First Contact is proud to now offer an intensive outpatient program for those suffering from addiction. This class is for those individuals who wish to remain in the community during their treatment. We will meet one day a week (Saturday) with outside class assignments during the week to help with sobriety. We are excited to offer this Christian-based behavioral therapy training.
Are you in recovery from the struggle with addiction? Do you have a family member or friend who has experienced addiction? Do you need a community surrounding you to lift you up and help you through this phase of life? Then you’ve come to the right place! We invite you to join us on Tuesday nights beginning August 23rd at Mud Creek Baptist Church and Thursday nights beginning August 25th at Ebenezer Baptist Church for our fall session of Over-Comers and Family Support Classes.
Call us at 828.435.2180 for more information.
Most, if not all New Year’s resolutions are aimed at making us better versions of ourselves. Start that diet, work out more, learn a new language or give up smoking. Regardless of the want, without commitment, sustainable change is impossible. What we discuss for this post is one of the hardest biblical principles to be consistently and mindfully aware of. And the only easy way I can think of, is to lay a framework for a comparison using the following electronic signals: analog and digital. Follow along in lesson 17 of our Bible study on overcoming addictions.
An analog signal is best described using the word intensity and a scale of 0 to 10. Analog describes things like how loud the volume is, how fast is the fan spinning. The curious thing about this type of signal is that it is observed best over time. Time affects our perception and interpretation of analog. Over the course of time, analog signals tend to trend one direction or the other, much like our lives and the choices we make.
A digital signal is either a 0 or 1. It is either on or off. These signals are commonly referred to as binary system. Think of digital as a coin has either heads or tails, it is a light switch that is either on or off. Many complex systems can be built from this framework, because of the logic behind it. That logic is based on the argument, “Is this thing on or off?” This sort of argument occurs every single moment of every single day in our lives, just in a different fashion. So, just as an experiment for a moment, try to imagine all the decisions going on inside your mind right now. Now to make it a little more complicated, try to ascertain if those decisions are self-based or spiritual-based. Staggering, isn’t it?
Binary Logic
Some sacrifices are the ones that reveal themselves over time in a chronologic analog fashion. When we repeatedly choose something that we are willing to give up for something else, convinced the payment is worth the price. Some of these components: family, friends, employment, health and reputation. Which of these have you had to sacrifice for your drug or alcohol use, had to sacrifice for a promotion at work, sacrificed for your own personal wants?
Jesus was quite clear of this truth when He said “we cannot serve two masters…” Trying to serve the self and Christ at the same time are contrary to each other, their wants are different. This is especially true when it comes to thoughts of who you used to be competing with thoughts of who Jesus wants you to be. Once you accept Christ, your identity changes as well as your investment. In this regard, sacrifice addresses the issues of ownership. This conundrum, as it appears to be, is as simple as a choice, yet as complex as the analyzing of patterns and trends. For us, this subject of sacrifice is merely a question of a 0 or a 1. Are we going to serve ourselves or are we going to serve Jesus?
A most likely premise
Since we live in such a me-centered society, this is no easy topic to broach without stepping on some toes. Understand my intention, I am not here to beat you up as I have said before. My goal is to help you live the Christ-centered life as best as possible and fill in some of the cracks that I have stepped in. In our anchor verse, Peter is writing to God’s chosen people to remind them who they are and encourage them to be what God wants them to be as well as a warning.
Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.
1 Peter 2:10-11
He is saying to them, yes, that is who you used to be, but that’s not who you are now, you are worth more that what you have sold yourself for. He is trying to instill in them their true identity; God’s people, not whatever desire the heart of the self may have at the moment.
What may seem like a sacrifice is nothing more than separation anxiety with the articles we have found to be comfortable in this world. When we do this, we submit to the world to give us our identity. Which is flawed logic. The world is primarily responsible for showing us things to be desired. Then we sellout for them. The world changes every minute, how can you expect to have any form of stability when that is your bedrock? I’m not downing the world, I’m saying our Father in heaven does not change, He is steadfast and capable of not only giving but showing us how to live in our new identity. The only way to do this is to ask the question:
Whose are you now?
Bible Study on Overcoming Addictions
Application – a Bloody Mess
This is a digital question and it is constantly being asked all the time, whether we know it or not. How you answer this over time will determine what your analog signal is; do you lean more this way or that way? Do you find that you constantly revert to who you used to be, serving self or do you find your actions falling in line with your heavenly identity? Has drug use stolen your worth? Has anger destroyed your investments in life? This identity goes hand in hand with our investment, which we will discuss next.
Many components are necessary for success. Determination, motivation and hard work. For things that truly matter though, sacrifice is essential. Sacrifice is hard and it is costly, especially if you have a particular attachment to the thing being given away. Because to sacrifice for something means that you believe it the cause, not with words, but with actions and possessions. There better be a reason and it had better be a good one. Refinement is war.
And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
Luke 9:23
To sacrifice things that mean something to us takes receptiveness, willingness and commitment. In many ways it is an investment in something better. It means we not only see value in what it is we are sacrificing, but that what we get in return is worth more than what is being sacrificed. What is standing in your way of better? What is in your life that needs to be given up, that is not producing good fruit in your life? These are the things that need to be offered up. Just be aware, chances are they will not give up easy, especially if you hold on to them too tightly.
The battle for the self will always rage on. Some days will be easy, others will be a slaughter. Some days you’ll make progress in one area only to find you are losing ground in another. Understand the severity of the decision to fight the self. It is a choice we make every moment of the day. And thankfully for us, Jesus made that decision to sacrifice for us. In fact, He sacrificed everything:
And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:8
This Bible Study on Overcoming Addictions 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 Bible Study on Overcoming Addictions 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
One of the more problematic results of anger is that it clouds your vision and blinds you to facts, impeding decision making. But usually, we find this out after the fact. After we cool down we normally realize we shouldn’t have said that. Then you get the honor of having to be on clean-up detail. This is not a fun place to be, and if you frequent it too many times, you’ll find yourself casually purchasing an apartment there in the realm of lost compassion from those you have hurt. This becomes your new living arrangement. And no matter how much you think you can keep the different areas of your life compartmentalized and un-affected from anger, it will eventually spill over, just like every other sin. We think we can hide it when we have to, until it outgrows the closet and bursts into the living room, when you are entertaining in-laws. Learn more about the concepts of anger and clarity in this “Overcome” Bible Study Lesson on Addiction.
You see, there is a strange cathartic stage, if you will, much like the first real moments of sobriety, where the scales have fallen off of your eyes and you begin to see. You begin to see things that you didn’t know were there, you see things that you never paid attention to in the past, mostly yourself and your actions. This nauseating stage can be likened to when you wake up to a bright beam of sunlight that has found its way through the tiniest of cracks in your bedroom window curtains and landed upon your pupil. That instant that your pupil constricts, that slight twinge of pain, squinting and scrunching your face to somehow shut your eyes even tighter to block out the sadistic ray… time to face the day.
The conflict that goes on during this time, when you really begin to see who you are, can be contrasted between darkness; operated by anger, and light; clarity, being who we once were versus who we were made to be. This light may be foreign and initially discomforting, but once you get used to it, it makes going back into the darkness all the more repulsive.
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
John 8:12
Opening a Can of Worms
I opened up a can of worms the first time I taught this specific class when I asked the question “What makes you angry?” Which has led me to including the following disclaimer: It is not up to me or another person to validate or invalidate your anger. All I can do is point you to scripture. I do not have the spiritual discernment to judge the motives or heart of another person, I can’t even judge my own properly.
Chances are that, based on my possibly faulty perspective, I have a 50/50 chance of looking at the situation wrongly to begin with. Then it becomes a heads or tails if I make the right or wrong decision. Why, because I may not have all the correct information and my own personal experience and taste regarding the subject. Which leads us to our next stop in this discussion, righteous anger and our own point of view.
Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.
Ephesians 4:26
If anger is something you find yourself dealing with, then just as with any other sin, we must make ourselves as aware as possible with our inner self. Often, we find ourselves justifying our anger. There is such a thing as righteous anger, or indignation. While anger is ok and a part of life, we must be especially careful to not chalk up outbursts to righteous anger. The easiest way to do this is asking yourself do you get angry at everything else God gets angry about, or is it only a few select items. What makes you angry, may not make me angry. Likewise, there are a few issues I have a personal history with that have become burdens to me when I see them occur or I am the recipient of such treatment. In other words, I am not necessarily angry with them offending God, but more the fact that I have been offended. God’s word is pretty clear on this point:
Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.
Romans 12:17
It’s not a question of do you get angry or if you get angry. It’s more a question of why do you get angry and how do you handle it. Many times, when anger strikes it is in my weakest areas and people are watching me to see how I am going to react. It’s during these opportunities that come at the worst times, a chance for others to see Jesus in me, not the me within me.
The Roaring Lion
Truth be told, there are so many applications and directions we could go with this scripture. So, please hear me, what I teach out of this scripture is not the only thing there. There are other nuggets that can be drawn out such as: adversary, prowling, watchful or even generational. But for the intent of this study, I want to define a few words to tease out a logically implied cost.
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
1 Peter 5:8
To devour means by any and all methods necessary, to consume entirely. To eat you up. Anger is typically built up and compounded over many situations and circumstances. It develops as we think about, talk about and get worked up about. We become ticking time bombs when we collect and find it hard to contain during the bottling process, firing passive aggressive warning shots across the bow of those who have offended. Like Chunk so clearly put in the Goonies, “That’s all I can stand, and I can’t stand no more!”
To be sober-minded and watchful is a choice. It is a quality and a description of that choice. It is not a feeling, but rather an intentional call to action, to be alert. Sometimes it is best to walk away from an argument. Sometimes it is actively choosing to starve the anger instead of feeding it. So much of gaining this clarity is from dwelling on scripture itself. Making a choice to apply scriptural guidance rather than scratching the itch of vengeance.
Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
James 1:19
Overcome Bible Study Lesson on Addiction – Week 16
Application – Dredging
In a bit of transparency regarding this topic, I allowed many of the wrongs done to me in my younger years to generate feelings of anger and anti-social behavior. This anger resulted in a self-imposed isolation and de-valuing almost every other human I came into contact with. Because of allowing the trauma and anger to devour me, I became a drastically different person than what I imagined God designed me to be originally. Much of how I handled anger resulted in me misunderstanding God and directed misplaced hate towards Him for allowing the rejection, neglect and abuse. Handling anger wrongly cost me years and relationships I will never get back.
The main point is this, if you constantly find yourself erring on the side of anger as the go-to reaction to “unpleasant” things, there is a chance that you are allowing yourself to be devoured, and this isn’t one of those pictures of buzzards sitting on top of a carcass out in the desert, it is a lion with its head buried in the gazelles’ ribcage eating it from the inside out. With anger, everything can change in a moment and it usually does. Below is a graphic of two words imposed on each other. See if you can figure out this visual puzzle:
Anger clouds your vision and your reasoning. Powerful emotions like anger clouds your vision, it blinds you and obscures your vision, like clarity in who Jesus is. We do not want to devour ourselves or others. Know, that whatever the offense, Jesus’ death on the cross paid it. This is especially difficult when it appears that God is not bringing justice to the situation. We are all screwed up, and we are all in debt. We do not want to allow the devil to drive us to want to devour others, any more so than wanting to be devoured ourselves.
The “Overcome” Bible Study Lesson on Addiction 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 Bible Study on Addiction 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
Pride is considered the grandfather of all sin. Pride allows you to adopt the mindset that you are indeed the center of the universe. It is subtle and makes you a poor student. Pride encourages comparison and selfish expressions. If you don’t believe this fact, engage in the following rudimentary experiment: go an entire day without referring to yourself or your achievements… Follow along in this lesson of the Overcome – Bible Study for Addiction Recovery.
There are numerous quotes that address pride. There are also a multitude of verses in scripture that examine pride as well. There is no shortage of literature on this topic, from Nietzsche to Solomon, from Oedipus Rex to Jesus Christ. There is just something repulsive and repugnant about pride in humans, so much so that we hate it in others, yet condone it in ourselves. Which leads me to believe that the sin in me recognizes the sin in you. At this point it is no longer a question of denomination or profession. We all agree, Christ follower or atheist, pride is a quality undesirable in others, yet we tolerate it within ourselves. While the antithesis to pride, humility, is a trait we all wish our fellow man to be endowed with but find difficult to volunteer ourselves to this practice.
As I mentioned in the introduction post of Overcome, it has been quite an undertaking to translate a group meeting into a blog posting. One of the components to the original design of the class was using a celebrity personality who had succumbed to one of the destructive reactions we cover and juxtapose a testimony from an individual who embodied the biblical response. In this translation, I have removed the celebrity references because I did not want to drive a lot of back and forth and risk missing the entire point. With that being said, I will make this one statement; throughout the development of the original class material, it has been harder to find individuals who have recovered from addiction, than those who have passed away either due to or as a result of. Tragically, I believe it is because of the very topic we discuss in this post.
The problem with pride is that the one suffering from this affliction is they are never wrong, which means they will struggle with being humble. They literally believe they are right, deep down in their heart. Now it is easy for me to be on the other side of the keyboard and point my finger at all of the people whom I believe are prideful, especially when they disagree with me. But for some reason, we all fall into the following observation:
While we are violently aware of pride in others, we exhibit blissful ignorance on our behalf for the same affliction.
A Question of Perspective
The word hubris is a fancy word that means excessive pride, self-confidence and arrogance. The bible refers to this as being stiff-necked. So, for the duration of our discussion, hubris, pride and arrogance will be used interchangeably. In the book Mere Christianity, CS Lewis calls pride “the great sin.” Albert Einstein was famously quoted saying, “the only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.” While God does not have a sliding scale when it comes to sin, we need to be particularly mindful of the dangers and products of pride: anger, bitterness, rejection, burden, exhaustion, disappointment, gossiping and comparing. While this is not an exhaustive list, let’s focus on the last one for a moment, comparing.
When we compare, we look either up the food chain or down the food chain. While looking up the food chain could generate inspiration, it usually results in the reactive emotion envy. However, looking down the food chain could generate compassion, it usually results in pride. When we start this comparison, we suddenly become aware of the shortcomings of others and foster the deadly feeling of self-importance. When we engage in this activity, we become dismissive of others and talk down to them in posturing manners. Many things can breed arrogance; house, money, car, job, spouse, looks, talents, even knowledge. Regardless, the things that we feel most prideful about are the areas we feel the most superior and powerful in.
When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.
Proverbs 11:2
Notice the wording of this verse, he says when pride comes, not if. I believe, because Solomon was especially specific in his request when God asked him what should he be given. Solomon answered “a discerning heart…” With that knowledge, I have to logically assume Solomon was well equipped to observe and report the many motivations for what we humans do, he could reasonably deduce human behaviors and actions. After the comma, he uses the word then. This is a cause and effect statement, a formula. Pride consequently leads to disgrace: the perpetual remorse of conscience. What goes up, must come down. Proverbs is laden with this type of structured advice for Godly life. And, as it turns out, Solomon had quite a bit to say about the dangers of pride, reference verses 18:12 and 16:18.
Still a Student
Look at the last section of our anchor verse but with the humble is wisdom. This is the understood contrast and within it lies the heart of addressing pride. We have the negative consequence to partially reinforce against pride, but we need the positive reward to move from discipline to growth. In other words, we chose to open ourselves to instruction. While pride makes people unteachable, humility makes us a willing student.
Words like humble and humility sound repulsive and leave a bad taste in our mouth when we say them, don’t they? It is because it goes directly against our self-based nature and culture. You don’t have to teach a child how to be selfish. However, as we get older, we learn to disguise this nasty little characteristic. Before too long, it takes a conscious act of the will to show humility. That is if we can resist the urge to tell everyone about our benevolent actions. But once we come to Christ, we acknowledge that we can’t do it and it isn’t all about us.
Unfortunately, we will always fight against being self-based creatures. The proclivity in our spiritual walks is to exhibit humility in the early stages, but to give way to pride as we grow further away from our moment of salvation. This usually occurs unintentionally… more of a creeping effect. We stop looking at the log in our eye and start looking at speck in other people’s eyes. When we do this, we no longer focus on our growth, but comparison to others. We no longer need to learn anything… we know it all. And most importantly, humility is a necessary catalyst for good to not only flow into your life, but out from it.
Overcome – Bible Study for Addiction Recovery
Application – Shifting
As always, Jesus gave us a walking model of humility and its value in His Word. We are all familiar with Him washing the disciples’ feet at the last supper found in John 13. He got up before dinner and put Himself in a position of humility and washed their feet. What is especially important for us and our topic, is that in His position of humility, He gave us an illustration of our need for Him. He had to put himself in that position to do what needed to be done, for each of us. “The servant is not above the master” means that when we only think of ourselves, we become our own master. We must choose to put ourselves in the position of serving others, not ourselves, especially with the gifts and talents we find reasons to be prideful with. The best way to jump-start this process is to simply ask the next two questions:
The “Overcome” Bible Study for Addiction Recovery 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 Bible Study for Addiction Recovery 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
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