Desperate Joy

  Jesus was in the business of breaking down barriers and connecting with people that everyone else had cast aside. In John 4 we find Jesus travelling from Judea to Galilee. This journey would take him through Samaria. Samaria was where people of mixed descent lived. They were not the pure-blooded Jews that lived in the other areas of Israel. Many Jews despised these Samaritans and would take a longer journey around Samaria in order to avoid coming into contact with them.   Jesus made it a point to pass through Samaria. Along the way he took a break at a well around noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water and Jesus asked her to give him a drink. She was surprised at this because Jews typically have nothing to do with Samaritans, but Jesus was there for the specific reason of talking with her. He preached to her of living water, the forgiveness and healing that he was offering. She took him up on his offer and well of water springing up unto eternal life up erupted in he...

  The other day I was talking with a good friend about investing in the stock market and he mentioned that he doesn't invest in "bad" businesses like oil companies, and he feels guilty when he has to fill up his car with gas. It seems like these sentiments and values are becoming increasingly common and I find them a bit bizarre, if not disturbing, especially considering them from a Christian perspective.  I think there are bad men and bad companies in the world, to be sure, but just because a company is involved in oil hardly makes them bad. And I certainly don't think that anyone should feel guilty about filling up their tank with gas.   There are things that as individuals and a society we should be feeling guilty about, but they have nothing to do with gasoline or the environment. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against renewable, "green" energy and preserving our natural resources and keeping our rivers, forests and oceans clean and healthy. ...

  There are many important tools that recovering addicts have found useful in helping us find our way to a healthy life and spirituality. We have discussed the importance of meetings, making phone calls, and gratitude, this time we will go a little further into these ideas and focus on accountability. Accountability is often discussed in Christian circles, at least among men who are trying to quit porn or other destructive habits. We are encouraged to find a good friend who can hold us accountable for our commitments. When I first tried to practice this sort of accountability, I managed to build up the courage to ask a good friend to keep me accountable. My thought was that I would ask him to hold me accountable, and he would follow up and ask me at intervals how I was doing with that. My friend, likewise, was struggling, and asked me to hold him accountable as well. Then it became my job to ask how he was doing. This can create some awkwardness, as you can imagine. It can be...

  One of the greatest battles we face in the Christian life is with temptation. Satan is always near, whispering in our ears, trying to seduce us and lure us away from the Savior. It is far too easy to fall into these snares. But as we saw in our previous post, if we are fully satisfied in Christ, if we are "filled with the fullness of God"(Ephesians 3:19), then those temptations lose their power. It is easy to say "no" to the cupcake when have just eaten a delicious, healthy meal. But the question remains, how do we go about being filled with the fullness of God? What does that mean, practically speaking? Faith is the first and most important step, "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith..."(Ephesians 3:17) We must first and foremost make a decision to follow Christ and place our complete trust in him. We stop relying on our own resources, skill, wisdom, and power and turn fully to Christ. We humble ourselves and commit ourselves completely and...

  In my family, as with most American families, we gather together at Thanksgiving and have a ridiculously large feast. We will have roasted and smoked turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls, sweet potatoes, green bean salad, stuffing, several types of pecan pies, apple pies, pumpkin pies, and assorted other appetizers, snacks, and candies. By the end of the day, I will be sprawled out on a couch, in a daze, stuffed to the gills. Every craving and appetite fully satisfied, and to excess. You could ask me, "You want a peanut butter cup?" (which is my favorite candy), and I would say, "No, I couldn't possibly eat another bite!"  In that state of satisfaction to near stupefaction, any form of food and drink holds no appeal for me. Gordon Ramsey himself could show up to offer me a gourmet meal, but I would have no desire for it because I was so full. In that state, the thought of eating more almost becomes unpleasant. The devil often comes to us with many delectable treat...

  We are joined in a mighty battle between the spirit and the flesh, Satan, and our Savior. Every day we are pulled away from our Savior and into sin. Many of us make commitments to follow Christ, and yet we struggle with sin and addiction. We want nothing more than to walk in righteousness, but we war with our flesh and unclean desires. The Bible is clear that either we will be killing sin, or sin will be killing us. "The wages of sin is death..." (Romans 6:23) But one of the paradoxes of Christianity is that we do not fight this battle with sin and Satan with aggressive, forward action. It is less of an assault, and more a surrender. We do not go forward in a direct assault. We do not throw punches, thrust swords, or lob grenades. We lay down our weapons and stop fighting. Of course, to surrender to sin is to plunge ourselves deeper into sin and death. Sin must always be resisted, but as we turn away from sin, we look to the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ and we surrender ...

  Addiction always has its roots in sin, and that sin in turn springs up from our own lustful, selfish desires. This is the idea that we have been looking at in James 1 over the last few posts. There is a process that sin always follows. We sometimes feel like we just stumble into it, or it just happened, like a meteor falling from the sky. But if we learn to pay attention, we will see that it happens gradually, step-by-step. The medieval Christian thinker Thomas a Kempis digs deeper into the ideas we saw from James and offers us some useful insight into the process that sin takes: "First there cometh into mind a bare thought of evil, then a strong imagination thereof, afterwards delight, and evil motion, and then consent. And so little by little our wicked enemy getteth complete entrance for that he is not resisted at the beginning." First, we have the "bare thought of evil."   The world, the flesh and the devil will all send images, thoughts, and ideas into ou...

One of the marvelous things about Christianity is that in Christ we can find full forgiveness for all our sins. Through him we can escape the weight of our guilt and shame. There is liberty, knowing that our sins are forgiven. Our past is erased by the blood of the Lamb, and we walk in newness of life. We live in a world that tries to convince us that we are not really sinners. That sin is just an illusion or a social construct, but the reality is that all of us feel the weight of our guilt. We cannot escape it. We might call them mistakes or errors of judgment. But ultimately, we know they are sin. The meaning behind the Bible word for sin carries with it this idea of missing the mark, like if we are shooting an arrow at a target and we miss. This is what it is to sin, we aim for something we know is good and right to do, but then we fall short. "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God."(Romans 3:23)   James says this, "Therefore to him that knoweth to...

  In Mark chapter 9 we find the story of the father of a demon-possessed son coming to Jesus's disciples for help. The disciples were unable to cast it out, so they brought the man and his son to Jesus. We pick up the story in verse 19, with Jesus rebuking the disciples: "19 He answereth [the father], and saith, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him unto me. 20 And they brought him unto him: and when he saw him, straightway the spirit tare him; and he fell to ground, and wallowed foaming. 21 And he asked his father, How long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, Of a child. 22 And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us. 23 Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. 24 And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I bel...

  Romans chapter 6 in the New Testament has always been an important part of my recovery.  Early on, when I first began to realize that porn was a problem for me, a preacher mentioned that Romans 6 was a good chapter to study and memorize if we were struggling with habitual sin.  So that is what I did.  I memorized it and several other chapters from Romans.  It was helpful, but it took me many years to come to understand what it really means and how to apply it to my life. One of the most powerful ideas presented in Romans 6 is the fact that in Christ we are set free from the power of sin.   We may feel like we are in bondage to sin and addiction, but the reality is that Christ has broken those bonds.   Now we have a choice.   We get to choose who our master is now, either sin or the Savior. We have looked previously at this chapter and the truths about our identity in Christ, that we are dead to sin and alive to righteousness, and the importa...

  Addiction is a problem that has many dimensions. It is a sickness that manifests itself in every aspect of our beings, it impacts the body, the will, and the emotions. It is a spiritual poison that spreads through our entire person making us sick and threatening to kill us. Because it attacks on so many fronts we must fight on multiple fronts, and one of the most important, if not the most important is our mind. We have been looking at the different aspects of our identity in Christ and what this means for our addiction. In Christ we are dead to sin and alive to God. Sin and Satan have lost their power and cannot control us unless we allow them to. We have been resurrected with Christ and now have his power abiding in us and there is no sin or addiction that can overcome us. In Christ we have already overcome. We are already victorious in Christ. All the strength and power we need is found through our relationship with Christ. These are powerful truths, and understanding them i...

I know very well what it feels like to be enslaved to an addiction. To feel trapped, bound, and unable to run, walk or even move. I would dig up some will power and manage to resist for a time, but the urges would always return, and I would find myself in the same old patterns time and time again. I was wrapped up in chains of sin and could not find a way to escape. It has taken years of work, but at last I have found some freedom and deliverance. I can look back now and see that while I was wrapped in chains, they were chains that I had forged myself. And while they were locked securely, I held the key, a key that had been given to me by the Lord. Those chains were in reality lies, deceptions and false beliefs about who I was. I had deep and damaging misconceptions about my identity. One of the keys I have found to unlock those chains has come through understanding my true identity in Christ. Satan's lies convinced me that I was not a true child of God, and I could not be a re...

One of the key struggles in recovery is related to our identity. In the thick of the addiction, it is all too easy to lose track of who we truly are and think only in terms of our failures and faults. "I am such a loser. I am so pathetic. If I were a real man (or woman, or Christian) I would be able to quit. If I were really a child of God, I could overcome this sin."  And on and on the voices of shame berate us. We struggle with the addiction for so long that we become convinced that is our identity now, we are addicts, that is who we are, and we cannot change. It is not that we are basically good, worthy people who struggle with an addiction, we believe that we are basically bad people, addicts, sinners, unworthy and unrighteous. As we work recovery and grow spiritually, we come to recognize these lies for what they are, and in turn, we learn the truth of our identity in Christ, which we touched on in our previous post. Instead of believing that our identity is primarily ...

  Many times, we believe that our struggles with habitual sin and addictions are a power struggle of some sort. We think we must be strong and have willpower, if we only had more self-control then we would be able to overcome. We discussed this in a previous post. The reality is that our conflicts are not a power struggle but a truth struggle. Addiction is about truth versus lies not strength versus strength. One of the most powerful truths I have found in my recovery journey is understanding the nature of my identity in Christ. The more I understand my position of power and authority in Christ, the more I can resist the temptations of the addiction. The more I have realized who I am in Christ, the more I have been able to combat the lies that contribute to my automatic thoughts and false beliefs. When the Devil attacks, one of the most common pressure points he targets is our identity. He convinces us that we are worthless and inadequate. He tells us that we are sinners, addic...