addiction

Leap of Faith

Frank

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. -Hebrews 11:1

I know the theme of this blog carnival is ‘trust’, but I can’t think of trust without thinking about faith. Faith is more than just believing ‘in’, it also includes believing ‘on’ (or unto, for you King James fans). The former is intellectual, the second results in action. It’s like believing in Santa Claus- you may believe he lives at the North Pole and keeps a list (and is checking it twice!), but you trust that if you’re good he’ll bring you lots of presents.

Unfortunately, for many our faith in God is like our children’s faith in Santa Claus. We behave a certain way ‘trusting’ that we’ll get something good in return. Even though “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28), what is ‘good’ for God isn’t necessarily good for us. After all, Jesus still suffered and died, but we insist that was good.

So we have to trust when whatever we’re going through, God is in control. Easier said than done.

“As they were walking along the road, a man said to [Jesus], ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’

Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’

He said to another man, ‘Follow me.‘

But the man replied, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’

Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’

Still another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family.’

Jesus replied, ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.‘” (Luke 9:57-62)

Interestingly, right after this passage in Matthew 8, we are told the story of Jesus’ disciples being afraid while caught in a storm on the Sea of Galilee. What was Jesus doing at the time? Sleeping. After they woke him up, his response was simple, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” (Matthew 8:26)

Nowhere is trust and faith more evident than in the addiction ministry in which I serve. The biggest challenge for any addict is to resign control and trust in God. (In AA, the first 3 steps are based on this truth.) Recently we told one young man that he needed to make a very specific, and challenging, lifestyle change. He balked at the suggestion. Instead of beating him over his head with ‘why’, we simply encouraged him to go home and pray about it. Reminding him that God knows what he needs better than he does or we do.

The brother who leads that ministry likes to use his own personal example. Before he became a disciple of Jesus and committed to carrying his cross daily, he was afraid of the implications of such trust. (In fact, this was when he was struggling with the third step in AA.) He thought, “If I commit to God, he’ll send me someplace like China and I don’t want to go to China.” A few years later, he was in China to adopt his daughter. He says, “not only did I want to go, I was praying to get there sooner!”

Who knows where our next step will take us? Who knows what God has in store? But that’s trust. Stepping out on trust requires a leap of faith.

Leap of Faith

Frank

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. -Hebrews 11:1

I know the theme of this blog carnival is ‘trust’, but I can’t think of trust without thinking about faith. Faith is more than just believing ‘in’, it also includes believing ‘on’ (or unto, for you King James fans). The former is intellectual, the second results in action. It’s like believing in Santa Claus- you may believe he lives at the North Pole and keeps a list (and is checking it twice!), but you trust that if you’re good he’ll bring you lots of presents.

Unfortunately, for many our faith in God is like our children’s faith in Santa Claus. We behave a certain way ‘trusting’ that we’ll get something good in return. Even though “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28), what is ‘good’ for God isn’t necessarily good for us. After all, Jesus still suffered and died, but we insist that was good.

So we have to trust when whatever we’re going through, God is in control. Easier said than done.

“As they were walking along the road, a man said to [Jesus], ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’

Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’

He said to another man, ‘Follow me.‘

But the man replied, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’

Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’

Still another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family.’

Jesus replied, ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.‘” (Luke 9:57-62)

Interestingly, right after this passage in Matthew 8, we are told the story of Jesus’ disciples being afraid while caught in a storm on the Sea of Galilee. What was Jesus doing at the time? Sleeping. After they woke him up, his response was simple, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” (Matthew 8:26)

Nowhere is trust and faith more evident than in the addiction ministry in which I serve. The biggest challenge for any addict is to resign control and trust in God. (In AA, the first 3 steps are based on this truth.) Recently we told one young man that he needed to make a very specific, and challenging, lifestyle change. He balked at the suggestion. Instead of beating him over his head with ‘why’, we simply encouraged him to go home and pray about it. Reminding him that God knows what he needs better than he does or we do.

The brother who leads that ministry likes to use his own personal example. Before he became a disciple of Jesus and committed to carrying his cross daily, he was afraid of the implications of such trust. (In fact, this was when he was struggling with the third step in AA.) He thought, “If I commit to God, he’ll send me someplace like China and I don’t want to go to China.” A few years later, he was in China to adopt his daughter. He says, “not only did I want to go, I was praying to get there sooner!”

Who knows where our next step will take us? Who knows what God has in store? But that’s trust. Stepping out on trust requires a leap of faith.

Drugs Don’t Work

Frank

(pick your favorite artist for the song above: Morphine, Radiohead, Ben Harper. They’ve all come to the same conclusion)

A couple of weeks ago a gentleman came to our Chemical Recovery (CR) meeting with a serious alcohol problem. His doctor told him he needed to quit drinking or his liver would fail. He’s in his 30s.

We introduced the program to him, explained that we are faith-based, and reminded him of the first three steps of AA:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

He surrendered to the first, but couldn’t accept the second or especially the third. He believed there was a God, but wouldn’t turn to Him to overcome his addiction. He strongly believed there had to be an easier way and was going to try medical treatment.

Treating addiction has an interesting history. Traditionally, before 12-step programs, the addict was either jailed (the drunk tank), shunned by his community (the local drunk), or institutionalized (the thorazine shuffle). Addiction was either a legal or medical problem. It wasn’t until the Oxford Group started to take hold that addiction was considered a spiritual issue. Alcoholics Anonymous recognized the need to surrender to a higher power, but also the need for community support (the group). Interestingly, when alcohol was introduced to Native Americans, their treatment consisted of taking the alcoholic out to the wilderness to “return him to his roots” with the support of a couple of close friends. So community and spirituality are key to recovery.

Medical treatment sidesteps these two critical ingredients. A recent article on MSN Health discussed a drug that inhibits the pleasure part of the brain that is stimulated by alcohol. The theory goes that if you keep drinking, eventually you’ll miss the effect and quit. I’m reminded by the Big Book that “the great obsession of every abnormal drinker is to control and enjoy his drinking.” This medicine claims to take away the joy and allow the abnormal drinker to control, or even quit his drinking. The article is filled with mixed reviews of this method, but only twice in two pages does the possibility that it’s not just about “enjoying the drink” even get mentioned, raising the possibility of turning to other drugs, or more importantly never dealing with the root causes like depression. That’s why those two ingredients of spirituality and community are so important.

A brother once asked me if CR really worked because if you quit drinking, what keeps you from picking something else up? Spirituality and community. Spirituality gives you a hope and a purpose- the will to overcome, while community gives you accountability and help. Medications don’t offer either of these.

“When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.” (Mt 12:43-45)

You can drive out all the evil spirits, so to speak, you want with miscellaneous treatments. But until you fill your house with the Spirit of God, your “final condition… [will be] worse than the first.”

More to come on this subject

Drugs Don’t Work

Frank

(pick your favorite artist for the song above: Morphine, Radiohead, Ben Harper. They’ve all come to the same conclusion)

A couple of weeks ago a gentleman came to our Chemical Recovery (CR) meeting with a serious alcohol problem. His doctor told him he needed to quit drinking or his liver would fail. He’s in his 30s.

We introduced the program to him, explained that we are faith-based, and reminded him of the first three steps of AA:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

He surrendered to the first, but couldn’t accept the second or especially the third. He believed there was a God, but wouldn’t turn to Him to overcome his addiction. He strongly believed there had to be an easier way and was going to try medical treatment.

Treating addiction has an interesting history. Traditionally, before 12-step programs, the addict was either jailed (the drunk tank), shunned by his community (the local drunk), or institutionalized (the thorazine shuffle). Addiction was either a legal or medical problem. It wasn’t until the Oxford Group started to take hold that addiction was considered a spiritual issue. Alcoholics Anonymous recognized the need to surrender to a higher power, but also the need for community support (the group). Interestingly, when alcohol was introduced to Native Americans, their treatment consisted of taking the alcoholic out to the wilderness to “return him to his roots” with the support of a couple of close friends. So community and spirituality are key to recovery.

Medical treatment sidesteps these two critical ingredients. A recent article on MSN Health discussed a drug that inhibits the pleasure part of the brain that is stimulated by alcohol. The theory goes that if you keep drinking, eventually you’ll miss the effect and quit. I’m reminded by the Big Book that “the great obsession of every abnormal drinker is to control and enjoy his drinking.” This medicine claims to take away the joy and allow the abnormal drinker to control, or even quit his drinking. The article is filled with mixed reviews of this method, but only twice in two pages does the possibility that it’s not just about “enjoying the drink” even get mentioned, raising the possibility of turning to other drugs, or more importantly never dealing with the root causes like depression. That’s why those two ingredients of spirituality and community are so important.

A brother once asked me if CR really worked because if you quit drinking, what keeps you from picking something else up? Spirituality and community. Spirituality gives you a hope and a purpose- the will to overcome, while community gives you accountability and help. Medications don’t offer either of these.

“When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.” (Mt 12:43-45)

You can drive out all the evil spirits, so to speak, you want with miscellaneous treatments. But until you fill your house with the Spirit of God, your “final condition… [will be] worse than the first.”

More to come on this subject

Beyond Belief

Frank

It’s my favorite time of year! March Madness is heating up. It’s Spring Training, which means Opening Day is right around the corner. And this year we’re getting an added bonus with the World Baseball Classic. How ’bout those Dutch!

Anyway, I’m way behind in my posting (I have a draft about the nature of “church” that’s three weeks old) but I can easily talk about baseball as a filler. Every season I find a baseball-related book to read during the season (ok, I’ve really only done that a couple of times, but I want it to become a tradition). Last season was Crazy ’08 by Cait Murphy about the 1908 season, arguably the best season in the history of baseball. I also posted last season a list of books I want to get to. But I just got my monthly Family Christian catalogue and saw this book about Josh Hamilton.

If you haven’t heard of him, he’s a phenom for the Texas Rangers who had an incredible season last year and lit up the Home Run Derby. What’s so special about that, you ask? Well I said he’s a phenom, but he’s not young. In fact he’s soon to be 28 (middle aged in baseball years). What took him so long to get to The Show was a complete derailment of his life by his addiction to drugs and his subsequent redemption through his faith in Jesus Christ. Given that background, as soon as I saw this it moved right to the top of my must read list. I love this kid and cheer hard for him. Sorry Free Byrd, but you’re going to have to wait until next season.