Songs of Recovery - Cry Out to Jesus by Third Day

I am 4 months removed from burying my father after he committed suicide. I have recently broken up with the mother of my 1 year old son, and she has not let me see him for several weeks. I am agnostic. I am broken. I am a functioning alcoholic who is working one full-time and one part-time job, I smoke two packs of cigarettes a day, I cannot complete a sentence without using the "F" word  and I am getting into fights semi-weekly. I still think convict and junkie every time that I look into a mirror, even though I have not done drugs other than alcohol for several years. No matter what I do, how many degrees I have, I still see myself as worthless and the only thing that really matters to me, my son, I am not able to see.

That is where I was a little over three years ago. Thankfully, I had several people that I knew reach out to me. One of them was Nate, who I worked with and the other was his wife Becca. They were 2 of the only Christians that I had ever met that did not judge me and that appeared to be genuine. They walked the walk instead of just talking it. They saw me, shattered and hopeless, and invited me to church. I would have said no, but they suckered me in with the BBQ that was after the service. If you saw me you would understand. I do not say no to food. In fact, I love food. BBQ just so happens to be near the top of the list when it comes to my favorite things to eat. That is probably the reason that I am currently on a diet. 18 pounds down, 37 pounds to go!

I remember several things about that day that made me feel welcome at their church, which is New Life Church. I have talked about the ink wall, which is the wall when you first walk into the church that has pictures of tattoos that people who attend New Life have, along with the meaning of the tattoo and where they got it done. Today, I will talk about the first song that they played in service and how it made me feel as I read the words of the screen that morning.

The song was a perfect song for my first experience with the church. It was Cry Out to Jesus by the band Third Day. It starts off:

                      To everyone who's lost someone they love
                      Long before it was their time
                      You feel like the days you had were not enough
                      when you said goodbye.

As I heard the band sing these words, tears formed in my eyes. All I could think about was my father, and how I did not get to really say goodbye. I thought about the last words that I ever said to him, face-to-face and how I could never take it back. I thought about all of the times that we talked and I took it for granted! I thought about the fact that my son would never be able to meet his grandfather, my father, the man that I call Superman (I blog about him here: http://spiritualspackle.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-superman.html).
Then came the second stanza:

                                      And to all of the people with burdens and pains
                                      Keeping you back from your life
                                      You believe that there's nothing and there is no one
                                      Who can make it right.

The tears began to roll, as I thought of how miserable I was. I had tried substance abuse rehabilitation, psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, Narcotic's Anonymous and Alcoholic's Anonymous but there was something that was missing. The only thing that I had found to work was alcohol, sex and violence. It took my mind off of my current and past problems and made it right for a while. But even that was only temporary, and I knew in my heart that nothing could change me, nothing could make it right. Then came the chorus:

                                There is hope for the helpless
                                Rest for the weary
                                Love for the broken heart
                                There is grace and forgiveness
                                Mercy and healing
                                He'll meet you wherever you are
                                Cry out to Jesus, Cry out to Jesus

I continued to cry, I can remember this. I was the helpless, the weary, the broken hearted. This song could have been written about me. What could they possibly mean that there was hope, rest, love and mercy. I could not forgive myself, so how could anyone else forgive me. They did not realize who I was, that I was an addict, that I was evil and mean and hateful and arrogant and every other negative thing that I could possibly think of. There would never be love for me, because I could not even love myself. I was an addict, a junkie, the worst of the worst. Even though I was not using any more I was still a drunk, and I knew who I really was! Several stanzas later, God spoke to me again through music as I heard the entire congregation sing:
                                        

                For the ones who can't break the addictions and chains
             You try to give up but you come back again
                Just remember that you're not alone in your shame
                  And your suffering

                 When your lonely
              And it feels like the whole world is falling on you
            You just reach out, you just cry out to Jesus
                Cry to Jesus

Wow, even me?!?! Even the addict was being talked about. My life was being mentioned. I had kept trying to change, but no matter what I did I was always still me. No matter how much I tried to change, what I took, where I moved, who I associated with I was still me. I was still miserable, I was worthless. Since when were addicts talked about inside of church, other than when the pastor said, "Don't be like these people!" I was lonely, I was suffering, and the whole world was crashing down on me. I was pretty sure that there was no help for me, but I had several friends that were in church that day with me, they had a program of recovery I had never tried called Celebrate Recovery, and the band actually rocked!

Maybe there was something different about church than what I was used to. Maybe they were not all judgemental and holier than thou.  Maybe I would give this place called New Life Church a chance. I still did not believe in God, but I felt a little better for the first time in a while. I felt accepted, I felt a little less stress, I felt a little more at ease than when I had walked in and I liked it. Yep, I decided, I will give this a chance and see what happens! Here I sit 3 years later, and the journey was definitely worth it. This is one of the songs that was truly instrumental in my still being alive today, in my being blessed with a life worth living. I went from hope-less to hope-filled. I took the road less traveled, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Living Free Video Shot for New Life Church

Jonah and the Big Fish/How I Know God Exists

We talked about Jonah and the big fish in church on Sunday. This was a discussion that quickly begin to lower itself. Major thematic points.

1. God loves you and is relentless in His pursuit to fashion you for his good pleasure
2. God's grace is extended to you because it is His nature to love you and bring you to repentance
3. Prayer sometimes changes the situation, but it most assuredly changes us
4. God is the God of the second chance
5. God wants you to have a heart for people like His heart for people   

So, getting to the first point, that God loves you and is relentless in His pursuit. Dan Call, our pastor, likened God in this case to Pepe Le Pew. Do you remember the skunk in the cartoons that would always chase after the cat, declaring his love for her? That is how God is for us, He will pursue us no matter where we go. He will give us His grace (read His grace as saying His favor) no matter where we have gone. Prayer does have the power to change us. God will give us a second chance, but it is up to us what we do with it. Finally, God wants us to love others as He loves us........whether we deserve it or not, and whether other people deserve it or not. I can and will vow to the first 4 points.

You see, in my past, I had felt that my sin had led me to a place where God could not reach. I knew that because of my criminal conduct for 20 years and my drug and alcohol abuse that began in 7th grade and lasted until I was 37, that I had walked away from Him for good.  I found out that kind of thinking was fallacious. I truly was the prodigal son, who figured he had removed himself from his father's good graces. I knew that God would no longer want me. When I came back to Him, after 27 years of agnosticism and 25 years of drugs and debauchery, there He was waiting to comfort me. He took my hand and walked me out of the haze of my addiction and into recovery overnight.

There are many out there who would tell me that my experience with the Holy Spirit was only imagined. There are atheists and agnostics that would tell me I have lost my mind. There would be psychiatrists and psychologists who in the past would have told them that they were right, I had gone crazy.....in the past. To them I have a reply. If you have ever been in the depths of addiction, you would not say that. I have been in the depths of my addiction. Everyone has a different rock bottom, here is mine:

1. I have shot up ice water, because the batch of meth was not ready or I was waiting on the person to get back from filling their morphine prescription.
2. I have woken up at 4 AM in a urine soaked mattress to get up and drink a couple of shots to put me back to sleep and stop the shakes.
3. I started smoking cigarettes in 6th grade and had never been able to quit.
4. I had been to county jail often enough that I would stay in for several weeks to catch up on sleep when I had the cash in my wallet to bond out.
5. I had slept with enough women that I was in the mid-triple digits. I would go to parties and sleep with 2 or 3 girls when I was a drug dealer.
6. I was drunk 30 minutes after I got out of prison, and spun out on methamphetamine that night.
7. I dealt drugs and was involved with the manufacturing of methamphetamine for over a decade.
8. I had been to rehab, but the longest stretch of sobriety I had since I was in the 7th grade was 3 months.
9. I had been diagnosed with Bi-Polar with Psychotic Features, borderline personality, antisocial personality, sadomasochism, generalized anxiety, major depressive and substance induced psychosis disorders.
10. I used the "F" word and cussed every other word even when I was happy and in normal conversation.
11. I have been found passed out in my own blood after slashing my wrists and rushed to the ER.
12. I have totalled 5 cars drinking and driving (including flying a car off of a cliff traveling 97 feet and getting 32 feet in the air) yet continued to drink and drive every night.
13. I have overdosed on several occasions and yet used within 24 hours every time.

I do not say this to brag. This is simply the truth. I want you to know where I was in my life, in my addiction, in my slow suicide when God found me. One night, it was finally too much. As I have discussed before, I began to pray to God. I put it all on the line. I was ready to try it His way, because my way was killing me. I was living in misery. Since the night I prayed to God and asked Him to take all of this from me, I have had a complete life change. I have not used drugs or drank, I have not smoked a cigarette, I have not had premarital sex, I have not been to jail and I am on no medication for any mental illnesses. I have not cussed since I do not know when. If all of that is not proof of God, than I ask you what is?


I had tried counselors, psychiatrists, drug rehabs, interventions and Narcotics/Alcoholics Anonymous, all to no avail. I had worked the 12 steps, but it was never quite enough. I came to Him in prayer, and He gave me a second chance. That was all that I needed to do, truly turn my will and my life over to God. I had tried using a random higher power, such as the community in 12 step groups, and it was not effective. God was!

I like how Dan saw God yesterday. I see how He can be like Pepe Le Pew, but He is so much more than that, too. I see God much as my wife sees Him. God is like Yoda. He is this wise, mild, unassuming person that has the ability to draw us to Him from other galaxies. He is mild, but acts with conviction when it is warranted. He sometimes stands by and lets the war happen, and other times he intercedes and fights. And when it is time to fight, there is none more able or more passionate in battle for what is right than He is. Yeah, my God is not a jedi, my God is the Jedi of all Jedis. Trust when I say that "the force" is strong with this One. You can have your little "g" gods, mine is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, mine is the one and only BIG "G" GOD!!!!!!                         

Songs of Recovery - Blessings

I was listening to some music today, and the song "Blessings" by Laura Story came on. In this song, Laura looks at the things in our lives that we pray for, the things that we do not think are fair. She also looks at how we may come to doubt God if these things happen to us. We may come to doubt the goodness of God, we may doubt that he loves us.

This made me think of how our relationship with God looks sometimes. We come to God all of the time to ask for healing, forgiveness, successful job hunts, to be content, to be happy, protection, etc. We have changed the Our Father Prayer to, "Our Father, who is in heaven, gimme gimme gimme!" Don't get me wrong, I think that healing does happen, and we can ask God for it. I just think that we look more at what we want and less at what God's will is for us. What if we have cancer, or were molested, or have a sick parent. Should we pray to be cured? I think that we should. We may not get our prayers fulfilled. God sees the big picture that we do not. So what if God does not answer our prayers the way that we want him to? Some feel that He should answer, and that He should cure us of our afflictions.

In fact, as I have recently been reading in Charisma magazine, there are some who feel that God performs miracles all of the time here in America. The problem is that we do not have enough faith in God, or we would be able to be cured of all ailments both mentally and physically. Bethel Church was in the magazine, and one of their church leaders said that that the problem is not that we ask for too much. The problem is that we don't ask for enough. It is not enough to accomplish worldly goals such as building churches in South America or digging wells in Africa. We should be curing the blind and making the lame walk, that is the the power of God and the power of the Holy Spirit according to the article written in Charisma magazine.

I do not know how I feel about that. I feel that God cures people sometimes, other times He gives us the ability to persevere. Iron is used to make steel. Steel is nothing more than iron that has had an impurity, carbon, added to it and then is remade in the fire. I feel that we too are made stronger in our fires. Even more than that, I feel that our fires can make those around us stronger too. How many of the Christians that have been executed over the years have brought non-believers to faith, not through their deliverance from death, but from their faith and compassion that never wavered when they were executed.

In the song Blessings, the song looks at how God's greatest gifts just might be the trials of this life, the illnesses, the loss, the spent tears, the persecution. We grow through adversity and hardships. When do not get strength and our faith is seldom bolstered if life is lemondrops and lollipops. We grow not on the mountain tops, but in the valleys. What if we are supposed to feel pain and hurt. What if every time that we work through this it makes our faith even stronger, makes our resolve to worship even greater and brings those around us closer to Christ? What if we are made how we are because that is how God wants us?

Psalms 139:14: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."

God made me, and because He made me I should be happy with where I am in life. I should make the most of my opportunities. I think of one of my favorite inspirational speakers, Nick Vujicic. His ministry is called "No Limbs, No Limits." Nick was born with no arms and no legs. He does not ask God to cure him of his "handicap." He does not see it as a handicap. Instead, he is able to reach thousands of people and let them know that faith in Christ will allow you to accomplish all that you need.

My wife is legally blind. She was taken to a healing conference by her youth pastor so that her vision could be fully restored, and she was not cured. She was told by some people that it was because she did not have enough faith in God. Wow, how that had to hurt a legally blind teenager. "God did not cure you because you do not love Him enough," she was told. She, on the other hand, did not think that healing was what God had in mind for her.

Today she works at Global University (an Assembly of God missionary college) as their video editor.......a legally blind video editor. She has been to multiple countries to film Christians all over the world. To hear her talk about her "disability", she feels that God created her to do what she does, "I can see better through the lens of a video camera than I can with the eyes I was born with." Does she need to be healed? I think that she is wonderfully made!!

I do not know about you, but I feel that many Christians come to a point where we feel that God owes us something. I believe in God, I tithe, I attend faithfully so He should cure me. If trials pop-up, if I get sick, God should make it go away. I just do not feel that is true. God made me the way that He wanted me. This world to many may be full of sin and disappointment, but what if that is what makes us realize that there has to be more than just this world we now live in? I yearn for something that I know I cannot have on this Earth, but that I know I desire and I know exists. I yearn for hope and happiness. Where do I find that?

One of the most influential people that I ever met was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. He was given 3 months to live by the specialist. He told people not to pray for him to be cured, but to pray for God's will to be done. He died with a smile on his face, and got to meet his heavenly father. That is what he talked about in his final days. He was consumed by pain that the opiates could not touch, but he lay in bed and would talk to us about how lucky he was to be going home. He died in pain, but he remained positive and peaceful.

His death was the instrumental piece that brought his estranged son, who was an atheist and a drug addict, to Christ. His son was by his side for the first time in over a decade when he died. His son came to Christ less than a month after his father's death. If his father would not have died as happy and hope-filled as he did, his son would not have been redeemed. He told me this. I was was not friends with the man who died, I was a friend of his sons. But that is his testimony, not mine.

I am saying that if he would have been cured, his son would not have gotten saved. I know women who have been raped and beaten that have turned their experience into a ministry to help others going through the same experience. I am a former convict and drug addict who works with convicts and drug addicts. I am proud of all that I have been delivered from. But there are also things that I have not been delivered from. I no longer obsess over drugs, but I desire them on occasion. I am okay with that. The Holy Spirit allows me to work through the desire. I have been transformed, I have been healed but not cured.

Cured is a medical term to me as a clinician that means something has been beaten or suppressed. Healed on the other hand could mean that the pain was embraced and that we moved forward from it. Curing asks, "what needs to be fixed?" Healing asks, "how can I grow?" My friends dad may not have been cured, but he was healed and allowed his son to be healed through his death. Why are we often not cured?
2 Corinthians 12: 7-10, "To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." You see, God can grow in the face of  illnesses, weaknesses, trials and tribulations whether they are cured or simply healed.

I am no greater than Paul was. God spoke to him personally. He saw Jesus in the flesh. He wrote 13 books in the New Testament. If he was allowed to live with a handicap and not be healed, a man who talked to Jesus face to face, than who am I to expect more? I thank God for the mercies in my life that came disguised as hardships. In the end, they have made me stronger and brought me closer to Christ!