There’s an old saying in the Drug rehabilitation process which goes like this: “Once an addict always an addict”. Some people say this is a scare tactic to keep people locked into a program…I think that this saying has more credence than we realize.

There is a real difference between an active addict and a recovering addict isn’t there? One addict is still seeking that high, that rush, that dependency on their drug(s) of choice. While the other addict had finally come to the realization that they weren’t controlling their habit, their habit was controlling them and their life has been horribly altered by it. They are seeking to become better, stronger and healthier so that they can avoid those old trappings. The recovering addict knows what weaknesses they possess and so they will go to great lengths to stay away from the slippery slope that is the erosion of self-control. They know that one glance back into that lifestyle…one sniff, one hit, one pop…and it’s goodbye recovery hello active addiction once more.

The recovering addict needs support. They understand that they can’t go at it alone. The addict knows that they need accountability of a sober companion or a sponsor of some kind. Someone who will push them when that “itch” returns…or when stress threatens to push them over the edge. Sponsors and addictions partners are vital to recovery and a return to a healthier “normal” in their lives.

THIS IS SPIRITUALLY APPLICABLE!

Either we are an active sinner, or a recovering sinner. To borrow a little from the Calvinist, we are all fallen, wretched creatures…but we don’t have to remain that way!! Praise the God of second and third and fourth chances! No this isn’t some sort of excuse to say that we can slip up and just wander back with some sort of “get out of hell” redemption card every time we willfully chose to sin again and find forgiveness…but as a recovering sinner who is saved by grace I recognize that we can still fall away if we are not careful! Recovery from sin requires not only the avoidance of sin and its subsequent temptational trappings but also the recognition of our own personal weaknesses. We too must realize that if we know our weaknesses Satan certainly does as well.

Scripture tells “there is no one righteous, no not one!” (Romans 3:10) If this is true then we are all sinners in need of a redemption that is beyond our physical reach. Enter Jesus. He comes and gives us the only way out of our addiction of sin. Jesus said, “I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me…” John 14:6.

Our addiction to sin can be ultimately relieved but only after entire sanctification has ravaged our souls, scrubbing it clean of our prior ways of life so that our vessel is fit for the embodiment of Christ alone within us. This act requires from us our complete faith and utter surrender. The Holy Spirit provides the act of cleansing from the moment of initial sanctification and the invitation for Christ to be ours and ours alone, to the maturation of our spiritual growth as we continue to feast on His word and our absorption of His grace within and without us so that in word and deed we serve only Him. This is a hard and difficult road. For though Holiness isn’t physical perfection it is a complete death to selfish wants and needs in an answer to this higher and holy calling of Christ-likeness.

Yet in and of ourselves we can not complete this daunting task. Dare I say that the Holy Spirit is sufficient though without other godly men and women beside us to prompt us, correct us, affirm us and challenging us along they way, we can find this complete surrendering nearly impossible. We need sponsors of the Spiritual kind. We are all in need of spiritual sober companions to help in our discipleship. Because there is a very real danger that though we are saved by His grace, we can look back, and in so doing find that we have backslidden into our old selfishness and sin. Addictions, across the board, are like this. We crave it’s seductive lure. We yearn for the instant gratification yet if we succumb, we will have gone horribly backward, and would have strayed from our desire to be like Christ and would have threatened to unravel our entire salvation story in the process.

The Holy Spirit wants to make us like Christ. He wants to restore that first image that God set at the dawning of time within us. Yet we are still addicts to sin. We must never forget where we have come, how we got there, and where our weaknesses lie so that we can accept this full restoration that He so willingly offers to us. For many, this restoration will take a life time. For all of us, we must continually go to The Well of our righteousness! We must come to His waters and be filled up not just daily but moment by moment. Isaiah 55 says: “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; …”

Come all who are thirsty! We can be fully restored, but we must be willing to let Him continue this work within us! It must be found in our daily even moment by moment surrendering to His will and to His image forming hands.

3 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. 2 Peter 1:3-4

Do you know God?
Let me ask this seemingly simple question again, but this time consider what the word “know” means. We might know something about the topic of history but not know it enough to teach the subject or know the dates when monumental things took place…we simply know about history but not truly know history. There’s a great divide between knowing about something and truly KNOWING something.

The same thing can be applied to our knowledge of God. Even demons know about God don’t they? Many people in our world know something about God…but how many people truly KNOW God? This passage this morning reminds me that it isn’t enough to simply know something about God but it must become something much, much deeper. My heart, my soul longs for that communion with the One who created me. There is, in all of us, this innate essence to be known. We desire for others to know us. This isn’t some sort of narcissistic notion, but rather this essence inside all of us to be wanted, to be loved, to be known. It speaks of a very intimate kind of knowing.

GOD KNOWS YOU!
God knows you. This is a truth we all must come to terms with in our own spiritual development and formation of our faith. God knows you so intimately. Psalm 139 speaks of this. Before we were even created, God knew us. Before we had conscious thought – God knew us. He knows us better than our parents, spouses and kids know us. He peers into our hearts and knows us for who we are.

For some of us, this notion that God deeply knows us scares us to death. He knows me- He knows you.

DO YOU REALLY KNOW GOD?
If God knows us, and He does, then should the reciprocation of that knowing be evident in our study and worship of Him? He has “called us by His own glory and goodness” (v3)…that should be a relief for us. We didn’t have enough glory and goodness in our total depravity. God knew this lack of glory and goodness was evident within us and so He sends us His Son Jesus so that we might know Him truly! Total and utter redemption can come to us all by knowing Christ!

It is not good enough to know about religion, or about being kind to others or even knowing about God. It is never good enough. We have meditate on His words written for us in His scripture. We have to know Him in our prayer life, in our prayer closets. We have to know Him in our treatment of other people and our love for even our enemies. Every facet of our lives should be consumed with knowing God. This is the pathway of Holiness – knowing God, Surrendering Self, and through the Holy Spirit becoming like Christ.

Do you know God?

-Just a thought for today.

When at times life is at a cross-roads
when, restless, life sweeps away all desire.
Begin, then on your knees dear Soldier
for God to once again ignite that fire.

When apathy begins to reign supreme
and careless hearts and minds devour
Allow our prayerful hopes to take wing
and He will grant to us His holy Power.

Dear Soldier get back into the fight
your battle, this war is not yet won
The Holy Spirit can come and empower
until His work, and earth’s darkness is done.

“Those who trust in The Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever.” (Psalm 125:1)

When I was a teenager I worked at camp. Before the camping season even began and the children poured into cabins and onto the docks of the lake for a swim, we (the staff), would first begin with team building exercises. These exercises included climbing obstacles, figuring out puzzles and my worst fear: the trust fall. I had difficulty trusting those around me. I hated having to let go. I feared what might happen if those behind me chose not to catch me. I envisioned the pain that I would feel to fall to the ground. I also imagined my bruised pride as I might lay there looking up at people who really did not care to help me in my time of need. Luckily those scenarios never happened. I never fell to the ground, nor did those gathered below me choose not to catch me. But I still had trust issues. Do you have trust issues?

Read Psalm 125:1 again. There is a key word that ties everything else together within this sentence; the word “Trust”. Trust can be a powerful companion, but it can also be the one weakness within the armor of faith. Ask yourself honestly, “how much do I trust my Lord?” It’s a startling question with many, many different answers. For some of us we struggle to trust anyone, let alone God. For others trust is attainable but only after every other resource has been extinguished. Still others, the very few, trust is all that they possess and God is near to them at every human endeavor.

Which one represents you today? How much do you trust the Savior? Are you willing to go where He beckons? Are you placing your all in His hands? Have you ever had trust issues? Do you still envision in your mind how it will feel when God lets you down? Trust Him today. He won’t let you fall. He won’t let you down. We too can place our all in His hands and find that we will endure forever because of His unfailing strength and love. Let go…and fall into His safe and loving arms today.

-Just a thought…perhaps a frightening thought at that.

It’s a cliche. It’s a metaphor floating on a current. Wave after wave, bobbing on the foamy seas, a lonely bottle with a message inside. It is a song. It is one of the hits from iconic 80’s band The Police, entitled “Message in a bottle”. The song’s theme is nothing new. It is something that every person on earth has struggled with. Not being marooned on a deserted island, but the feelings of total and utter loneliness. Everyone has experienced these feelings of loneliness and solitude. It doesn’t take a deserted island to feel this way, it just happens sometimes. Perhaps it manifests itself through forms of depression. Other times loneliness happens at the intersections of choice.

We find ourselves lonely even when in a crowded room. Loneliness creeps into the corners of the heart, weighing us down like an old roof on a buckled and bowing barn in an abandoned field. Eventually that barn is going to collapse. Eventually in this loneliness the roof caves in on us and we find ourselves casting these bottles into the seas so that someone, anyone might hear us and we will no longer be alone.

King David felt like this. He cast many “messages in bottles” when he composed psalms of prayers and desperations to God. In Psalm 142 David identifies the emotion of loneliness because he had been there, he had lived in the shadows of loneliness. “Look and see, there is no one at my right hand; no one is concerned for me. I have no refuge; no one cares for my life.” (Psalm 142:4) Yet there is wisdom here as well. He goes on to disclose the remedy for such moments of despair and desolation; “I cry to you, LORD; I say, “You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.” (Psalm 142:5) David knew where his hope could be found even in the midst of his loneliness. Earlier in the same Psalm he says; “When my spirit grows faint within me, it is you who watch over my way. In the path where I walk people have hidden a snare for me.” (Psalm 142:3)

Are you casting out messages in bottles today? Are you alone in your troubles? Does it seem like the roof has caved in on your life and has pressed you down and crushed you by these burdens? Take comfort, take courage, because you are NOT alone! God is near and He will never leave you alone. When you cry out to Him, He will answer you.

-Just a thought for today

Its a famous scene in a commercial. A man has just finished his walk when his neighbor informs him that he dropped his butt. The neighbor is trying to give him his butt back but this, now healthy man, refuses to take his butt back. The message is simple. This man has worked hard to discard the excess weight. He refuses to put it back on. It is a part of his old way of living and now he has embraced a new way, a healthier way.

Quite simply, we are all called to this new way of living. Spiritually speaking, if we claim to have accepted Christ as Lord of our lives then the old has gone and the new has come (2 Corinthians 5:17). We no longer need the old ways of life. We no longer crave the sins that weighed us down in our sinfulness and depravity. Jesus has reached down and lifted us up to a new and better way of living. We don’t need our butts anymore…ok, I admit that sounds funny. We no longer need that old way, that harmful, self-indulgent way any longer.

Yet the world and Satan himself wants us to pick it back up. They will tempt us to forget about this better way and to come back to where we once were, lost and blind to the sins in and around us. The world will try and convince us to take it back up again because without it we have lost our identity. Without it we are no longer whole. Without it we are simply not ourselves. But dear fellow believers, don’t buy the lie! Don’t give into those temptations of the old life any longer! Don’t let Satan convince you that you have lost your fun, your joy, your freedom, because the opposite is true…you have gained all of that with this new life in Christ Jesus!

So the next time Satan tries to convince you that you dropped something when you gave up your old life, don’t buy the lie! Remember the lengths in which Christ has taken to redeem you and has brought you safe, sound and whole into this new life!

-Just a thought for today!