April 2, 2012



 

Anyone who has put together any serious clean-and-sober
time can tell you, recovery is hard work!Making the decision is one thing, but walking it out on a daily basis
can be an incredible challenge – and at times, very dis-couraging.

 

This would be a good time to have a support system you could turn to for….. you guessed it – support! A support system can be any group of people – even just one or two to start with – who understand what you are trying to do, and are on board with it.   This would be someone who’s willing to talk with you if you needed someone to talk to, go for a walk with you so you could clear your head on a stressful afternoon, or meet up with you for a burger and a cup of coffee on a night when you are tempted to make a six-pack your dinner. In other words, this person would NOT encourage you to go get drunk or high as a way
to deal with how you are feeling . A supportive friend would try to talk you out of that destructive idea, and instead encourage you to hang onto the good ground you have already taken.

 

Some of us are blessed with a crowd of people like that – family, friends, co-workers, a fiancé …. but some of us have isolated  ourselves so much by our addiction that we have to use binoculars to find someone who’s on our side and wants to help us.

 

So, where can you find people like that? Here are two
ideas: a local 12-step meeting or a church whose pastor or pastors understand addiction (yes, they do exist!). What could it hurt to try a meeting or even a church service, sit in the back, and just listen? You probably have a good internal ‘radar’about people, or you would not have survived your addiction so far. That same part of you that can tell if someone means you harm or is full of baloney, can tell you who seems trustworthy and worth listening to at a meeting or a church service. When you find a person like that….listen. Think about what they are saying. Watch them.Go back again to that same meeting or church. Listen again.

 

At some point, when you feel comfortable enough, try opening up the conversation, just the two of you, by saying how that person’s words rang true for you, in your life, right now. You may find that the chat that follows is not as hard as you thought it would be, and look at you – you have begun a new friendship ! This is one of the ways you can build a support system.

 

There are other ways to build up a support system, this is just one of them. But if you are willing to do the work, I am absolutely sure that you will beglad when you have the results. Building trust in people again can be especially hard if you have been hurt by people in the past. But if you will ask God to help you find people who can be trustworthy and helpful,you will meet the right kind of people , if you go to the right kind of places to look for them. I’ll be praying for you!

 

Love,

 

Pastor Judy

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April 15^th, 2012

 

One of the things most necessary for recovery from
addiction to begin, is for us to become disgusted with what we are, what we’re doing, and where we are headed. We become so miserable with us, our way of living, that we become willing to turn away from it. Until that happens, that willingness, we remain
invested in doing the same thing over and over again. And the results don’t change.





 

But if we come tothe place of utter disgust with ourselves, when we become willing to turn away from it and walk a different path, we find God is right there, willing to help us. THEN God can do his best work in us. But you know God is not going to wrestle us for the steering wheel of our lives. He’s a polite God, and he will wait until we come to that awful place in our addiction called ‘hitting bottom’, where we become willing to try this HIS way. God can do amazing things in our lives if we come to that point of disgust with self and turn, in surrender, towards him.  Rock bottom is not the end of us – it’s actually a chance for a new beginning – a beginning of hope for something better.

 

Many people refuse to admit that their way isn’t working. Denial is a powerful part of addiction, and the lies of denial seem so believable!!!!!   "I’m ok. I can handle this. I’ll get myself out of this scrape and pull my life together. I’ll  just cut  down, I’ll quit, I,I,I,I……………..

 

That’s what makes it so hard to recover! We tell ourselves lies that sound believable! Take a look, though, at the word that began most of those sentences of lies : the word “ I “.   I. Me. Mine.    That’s the
battle cry of an unsurrendered person. When it happens in the process of addiction, it can be fatal. Remember – if we had any power over our addiction, or could manage our own lives well, we wouldn’t have ended up in such trouble !  ( Step One ! See March 5^th article in the March archives. )

 

I can tell you, believingwith all my heart, that if you will allow yourself to come to that place of disgust with yourself, allow yourself to acknowledge that this is rock bottom, allow God to reach into your heartand begin to change you, you will not be sorry. You will , in fact, someday thank God for this day, this great day of change.

 

I am praying for you -I have faith in God’s power and love for you !!!!!!

 

See you next week!

 

Love,

Pastor Judy

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April 23,2012

 

 

 

The Bible is God’s word - it is his story of life here on Earth from the very beginning. It’s a story of his love for us.   In the New Testament are a number of stories about the Apostle Paul. Paul was a pretty smart Jewish religious guy who used to hate Jesus, and tried to kill and imprison people who loved Jesus and followed Him. But one day, as he was on his way to imprison some Jewish believers, Paul had a supernatural experience he never forgot, it changed him forever. In that experience, he spoke with Jesus who
was back in heaven by then. It was scarey and very powerful! After that,  Paul had a complete change of heart, and spent the rest of his life serving Jesus by starting churches all over the region and in Asia. Talk about hitting bottom and recovering! This was a new man! People who knew the old Paul could hardly believe he was so different!  Paul is a great example of how the power and love of God can change a person who becomes willing to be changed, who surrenders – hits bottom, so to speak.

 

 

 

In the Bible is a book called Romans – a book of letters written to the Roman Christians by the Apostle Paul. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to use some verses from Paul’s letters to talk about addiction and recovery from the point of view of the Bible.You don’t have to agree with me, but hey, what could it hurt to follow along and ponder the things we’ll be talking about?

 

 

 

Romans Chapter 1, verse 25 reads :

 

^“ They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.”

 

 

 

That sure sounds like addiction to me! It seemed so easy to exchange what I knew about God for the ‘lie’ of whiskey, other forms of alcohol, and drugs. And while I did not grow up Christian, I sure did hear about and know about the 10 commandments! Those commandments are how God wants us to live because he loves us and wants what’s best for us.   But alcohol and drugs felt so much better than following those fuddy-duddy commandments, that I dropped them and God altogether. ‘Eat, drink, and be merry – for tomorrow we die’ was my motto. I neither
worshipped God nor served him.  I worshipped and served the created things instead- alcohol and drugs.   Sound familiar? To say I was not doing well in God’s eyes would have been polite.

 

 

 

Romans 3:10 reads, “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.”

 

 

 

Romans 3:23 reads, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”

 

 

 

As I said last week, it is so important for us to come to a true sense of ourselves and our predicament if we hope to recover. If we can look at those three verses I just wrote, and see ourselves in them, even a little bit,we have made a good start. None of us are righteous. We have all sinned and fall short of God’s perfect holiness. We deserve to be punished for our screwups. But God loves us so much, he
knew we would need help. So he made a way for us to get right with him.

 

 

 

Romans 5:8 reads, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ
died for us.”

 

 

 

That means that God didn’t wait till we got good enough for him to help us – he made a way for our sins to be paid for, the punishment served, and for us to get a fresh start. You know who that is: Jesus Christ. Next week, we’ll take a look at how we can have that fresh start, a clean slate, thru God’s loving plan for us.   If the Apostle Paul can have a fresh start and a new life in Christ, why can’t you?

 

 

 

You are so loved! See you next week!

 

 

 

Love,

 

Pastor Judy

_______________________________

 

April 30^th,2012

 



 

 

 

Last week, we looked at the reality of sin, and how none of us are lily-white and innocent of sin. We identified with a passage in the book of Romans that described addiction
perfectly – exchanging the truth of God for a lie, and worshipping the created thing instead of the Creator. And finally, we read a verse that assures us of how deeply
God loves us – he made a way for us to get a fresh start thru Jesus Christ, God’s Son, who paid the price for our screwups.  The Apostle Paul got a fresh start by putting his faith in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Paul ex- perienced such a profound and powerful change that his whole life wasdifferent, from top to bottom! 

 

 

 

You can have that same fresh start. And God isn’t waiting for you to get perfect before he helps you. He’s ready to help you now, if you want.

 

 

 

In Romans Chapter 10, verse 9, Paul writes:^“If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

 

 

 

Here’s what that means:   If you speak from your heart that Jesus is Lord (the Master,the King) , you are saying He is great – and you are not. It’s a surrender thing. It’s realizing that He deserves all your love and respect, for who He is and for what He has done for you when He
took your punishment on the Cross. It’s about recognizing that Jesus is holy and perfect. And we are not. We are pretty messed up, actually. We sin a lot. We can’t seem to stop sinning. Somedays, we are really, really awful. It’s like waving the white flag and saying, “Ok, Jesus. Here I am - I surrender to You, Lord. Help me, please. ”

 

 

 

It’s also about believing in your heart of hearts that,yes, God did raise Him up from the dead on that first Easter Sunday morning, JUST LIKE HE SAID HE WOULD! When God raised Jesus from the dead back to life,God proved his
promise true that we, too, could all have everlasting life. We could be saved. From what, you ask? From the power of sin and the penalty of sin. Jesus’ death paid the penalty, and His coming back to life broke the power of sin.

 

 

 

The book of Acts in the Bible is a collection of amazing things that happened in the days of the early Church
times. In Chapter 3, verse 19 , the Apostle Luke wrote: “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord,” 

 

 

 

Repent is a pretty old-fashioned word that means to feel sorry about how you’ve been living and behaving, and to turn away from it and turn towards God.

 

 

 

So, God’s plan of salvation is for us to realize we are
messed-up people who can’t fix ourselves. We look at our lives and how sin has wrecked us and wrecked our lives. We need Jesus to forgive usand give us a fresh start. We surrender to Jesus, as our Lord, as our Savior, and ask Him to forgive us our sins. We turnaway from the way we’ve been living, and turn towards Jesus and start
following Him. It’s that simple. It just requires that you be for-real about it. No posing allowed. God can tell if you’re
posing, you know.

 

 

 

Paul had to get knocked blind by lightning before he
saw himself for the miserable man he really was. Then he
asked the Lord to help him live right – to follow and serve Jesus the rest of his life. And he did a fantastic job of it! If Paul can have a fresh start and live an amazing life as a result, what could YOU do with a brand-new fresh start?

 

 

 

May I suggest, you might ask Jesus about that? See what He says to you. Go on – He’s waiting to hear from you!

 

 

 

You are loved more than you know – see you next
week!

 

Love, Pastor Judy