The Process of Recovery

“For just as sin, addiction, and misery typically go together, so do confession, healing, and the long process of redemption. We need redemption not just from our sins and addictions but also from their miseries — particularly those miseries that occasion more sin and deeper addiction. As all recovering sinners know, this process of healing and liberation, this ‘conversion unto life,’ this set of lessons to teach us how to dance again will prove to be as cunning, baffling, powerful, and patient as addiction itself.”

— Cornelius Plantinga  Not the Way It's Supposed to Be
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1995), 149.

Hat Tip: Of First Importance

Worship: The Secret to Freedom

From a great post at "Desiring God" on Fighting Sin With Worship, based on  material transcribed and edited from Tim Keller’s sermon “Sin as Slavery” (which can be downloaded for free) :

...If you are a Christian and you are dealing with enslaving habits, it's not enough to say, "Bad Christian, stop it." And it is not enough to beat yourself up or merely try harder and harder and harder.

The real reason that you're having a problem with an enslaving habit is because you are not tasting God. I'm not talking about believing God or even obeying God, I'm saying tasting — tasting God.

The secret to freedom from enslaving patterns of sin is worship. You need worship. You need great worship. You need weeping worship. You need glorious worship. You need to sense God’s greatness and to be moved by it — moved to tears and moved to laughter — moved by who God is and what he has done for you. And this needs to be happening all the time.

This type of worship is the only thing that can replace the little if only fire burning in your heart. We need a new fire that says, “If only I saw the Lord. If only he was close to my heart. If only I could feel him to be as great as I know him to be. If only I could taste his grace as sweet as I know it to be.”

And when that if only fire is burning in your heart, then you are free.

I highly recommend reading the entire thing at the link or listening to the whole sermon.

The Painful Side of Hope...and Healing

On the subject of hope for those suffering from abuse, addiction and emotional pain, here's an excerpt from Redemption by Mike Wilkerson.

Which is more painful? To live without hope or to catch a glimpse of hope only to have it disappear? Often, this is our experience on the eve of redemption. Certainly, God is not a fickle redeemer. He is faithful. But if we expect redemption to be mainly about comfort, we may be disappointed when—at least for a season—it brings more pain.

Or you may have come to God with a life that was a mess with sin and were relieved to find that he accepts you in Christ, just as you are. But in time, you were confronted with the reality that some of those sins from your former life still had a powerful hold on you. Some new Christians at this point are so discouraged they question whether they were ever saved at all.

Or you may have found that after years of harboring the pain of abuse in secret, it’s time to talk about it. You may have to revisit some painful memories or confront someone who has harmed you. The battle to decide to speak out is pain unto itself, intensifying the pain of the original abuse. Maybe you’ve made your secrets known, and your confidants, rather than comforting and protecting you, have hurt you further by suggesting that you keep quiet or have even blamed you for stirring up trouble by digging up the past.

The Antidote to Alcohol and Drug Addiction

Interesting review at Christianity Today of a book by Kent Dunnington with the thesis that Christian worship offers the only adequate response to the seductions of drink and drug.

Addiction and Virtue: Beyond the Models of Disease and Choice
by Kent J. Dunnington
InterVarsity Press, September 2011

Dealing With "Sexual Obesity"?

So many parents are concerned about childhood obesity, but what about the growing problem of "sexual obesity" in our culture? What is sexual obesity, you ask? Check out this article at First Things - The Weight of Smut:

...But while we’re on the subject of bad habits that can turn unwitting kids into unhappy adults, how about that other epidemic out there that is far more likely to make their future lives miserable than carrying those extra pounds ever will? That would be the emerging social phenomenon of what can appropriately be called “sexual obesity”: the widespread gorging on pornographic imagery that is also deleterious and unhealthy, though far less remarked on than that other epidemic—and nowhere near an object of universal public concern. That complacency may now be changing. The term sexual obesity comes from Mary Ann Layden, a psychiatrist who runs the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania. She sees the victims of Internet-pornography consumption in her practice, day in and day out. She also knows what most do not: Quietly, patiently, and irrefutably, an empirical record of the harms of sexual obesity is being assembled piecemeal via the combined efforts of psychologists, sociologists, addiction specialists, psychiatrists, and other authorities.

Read the whole thing- read it and weep for the so many people suffering under these addictions.And it is not just affecting adolescents:

And this list is just one possible way of starting a conversation about the consequences of today’s novel sexual obesity. There is also the question of what the same material does to adults—about which another empirical record is also being amassed, and about which more will be said later in this essay. Pornography today, in short, is much like obesity was yesterday—a social problem increasing over time, with especially worrisome results among its youngest consumers, and one whose harms are only beginning to be studied with the seriousness they clearly deserve.

Parallels between the two epidemics are striking. Much like the more commonly understood obesity, the phenomenon of sexual obesity permeates the population—though unlike regular obesity, of course, pornography consumption is mostly (though not entirely) a male thing. At the same time, evidence also shows that sexual obesity does share with its counterpart this critical common denominator: It afflicts the subset of human beings who form the first generation immersed in this consumption, many of whom have never known a world without it—the young.

Smut is truly a weighty thing on the human soul.   God have mercy!

Jesus Uses Broken People (I Qualify)

Notice the irony in this picture? Quite a mix of brokenness and addictions isn't it - combined with a message on hope for the future.

I like what Paul Wilkinson said about the message of this sign.

"Jesus can do more with broken people than he can with people who have it all together. The addicted, the abused, the abusers, the impoverished, the homeless, the users, the people with no self image, the people dealing with temptation, the people on the brink of despair; these are all the people who can be America’s hope for the future.

The future never looked as bright as when you know you’ve reached bottom and there’s nowhere lower down you can go. I hope it was a great sermon!"

Quote from :Blessed Are The Broken: Our Hope for the Future « Thinking Out Loud