When I think back on the many Sundays when I sat in church next to my father, listening to theological musings that flew right over the gritty reality of the many addictions he fought alone, I get angry. How could our family have played church for so long with so little impact on our everyday struggles? Maybe that’s why I left the church as soon as I was old enough to rebel.
Christ’s community should be a place of healing for people like my father, whose deep wounds, inflicted by his father’s brokenness, fueled the addictive behaviors that robbed him of peace and drove him to an early grave.
In a generation spawned in brokenness, addictions rule! Emerging generations struggle with addictions to alcohol, drugs, pornography, tobacco, spending, sex, eating, working, dieting, and gambling to escape the pain of brokenness. Extrapolating the statistics, it appears that half of twenty-somethings today may battle some form of addiction. The church can’t be caught flat-footed if we want to see a generation redeemed.
For the church to have a healing influence, we must understand how to break the slavery of addiction. Just telling people their behavior is immoral or wrong won’t set them free—in fact, it may exacerbate the problem since shame often fuels the addiction. We need to cultivate a church culture that facilitates healing and growth.
Come as you are
At Gateway Church, we’ve seen many people find faith and healing from addictions, but only because they heard us say again and again, “Come as you are.” The path to healing starts with creating a culture of grace—accepting people “as is” and pointing out their intrinsic value, even before they believe or “clean up.” We must show people that God has already valued them—at the cost of his Son.
If you create this grace-first culture, the people who come will begin inviting their friends, just like the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at the well and ran to tell her friends. Nate invited his alcoholic roommate, Craig, who found faith in Christ and sobriety. Craig then invited Trey. Listen to the way Trey found healing from a cocaine addiction:
“I had been trying to connect with God ever since praying a prayer to become a Christian in the eighth grade. But the more I failed, the more I felt uncomfortable in church. But Craig told me that Gateway’s policies were ‘Come as you are’ and ‘No perfect people allowed.’ That immediately put me at ease, because I definitely qualified. Fast forward to today. I have been sober since the first weekend I walked into Gateway (absolutely no coincidence). I realized that drugs and alcohol were just symptoms of my real dilemma: separation from God. I thought that I needed to get well and then come to church. I had it backwards. I needed to come to church to get well.”
What would people say about your church? Is it the place to come to get well? Or do you need to “get well” to come?
We’re all addicts
One thing that inhibits grace and its reach to set captives free is the “us vs. them” mentality that many churchgoers unconsciously project. If we think of addicts as “those people” with the serious problems, unlike us who don’t “desperately” need God’s help, we sound a lot like the Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like “that tax collector.”
Jesus went to a party that Matthew threw for his reprobate friends. The religious leaders asked Jesus’ followers: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’ (i.e. ‘them’)?” Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Jesus’ point was that he came for all who realize they desperately need God’s help.
The founders of the Twelve-Step program rightly assessed that the core human sickness is addiction to self. We all tend to play God and try to get life, people, and even God to do our will. That’s why putting God at the center—doing his will only, moment by moment—is the key not only to successful recovery, but also to experiencing an abundant life. Acknowledging that we all desperately need God’s help to overcome our addiction to self will not only help our churches set captives free from the outwardly obvious symptoms of addiction, but also help free a lot of Pharisees from the insidious addiction to self.
Just one thing
So how do people become all God intended? How do pastors help greedy people become generous, divorcing people reconcile, sexually entangled people honor God, and addicted people find freedom? Do we need more Bible study, prayer, more frequent church attendance, greater commitment to obedience, or community? All good things, but Jesus said to Martha, who was busy doing lots of good things, “Only one thing is necessary.” What is the “one thing”? Jesus tells us Mary was doing it. She was listening. The way we love God is by listening and responding moment by moment in constant connection to him.
Jesus knew this one thing is precisely humanity’s problem: our addiction to self pushes God to the periphery. So his last night on earth, this One Thing was foremost on his mind. Jesus picks up a branch and says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.” Stay connected; fruit happens!
That’s how people change—by living moment by moment listening and responding to God’s Spirit. Like Paul said, walk (each moment) by the Spirit and you won’t do the evil deeds of the flesh. You’ll see fruit like love, joy, and peace growing naturally. Jesus reiterates this one thing over and over. All you have to do is stay connected to his Spirit, and God does for us what we can’t do for ourselves. This is how Jesus lived: “The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing” (John 5:19).
Growth starts with grace-filled, confessing relationships.
Interestingly, this practice of moment by moment constant contact with God, being willing to do his will only, is the central tenent of the Twelve Steps. If you make this the central focus of Christian spiritual life at your church, you will be teaching not only what was central to Jesus, but what the recovery movement discovered is central to overcoming addiction.
The Twelve Steps were coined in the recovery movement of the past century, but they’re really as old as the Bible. In fact, Bill W., who wrote the Steps, acknowledged that they came straight from the pastor of Calvary Church, Dr. Sam Shoemaker, who led Bill W. to Christ through a small group. At Gateway, we have seen many people in recovery find faith in Christ. We acknowledge God’s work in their lives (after all, Jesus healed many people who had yet to demonstrate faith in him as Messiah), and we simply point out to them that the God who healed them wants them to know him personally in Jesus.
Truly abiding moment by moment in Christ, remaining all day long in his love, and staying willing to respond to God’s will is the most rigorous practice imaginable, and very unnatural to our sin nature. Yet it’s the One Thing necessary. So how can we help each other actually do this One Thing?
We’ve regularly challenged our church to a 60 day experiment to stay in continuous connection and radical responsiveness to God. We have everyone set a watch to beep every 60 minutes to remind them to stay connected to God. This interrupts our habit of ignoring God most of our day. Furthermore, we teach them how to live this out in community. Over 4,000 people have done this “60-60 Experiment,” and the results for those who went all out were astounding.
Brian was an atheist who got his third DWI. In recovery, someone convinced him to just act as if God exists and try to be thankful. He started thanking this God he didn’t believe in, and he said he began to see “little coincidences.” Brian writes, “A woman invited me to Gateway when they held a 60-day ‘experiment’ in connecting with God. I began to see God at work in my life throughout the day and found faith in Christ. As I kept doing the 60-60 Experiment, my habits of looking lustfully at women and Internet porn started to decline. I didn’t have to struggle because Jesus was taking the impulse away.” Three years later, Brian is leading other atheists to faith, leading a small group, and thinking about full-time ministry. Jesus’ words are true: stay connected—fruit happens!
During the experiment, long-time churchgoers experienced the fruit of God’s Spirit for the first time. We had heterosexuals and homosexuals alike decide they were going to stop getting sexually entangled. We witnessed denial broken as people addressed addictions to porn, alcohol, and drugs and got into recovery. People confessed to secret affairs and got into marriage counseling. But that leads to the next key cultural element for healing.
Rigorous honesty
The only thing we must do is stay connected. But we don’t do this naturally, so creating the right environment in which we can best stay connected to God’s Spirit is critical. It starts with grace-filled, authentic relationships that make it okay to admit struggle, failure, and sin. James tells us God uses this kind of confessing, praying culture to heal us (James 5:16).
As leaders we must teach and organize so that rigorous honesty becomes the norm. This kind of transparency only happens when grace is the foundation on which smaller community interaction gets built. If I don’t believe you are “for me” and see God’s masterpiece in me, waiting to be revealed, I won’t be rigorously honest. We teach often on this, we train leaders to lead by example, and we remember that just as human nature’s default mode is disconnection from God, our sin nature causes us to hide and pretend with people, too. That’s why John tells us to walk in the light together and not deny sin (1 John 1).
We must constantly lead people to swim against the current toward disconnection from God’s Spirit and each other. At Gateway we adopted the motto, “No perfect people allowed.” It’s a way to continually recalibrate our culture to admit that we have struggles, addictions, and self-centered sin patterns to overcome. When we regularly confess to one another and pray for each other, encouraging constant connection and responsiveness to God’s Spirit, God heals us. And in this culture, sometimes we must confront denial and train community leaders to do the same.
I was in a couples small group early in the life of our church. We made it a practice to talk openly about struggles. One night Mike told the men, “I still drink, but it’s not a problem.” We knew Mike had a history of drug abuse, so his comment raised a red flag. We started asking questions.
“How many drinks? And how often?”
Mike was honest: “Three or four beers a day, sometimes more.”
Larry asked him, “How do you feel about that?”
Mike felt fine about it; he felt it was under control. Many of us smelled the stench of denial and were secretly praying for wisdom.
One of the men asked more pointedly, “What do you think God wants you to do?” Mike was quiet.
Another said, “I think it’s a problem, considering your past.”
Then a scene from my own past appeared in my mind. Suddenly I felt compelled to tell him my story: “When I was in middle school, my father would come home and have a few beers each night. It helped him relax, he said. The truth was, my father had a drinking dependency. I loved my dad more than I could imagine, but when he drank, he was a different person and I didn’t like being around him.” Mike was quiet the rest of the night.
The next day, Mike emailed me: “I don’t know what happened last night, but as you were telling me that story, it was like the words were piercing into my soul—I was almost shaking. I knew God was telling me I have to quit. I don’t want to do that to my son. I want to be a father he’ll remember and be proud of.” God broke through his denial. Mike admitted his powerlessness and decided to seek help through a recovery group. Since then, he has stopped drinking, has grown tremendously in Christ, and now leads others. God heals us through confessing community where the foundation of grace allows people to be honest.
Turning off autopilot
Growth starts with grace-filled, confessing relationships. But we also need intentional practices, or disciplines, to help us stay connected and responsive to God’s Spirit in that moment when our habitual, automatic response threatens to take over.
Most of life is lived on autopilot. When we just can’t help ourselves because we automatically lust, or automatically overspend, or automatically feel envious or judgmental, or automatically drink too much, or automatically respond with impatience or anger or worry—all of this is habitual. We’ve trained ourselves to respond automatically to certain stimuli in certain ways. Whether we are enslaved by alcohol or a critical spirit, we get stuck in habits and patterns that become automatic responses we feel helpless to resist.
We need intentional practices in place to re-program our body’s habitual response to the old nature. Lust causes a physical reaction, which creates a desire for action, but our body’s instincts or hungers do not have to control our spirit any longer. The practice of capturing the first lustful thought and talking to God about how he views that person and what will truly satisfy allows the Spirit to renew our minds. When the tongue has been trained to lash out from feelings of hurt or anger, damaging words can flow naturally. However, the practice of letting hurt or anger prompt reconnection to the Spirit, combined with a commitment not to speak to the person before we speak to God, helps hold the tongue in check so that it becomes obedient to the Spirit.
The recovery community has intentional practices most churches would benefit from, like commitment to confessing community, taking a regular moral inventory, making amends with all broken relationships, and praying daily for God’s will only. Some intentional practices work like crutches to provide support for healing for a season. After a season, lust or drunkenness won’t control you, so you may not need the same intentional practice. Other practices, like regular study or meditation on Scripture, prayer, and solitude provide ongoing strength to help us stay connected to God’s Spirit, resisting the lies that threaten to lead us astray.
At the beginning stages of his recovery from alcohol and crack cocaine, Trey recalls many lies he found deviously leading him into temptation:
“I used to buy crack near a particular gas station. This particular gas station was close to my job and had some of the cheapest gas in town. This is where the subtle lie began. ‘You need to be wise with your time and money,’ the voice would tell me. Rather than take that thought captive, I would simply respond to that lie and drive in and buy gas. It worked just fine on several occasions, even though I could see my crack dealer’s house as I pumped the gas. Then one day I found myself driving up to my old dealer, and before I knew it, I was talking to him about buying crack. Fortunately, I had enough connection with God to respond to his prompt and speed away.
“From that point forward I immersed myself into God’s truths in Scripture. The 60-60 Experiment helped me not get sucked into gas-station-style lies because each time my watch beeped, I would automatically ask: ‘God is this where you want me to be? Is this what you want me to be saying? Is this who I should be hanging out with? Am I trusting and obeying you right now?’ I’ve been sober over six years since then, but more importantly, I’m connected to God moment by moment and feeling free at last!”
John Burke is pastor of Gateway Church in Austin, Texas, and author of Soul Revolution: How Imperfect People Become All God Intended (Zondervan, 2008).
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