmental sin is overcome, and personal sin is forgiven. This is a Church where the false self dies and abandonment ends. The new Church is where our being wound is healed.

The new Church is centered in the fearless, free, and self-giving Jesus, where Jesus' agenda for ministry is pursued, love is unconditional, and human control is surrendered. This a Church under the control of the Spirit.

This is a Church where all are addicts and are taking responsibility for their recovery, where a fresh, real commitment is born. This is a Church where sin is inventoried, confessed, and forgiven, where people are healed and delivered and amends are made. This is a Church where prayer and meditation prosper.

This Church is filled with praise, prayer, and the gifts of the Spirit. Here the cross is preached and tithes are paid.

This is a Church where love is extended, accountability is demanded, and relationships prosper, where the lost are found, the poor are clothed, and the hungry are fed. This is a Church that is taking the good news to the nations.

Where this Church is emerging, people who are caught in crisis, bound in shame, fearful of judgment, addicted and despairing can cry out, "Go tell the Church." Such a Church will respond by offering a flood of grace, water for the thirsty, bread for the hungry, refuge for the abused, deliverance for the addict, and love for all.

The new Church is Jesus' Church. he designed it and called it into being. It is the choir for his worship. It is the family for his love. It is the weapon for his warfare. It is the Church--militant in its suffering. It is the Church--triumphant in his return.

Are you weary? Fed up? Famished? Faint-hearted? Helpless? Hopeless? Lonely? Empty? Lost? Trapped?

Go tell the Church.

--Don Williams, Jesus and Addiction

Self-Giving Worship

What follows is taken entirely from, "Self-Giving Worship", Don Williams, Jesus and Addiction.

In the addictive church, people come to worship in order to get rather than to give. As users, their preoccupation is, "What's in it for me? Do I enjoy the aesthetics? Are people friendly to me? Do I like the music? Am I inspired by the choir? Does the preaching feed me? Is the pastor friendly? Does the pastor know my name?" Such pious expectations about our spiritual growth barely hide our full-blown narcissism. Often I hear people say, "I'm going to another church. My needs aren't being met here." Whatever the merits of this complaint, it has nothing to do with worship. The reason is simple.

Worship is not getting; worship is giving. The word worship in Hebrew means "to fall down, to surrender, to submit," as in a slave or subject bowing low before a mighty king. The word in Greek means "to come toward to kiss." This kiss is not an act of intimacy, it is an act of submission, as in kissing the ground before a sovereign, or kissing his feet.

Worship is the basis for a life of self-giving; it is surrendering ourselves to God. Consider Psalm 95:6: "Come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker," or Psalm 99:5: "Exalt the Lord our God, And worship at His footstool; Holy is He."

In the New Testament we are called to worship as priests. There is no clergy class. (See 1 Pet. 2:5) All believers belong to this priesthood. Like Israel, we are not to come to God empty-handed. Slaughtered sheep, goats, or bulls, however, are no longer acceptable sacrifice. The last bloody sacrifice was made on the cross by Jesus. What then are we to bring?

1. First, as priests, we are to give God our bodies (Romans 12:1).
2. Second, we are to bring God our praise (Psalm 100:4; Hebrews 13:15).
3. Third, we are to give our prayers in intercession (Hebrews 4:16).
4. Fourth, we are to bring our tithes and offerings to God (Malachi 3:8-10).
5. Fifth, as priests we are to bring God our acts of mercy as a part of our worship (Hebrews 13:16; 1 John 3:17; Matthew 25:40).
6. Sixth, self-giving worship includes evangelism (Romans 15:15-16).

What to Expect at Church

What follows is mostly a summary of direct quotations with an occasional paraphrase on my part.  The work belongs to Don Williams and is shared from his book, Jesus and Addiction - A Prescription to Transform the Dysfunctional Church and Recover Authentic Christianity, Recovery Publications, San Diego, 1993.  On pages 170-174, Williams describes the "Freedom in Community" that we should expect in a fellowship of Christ-followers.

I intend to share these eight values tomorrow morning in my message from John 1:1-5 that I've titled, "REBEGINNING - It's not to late to start over..."

"The values that form the core of God's family are liberating values"

1. We enjoy the authority of being adopted into God's family.  We belong and can never be alienated.

2. We find a new identify.  We are identified by our new Father and by our new brothers and sisters.  We are accepted and can never be rejected.

3. We have a new security.  As members of God's family, we have been given the keys to the entire kingdom.  We can never be locked out.  We can risk sharing our thoughts, our feelings, our stuff, and our lives because we are finally secure.

4.  We can live honestly by respecting each others thoughts and feelings.  We are free to know ourselves and each other.  There is no abusive control--no party line to parrot.

5.  We live together in a nurturing environment that is determined by love.  Love builds up!  It is emotional support under girded by tender-hearted kindness that seeks our benefit.

6.  God's family life includes discipline.  We are free from the old self-destructive chaos.  We are free to live responsibly.  We can and must speak the truth in love to each other while owning the impact of our words.

7.  We care for each others physical needs.  We are free to give.

8.  Rather than sick dependency, our family goal is to grow up into maturity.  This means achieving a healthy interdependency.

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 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 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!

Step One

For some time now I have been slowly reading Don Williams' book, Jesus and Addiction.  I have reached the point in the book where Pastor Williams discusses the 12 Steps of recovery.  My personal exposure to the 12 Steps comes exclusively through Celebrate Recovery and so I am deeply interested in another perspective.  In Jesus and Addiction, Pastor Williams is making the case that the church is by and large an addiction machine and that changes will be necessary in order for a church to become a place where individuals find freedom from addiction.  For example, rather than teaching people to serve out of their wholeness, churches often encourage service in order to find some sense of personal fulfillment--I now know that such a motive is called codependency and is anything but healthy.

Step One:  We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.

This first step, "painfully confesses that addictions, whether to substances, processes, or relationships, are no longer working and that we have to release them.  We have been pretending that we are in control, but in actuality, we are out of control."

"Giving up the illusion of control means abandoning the last defenses of our independent egos.  It means that false selves are now exposed for what they are.  Since destruction precedes reconstruction, these false selves must die."

"This admission of impotence only comes through crisis.  The crises of admitting that we are powerless over our lives comes as we hit bottom--sometimes with a bounce, sometimes with a crash."

"God will break the hard hearts of the self-righteously religious who come to Step One.  He will strip 'elder brothers' of performances, righteous works, presumptions, judgments, and secret rage.  As those elder brothers, we will give up the law and the spiritual pride that goes with it.  Where will that leave us?  We will be on our faces, mumbling that we are powerless and that our lives, yes, even our religious lives, have become unmanageable.  We will be on our faces, admitting that our codependent service to the church, our workaholism, and our continual rescue of others, hide the emptiness inside.  We will be on our faces admitting that our attachments to money, food, sex, relationships, and our own self-images are idolatrous.  This is the first step on the path of healing, and we must take it with guts and grace."

"I have admitted my own powerlessness more than once.  My first crisis was during my conversion.  I realized how much Jesus loved me and how I shared responsibility for his death.  My heart was broken; I knew in that moment that I could no longer manage my own life.  Another crisis came when my wife Kathryn and I, in deep emotional pain, admitted that we were powerless over our relationship.  Years later, I was broken once again when I was fired as a pastor. I then knew that I was powerless over the church.  I became separated from my 'drug of choice' and all of my codependent relationships.  Numb, depressed, and empty, I retreated into myself.  All my plans, hopes, and dreams lay shattered at my feet.  This was God's severe mercy and my first step to healing.  All of us will go through this crisis more than once as God brings down our idols, setting us free to love him.  Acknowledging that we are out of control is the first step to becoming like the fearless Jesus."

--Don Williams, Jesus and Addiction.

Addicted to Ministry?

There is a better way to do ministry than the one that I have spent most of my life dedicated to.  Don Williams' book resonates with my soul in more ways than I care to discuss.  However, as I have been recovering from many things over the past year (including church), I have found that there is a healthy way to do ministry.  Jesus is the example of course.  Here are few paragraphs on the subject from Williams' that you might find interesting.

"Jesus wasn't addicted to his ministry or relationships.  Unlike today's pastoral workaholics, he was free to leave a successful campaign behind and move on to other cities.  Since he was motivated by God's call rather than by the needs around him, he was free to withdraw from the masses and find rest and refreshment without guilt."

"Since Jesus loved people from wholeness, he had no addictively attaching relationships.  Unlike many pastors today, he didn't need to collect important people around him in order to shore up his fragile ego.  Being free from people, Jesus was free for people."

"Jesus not only freely loves us, he sets us free to love ourselves and each other.  As we receive his mercy and become merciful toward ourselves, we will be able to extend it to our neighbors.  Such love throws Christians into each others arms for care and comfort and enables us to bear the good news of Jesus' love into the world.  Since he doesn't condemn us, we won't condemn ourselves or each other.  Since he loves his enemies, we will love our enemies.  Since he forgives us, we will forgive ourselves and each other.  Since he comes to seek and save the lost, we will go to seek and save the lost.  The great commission will be fulfilled throughout the whole global village by a Church in love with God and its neighbors."

--Don Williams,  Jesus and Addiction

Freedom with Jesus...

Some quotes today from Chapter Six of Jesus and Addiction by Don Williams.

"From the study of addiction, it's clear that everyone is in bondage.  For us there is no 'natural' freedom.  Only when God's grace intervenes in our lives and we die and are raised with Christ can we progressively detach ourselves from all the things that had controlled us.  Rather than the bondage of desire, we increasingly experience the freedom of true desire.  This freedom means that we will not turn any substance, process, or relationship into an idol, losing control to anything outside the control of God.  This freedom means that we are now able to think, say, and feel truthfully without fear of abandonment or shame.  This freedom means that down deep in our guts we know that we are loved unconditionally by Jesus and are secure in him for eternity."

"As a result, we can at last love God with all our hearts, souls, and minds, and love our neighbors as ourselves."

"How can we nurture this new freedom?  How can we prevent relapse into addiction and codependency?  First, we must live with Jesus, the only fully free person on this planet, day by day.  As we experience his freedom, we will be set free from our attachments, compulsions, and addictions."

"Jesus found his freedom in open communion with God, serving as a channel for what the Father wanted to accomplish.  Consequently, Jesus was free from any external code.  He had no need to check out how people felt about him in order to know how he felt about himself."

"Unlike addictive and codependent people, Jesus had no illusion that he could control everything.  Because he was submitted to his Father, he didn't have to get control of himself.  This made him free from seeking to control circumstances or people.  Fear of failure, exposure, or of losing his addictive fix weren't hooks for him.  Since Jesus was certain of who he was, he was free from the bondage of human control and expectations.  Instead he was free to love, confront, comfort, heal, and save people."

"Through Jesus' example, we learn that freedom isn't found in autonomy or separation from God.  Real freedom is found in unity and communion with God.  No wonder Jesus says that apart from himself we can do nothing."

--Don Williams, Jesus and Addiction, 1993, Recovery Publications, Inc.