Recovery Under the Cross

Call on the Lord in Humble Faith

Recognizing our lives have become unmanageable because of our addiction is humbling. That's the point of the first step. It's to humble us, making us ready for step two. As Christians, we call on the Lord in humble faith to restore us to sanity. In our Scripture lesson today, we see a Roman centurion call out to the Lord, Jesus, on behalf of his servant who is sick and close to death. It's in humble faith the centurion makes his plea for Jesus to heal his servant. Likewise, it is in humble faith we cry out to the Lord to help bring us to sobriety and maintain sobriety.

God's Way is the Only Way

All too often we think we can make our unmanageable lives manageable again on our own. How wrong we are! In our Scripture reading for today from 2 Kings 5, we find Na'aman, a commander in the king's army, seeking Elisha's help to be cured of leprosy. Na'aman quickly dismissed Elisha's instructions. However, Na'aman would find out God's way is the only way for him to be healed and be brought to faith. The same principle is true with our addiction. Our way of attempting to get sober, stay sober, and have lasting freedom and peace from our addiction fails. It's by God's grace and help that He puts people in our lives to help us medically, emotionally, and spiritually. It's through the Gospel we know we have everlasting freedom from sin and freedom from addiction.

Midweek Meditation: Reputation Protection

God protects a person's name and reputation in the 8th Commandment.   Addicts have all too often sought to destroy someone else's reputation by lying about the person/people who confront the addict out of love about his/her addiction. Instead of taking the person's word's in the kindest possible way, the addict goes out of his/her way to ruin the other person's reputation as a means of self-preservation.   Listen to what Jesus has done to restore our reputation before our Heavenly Father by what He has done to take away our sins.

Midweek Meditation: Waste and Abuse

A pastor once told his catechism students, "The 7th Commandment is about protecting 'stuff'." Yes, he said "stuff". The "stuff" the pastor was alluding to were the many spiritual and physical blessings God bestows on all of us. God has blessed us with so many spiritual and physical blessings. Sometime we waste and abuse those blessings to keep our addiction going. In so doing, we steal from God, our families, and ourselves when we keep feeding our addiction at the expense of providing for our families and giving back to God the first-fruits of our labor. Even though we waste and abuse the blessings God gives to us, God gave us His one and only Son, Jesus, who didn't waste the opportunity to save us from our sins. Jesus paid for our sins with his perfect life, with his blood shed for us on the cross, and with his rising again from the dead so that we can have new life with Him. Because of Jesus, we are motivated to use and enjoy the blessings God has given to us faithfully.

Midweek Meditation: Adulterous Hearts

The Recovery Under the Cross Midweek Meditation series on the 10 Commandments continues with the 6th Commandment: You shall not commit adultery.   The two most obvious ways in which the 6th Commandment is broken are spouses cheating on each other, or unmarried people fornicating.    The 6th Commandment goes deeper than that. Jesus tells us in his Sermon on the Mount that anyone looking at a woman lustfully commits adultery in his heart. The same is true for women looking lustfully at men.   One way people look lustfully at someone is often done in secret with near anonymity by watching porn on the Internet. Porn addiction has become more common since the launch of the Internet. Some try to soften porn addiction by saying it's not infidelity, thus not adultery. This is the work of Satan who lies in order to get us to sin. According to Jesus, anyone looking lustfully commits adultery.   Thankfully, we have Jesus who paid for all of our sins - even the sins committed in our adulterous hearts. God has also provided people in our lives to help those caught up in porn addiction to break free from it.   Conquerors Through Christ [https://conquerorsthroughchrist.net] has a wealth of resources for helping someone caught up in porn addiction.