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Overcome – Faith-based Addiction Recovery Bible Study Lesson 12

Captivity & Freedom

To Turn Around – Lesson 12 of the “Overcome” Faith-based Addiction Recovery Bible Study

The word captivity insinuates that someone or something has control over you. It could be from a battle lost and you are now hostage or the act of slavery. The majority of time, whatever it is that holds you captive could care less about your well-being. You jump when it says jump. You go when it says go. Shackled and in chains. Learn more about obtaining freedom in this lesson of the “Overcome” Faith-based Addiction Recovery Bible Study series.

Throughout this post, I will be using some old testament, churchy sounding words; sin, sacrifice, confession, repentance and glory. I will attempt to describe them in such a way that the essence of them is illustrated and clear up some of the fog that may be surrounding them. Understanding these words is crucial for grasping a hold of the concept of being a slave to sin or walking in the freedom of Christ. I honestly believe that if we can get this down, it will be a turning point in our lives, both presently and eternally.

I have humbly accepted the realization that there is nothing I can say or do that will affect what someone believes, unless I act like a madman and then they may believe I am all sixes and sevens. Which thankfully for you and me, trying to change what another person believes is not my job. My job is to illustrate, as clearly as I can from my own point of view what I myself believe, and to reflect that in my outer words and actions, although I do fail often.

At some point in each of our walks, beliefs move from a point of struggle to fact. From my own experience, whatever seems to be the loudest in my life, gets all of my attention and without thinking about it, I soon start shifting my beliefs. Ignoring or acting like the following three facts are not true does not make them any less factual, the same way that gravity does not require your belief.

We all sin. We almost always err to the side of our humanness. Humans are notorious for sinful behavior. Sin essentially means you are actively choosing to go against what God has said. Sin is rooted within the self of each of us. Sin does not consider the cost or weigh the outcome. Put simply, it means chasing your desires regardless of the damage it will create.
Sin will always lead to suffering. That suffering may take form of spiritual, physical, mental or emotional slavery and separation from a Holy God, from family members and from friends. Sin hurts, sin is deadly and the debt it incurs has to be covered somehow, just like in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve first sinned. When they sinned, they recognized they were naked and God sacrificed an animal to cover their nakedness, their sin.
We, ourselves, cannot heal the sin and suffering in any lasting way. The best we can hope for is to find a distraction. In other words, we cannot reach success when attempting to work our way into freedom. When we attempt to do this, we are trying to justify ourselves based on the law. The law is not meant to save, but rather to judge. The law is meant to condemn the accused.

These three facts are the basis for understanding the severity of our situation. As Romans 3 says “all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God.” Once we begin to reach a level of awareness and maturity, these facts lead to two actions: confession and repentance.

Confession of one’s sins is when we take responsibility for what we have done. We do not hide the sin any longer. We go to God and acknowledge our wrong doings, our trespasses, and ask His forgiveness. We do this because He is a just God, full of mercy, as scripture says, “He is faithful to forgive.”

Repentance is a Greek military term that means to turn around. Imagine a squadron is marching due east when the captain bellows “Halt.” The procession comes to a screeching stop. The captain then yells out “Repent” and the entire squadron spins on their heels and begins marching to the west. In our spiritual lives, repentance means that we will stop going in the direction that is rebellious to God’s command and walk in the opposite direction.

If you are free…

Right now, if I were to ask you, are your thoughts, beliefs or actions were most influential, what would your answer be? I am convinced one of these are the most powerful for each of us. If something gains control over you, it can affect how you handle situations, react to bad news, even what you would choose to kill for or die for. One of these keeps you in slavery or releases you into freedom. One of these will most commonly make your decisions. One of these will be your yoke.

For freedom Christ has set us free, stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.
Galatians 5:1

Now, suppose I asked you what freedom meant to you, could you answer it? As a teenager, what did it feel like when you got a little taste of freedom from your parents and their rules, even if for an hour? We sowed our wild oats and learned about the real world, stuff you can’t learn under your parent’s roof. We get our first speeding ticket, for example, and hopefully learn not to speed again. Notice at the end of the verse above, Paul says “…and do not submit again…” Again. But for whatever reason, we enjoyed the thrill of it. Went back to school and relived the entire moment over for our friends. However though, there is a cost associated with this example, our insurance premium has now risen, which means we will now have to figure out how to cover the cost.

This is a fairly harmless example, but within it exists a core concept. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “With freedom comes responsibility.” Jesus has established this freedom for us. Our responsibility is to not submit again. Resist. If the desires of your heart are constantly leaving you to pick up the check, if our thoughtless habits are dictating our very existence day to day, or if the belief that God is angry and distant, we have to wipe the sleep from our eyes and realize we are bound in slavery to something other than God’s truth and plan.

“Overcome” – Faith-based Addiction Recovery Bible Study

Application – what are you doing with your freedom?

At any given moment during the day I am submitting, the only variable is whom I am serving. Am I serving myself; my desires, my selfish pursuits, my fame or fortune? Or am I serving a loving God that has supplied me with talents and gifts to build His kingdom, something that is everlasting and not temporal? I feel that too many times, we prescribe to the thought that the Christian walk is something that is devoid of freedom or joy. God did not set out to make little replicas of the exact same person. No, He shows His creativity and handiwork because of our differences. We each are unique, with our own personalities and special gifts. This leads us to our concluding thought, it’s not so much the question of what we do, but why we do it. The following two verses illustrate this concept, the first verse addressing the what, and the second facilitates the why:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
Deuteronomy 6:5

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:17

When we are in slavery, we are unable to truly love God with all of our heart, soul and might. Choosing to be a slave to sin impedes our decision to walk in freedom. We may want to be free, but our actions say otherwise. Consistent choices dictate what we really believe. The second verse is where we find our freedom, in whatever we do in the name of Jesus. If you are a single mother, a factory worker, a school bus driver, a struggling artist; do it with the intention of bringing glory to God alone. This is the why behind why you do what you do. So, I ask you, if you are free, what are you doing with your freedom? Are you going back to patterns that encourage a lifestyle of slavery to sin or are you walking out your freedom through a relationship with Jesus Christ? Can you say about every decision and thought, whatever it is, that it will be done in the name of Jesus for God’s glory? If you knew you were free, what would you be doing right now that shows that you have accepted and honored that freedom?

The “Overcome” Faith-based Addiction Recovery Bible Study is part of the discipleship program at First Contact Ministries in Hendersonville, NC.

Did you miss the other lessons in this series? Click see the entire Overcome Faith-based Addiction Recovery Bible Study series.

We always look forward to meeting new people at our Tuesday night support group meetings at 6:30 pm, located at Mud Creek Church in Hendersonville, NC. Our classes are designed to teach biblical principles for addiction recovery through discipleship. Our goal is to show the love of Jesus by supporting those who need it most.

For more information or to purchase “The Resistance” by Josh Staton to use as a Christian leadership book, or curriculum for an addiction recovery class, please visit: The Resistance: Becoming A Servant Leader Through the Beatitudes Christian Leadership Book

Overcome: Addiction Recovery Bible Study, Recovery, Teaching Series

Overcome – Christian Addiction Recovery Guide Lesson 8

Overcome- Christian Addiciton Recovery Guide

Regret & Discernment

The Aftermath- Lesson 8 of the “Overcome” Christian Addiction Recovery Guide

We all make mistakes, some worse than others. However, the tragedy is when we make mistakes that could have been avoided. Feelings such as regret, shame and guilt often accompany this type of mistake. The best way to judge such decisions is by observing the outcome, what it produced, destroyed, solved or created. Did it result in failure or success? Working backwards we can gauge the validity and motivation for many decisions we make, and whether it produced the intended outcome. Follow along in this lesson of the “Overcome” Christian addiction recovery guide to learn more about making decisions without regret or shame.

Decisions, decisions, decisions. I’m sure we have all made decisions we have immediately regretted. Most of these decisions, I would wager, have been made in the heat of the moment when emotions were high. Was the situation appraised logically or was it based on feeling? Did we know better, as my grandmother used to say, but just didn’t do better, even though we have seen the outcome at least a dozen times or more? Hangovers, arguments and knee-jerk reactions come to mind.

Many individuals I have worked with in the past quantify their sobriety in years, months and days. However, whether it was their first or hundredth attempt, many measure their recovery in hours. This observation, along with observing myself, has led me to the following statement:

Regret will always follow the decision to rebel.

Deductive Reasoning

The context of the following scripture is Paul writing to the church in Philippi when he was imprisoned for his spiritual beliefs. He could have chosen to conform and keep his head low, but he didn’t. He chose to do what was right even though it cost him his freedom and eventually his life. By human accounts, this could be considered a bad decision. Thankfully for us, God is divine and at the wheel, not a human.

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
Philippians 1:6

Before we go any further, I want to delineate the difference between guilt and shame using another of my grandmother’s sayings. Are you sorry you did it, or sorry you got caught? Guilt is sorry for doing it, shame is sorry you got caught. Guilt is Godly conviction, shame is not. Regret and remorse are products of disobedient decisions. It is when we go against that still, small voice that helps and instructs us. Some call it a conscience, I call it the Holy Spirit.

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
John 14:16-17

The more you listen to that little voice, the louder it gets. The less you listen, the more silent it becomes. It’s the idea of whatever you feed is going to grow. The good news is that we don’t have to stay in this state of regret. Even when Adam and Eve were dealing with their regret, God was preparing a plan. We do things we will regret because it is part of our sin nature. We love to do something we have been told not to do. Shame has been just as responsible for relapses as has pride. Regret is a breeding ground for creating a perpetual cycle of self-loathing, in which we tune out that little voice that says come back.

Embrace the Process

With the price being high for regrettable decisions, we have to first understand what it is we are risking. Some poor decisions are recoverable. Some are not. We risk hurting ourselves and those we love. To do this, we go back to a section of the verse in Philippians, He who began a good work in you. There is a context of progression here. A process of God refining your character. It is the same sort of progression that is identified in the following verse:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
1 Corinthians 13:11

Discernment is accepting Godly counsel and statues for proper living. It starts off small and grows larger. Like a masterpiece that God is painting, you are an investment of love. Learning to make decisions that you won’t regret is a large part of the good work Paul speaks of. When you come to Christ, He begins the transformation process, a good work.

We define discernment the way the Hebrews and Greeks did, the idea of considering and examining. Discernment is asking what will this decision cost me or others? It is fighting the urge to react. It’s the idea of making decisions you won’t regret. Not being driven by desires or emotions and having to pay the price for failure. The goal is not to do something stupid today, that I will have to pay for tomorrow.

The “Overcome” Christian Addiction Recovery Guide
Application – 1 Simple Statement

We will finish out our topic with a contrast of two of Jesus’ disciples. One of them made a horrific decision and chose not to deal with it, the other made an equally horrible decision, but addressed it. One committed suicide because of remorse, the other repented and received grace.

Judas betrayed Jesus for some money. He listened to Satan and allowed a poor decision to lead to regret, which ultimately resulted in him taking his own life:

And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself.
Matthew 27:5

Peter on the other hand was adamant that he would never betray or deny Jesus. To which Jesus responded by telling him that he would in fact do so. After experiencing this heartbreak and repenting, Peter would become the rock on which Jesus built His church.

And immediately the rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had said to him, “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” And he broke down and wept.
Mark 14:72

Discernment is not just about knowing better, it is about acting accordingly. Through repentance, God develops our character and carries on a good work. It is about obedience and striving to do better, not stay in the same rut. Just because we have made bad decisions, does not mean we continue making them. Which leads us to our one simple statement:

If regret doesn’t lead to repentance, it will only lead to remorse.

The “Overcome” Addiction Bible Study is part of the discipleship program at First Contact Ministries in Hendersonville, NC.

Did you miss the other lessons in this series? Click see the entire Overcome Christian Addiction Recovery Guide series.

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