LEAVING THE PAST BEHIND
Amy Winehouse has been called the most talented singer of my generation.1 In 2008, when she was just twenty-four years old, she won five Grammy Awards; at that time, no female artist had ever won more of the awards in a single night. She won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist, beating out Taylor Swift, and also won Best Pop Vocal Album. The other three awards were all for her signature song, “Rehab,” a catchy, strangely upbeat song she wrote about her own life. The lyrics consist of the singer repeatedly refusing to go to rehab, even though the people around her try to get her to go.
While many songs tell made-up stories or use personal experiences to speak broadly about general themes of love or loss, “Rehab” is both autobiographical and specific. Amy’s heavy use of drugs and alcohol were well-known and were already negatively affecting her career and her health. Her management company did try to make her go to rehab, but she refused. Likewise, her dad, who once agreed with her that she was “fine” and didn’t need help, eventually also tried to make her go to rehab. She wouldn’t go. Or rather, she said that she did, but “for just 15 minutes.”2 A full stint in rehab is ten weeks, or seventy days, both of which she references in the lyrics, but she said that she didn’t have the time for a ten-week program.
Tragically, Amy’s issues eventually caught up to her. She died in 2011, at the young age of twenty-seven, due to alcohol poisoning. Her family and friends were robbed of her presence, and the world lost a great talent, due to the addictions she couldn’t control on her own. The girl who once sang that she didn’t have the time to spend ten weeks getting help and getting healed lost decades of her life as a result.
As the old saying goes, “There but for the grace of God go I.” I’m not criticizing Amy Winehouse, because I’ve done some of the things she has. (The drug and alcohol things; not the crazy-talented and successful singer things.) Perhaps you have too, though hopefully not to the same extent. Even if you can’t relate to her specific struggles, I know you have struggles of your own: perhaps it’s lust or pornography or materialism or control or body image or abuse. Or maybe you think you have no problems and are perfect, in which case your problem is pride.
Some addictions can literally kill you if you take them too far; others may seem relatively harmless in comparison. But even if your particular struggle doesn’t physically kill you when you overdose on it, it can still bring death: death to your relationships, your career, your happiness, or your effectiveness for God. Be thankful that it hasn’t killed you, but do something about the problem before it gets the chance.
One of my goals for this book is to help you avoid becoming trapped by sin and enslaved by addiction. I’d rather you not need to go through rehab. But, in a way, we all need to be rehabilitated. We all sin, and we all have a natural tendency to fall into destructive patterns. For some of us, those sin patterns lead us into substance abuse and other addictions, sometimes to the extent that you might literally need to go into a ten-week rehab program. If that’s you, go; you can’t afford not to. But for everyone else, you still need help, and that help is available. Even if you think this doesn’t apply to you, keep reading.
Houston, We Do Have a Problem
I probably have the worst eating habits of anyone I know.
Every morning, when I wake up, I crave chocolate. Weird, I know. Most people crave coffee or bacon or other breakfast foods; I want chocolate in the mornings. So I’ll often have a Hershey’s bar for breakfast. Not a Snickers or an Almond Joy or something that at least has some nuts or some other ingredients in it; just a regular, chocolate-only Hershey’s bar.
We’re also a dessert family. We love all kinds of dessert: cakes, cookies, pies, candy, sundaes, or whatever. If it’s on a dessert menu, we’re a fan. I’ll sometimes take the kids to get frozen yogurt and pretend that it’s a treat for them, but really I’m going to satisfy my own sweet tooth.
Plus, I have no idea why, but around midnight every single day, ice cream starts sounding really good to me. So I always keep some in the freezer for a late-night snack. Blue Bell, of course, since I’m from Texas. Only the best.
I never really figured any of this was a problem. After all, it’s not like I was noticeably fat. I’m in the weird-tall category, so there’s a lot of room to hide such things.
Then, when I turned thirty years old, I had a kidney stone. I spent my thirtieth birthday at the hospital. Part of the diagnosis involved having a CAT scan. While looking at the results of the scan, the doctor asked me, “Do you know that you have a fatty liver?” Uh, no, I didn’t. I didn’t even know that was a thing. I knew I had a liver in there, somewhere, but I didn’t know it could be “fatty,” or whether that was a bad thing. I asked her what that meant and whether it was important. She said that it meant I was prediabetic. That made sense; my dad has diabetes, so it wasn’t a big surprise that I would be prediabetic. But I didn’t think it was a big deal. She talked like it was really serious, but I figured she was paid to do that. She was supposed to point out every little thing.
Not long after that, I traveled to my hometown to visit my parents. While there, I ran into an old friend of mine. In talking to her, I found out that her dad had died. Of course, I was very sorry to hear that and gave her my condolences. Her dad was relatively young; just my parents’ age. So, later that night, I asked my parents what had happened to him and whether they knew how he had died. My mom said, “Well, he had diabetes.” I said, “Oh, OK, I didn’t know he had diabetes. But how did he die?” She replied, “He died from diabetes.” “You can die from diabetes?!”
I didn’t know that was even possible.
I realized I’d never researched the disease and didn’t know what it could do to your body. So I looked it up online. And I learned that diabetes can lead to blindness, heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, amputations, nerve damage, and death. That’s a really severe list of potential consequences. Suddenly, being prediabetic seemed like a really big deal after all. I realized I needed to make some changes. No more chocolate for breakfast. Time to cut way back on desserts. It turns out my little Blue Bell habit could kill me.
Now, if you’d asked me before that what my biggest sin struggles, bad habits, or addictions might be, “chocolate” would not have made it into my top ten list. It didn’t even cross my mind that it was a problem. Overindulging on sugar is not something that people typically think of as a sin, and gluttony is not something that gets preached about much on Sunday mornings. But that didn’t make my problem any less serious.
Perhaps you think your problem isn’t really a problem. It’s nothing serious; you can live with it. It’s not something you need to bother getting help for. After all, you’re so much better than those other people, the people with problems that you normally associate with rehab. In comparison, your problem is hardly even worth mentioning.
That’s what I thought about my cute little sugar habit, but I was wrong. I possibly could have even been dead wrong, if God hadn’t used my circumstances to show me differently.
So don’t minimize for yourself the importance or severity of anything that God calls “sin.” No sin is harmless, and it’s certainly not helpful. Nobody’s ever felt better about themselves or been healthier or had a closer relationship with God as a result of doing something they know is a sin. It has zero positive benefits. It can only do harm. And if you choose to go on harming yourself—over and over and over again—well, that’s not a minor problem. It’s something worth getting help for.
In Jesus’s time, there was a group of people who were known for having it all together. They were called Pharisees. Their defining trait was that they followed all the rules, even the tiniest and most obscure ones. They were, literally, holier than thou. And that was really their point: they wanted you to think that they were better than you. Admitting publicly that they had flaws, and were less than perfect, would ruin their image and defeat the whole point of the show they were putting on.
And what did Jesus think of the Pharisees? Did he like them better because they were closer to perfect, and didn’t have any of the big, obvious sins like the thieves and drunkards and prostitutes in the community? Not at all. In fact, Jesus spent most of his time hanging out with and healing “sinners”—people with obvious problems who admitted they needed help—while he had harsh words for the Pharisees (Matt. 9:10–13; 23:1–39). He was gentle with those who realized they had problems and practiced tough love with people who thought they were already good enough.
Don’t be a Pharisee. You’re not perfect, and that’s OK. Jesus is here to help.
The First Step
Much of what I have to say on this topic is really just repeating what I’ve heard said by my close friend, coworker, and community group member, John Elmore. John is the leader of re:generation, one of the largest recovery ministries in the world. Re:generation is a twelve-step program that can help you recover from almost anything, from pride to pornography addiction to alcoholism to materialism.
There are a number of twelve-step programs out there. Besides Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, there are at least thirty other “Anonymous” recovery programs dealing with specific issues, plus more general church-based programs like Celebrate Recovery and re:generation. They all use twelve steps, and though the steps might vary a little between programs, the first step is always the same. In fact, it’s so common that you’ve probably heard it referenced in popular culture: the first step is to admit that you have a problem. Or, more specifically, “We admit that we are powerless over our addictions.”
In other words, you need to realize that you can’t fix the problem on your own and that you need outside help.
There’s a reason why this is the first step. Until you admit that there is a problem, you won’t do anything to resolve that problem (because, in your mind, there’s no problem to be solved). If you don’t admit that you need to get help, then you’ll never try to get help.
Most people are reluctant to admit they need help. No one likes being “powerless,” especially over their own actions and choices. Perhaps that’s you, right now. You recognize you have a problem, but you think you can handle it. Sure, you haven’t managed to quit yet, but all you have to do is try harder. Have more willpower. Really mean it this time.
You know the definition of insanity? It’s doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Look, I understand not wanting to admit you need help and literally can’t do it on your own. It feels like admitting defeat. It feels like admitting there is something fundamentally wrong with you, since you can’t stop sinning on your own. But the thing is, there is something fundamentally wrong with you. There’s something wrong with all of us. We’re all sinners, whether we want to be or not. It’s part of human nature. And admitting you need help and can’t be perfect on your own is not merely the first step of rehab. It’s the first step in becoming a Christian at all. Following Jesus means admitting you are a sinner who needs saving, you can’t be made right on your own, and you desperately need help. Accepting help doesn’t make you less of a Christian; it’s what makes you a Christian.
I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. . . . I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. (Rom. 7:14–15, 18–19)
The quote above was not written by a crazy person, or by the world’s most hopeless addict. It was written by the apostle Paul. Now, Paul was not just an ordinary Christian. He was, you could argue, the greatest Christian to have ever lived, or at least the most important. (Jesus isn’t in the running for that title because he wasn’t a Christian; he was Christ himself.) Paul wrote most of the New Testament and did more to spread the gospel than just about anyone else in history. After becoming a Christian, he dedicated the remainder of his life to that mission and was eventually jailed and martyred because of it.
Yet even Paul, the super-Christian, talked about sin as something he couldn’t control and couldn’t overcome on his own. He wanted to stop sinning but he couldn’t. It was impossible for him to do without help. And if Paul is OK with saying that, I think it’s OK for me to admit it too.
Where to Get Help
Once you recognize that you need help, where are you supposed to get help? From the same place Paul got help in Romans 7:
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! (vv. 24–25)
God is the only One powerful enough to break the power of sin over your life.
This is the second step in any twelve-step program. The first step is to admit; the second step is to believe. Believe that God is the One who can restore you.
Note that this is step two not only in explicitly Christian programs like re:generation but also in secular twelve-step programs. They may refrain from saying “Jesus” or even “God,” referring to a generic “higher power” instead, but they still acknowledge that this is the only way to get free. God is the Higher Power, and he is the only One who can break the power of sin over your life.
When we try to do it on our own, it’s because we want to be our own god. But when we let Jesus be Lord over our lives we find healing, saying, “I can’t, but God can. I’m powerless; he’s powerful.”
If we turn to anything other than God, then we tend to just swap one sin for another. We trade an addiction to pornography for an addiction to some other kind of drug, or stop wasting our lives on video games because we’re too busy wasting our lives watching TV. There’s always going to be a hole in your life that you’re trying to fill, a pain you’re trying to forget, or an insecurity you’re trying to secure. The solution isn’t going to come from putting a Band-Aid on it. The solution is to let God heal what’s wrong.
Trust God
I promise I won’t go through all twelve steps here, but there is one more worth mentioning. Step three is trust: we decide to trust God with our lives and wills.
If you’ve already trusted in Jesus as Lord, then this step is really just the process of living that out. It’s not a one-time decision; every day, and every moment, you have the choice to either trust God or not.
When I talk about overcoming sin patterns and addictions, I’m not aiming for behavior modification. I’m not interested in getting you to just change your behavior. I do want what’s best for you, and if you have a behavior that is causing you harm, then I do want you to stop harming yourself. But, as I’ve mentioned before, life is not about following the rules or “being good.” It’s about what you believe.
But what you believe and how you behave are inextricably linked. Your behavior always follows your beliefs. Here’s what I mean: if you do something—anything—it is because you believe that thing will bring you life. You believe that doing it will somehow make you happier than if you did not do it. And if you choose not to do something, it’s because you believe it will not bring you life.
For example, we all believe that touching a hot stove will bring us pain. That red glow or blue flame might look nice, but it will not bring happiness if we touch it. Some of us learned that the hard way, as kids, by touching a hot stove and experiencing the pain firsthand. But some of us did not. Some of us were warned by our parents that it would be painful, and because we trusted our parents and knew that they had our best interests in mind, we believed them. Whether through experience or through trust, we believe that touching a hot stove will bring us pain. So we don’t do it. In fact, you couldn’t pay me to touch a hot stove. If you tried to make me do it, you’d have to be bigger and stronger than I was, because I’d fight you to keep from having to touch it. My behavior in regard to the stove is completely determined by my belief.
My behavior in regard to chocolate was, for most of my life, the opposite. I always went for the chocolate. I never avoided it. That’s because I believed that eating chocolate would bring me joy. And it typically did—in the short term. But once I learned that my behavior in regard to sweets was not going to improve my life long-term—that it actually might end my life if I ate too much of it—my behavior changed. If I believe that something will harm me and rob me of long-term joy, my behavior will change as a result of that belief.
As Christians, we say that we trust God and believe in his promises. However, our actions sometimes show otherwise. We do things that God clearly says are bad for us, or fail to do things that he asks us to do. This doesn’t necessarily mean we don’t believe in or trust God, but it does show we’re not believing him in that moment or trusting him in that area of our lives. We know God says it will be better for us to abstain from that particular sin, but we don’t believe that’s actually true. We think he’s holding out on us. We see God as some kind of cosmic killjoy who is trying to keep us from having fun.
Not only is this not true, it’s actually the opposite of the truth: what God wants for us is the most joy and the least pain. That’s why he warns us away from certain actions and encourages us to do other things instead. But since the beginning, Satan’s MO has been to convince us that God doesn’t have our best interests in mind and that God is preventing us from having what we want. It’s the way the enemy usually works, not through obvious acts of ugly evil but through little whispers of “It’s not really bad for you,” or “It’s no big deal if you do it this once,” or “You’ve already done it once, so you might as well do it again.”
Similar to the battle against worry, the solution is to combat these little lies with the truth, trusting that God really does know what’s best for you.
After trusting in Christ in my twenties, there were a lot of changes I needed to make in my life and a lot of bad habits I had to break. It seemed like a huge challenge at first. But then I started doing something really simple: every time I faced a decision about what to do, I would ask myself, What does God have to say about this? And then I would do what he said. I would trust that God knew what was best for me. It was a nearly constant conversation with myself. If I had a desire to look at pornography, I’d ask what God had to say about that. He says no pornography? OK, then I won’t do that. A buddy wants to hang out and have a few drinks. What does God have to say about that? He doesn’t say that it’s wrong to drink alcohol, but he does say in the Bible that you shouldn’t get drunk. OK, so I might have one drink, if I want, but I’ll stop at one. And so on and so forth. Every decision, every day. It might sound exhausting, but it was actually quite freeing. I didn’t have to wrestle over decisions of what I was going to do or how I was going to handle different situations. I just trusted in God and did what he said.
I quickly realized that, in the vast majority of decisions, God gives us the freedom to do what we want. Following him is not restrictive. It frees us from the consequences and the bondage that can come from listening to the enemy’s lies.
Freedom from Addiction
There’s a difference between changing a habit and breaking an addiction.
Oftentimes, people sin because they want the freedom to do what they want, regardless of whether it’s right or wrong. However, one of the consequences of repeated sin is that it can rob you of that freedom. That’s what happens with addiction: your mind and body become hardwired to behave in a certain way. You may decide you no longer want to use that drug or lust after those images or gamble away your paycheck, only to discover you no longer have the ability to say no. You’ve become an addict. You hate yourself for doing it, you know it’s ruining your life, and yet you still can’t stop.
There is hope for you, but you’re going to need some help—more help than I can provide in this book. You’ve already proven, over and over, that you can’t change on your own. You’re not alone; many millions of people are in the same situation. There’s no shame in getting help. But where can help be found?
As I’ve mentioned, my friend John helps run the re:generation recovery ministry at my church, and there are re:generation groups at a number of churches around the country. Celebrate Recovery is a very similar ministry and is far more common; odds are, you can find a Celebrate Recovery group somewhere in your city. I highly recommend either of them. If you don’t know where to start, start there. Google them and see what’s available in your area.
The important thing is that you go. Don’t try to white-knuckle this on your own, thinking that this time is going to be different than the last 1,792 times that you’ve failed. Don’t go at it alone. Invite your small group in to fight with you. Remember chapter 6? Get help. Find freedom.
It won’t be an overnight change. It’s probably taken you years to get to this point, so don’t expect an immediate fix. Going through the twelve steps usually takes a year or more, so be prepared for that. But it’s worth it. It’s a matter of life and death: death from sin or true life through Christ.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I [Jesus] have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10)
Choose to live life to the fullest. You’ll never regret it.