Lights Go Off
Video Intro
Music Intro, Spot Light follows me to front, Stage Lights come back up, round girl crosses stage
(Slide 1) Ultimate Cage Fighting
(Slide 2) Pt. 3 – The Cage of Addiction
I. Introduction
In Round 1, we dealt with the Cage of Fear. Last week, in Round 2, we discussed the Cage of Death. In Round 3 and in Round 4 we begin to discuss some of the greatest cages that trap people in modern times.
In cage fighting matches there are 3 ways to win a victory. The first is by knocking your opponent out. The second is to submit your opponent which is signified by the opponent tapping out. The third way is for judges to grant you the victory based on their scoring of each round. There are some specific areas that a judge watches to decide who wins the rounds. A judge uses the following criteria:
-Clean Strikes
-Effective Grappling
-Octagon Control
-Effective Aggressiveness
The one element of these criteria that I want to mention because it pertains to our topic today is Octagon Control. Octagon Control is exhibited when:
1. A striker who fends off a grappler’s takedown attempt to remain standing and effectively strike is octagon control.
2. A grappler who can takedown an effective standing striker to ground fight is octagon control.
3. The fighter on the ground who creates submission, mount or clean striking opportunities.
(Slide 3) 4. The fighter dictates the pace, place and position of the fight.
Isn’t that a pretty good picture of addiction? Addiction dictates the pace of our life, the place and position of our life!
It may seem weird or odd that I would address addiction in a church setting. We are supposed to be the free ones. We are supposed to be the chain free folks. However, I would suggest to you that addiction is running rampant everywhere! Even in the church!
Did you know that in the USA:
• (Slide 4a) 2 million compulsive gamblers
• (Slide 4b) 16 million with compulsive sexual behaviors
• (Slide 5a) 4 million binge eaters
• (Slide 5b) 1 out of 20 on drugs
• (Slide 6a) 1 out of 4 men addicted to tobacco
• (Slide 6b) 1 out of 6 women addicted to tobacco
• (Slide 7) 1 out of 14 abuse or are dependent on alcohol
• (Slide 8) 4 out of 5 people use caffeine and ½ of those 4 use it excessively
• (Slide 9) 1 out of 20 compulsively shop
The truth of the matter is that the cage of addiction is not limited by race, gender, social status or religion.
Some of the most addicted people in the world attend church on a regular basis. Addiction is defined as being unable to stop even when you want to even though you recognize the negative impact something has on your life.
I think Paul, in his discourse on the battle with sinful nature, in Romans 7:15-24 may have best described the Cage of Addiction:
(Slide 10-23) What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary. But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?
Haven’t you met someone who doesn’t like what they are doing, but can’t seem to stop? They recognize they are destroying their life and everyone else’s too, but still keep doing what they are doing.
I have discovered that no family is off limits. My own family has been impacted by addiction. I am a recovering addict. Fortunately, my addiction wasn’t to heroine or something like that, but as trival as it sounds I was definitely addicted to Mt. Dew. You may laugh, but when you drink one in the morning right after getting out of bed and drink one right before you go to sleep adding to the 10 or 12 you drank during the day you are an addict. Fortunately for me freedom was easy. I just quit drinking them. 1 day of headaches and done. However, for other members of my family addiction has won the control issue. My father wrote this a few years back.
RICK’S STORY
I watched the small, red-headed, freckled face boy grow up. He attended the church I pastored and the summer youth camps I directed. As a teen-ager, I took him on two mission trips to Monterey, Mexico. I watched him play high school sports - basketball and baseball. He was good. He wanted to be a coach. I even tried to get him into Southwestern (the old 10th Street location) on a baseball scholarship.
He started drinking during his senior year of high school. He attended a small, rural Oklahoma school (there were only 8 in his graduating class) that was dominated by students with nothing to do but experiment with alcohol and drugs. His drinking continued after graduation, until it led to his first car wreck. Was he driving, or not? No one knew or, at least, wouldn’t say. The results: One teenager dead and him in the IC unit at the University of Oklahoma Medical Center with severe head trauma and a broken collar bone. They didn’t even set the break. There was no need. They didn’t think he would survive the head injuries. God intervened and slowly, over a period of weeks and months, he recovered. Surely that was enough to break his alcohol addiction and dependence. Not quite. He continued to drink, experiment with drugs and began a downward spiral that took a toll on his health and his life. He became a meat cutter, a hard worker, who couldn’t hold a job for long. You see, money was just a tool to get the next drink. His ’friends" led him deeper and deeper into the alcohol dominated culture - fights, drugs, and more accidents. Jail time for possession, drunken binges, a suspended driver’s license, promises to quit - these were repeated time and time again. He married Debbie (I preformed the ceremony), had two children, Teresa and Jeremy, divorced Debbie, remarried her and was divorced again. The alcohol and drugs were always to blame.
I tried to help. I gave what I could. He became a con artist in obtaining sympathy and money. I helped him get into at least two detox centers, including a mid-western Teen Challenge facility. He’d dry out and return to alcohol. He became so involved in drugs that the only way to avoid prison was to become an informant for the narcs. Now, his very life was in danger. That scared him away from drugs, but not drinking. He betrayed his friends, his mom and dad, and me, over and over again. He took, never repaid and drank. Finally, he betrayed the people who help raised him, stole their check book, committed fraud and spent one year in a medium security prison in Granite, Oklahoma. I visited him and listened as he told me how he had changed. "When I’m released, no more alcohol or prison for me", he declared. He was released and drunk in three weeks. He lost his family. His son, Jeremy, now addicted to alcohol and anger himself, was living in a relationship that produced a baby, a grandson that he’s never seen. Now Jeremy faces a 30 year jail term of his own. He fled charges on non-payment of child support and lived for months in the woods in south Texas (he has the scars from the spider bites to prove it). He has cirrhosis of the liver, seizures from his car wreck injuries, high blood pressure, lost half of his right ear in a fight and, at 48, looks 68. Surely, at the bottom, he would look to God and others to find release from alcohol.
Though I love him and pray fervently for him, even as I speak, he still is slowly committing suicide with alcohol and his drunken binges. He could quit drugs, but not drink. When he’s sober, you would like him. He had a bright future in sports. He would’ve made a fine coach.
So don’t tell me its "ok" to social drink or it’s just a social activity among friends. Don’t tell me you’ll be the strong one and never become drunk or addicted. Don’t tell me that Christianity allows you to drink when it is a ghastly witness to those who battle everyday of their lives with the demons of drink that seek to destroy them. Don’t tell me that private clubs, Hooters and beer dives, are different now - just harmless social gathering places. Remember, we Christians are to "shun the very appearance of evil." Wake up! Read the statistics with the billions of dollars that alcohol cost this state and nation each year in lost jobs, destroyed families and devastated lives. Or, read the number of alcohol related deaths caused by the "social drinker" whose drunken driving kills 1000s each year.
Don’t tell me Jesus would be involved in the social drinking scene that destroys so many. Don’t tell me that drinking isn’t a sin - for the Word of God says "the wage of sin is death" and I can personally introduce you to a living dead man - he’s my nephew and his name is Rick!
Rick was my hero growing up. My earliest basketball memory is of Rick taking a long half court shot in a High School Conference Championship Game. I woke up one day as a teen and realized that he couldn’t be my hero any longer. Addiction had won.
So I personally know the pain of addiction. I thought about trying to get Rick on camera to tell his story. I wasn’t sure he would talk, I was less certain I could listen. No family is off limits.
Jesus dealt with folks with control issues. You remember the account of the man they called Legion? He was out of control. He was bound. You find the account in Mark 5.
(Slide 24-31) Mark 5:1-5
And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes.
And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, Who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains: Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.
Please don’t misunderstand me this morning. I am not saying that everyone who is addicted is possessed by demons. Although, one of the few lessons I remember from my Greek Classes was that the word for witchcraft in Greek is Pharmacia where we get our word Pharmacy. So I do believe there are spiritual issues when dealing with drug addiction (of which drink, caffeine are all apart of). But what I want you to take from the account is the uncontrolled state of the man. Who wants to live in a cemetery? Who wants to cut himself? Who wants to be wild and untamed to the point that he is a social outcast? That is the picture and result of addiction.
I want to be able to offer you hope this morning. I do believe that the cage of addiction can be defeated and destroyed. So let me just mention some things this morning.
I have been listening to several Christian Counselors who are doing some really impressive studies of addicts. They are using brain imagining technology to study the impact of substance abuse on the brain. What they have discovered is those that are addicted to drugs, alcohol, or anything else have a common trait in their brain. The common trait is that when their brains are scanned the addict has low pre-frontal cortex or the frontal lobe activity. That is important because it is the frontal lobe that causes a person to have pause. In other words, when you are setting at a store and the armored truck pulls up and you see the guards unloading large sacks of cash and the random thought runs through your brain that I should rob them. I could get away with it. I would be rich. If you have a normal frontal lobe a pause kicks in and you suddenly stop and think that is crazy, I would get caught, I would get put in jail and my life would be ruined. It is this area of the brain that stops you from carrying out all those crazy, stupid, sexual, acts that you think about in passion. You don’t act on the impulse. They have discovered that addicts don’t pause they just act. The second thing they discovered is that as the frontal lobe activity drops the singulet area of the brain starts to have increased blood flow and becomes highly active. Again, important because it is this area of the brain that causes us to obsess or have a totally singular focus about something. A person with high activity in this area becomes total obsessed or stuck on an activity, a person, or a substance. See how that works together? Now they are totally obsessed with one thing and there is no pause to say this is dangerous.
I am no scientist or doctor, but I noticed something that I wanted to draw to your attention. If you revisit Jesus’ encounter with Legion something interesting happens.
(Slide 32-33) Mark 5:15
And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid.
Did you catch that phrase? In his right mind. Scientists have discovered 3 contributing factors to addiction: Environment, biology, and how a person thinks about addiction.
May I suggest to you this morning, that one significant step toward beating the cage of addiction whether that addiction is to crack, Budweiser, cigarettes, Mt. Dew, or shopping is a mind change!
I know there is no canned answer or easy solution. However, I also know that change and victory can be won. In fact, Paul answers his own question, of can anyone help, in Romans 7:25.
(Slide 34-37) The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.
He goes on in Romans 12:2 and makes this statement:
(Slide 38) And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.
So, even Paul understood, that live life and battle the contradictions, one had to experience a renewed mind. (Slide 39) A renewed mind has transforming power!
I wonder how many of us have willingly given Jesus our heart, but have never really allowed his power to transform our minds so that we think differently, we pause again, we obsess less, our perspective changes and clears up, and our thought process changes. Paul says that we should have the mind of Christ. Maybe we concentrate so hard on giving Jesus our heart that we forget that we must also give him our mind! If all he controls is our heart and addiction is brain controlled perhaps we need to deal more purposely with our mind!
I do know this, Jesus’ experience with a bound man, a man whose pace, place and position was out of his control teaches us that addiction can be broken by one encounter with Jesus. If we allow Jesus to not only change our heart, but our mind we can be transformed. Chains can fall off and be broken forever.
I also, readily admit that it doesn’t work this way for everyone. There are folks who find that the battle continues. That is why I also want to mention something else I discovered. Teen Challenge is one of the most, if not the most, successful place of treatment for addicts in the world. Their recovery rate is around 70% while other treatment programs usually have a 1 – 15% success rate. They have discovered that there are 3 necessary elements for an addict to be set free:
(Slide 40) 1. Family
In most cases of addiction, the family unit is shattered and in a lot of cases the family no longer wants to help or can help. You may feel like your family is part of the cause.
That is where this body comes in and can help.
(Slide 41-44) Ecclesiastes 4:9-10, 12 says, “Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their efforts. For if either falls, his companion can lift him up; but pity the one who falls without another to lift him up…And if somebody overpowers one person, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not easily broken.”
I want you to understand that God places us in a body, a family of believers to help each other! We have the whole idea of church attendance wrong. We think we are just rubbing elbows with folks that happened to decide to attend the same day we did. WRONG. Realize it or not, take full advantage of it or not, act on it or not we are actually assigned to each other by God! God knew we would need each other and in 1 Corinthians 12 it says, “God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased.” Set . . . handpicked and placed in the body. The body we are set in helps provide love and support even through hard times.
(Slide 45) 2. Guidance
Word is a lamp to our feet! We listen to Word and apply the Word and it guides us in how to live our lives. (Slide 46-48) Galatians 6:1-2 gives a helpful principle, "Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ."
(Slide 49) 3. Anxiety
Accountability. Responsibility. Being a part of the body helps create pause and we think I will hurt others and I am expected by others to stay clean. Not all anxiety is bad. We are interconnected.
Additional Strategy for Freedom
(Slide 50a) 4. Be honest.
Greatest deception is self deception.
(Slide 50b) 5. Talk to someone.
Silence is the path to destruction. Silence becomes a cage. You need someone to talk to. This is one cage that you have to have help with. You need someone to confide in! Remember “iron sharpens iron”! Don’t find someone who has same issue you have! Find someone who can sharpen you!
(Slide 50c) 6. Don’t give up hope.
Stay in the fight! You can beat this thing! Hear me this morning, there is hope. I go back to the story of Legion. It seemed to be a hopeless situation. Man had done all they knew to do to no avail. Jesus can help!
Galatians 5:1 “Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.”
No master but Jesus. No controlling substance or habit. Nothing but Jesus determining our pace, place and position!
I don’t know what you are facing. I do know that most of us that are addicted are trying to become numb. We shop to escape. We drink to forget. We drug to longer have to think about things.
Most commentaries believe that Jesus had the same opportunity. While on the cross Jesus declared that he was thirsty. The Gospel accounts state that someone grabbed a spear and used it to offer Jesus a sponge soaked in wine which either had gall or myrrh in it. Some com¬men¬tators refer to a passage of the Talmud that mentions the practice of giving a narcotic to those about to be executed. Some think the gall had a numbing attribute or that the wine would keep him from hurting. Jesus refused to drink. He refused not to feel the pain. We must follow his example and have a no numbing mentality. If Jesus could endure such pain for us and refuse to be numbed and we know "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin" (Hebrews 4:15).
Then my question for you this morning is what are you turning to other than God?
Talk to us. We are all fighting! You may not wear a karate outfit to church, but we are all fighting! It is better to fight together!
