Twelve Steps To Recovery Part 6
Scripture: Isaiah 55:1-9; Jonah 4:5-8; John 5:2-7
Introduction
To date in this series we have discussed the first five steps in the twelve step process. We began by admitting that we were powerless over our dependencies and that there was a God greater than ourselves who could restore us to sanity. After reaching that point, in step three we made the decision to turn our lives over to the care of God, a conscious choice that was made freely. In step four, we took a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and in step five, our last step, we understood our addictions and began to confess them to ourselves, God and to another trusted individual. As we continue working our way through these twelve steps, I want to remind you once more that this is an individual process that each person must go through on their own. As we begin step six, we come to the point where we are ready to have God remove all of the defects from our character. This is a voluntary decision to submit to every change God wants to make in our lives as we humbly ask Him to remove our character defects. What is a character defect and what is its relationship to our addictions?
I. Character Defects
Your character is basically how people define you and your actions. It is the behavior that is typical of a person or group of people as in your reputation or moral strength. Based on this understanding, we get the term that someone is acting “out of character” which means they are acting different from what is known or expected of them. Every one of us is known in some way by our character and based on our character; our addictions are either being fed by or co-existing with it. When you consider the term “defect” it carries the meaning that something is not totally what it should be. A defect is an imperfection; a lack of something necessary for completeness. This involves perfection. If you go to some outlet stores, they may sell merchandise that have some “small” defect in them so they cannot be sold as “perfect” or for the full retail price. Some of the small defects may not affect how the object does it job but it does affect the appearance of the object and therefore its perceived value. If someone is paying the full asking price, they want the item to be in perfect condition. Next there are defects that make an item “un-saleable” or un-useable. These defects are so severe that the item will not work the way it is intended and is therefore not good for anything. These are the defects that more align with our addictions. Our defects are crippling us and although it is a slow process we are still being crippled. Our character defects negatively influence our ability to walk fully upright before God. Some examples of character defects includes: self pity; self justification, insensitivity, vulgar/immoral thinking; dishonesty; hate; enviousness; jealousy, lying and selfishness. There are more but these are given just to give you an idea of how widespread our defects are. Regardless of the number of character defects you have, if you are ready for God to remove them from your life, He is ready to do it, ready to give you a pardon; to restore you.
II. God’s Pardon
Have you ever taken the time to think about what it means to receive a pardon? I know your minds may immediately go to our prison system and some of the pardon you may have read about, but I want you to think about your pardon. That’s right everyone who has accepted Christ has received a pardon. God has pardoned us. To pardon someone means “to release them from further punishment; for forgive; for excuse from a fault.” Each of us has received such a pardon and this pardon is what puts us in the mindset to allow God to remove our defects. If we know up front that any defect that we bring before God has already been forgiven we have nothing to lose and everything to gain from laying everything at His feet. We have been told to repent and then stop thinking and acting the way that we do but it is not that easy. I believe most of us would gladly walk away from our defects if we could. People do not seem to understand that with some things we cannot just walk away.
God understand this and has made a way for us. Consider what God says in Isaiah 55:1-3, 7-9: “Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, according to the faithful mercies shown to David…..Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
God truly understand what we are dealing with and in the verses above He puts it into the larger context of dealing with the hunger within our soul. In verse two God asks the question “Why do you spend money for what is not bread and your wages for what does not satisfy?” Consider this question in context of having a hunger craving. If you are craving seafood and all that is available is soup, you will eat the soup because you are hungry, but it does not stop the craving or you may find the soup “unsatisfying”. Or consider this example, you are hungry and instead of buying food, you buy cigarettes. In both cases the body received something, but in the first case although you may have satisfied the “mental/emotional craving” with the cigarettes, you did not solve the physical need with food.
God is asking us to come to Him for only He can make a difference in our lives. As we think about what we are facing with our addictions, we come to understand that we are fighting them on two fronts. First we are dealing with the hunger deep inside us. Whatever your hunger is that is driving your addiction, it is nestled deep within you. For some it is so deep that it may take you a while to truly pinpoint it. That hunger, whether it is for appreciation, love, attention or all of the other things that drive us, is something that until fulfilled or removed, will continue to drive us. Only God can fulfill and/or remove it so that it is no longer driving you or hindering your progress. The second front of the battle rests with changing our thoughts of doing wrong. Recently we have heard or read about the wrongs of prominent ministers. These wrongs cover a wide range of things from their divorces to their lavish spending of ministry funds on their personal lives. The reason I mention this is that none of them have come forward and said that what they did or were doing was wrong. However, several of them used the scriptures to justify what they were doing. When Paula White was asked about her divorce from her husband, she quoted Ecclesiastes implying that there is a time for everything under heaven and her divorce was one of these times in her spiritual journey. She also stated that since she and her husband were such good friends, they may get back together. Never once did she encourage anyone to fight to stay in their marriage. God is willing to pardon our sins, but He cannot pardon us when we do not accept that our wrongs are actually sin and see no need to repent from them.
It is proven that when we are upset we often depend on our addictions to make us feel better. As we begin to get rid of these addictions, we come face to face with the deeper character defects that God wants to heal. Our addictions function as a sort of shelter for us, we can go there and hide and receive comfort when we are stressed, pained or upset. But, when that shelter is removed, deep anger may surface, exposing even deeper character flaws that need healing. Think about the story of Jonah. Jonah, as you may recall, was told to go to Nineveh to preach to the people. But Jonah had a character flaw – he couldn’t forgive and have compassion on the people of Nineveh whom he hated. When God decided not to destroy the people of Nineveh, Jonah threw a temper tantrum and complained to God. Then he left the city and went and sat on a hill to see if God listened to his complaint and would change His mind about destroying the people. Jonah 4:5-8 says “Then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of it. There he made a shelter for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen to the city. So the Lord God appointed a plant and it grew up over Jonah to be a shade over his head to deliver him from his discomfort. And Jonah was extremely happy about the plant. But God appointed a worm when dawn came the next day and it attacked the plant and it withered. And it came about when the sun came up that God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head so that he became faint and begged with all his soul to die saying, ‘Death is better to me that life.” God did this to show Jonah that the real problem wasn’t the loss of his shelter, but his own hatred for the people of Nineveh – he cared more for the shelter than the people. The removal of our sheltering addictions may expose deeper problems which may spark defensive anger, but God will still be there to touch and heal our deepest hurts.
III. Discovering Hope
It is okay to hope, we need hope. If we have lost all of our hope it is hard to believe that God will do anything for us. So it is with our addictions. Some of our addictions we have held on to for a long time and we may feel hopeless about being delivered from them. How can we honestly say that we are entirely ready for God to remove our defects if we have lost hope or we are thinking all or nothing? “God make me perfect with no flaws or I will just remain where I am.” When it is all or nothing, we fail to see the progress that we are making; we fail to see how God is moving towards us, even when we cannot take another step and have lost our hope for change. I am reminded of a story that is found in the book of John. Turn with me to John chapter five. Let’s start at verse two.
“Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes (porches). In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame and withered, waiting for the moving of the waters; for the angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted. And a certain man was there, who had been thirty-eight years in his sickness. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, ‘Do you wish to get well?’ The sick man answered Him, ‘Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Verses 2-7
During Jesus day, there was a pool that had five porches where people went and stayed, hoping to be healed when the waters were troubled. Only the first person who stepped into the pool would be healed after the water was troubled. This man had been at this pool for thirty-eight years, waiting and hoping. For thirty-eight years, whenever the waters were troubled, someone else would step down in front of him and be healed, leaving him with his condition. The man was so crippled, that he could not get to the water but needed someone to help him. It was apparent that he did not have any help as this is what he told Jesus. Now notice what happened when Jesus came up to the man. Jesus asked him, “Do you wish to get well?” This seems like a dumb question to be asking the man. He had been coming to this pool for thirty-eight years so of course he wanted to be healed. What was Jesus thinking when He asked such a stupid question? I will tell you for the question were not stupid at all. Jesus was asking the man if he still had hope. He was asking the man if he was still willing. When we have been dealing with something for so very long and it looks like it will not change, we begin to lose hope. When we have lost hope, we lose the expectation that comes with hope. When we have lost the expectation, then we begin to close God hands of deliverance because we no longer believe that it could happen. Jesus understood that after thirty-eight years of trying this man could have lost all hope. This man wanted to be healed and told Jesus he was willing, but did not have any help. If you read the rest of the story, you’ll discover that Jesus healed the man.
I share this story with you so that you can understand this point: it does not matter how many years you have been struggling with your addiction, God is here, today, ready and willing to help you. He is not going to question you about how many times you have failed in the past; all He is going to ask you do you are ready to be delivered. The man in this story had gone as far as he could go, and then God came to him in the form of Christ. Although you may have gone as far as you can go, understand that God is coming towards you, all you need to do is accept Him. God met this man where he was and brought him the rest of the way.
Conclusion
In step six we are ready to have God remove all of our defects. The key word here is “remove”. God does not want our defects “improved” He wants them totally gone, removed. Most of us have made numerous attempts at self-improvement with little success. We have tried to improve our attitudes, our appearance and even our habits. But there is a difference in improving something and removing it. When something is improved, as in an addiction, the negative impact is not as bad, but the addiction is still present. When something is removed, there is no negative impact because the addiction is no longer there. When we think about the defects in our character, I am sure many of us have been frustrated at our own attempts to “improve” them. In step six, after dealing with years of trying to do it ourselves; after years of trying to improve the defects; we are ready to have God totally remove them. There is no band-aid cure for our sins and defects of character. They have been fatally wounded and must die on the cross. Although this process is not easy, it can and will be done. And guess what, if you are afraid of what your new life will be like, don’t be for you will be pleasantly surprised at what will take place as you move forward into that new life. Now that we are ready to have our defects removed, it is time to make the request to God. Until next time, God bless.
