It's Hard to Stay Clean When You're Standing in the Mud

So now you have decided to get clean. You realize it is not going to be easy, but you are going to go to a residential rehabilition center for 20 days to start your sobriety off right. Then when you complete residential you are going to go to Narcotics Anonymous (or Alcoholics Anonymous, Celebrate Recovery, Living Free, Reformers Unanimous, etc.). You are going to work the 12 steps with a sponsor that you will find, or maybe already have.

"I am going to have a sponsor, a mentor, accountability partners, go to recovery meetings, church and work the 12 steps," you tell yourself and anybody that will listen. "This time, it is going to be different. This time, I am going to stay clean and sober when I get out of rehab!"

As a substance abuse counselor, I can't tell you how many times I hear this said by people who completely mean it. They are done with drugs and alcohol for a myriad of reasons. They might have had their children removed by Children's Division,  or they have been arrested. Sometimes they are in drug court, or they have come to the realization that the next time they relapse will be the one that kills them. Maybe they just want their old life back.

Having these reasons listed in the last paragraph coupled with the supports in the paragraph second paragraph would seem to be enough to accomplish long-term sobriety. Nope!! For some reason, many people fail after leaving residential and they almost all tend to have the same thing in common. In fact, I know that a lot of my clients will relapse before they even leave residential treatment. I even let them know. A lot of times the other clients even let them know what they need to change, but yet they still do it.

So what is it? What is this thing that time and time again causes people to relapse, even after they are warned multiple times about it? I call it mud. And it is hard to stay clean when you are standing in the mud! So what is it that I call mud? Some would call it love, other's familiarity. Basically, it is the relationships that we have in our lives. It could be your best friend since kindergarten. It could be the person you have been dating for several years. It could be your spouse, your sibling or even a parent. It could be their house or the bar.

It could be anyone or any place, but they all have one thing in common. They are bad for your recovery because they are still engaged in substance abuse, alcoholism or criminal activities or they are happening there. You have got to get rid of these people. Family, you can love them from a distance. Friends and significant others, you just have to let them go.

There is a reason for this. Your addiction is in the back of your head: lifting weights, running on a treadmill and doing research on a computer. It is getting stronger and smarter, just looking for a way to get back into the front of your head. It will use any means necessary to get you to relapse, especially our old playmates. If you are around it, you will do it. The question no longer becomes whether or not you will relapse, but instead WHEN WILL YOU RELAPSE? It is inevitable.

The Bible says bad association spoils useful habits. I think of a song by Rascal Flatts called "Moving On." In the song they say, "I've lived in this place and I know all the faces. Each one is different but they're always the same. They mean me no harm but it's time that I face it, they'll never allow me to change. But I never dreamed home would end up where I don't belong, I'm moving on!" If you want your life to change, you have to change it. You have to move on, staying rooted to people and places spells doom!

If you continue to live in addiction and chaos you will get caught up eventually, guaranteed. Like the program says, if you sit around a barber shop eventually you're going to get a hair cut. I say, if you sit around the mud long enough, eventually your going to get dirty! The reason is that your addiction is strong and it just gets stronger. It never takes a day off! Drugs and alcohol are everywhere, and if you stay around people who are still using or go to places where people use, eventually you will too.

If you want your life to change, you have to change everything about it. You cannot hold on to any one part of your life, or the Devil will use that to find a way back into your life. So how do we combat our addiction? There are a few steps that we have to take. If we take them, I have never seen anyone that was doing all of these fail:

1. Put God first in everything that you do! This means we pray, read the Bible and meditate daily!
2. Attend recovery meetings consistently (NA, AA, Celebrate Recovery, Living Free, etc.)
3. Get a sponsor or mentor
4. Work the 12 steps with that sponsor/mentor 
5. Apply the 12 steps to our lives (Knowing and doing are 2 completely different things!)
6. Get accountability partners 
7. Get rid of your old playmates 
8. Stay away from your old playgrounds
9. Find positive playmates and new playgrounds to frequent (We need to fill our lives with positive people and things, or the negative people and activities will find their way back into our lives)

What is the difference between sobriety and recovery

I have many times had to explain the difference between sobriety and recovery to many people. It seems that to many people who claim to have never struggled with an addiction of any kind, they do not understand that the two are different. In one of the secular 12 step groups that I used to attend, they had a clever way of presenting the difference. 

"If you have a drunken horse thief and you sober him up, what do you have? You have a sober horse thief."

By this example, we see that although the alcohol is gone, the criminal lifestyle is still present. I have my own ways of looking at the difference. Even though I may have stopped engaging in whatever my life controlling issue might be, I still have behaviors that I engaged in that are not right. Some call them criminal behaviors, but I would call them moral issues that arise from self-esteem issues and not feeling that I deserve respect. When I do not respect myself, how can I show respect to others. 

I may have stopped cutting myself, but I still cannot tell the truth. I may not be struggling with my eating disorder, but I still cheat every time I am in a relationship. I may not be drinking, but I am still trying to start fights with every one who looks at me as I walk by them. I may not be doing drugs, but I can't complete a sentence without dropping an F-Bomb. I may not be sleeping with multiple partners, but I cannot stop watching pornography. The list could go on and on, but you get the point. 

Some of the most unhappy, angry people that I have ever met were at a 12 Step meeting. They claimed to have 15 years of recovery, but at best they were sober. They had never over came their moral issues. They are still wallowing in self-pity and selfishness. They have never gotten over the loss of the "one true love" of their habit of choice. They still reminisce about the good old days, reliving that high and hating that they can never allow themselves to have it again. 

So what can we do. First and foremost, get the big 4. Sponsor (mentor), meetings (small groups), accountability partners and work the 12 steps (live Christ-like). Those are the 4 that always need to be present in your life. Next, learn that community service is not something that your judge or a probation officer assigns you. The longer you are sober, the more you owe back to society. Be positive by always focusing on the positives and surrounding yourself with positive people. Start off each morning by making a list of things that you are grateful for to get the day started positively. 

So, to recap

1. Sponsor
2. Meetings
3. Accountability Partners
4. Work the Steps
5. Give Back
6. Be Positive
7. Be Grateful

I did forget to add a few things, and to me these are what made the difference. I had the sponsor, meetings, accountability partners and step work. I was even giving back, but I had no positivity or gratitude. To be honest, I was pessimistic always. I was Agnostic, and it kept me from finding the hope needed to step into recovery. I was still engaging in most of my moral deficits. I only overcame them through Christ. So to the above list I would add a few more. 

1. Pray without ceasing
2. Read the Bible daily
3. Listen for the still small voice of God to guide you and you will find that it is neither still nor small!!

Remember to stay eternally optimistic and lean on God, for He is great ALL OF THE TIME! After all, I can do all things through He who strengthens me!

The Beast in the Back of My Head pt 2

Over the years that beast has changed. He has been in the back of my head transforming himself over the years: doing research, reading, lifting weights and running on the treadmilll. He continues to grow stronger each and every day. He gets wiser and more cunning every day. He looks for ways to creep into my life both consciously and subconsciously.

When I am asleep he will come and visit me in my dreams. I have woke up before certain that I had relapsed because of a using dream. He will bring up memories of "the good ol' days" when I hear a song, see a picture or run into someone from my runnin' and gunnin' days. That is the power he has, to remind me of all of the good times and never the bad ones.

When I am hurting and life does not go my way, the beast is whispering in my ear. When my father committed suicide, that beast was the first voice I heard. "Do a shot of dope and you will feel so much better" he purred. When I have bills that I do not know how I am going to pay, he always is quick to remind me how much I can make off of doing a burn (cooking methampetamine) "one last time."

I actually relapsed in 2000 after I bought that lie.  And that relapse is where I learned the truth about my addiction. In the several months that I had stopped using, it had grown stronger and stronger. I had never overdosed before, I had overamped a few times but never overdosed. In the next year, I overdosed three times. That beast did not pick up where I had left off, but instead had grown stronger and more insidious.

When I think of that beast, I always remember the Verbal Kint quote in the movie "Usual Suspects." He says, "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." The beast has tried this one several times. "Now that you have been sober for a year, you could just have one drink" or "you don't need to go to meetings anymore" it says. "You know the steps, you don't really have to work them anymore, do you?" That beast will try any way to get into my head. "Why pray when you never get what you want?" he asks me.

The problem he runs into is that I have seen the worst he has to offer, and could not escape him on my own. I even tried everything man made to overcome him, to no avail. At best I had temporary fixes. Then I finally came upon the cure. I needed things consistently to keep that beast at bay. I needed to insure that as strong as he was getting, my recovery stayed stronger. That has been accomplished, but it is not easy. There are multiple needs that I have to fill, and will have to fulfill, for the rest of my life.

Here is the quick recipe. I need regular meetings (or small groups), I need a sponsor (or mentor), I need accountability partners in my daily life, I need to work the 12 steps (read this live life as directed to in the book of James). That is all that we truly need to do in order to keep the beast at bay. As he grows stronger daily, we too must also daily do things that promote recovery and Christ in our lives.

To do otherwise is to guarantee that beast in the back of our head will one day resurface. He WILL come back stronger then he was. Trust that. If you want a better life, then focus daily on the prize. Put Christ first in all you do and walk where the Holy Spirit leads you while fulfilling the four musts I identified. Do that and you will live a life that keeps the beast mired in the back of your mind, trying his best to come back and not in the front of it, leading your every move!

What I Have Against the Word Recovered

I have personally never liked the term recovered. I know that Bill W used it (he also used LSD, nobodies perfect) and so does the AA literature, but I have never been a fan. To me recovered means that it is over. This will never be over. I once heard said that the greatest trick the Devil ever did was to convince the world he didn't exist. MY addiction exists. My addiction is looking for a way back into my life. It wants to see just a tiny crack in my shield. That is all it needs to get active again in my life.

My addiction is currently in the back of my head lifting weights and running on an elliptical, getting stronger and stronger. It wants me to believe that I am cured. If I am cured, I can stop all of the positive recovery oriented things that I am doing today. After all, if I am recovered I really don't need them. That is what my addiction will convince me of. I know, it has done it before!

The Devil works in the same way. He will convince us that we are better and that we do not need to do positive things that bring us closer to God daily. "You don't need to pray all the time," the Devil whispers. "You don't need to read the Bible today, you read it yesterday," he tells us. My faith and my recovery have things in common. They both need to be fed. They both have the ability to continue to grow for the rest of my life. They will both always be fighting against their opposite.

I have found that the more I pray, the more I meditate, the more I read God's word the stronger my faith will become. I need accountability partners for both my faith and my recovery. The more that I am around positive people in recovery or of the same faith, the stronger mine will become (accountability partners). I need a sponsor, a person with stronger faith/recovery than I have to be an example for me to follow. If I outgrow them, then I replace them.   


You see, the problem with recovered is that it is way wrong terminology. Recovered means that I am out of danger. I am never out of danger. In AA it is said there is a reason that it is called alcohol"ism" not alcohol"wasim." It will never change, the fact that I have an addiction. I can change whether or not I use, but once I use all bets are off. Just because I do not think about it 24-7 does not mean that I am cured. My addiction wants me to think that I am all better, but I am not. When life is going great, the thought may not be in the forefront of my thinking, but it is still there somewhere.

I no longer obsess about using, but the desire is still there. Example, when my dad committed suicide several years ago the first thought that popped into my head was to get high. "That will make you feel better," my addiction reasoned. My second thought was to call my sponsor, which I did. If I am recovered, that thought never touches my mind. Either one of these things does not occur. First the desire to use is gone, so I do not think about using. Secondly, the sponsor would not have been available to talk to because I would not have had one.


I am not cured, I am in remission. I am in recovery, which is present tense. Recovered is past tense. When you are recovered you leave the hospital. I will never leave the groups that I attend, because I need to not only give but receive strength, experience and hope. The day that I am recovered is the day that I die. Only then will it be over. I am blessed and grateful to be in recovery and I would hate to be recovered. I might forget where I came from or how I got there. Recovered means that I can use or drink again. That will never happen.

The truth is that I have a spiritual disease from which there is no known cure! I am thankful for that disease. It has given me knowledge, wisdom, strength, insight and the ability to reach people and positively impact their lives that I would never have had without it. That is awesome! Still there is never a time while I am alive that I will not be an addict. But there is recovery. There is remission, and for that I thank God for through Him all things are possible! For that I am forever grateful!

The difference between sobriety and recovery

I went on a cruise two weeks ago. While I was in the Honduras I went parasailing, and there were two women that went with me that reminded me of how different sobriety and recovery are. The two friends were talking about parasailing, and one of them said that she was scared to death. When asked why she was scared by the guy driving the boat, she told him that she could not swim. "Thats okay," he said, "you will be 800 feet in the air. You have to be in the water to drown." This did not reassure her at all. 


Her friend was the first one to go, and she went screaming and came back laughing. She started off scared, but in the end loved it. She told us how much she had enjoyed the ride, how peaceful it was and that the view was breathtakingly beautiful. Then her friend went. As she was whisked off the back of the boat, she was screaming bloody murder, "I changed my mind!" When she came back, she was in tears and angrily talked about how horrible it was and that she hated it. When asked how she liked the view, she admitted that she did not even open her eyes. 

This was the exact same experience through the lens of two different people, who felt differently about what they did. It is a lot like working through addiction and being either in the sobriety phase or the recovery stage. It is the same experience through two different lenses. Not to say that sobriety is not necessary for recovery to occur, but you have only touched the tip of the iceberg when you are sober. Read on, and we will get into that more as you go.

At one point I had been sober for several years, but I never stepped into recovery. Like the example above, sobriety is not easy. It is generally the hardest thing to do. Sobriety is the work, recovery is the enjoyment. You can have sobriety without recovery, but you cannot have recovery without sobriety. It is vital to have sobriety in order to move onto recovery. But like the first chapter of a great book, without the other chapters the first one is incomplete and disappointing.

Recovery is crucial if you want to stay sober for the rest of your life. Sobriety is not all that it is cracked up to be. I know that we feel that it should be enjoyable, but not drinking (or drugging or overeating or sleeping around or giving into rage or fixing everybody but yourself) is really just the beginning. It is a step in the right direction, but just that. A step! There is no magic that occurs, in my humblest of opinions. It does not guarantee a happy life to you. In fact, it can be just the opposite.

What we think should be the apex of our life can actually be the nadir. I thought that things would be all better after I got clean. I found it was really the reverse. Before when I felt low self-esteem, depression, anger, hurt or self-loathing, I could use and would feel all better. It would assuage my pain. Without the drugs, I now had to feel the pain with no buffer. There was no escape. What could I do?

I could have done a lot of things, but this is what I did. I began to revel in my character defects. I began smoking more cigarettes, having more sex, getting into more verbal and physical fights.  I began to find ways to look down on others. If they were not working their program “my way” I would belittle them at meetings. And thanks to principles before personalities that worked out well. So did my “13^th step” that I so often employed. I was now using others instead of my drug to make me feel better.

I did my 90 in 90 (more like 150 in 90) and I thought that I was doing good. If only attending meant better. You got to do more than show up. Like the pastor says, "Sitting in church no more makes you a Christian than my standing in my garage makes me a car." The same is true about meetings, just being there and not working what you learn outside of the meetings is worthless. But that was not me! I even worked the steps with a sponsor and told him what I knew he wanted to hear. I thought that I was in control as I counted the years. I eventually began drinking, but I could excuse that because it was not a drug. I was great at lying to myself and those around me. I portrayed happy and content, confident and strong. It was all a lie.

I could never find true happiness. I was miserable! I saw myself as an addict and a convict every time that I looked into the mirror. When I became an alcoholic, it should not have been a surprise to me. I tried to, as the Bible put it in Matthew 9, put new wine in an old wine skin. I tried to put on a new mind set but kept the old behaviors. That is a recipe for disaster. The new mind set was completely wasted as it spilled out onto the ground.

Eventually I reached the realization that I was back where I had started. I had taken a new route with a different vehicle, and I had arrived at the same destination as before. The worst part was that this time I could find nothing to blame it on. I had money, people I considered friends, a career I liked not a job I hated, a beautiful son, coworkers who cared, a boss that let me know I was appreciated, even the respect of people who never would have talked to me when I was an addict. All of that was simply not enough. I was still miserable. I began to realize that the fault was all mine. That was the beginning of my reaching the lowest point of my life. Then the jump to recovery happened, and I became happy almost overnight.

Recovery came to me for several reasons, but the most important reason is this. When I was an Agnostic and I woke up in the morning, I knew that this was AS GOOD AS IT GETS. I had nothing to look forward to. My life still consisted of terribly disappointing days followed by drunken nights. If I did not drink, I would get into my depression and isolate and feel miserable. If I did drink, I would get out of my depression while being around people and not feel miserable until the next morning. BUT…….I was always miserable in the end.

After I got saved, my entire outlook changed. I finally realized that I was forgiven. I could never forgive me before because I felt unforgivable. That is the smallest part of it though. The biggest thing for me follows. I did not believe in life after death. I believed that we returned to dust, and that would be the end. I would one day die, and this sinful, hateful world would be all that I would know. When I got saved I realized that even if this life where to be completely miserable for the next 30 years, after I died if I kept my faith and walked the narrow path that I would live an eternity in bliss. That was overwhelming, and it was enough to cheer me up........finally, I could smile and it was not fake!

This is when I finally realized what recovery is. Sobriety was simply me not drinking or drugging. I could still suck at every other aspect of life, still revel in all of my character defects, still be my own worst enemy and judge and hate myself, still make one wrong choice after another while justifying them and still care about me and only me juxtaposed with thinking only about others happiness and not my own. That is what I could do sober.

Recovery on the other hand was me changing everything about myself. I mean the floor to the ceiling, the windows to the walls. I began to make changes in recovery that I never would have made in sobriety. I began treating others with respect even if I felt they did not deserve it. I vowed to never have premarital sex again. I quit smoking, as it was just another addiction that was bad for me. I stopped fighting and started being genuinely nice, even when I would have normally resorted to angry methods of coping. I even quit cussing, as it was not really a nice way to conduct myself. These changes actually made me happy. I began to walk around positive, which made me positive. I acted positive, so I felt positive. I became an optimist instead of a pessimist.

I made these changes not to impress anyone, but because they were the right thing to do. That is what recovery is, not just doing the next right thing but insuring that I do not do the wrong thing. I act the same way behind closed doors as I do when I am in front of people, the same way to my wife I do to my pastor. I do not simply treat people as I want to be treated, but better than I want to be treated. In recovery we should treat people the way that we would want them to treat our sons and daughters. We should not engage in behaviors that we would not want our sons and daughters to behave in. That is recovery, total change of our lives.

The sad thing is that as I look around the rooms, I see a lot of people that are sober but very few that are in recovery. I feel that way when I look around churches, too. I will get into this in my next blog, because getting baptised is a lot like getting sober. It is simply the first step in the right direction. There is a long way to go, still. It is simply not enough. I see many who look down on addicts and alcoholics in recovery that could learn a lot from them. Recovery is something that we should all want, as we are all recovering from something. I’m not judging, I’m just telling the truth.

Whether you are in addiction or recovery, a Christian or an athiest, I want to leave you with one thing. Even if you do not believe the Bible is true, there is still good stuff in there that everyone could learn from. Here is one of those good passages. In Matthew 7 of the Big Book I live my life by, it says that they will know you by the fruit you produce. So, what does the fruit you produce say about you? Think about the two women parasailing. You can either open your eyes and enjoy the ride of sobriety, or you can wish that you were anywhere but sober and do it because you have to. One way will keep you sober  and make you happy. The other way will only lead eventually to failure. The choice is yours!

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!!!!!!                         

The First Step - Denial

The first step of AA, that has been slightly reworded but is also used in NA and other 12 Step recovery programs, states, "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable." Celebrate Recovery says, "We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable." It then lists Romans 7:18 - "I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out."


This is a pretty hard concept for some to grasp. I want to do what is right, but I cannot do it. I cannot control my actions. I am an addict, whether it is to relationships, sex, food, stealing, money, shopping, drugs, alcohol, codependency...........you get the point. The word that is not listed here but should be is denial. We have to admit a) that we have an addiction, b)that we are powerless and c) that we cannot manage our lives properly. The first thing we have to do is step out of the darkness of denial, or we will never be able to begin getting better.

So what is denial? Webster defines it as, "refusal to admit the truth or reality." That is what happens in our addiction. We cannot admit reality. We often either hide our issue, hang out with others who have the same problems, or we play it off as not as bad as it really is.

In denial our pain continues, never ending. In Narcotic's Anonymous they have a saying that I have always liked, "Drugs gave me wings then they took my sky away." In the beginning partying is great, but in the end it only ends in shame, guilt, depression, anxiety, isolation, deception, jails and death. Psalms 16:4 witnesses to that when it says, "Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more." Eventually, our addiction is our center of focus, the god that we worship. Only by accepting the help of the big "G" God can we begin to change.

God cannot help us if we do not admit the problem. John 3:20,21 says, "Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God."

1 John 1:5-7 adds:  “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”

If we continue to deny the issues we have, then God's light will not shine on us. If I am content on where I am at in life then I will be unable to change. Denial says, "I don't have a problem." If I do not think that I have a problem, then I have nothing to work on. The truth is that we are only as sick as our secrets.

If we keep living a lie than we keep ourselves away from the only power that can truly make us better. The only power that can break the chains of addiction that have us wrapped up so tightly that we cannot move. Hebrews 12:1 says, "let us strip off anything that slows us down or holds us back, and especially those sins that wrap themselves so tightly around our feet and trip us up, and let us run with patience the particular race that God has set before us."

We need to walk out of the darkness into the light of God. We must step into Jesus' unconditional grace and love. Only there will we be able to begin our journey into recovery. In Romans 6: 14, 22-23 states, "For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under GRACE. But now that you have been SET FREE from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but THE GIFT OF GOD IS ETERNAL LIFE in Christ Jesus our Lord."

If that is not a reason to cry out to Jesus I do not know what is. Here is the first worship song that I heard after I got saved that truly gave me hope and allowed me to step out of the darkness of denial and into the light of salvation!