Dealing With Drug And Alcohol Addiction

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May 24, 2017

Pastor's Jeff Durbin and Luke Pierson took over the broadcast today. Jeff and Luke are the Elders at Apologia Church. Apologia Church was born out of a hospital that specialized in addiction. They share a bit of the history and talk about a biblical approach to addiction. For more, go to http://apologiastudios.com .

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00:35: Hi folks, welcome to another edition of The Dividing Line. I'm trying my best to make this comfortable for everybody that's saying what is happening right now.
00:44: That's how he opens up, right? It's hi folks. Is that right? What does he say? Rich, what is it? Isn't it like, how does
00:50: Dr. White do it? He's like, howdy folks, or how, maybe that's just how I imagine it. Good afternoon, folks.
00:56: I think he says, what up? Welcome to another edition of The Dividing Line. I'm Jeff Durbin. Not David, not.
01:03: David Bowie. David Bowie. I'm not James White. I'm here today with Pastor Luke.
01:09: We're the pastors and elders at Apologia Church in Tempe, Arizona, and we're here for another edition of The Dividing Line, and we're going to do a special show today on addiction.
01:19: You get an opportunity to take over The Dividing Line. What do you do? I mean, this is Dr. White's seat.
01:24: This has been the place where Dr. White has communicated with people from all over the world, and so much has happened in this spot.
01:31: And what do you do? I can't match Dr. White's intellect and his, what do you do?
01:38: Shiny head. His shiny head? Yeah. Can't match it. Can't match it. Can't do it. So what do you do?
01:43: And I thought, well, let's do something that would be beneficial for the church, for people who watch this. So we're doing something on addiction.
01:51: Pastor Luke and I planted a church years ago, just had our seventh birthday at Apologia Church, planted it out of a drug and alcohol rehab facility, a hospital, actually.
02:01: Yeah. And so we've been through a lot. We thought maybe we could share some of those experiences with you and hopefully give you something that would be beneficial.
02:08: Maybe if you're struggling with addiction, this will help you. And if maybe you're a pastor of a church or a leader in a church and you're considering an addiction ministry or ministry in the area of addiction or your church, maybe this will bless you.
02:20: We hope so. We hope so. But of course, before we do, we're in The Dividing Line studio right now.
02:28: I made it into the bunker, made it through security. That's right. Made it through security. This place is blockaded like you don't even know.
02:34: And underground. Dr. White is on the other side of the planet right now. And so what's amazing,
02:40: Dr. White, is that right now I can do anything in here I want and you have no ability to stop me.
02:47: So let's figure out. Let's, let's do it. I mean, this is what everyone wants to see. What is happening inside here? So first and foremost,
02:53: I want to point out to you that we have, of course, Dave Hunts, What Love Is This?
02:59: Oh. What Love Is This? This is the paperback edition. I actually had a copy of this as well.
03:04: But it's not enough for Dr. White to have just one copy of What Love Is This? Of course, we also need the hardback edition.
03:12: This is actually a nice little cover right here. That'll sell a book right there. What Love Is This? Why is that so much thicker than the paperback?
03:18: It's updated and expanded. Oh. This might be after maybe had some interaction with Dr. White. If you guys don't know about that interaction, you should get on it.
03:25: I know that a lot of that stuff is up on YouTube. You can listen to some of the interaction. I was listening live to the original interaction that Dr.
03:34: White had with Dave Hunt on KPXQ. Right? That's where it was. I was listening live.
03:39: Wow. Yeah. There was a time where you knew someone was going to be on. You had to be there in front of the radio and tell everyone to hush. And yeah,
03:46: I was listening live and that happened. It was an amazing experience. So What Love Is This? Dave Hunt. So that's what's happening over here.
03:51: All kinds of interesting books over here. The Other Side of Calvinism. What else?
03:57: So you saw the four copies of The Kingdom of the Colts, which is ridiculous. You need all four, but apparently.
04:03: So you know, before we do the show today, let's do something and let's see, Pastor Luke, how long it lasts in the studio.
04:11: Let's do something in here and let's see how long it actually stays a part of the dividing line.
04:18: So what we thought we would do is... What's that? What? Look in the corner.
04:24: This? The very corner. Oh, who's that from? It's Doc from the...
04:34: What is it? From one of the seven dwarfs. It's one of the seven dwarfs. Snow White. And there's a book.
04:39: It says read the Bible. Okay, that's good. How long has that been there for? Since day one.
04:45: Since day one. Okay. So Dr. White and I, and of course, Rich, have had a long relationship.
04:52: We've known each other for a long time and have a very special relationship with Dr. White. He's had so much of an impact on me personally, on us, on our ministry.
05:01: And yeah, we love him and we love Rich and we're grateful for this ministry. So we thought, Dr. White, what does he love?
05:07: He loves riding bikes. He loves to ride bikes. He's insane, actually. Yes, this is true. He's crazy.
05:13: He's a little bit crazy. He knows a lot about God. He loves Jesus and he loves to defend the faith. But he's just a little bit crazy.
05:19: Just a little bit. Anybody that gets up at three o 'clock in the morning to ride their bicycle... For any reason at all. For any reason, really.
05:25: First of all. He's right, you know. Any reason, you're crazy. But then to do it in Phoenix when it's like super hot in the desert, something is a little bit off.
05:36: But all of us have something like that. So he loves to ride bikes and we love him.
05:42: I think he loves us. I think he does. And I thought we... This is pretty awesome.
05:48: We thought we would give you a gift, Dr. White. And this gift right here is a picture.
05:54: That's a real picture, by the way. Yeah, Marcus took that. Marcus Pittman. Right. Do you remember this,
05:59: Dr. White, when we did this? Yeah. So we... I think it was in Brussels, wasn't it? I don't know. Somewhere.
06:05: Tandem in Brussels. This is a picture of Dr. White and I riding a tandem bicycle.
06:12: And man, those legs. Wow. And wow. So there you go. So that's Dr. White and I riding a bicycle.
06:19: I'm very excited. You can tell from my face. I'm very excited. You can tell he's doing all the work. Dr. White is very disciplined.
06:25: He's just... He's there to do business. He's really what it is. He's just along for the ride. He's just there to do business. And so that's...
06:31: We're gonna leave this as a special gift for you, Dr. White. Where should we put this?
06:36: Set it up behind you so it's always in the camera. That's right. Set it up on the books. Put it to where everyone can see it and we'll see how long it lasts in the studio.
06:44: That's pretty good. There you go. There you go. We'll see how long that lasts.
06:51: Probably not very long, I'd imagine. So now we've had our moment.
06:57: We've left our piece and now let's give you guys an enjoyable show. So we wanted to talk about drug and alcohol addiction.
07:06: It's a complex issue. It involves the physical aspect of our being.
07:12: It involves, of course, a spiritual aspect of our being and what tends to take place as people approach this issue is they tend to focus on one or the other.
07:24: So one becomes the emphasis over the other. That's generally what tends to take place. So you sometimes have people who are believers.
07:32: They love God. They know the gospel. They try to address the issue of addiction. They address spiritual aspects of addiction, idolatry, drunkenness as sin, the need for repentance and faith, the need for regeneration, forgiveness, reconciliation with God, sanctification, the local church.
07:48: And I'll emphasize those things, but sometimes neglect the physical aspects of addiction, the toxicity that exists and those sorts of things.
07:57: And then what generally takes place in the industry, and believe me, it is an industry, what tends to take place in the secular industry of addiction is people focus in upon an unbiblical anthropology.
08:12: There is a totally contradictory worldview, a worldview that is in many, many respects opposed to Christ.
08:18: I mean, really in every respect opposed to Christ. So you have an anthropology that is based upon an evolutionary worldview, a
08:28: Darwinian model. I can remember being at the hospital and every month they would have new people coming in constantly but they ran them through like a 30 -day cycle.
08:38: And I remember that once a month, if you came there for the 30 -day program, you had to watch a film and the film is a very popular film.
08:47: Oh man, the name of it is, leave me at the moment, I think it's Weaving the
08:52: Rainbow or Unweaving the Rainbow or something like that. And the entire thing is meant to convince people that the problem of addiction is that it is a disease.
09:02: So they teach the disease model primarily and that the reason we have this problem of addiction is because of our evolutionary past.
09:09: It has to do with reward centers in our brains and it's not really a choice you're making, it's a disease which leads to that.
09:17: And so what tends to take place is as families drop their loved ones off in this hospital, they end up having a meeting where they're convinced that what's wrong with their loved one is that they have the disease of addiction and what they're doing is not really ultimately their fault.
09:34: It's a disease. And you've got to really sympathize with the disease and work on the disease and they'll say things like, you have the disease of addiction, you're never not going to be an addict, you'll always be an addict because, well, those are the cards you've been dealt, those sorts of things.
09:46: But what'll tend to take place is they focus in upon the physical aspect of addiction and completely neglect the spiritual aspect.
09:55: And of course, if you're not approaching it from a Christian position, you're not focusing in upon the word of God, you're not focusing in upon the gospel, those sorts of things.
10:02: And so the industry works like that. You have Christian programs that sometimes neglect the physical aspects of addiction and you actually have secular programs that, of course, divorce it all completely from Jesus and the biblical worldview.
10:14: So how do you address the issue? And I want to say that I never personally planned to go into this ministry.
10:27: Luke and I met many years ago and we were doing ministry and we were involved in ministry together at a church, pastoral work, that sort of a thing, but never really saw this coming.
10:43: And so this was really a shock, I think, both to Luke and me. I was pastoring at a church in Phoenix and I got a call from a friend of mine who was working at this hospital.
10:54: I didn't know the hospital existed. I was actually at the time looking to move across country.
11:01: I had gone through like a year -long search committee process. I was going to move across the country to take a job as a pastor in South Carolina.
11:09: And I had gotten a call from a friend of mine who was an employee at this hospital and he said they lost their chaplain, they lost their pastor, and they needed someone to come teach chapel that night.
11:19: And for me, it was an awesome opportunity because I didn't know it existed, but I thought I get to tell people in a room about Jesus and none of them can leave.
11:27: Okay, that's great. I'll do it. So I went to the hospital that night, no plan, no plans of anything else except just going to preach the gospel that night.
11:36: And so I go to preach the gospel to a room of people that were just like me. Some of you guys know my past, oh, how many years ago now, 17, almost 20 years ago,
11:48: I was a professing Christian. I went into drug and alcohol addiction and just a complete life of depravity and brokenness, almost died numerous times.
11:58: But God smashed my life and brought me to repentance. And that's where I know that I truly came to Christ then, turned from my sin to trust in Christ and really began to experience the change that takes place when you know
12:12: Jesus. So at any rate, when all that took place in my life, I knew enough about God's Word to understand that the problem of addiction was fundamentally spiritual, fundamentally.
12:24: And I knew that my need was transformation. I knew my need was the Word of God. I knew my need was the church.
12:30: I knew that I need to have my mind renewed. And so that took place in my own life personally.
12:35: I never thought to go to AA, NA, HA. I knew that existed, never thought to go, because I knew that God's Word had the answers and I knew that God had promised that He restores people.
12:47: And so that was many, many years ago. So when this came up and this opportunity was presented before me and I preached the gospel this night to this room of people,
12:55: I saw people come to Christ that night. And I remember that I was essentially thinking in my mind,
13:00: I'm on my way across the country. I'm leaving. I've already been selected. It's a unanimous vote from the search committee.
13:08: You're the guy. We had boxed my entire house up down to, I mean, everything, forks and knives were boxed up and we were ready to basically make the phone call and say, send the truck and get us the tickets.
13:21: And through some circumstances that happened at the church I was at, they needed me to stay essentially to carry this church.
13:30: And it ended up that this hospital asked me to take over the
13:35: Christian program. They had a Christian program and a secular program, and they said, we want you to run the entire thing.
13:41: You have full control to do what you want. Make it a Christian program. And so it became really clear that God was leading me to do this.
13:48: And so I did. Luke was there the whole time. And I don't know how,
13:55: I can't even recollect or recall how long that was for. I was there before the
14:02: Lord was really showing us. At Calvary? Yeah. How many was it? Maybe two years? Was it a year?
14:08: Maybe it was a year. Probably a year. And by the time we planned the church it was like two years. Right.
14:14: Yeah. I think, yeah. So, I minister at this hospital while I'm also the pastor at a church in Phoenix.
14:21: The church is growing and it's flourishing and doing well. I was also ministering at the hospital.
14:28: And so many people were coming to Christ at that hospital. Many of them were going back home to like New York, Florida, I mean all over the country.
14:36: People came every day. People came from around the country. If you looked up on Google, Christian rehab program or something like that, it was one of the first ones that came up.
14:44: So, it was a popular program. They were making a lot of money. And so what happened was we started seeing that when we would try to send these people to churches across the country, we would call a pastor and say, hey, this person just came to Christ here.
14:58: I'm sending them home. I want them to meet with you. And I kept getting like consistently from pastors across the country, what do
15:07: I do with them? Like, that was the thing. And I remember telling Luke about this.
15:12: These pastors would say, what do I do with them? I'd say, well, they were a heroin addict. They turned to Christ now. They've been here for 30 days.
15:18: Now they're coming home. They can disciple them. Disciple them. It's nothing special. Like, you know, disciple.
15:23: And they'd say, what do I, I don't know what to do. Or we would run into this. This was common.
15:29: They would say, yeah, we have an addiction program at our church that meets on Wednesdays. I'd say, great. What is it?
15:34: And they would say, oh, we have an AA group that meets here. And so what I knew at the time about AA being at this hospital, that worried me.
15:43: And so I would usually say, well, like a celebrate recovery program. And they would say, no, no, like the
15:49: AA group meets here on Wednesdays. So this is like a secular run AA group.
15:55: And what we started seeing was that even locally trying to send people away to churches, people said,
16:00: I don't know how to handle it. Or I have an AA group. But we're like, well, where's the Christian programs? And where's the people who just understand the nature of this?
16:08: And so through a long course of events, God started to make it really, really clear to both Luke and I that he was calling us to plant a church.
16:15: It was terrifying. Because we tried to resist it for,
16:22: I don't know, it was probably like six or seven months of resistance. At least six or seven months, because we never had any plan for that.
16:27: We never had anything in our sights of we're going to plant a church one day. We just wanted to be faithful, serve God. And what happened was people started coming into our lives and telling us, pastors, seminary professors that knew me saying, you have to plant this church, you're supposed to plant this church.
16:43: And I had a pastor that knows us both very well call me one day and said, Jeff, if you don't plant this church, it's sinning against God. He's making it obvious to you.
16:50: So Pastor Luke and I began to put our fleece out before the Lord. So we started throwing out things before God, Lord, if you're in this, we're not forcing it.
16:58: If you're in it, you got to give us this. And he would give it to us. We'd say, okay, one more thing, Lord. This one, he'd give us that. We got down the list to let last thing.
17:05: We needed a location for free as many times a week as we wanted. And then God gave us that at the hospital.
17:11: So we planted the church end of February, 2010, 2010, and we planted the church from basically zero.
17:22: It was Luke and Cheryl, my pregnant wife. Yeah, she was pregnant with his first child. Right.
17:27: At the same time, it was me, my wife and my four kids. Joy. Joy. Joy was with us.
17:32: And that was it. Joy the girl. What's that? I said Joy the girl. Joy the girl. She was with us since the very beginning. And that night we had the room filled with a bunch of ex -drug addicts.
17:42: People who were just, had just overdosed not long before that. People still on medication, detoxification medication.
17:49: And so the first two years of Apologia Church were, wow, difficult, really, really rough.
17:59: So go ahead. I'll let you talk about that. Maybe talk about the experience we had as pastors. Man, it was a couple of things.
18:04: Well, first, I mean, we'd have times where we were literally out chasing people at two o 'clock in the morning.
18:10: We knew the block they were on, essentially, and trying to find them because they had been using it and didn't know if they were alive, you know, stuff like that.
18:18: So that happened a lot. We learned a lot, too, just, I think, specifically speaking about how to help people through addictions.
18:27: We learned the importance of being concrete about things with people with addictions.
18:36: We learned just the importance of accountability. And we learned that, essentially, you can't make someone stop using.
18:49: Like you can't be, as much as we wanted to and tried, you cannot be the Holy Spirit in someone's life.
18:55: Ultimately, they have to want to stop using, and it only comes through the gospel, through the power of the
19:02: Holy Spirit. And so those were probably the big things we learned the first two years. Yeah, the first two years of our lives was all day, every day, around the clock.
19:11: And Luke's not, he's not telling tales out of the schoolyard. We used to literally be chasing people.
19:18: We'd find out someone that was maybe new to the church had gone back, and we would literally try to go find them, because these are people that were at risk to kill themselves.
19:26: They would use so much they would die. We would be scooping people off the street at two in the morning.
19:31: We'd taken people to the hospital on, I can't even remember how many times that took place.
19:38: And all this took place, and the reason why I tell you this, not to just sort of tell you the sad story, but to tell you really the victorious nature of it all.
19:46: We had, we had people who were new to Christ that had never been to church in their lives that were in these, this tight community of faith in Jesus that loved
19:59: God, loved each other, were experiencing transformation in ways that nobody thought was possible.
20:04: We had people, I mean, we were known early on as that drug church. That's how people called, oh, that drug church?
20:11: Because everybody at Apologia came out of drug and alcohol addiction. So we had like, you know, like 30, 50 people and all of them really, really close to one another and all with a deep understanding of the struggle that they were having.
20:25: And really just a glorious, the glorious moment of it all. What made it so beautiful is these people were literally people that had been to rehab some of them like five to 10 times, and now they're in Christ and they hate their addiction.
20:40: They love God. They're wanting to just follow Christ with their lives. It was beautiful seeing people,
20:46: I mean, you come to Apologia, and maybe to some of you guys who look crazy right now, he's covered in tattoos.
20:51: I've got tattoos. You come to Apologia church, people be covered in tattoos and gauges and they've torn jeans and they're worshiping
21:00: Jesus and love God and they're preaching the gospel to people and they do not look like a Christian, like they don't look like it.
21:08: And it was awesome, awesome. And I would say like, the beauty of like where we're at now as a church is that God so sanctified those people and this church that if you were to walk in on a
21:21: Sunday today, if nobody told you where we came from, if nobody shared the story, you wouldn't know.
21:28: You come into the church now and it's just filled with like 200 people and there's families now with children that actually came to being because of this church.
21:40: I mean, like kids everywhere, there is people, you know, older people, younger people, people who wear those same clothes, people who are wearing suits and ties.
21:49: It's just such a mix and you just wouldn't know. Like this church came to life out of an addiction context.
21:57: And so, it's amazing. Do you want to share anything else about kind of that, what it was like or? Oh, man.
22:04: Well, I will say, I will share this story. One of the things that was interesting is that Luke and I, we were with the church like all week, every day.
22:13: I mean, it was Bible studies all throughout the week. There was time to get together. There was prayer nights, like everybody who would like come to Christ and was really fresh in the struggle of sanctification would like gather together with the church on a
22:25: Friday night where they would stay up all night just fellowshipping in the word, praying to like,
22:31: I would get up and I would see them sharing pictures of like the sun coming up and they're like still not in bed yet.
22:37: They were just up all night rather than using the drugs and alcohol. They were like fellowshipping and worshipping with God's people and they were loving it.
22:45: It was just, it was amazing. But we also had like these experiences of like really sincere accountability.
22:53: Like you know, you're in Christ now. We treated him like anybody else. Nothing special about your addiction. Like this is a sin.
22:59: Don't pursue it. You need to be accountable. You need to confess your sins. You need to be healed. And we had, we had breathalyzers.
23:09: I still have it. You still have it? In my bag. Is it in your bag right now? You want to show it? Just, just to show them the history of apologia.
23:17: We have a, he still, he still carries it with him. Because of the nature of our church and the people coming in, we're usually raw.
23:26: Like they just turned to Christ at the hospital and now they're coming, now they're out, they're going to church. We couldn't have people coming to church like drunk or under the influence in any way.
23:38: And so we would, we would be checking people at the door and we wouldn't say, come here, let me smell you.
23:44: But we knew, we knew, we could tell, we could see it in their eyes. I could look right in their pupils and know exactly if they were using and what they were using and Luke and I just knew.
23:54: So we'd say, hey, we need to talk to such and such. We would pull them aside and forget even how to use it. Right there.
23:59: They'd blow right into this and we'd show it to them. And so there's Apologia's breathalyzer.
24:06: Pete Yeah, we had some pretty hefty numbers on there at times. All over the legal limit. So we also had, we had sort of this tradition as, as a church where we had so many people that were new in Christ and really experiencing sanctification.
24:24: So they're being, you know, as a new Christian that's coming out of this fresh, you have these, you're torn from side to side on the, on the one hand, like, you know,
24:33: God is, is causing you to love him and love his word and, and to desire fellowship. And so you just see this glorious moments of like worship of Jesus, right?
24:42: But then all of a sudden they have a bad moment. Like they're experiencing anxiety, depression, loneliness, all these things.
24:47: And they're used to going to the idol for those things to be satisfied. But now like they're struggling.
24:53: So they would come to church and I don't know how many drugs you held in your hand, but people would come and they'd say,
25:00: Hey, Pastor Jeff, I almost used again. I went out and bought, I forget what it was at one time, like 50 tabs of ecstasy or something like 50 or 25 tabs of ecstasy, which by the way, was my drug of choice almost 20 years ago.
25:15: And they would come and say, here's, here's, you know, I bought all these tabs of ecstasy. I don't know what to do.
25:20: I almost sinned. Help me with this. So we had this tradition where people can come in, you can be transparent.
25:25: Like you would come to Apologia Church and, and somebody would be coming to the pastors with like a bag of heroin saying,
25:33: I almost went back. And we'd, we'd say, awesome. Like there was this, you were, it's, it's, it's okay for you to be transparent and honest with your sin and your struggle and to want to repent.
25:47: And so we would have a tradition where people would, you know, give us their drugs and we would walk to the bathroom together.
25:55: We always had accountability. It was always, you know, making sure that there was somebody there to watch and as an act of worship, to worship
26:01: Jesus now, instead of this idol, we would go to the bathroom and we would have a little worship ceremony where they would dump it in the toilet and flush it as an act of worship to God.
26:14: So all of this to sort of train ourselves in, this is an act of worship. If you go to the heroin right now, if you go to the alcohol, if you go to the pills, if you go to the weed, you are worshiping, you are engaging in idolatry.
26:27: You are going to that for what you can only have satisfied in Jesus. And that was the context.
26:34: And so we would, we would do it as an act of worship. We're going to dump this so that you can pursue Christ for these things right now, rather than this idol.
26:41: And those are some of the most amazing experiences for me personally is seeing those victories in people's lives.
26:50: So before, before I go into, let's, well, let's talk about addiction, you know, in the church and those sorts of things.
26:55: Anything you want to share in terms of the whole experience? Lots of church discipline. Oh yes. Yeah. We've had,
27:01: I've lost, I don't know, 12, 15 maybe over the years of people we've had to bring before the church.
27:08: And so we always, you would tell the story, it was that one night, there was like three people one night. I think we had like seven people in the first two years or something like that.
27:15: Yeah. So, but two or two of those people, three of those people have come back and repented and... Yeah. Oh, that one night.
27:21: Just that one night. Oh, that one. Yeah. Just that one night. Just that one night. Yeah. So yeah, we, it was really, it was sanctifying for all of us.
27:29: They were being sanctified. Pastor Luke and I were being sanctified as pastors because God was, was really testing us as ministers because we've got this new church that's doing so well.
27:40: It's doing so well. And we're experiencing the blessing of seeing God work in these people. And then all of a sudden, like somebody would, who's professing faith in Jesus would go off and they would start using again or drinking heavily again and abusing alcohol.
27:54: And what we would always try to do is we would always try to restore them with the spirit of gentleness. We'd always try to restore them and help them.
28:00: So we would plead with them, we would call into repentance, we would offer them whatever they needed. And if they still wouldn't turn, we would even give them up to the last moment before we started worship.
28:10: We would call them and say, please don't, please don't make us do this. Please come back. And one night
28:16: I remember, I think Luke, the church was only about 30 people, real tight community.
28:23: I mean, it was, it was amazing. And we had three people to discipline that night. And these were people who were like, they were, they were very important in the church.
28:32: They were very important in the church. And I remember like, Pastor Luke and I talked before church and we, we committed that night.
28:39: Look, if God wanted to do this just for this, and he's going to, he's going to kill the church now, okay, but we're going to be faithful and we're going to do this.
28:49: And we had, we had to do the first one. We brought them, we brought it before the church and the church was in tears.
28:55: I mean, the church is just like, you know, crying and we're crying. And as soon as this horrible experience is over,
29:01: I'm like, okay, now I have to talk to you about another one. And then it was the next one and then the next one. So, but what
29:07: God ended up doing after that night is we thought it was going to hurt us as a church, but it ended up growing us as a church.
29:15: The church came back that next week, stronger than ever, more committed to Christ, more committed to holiness.
29:21: It was an amazing experience. We have a lot, we could just do whole episodes here on just this, but Luke and I thought we would do an episode on addiction and talk about how do we, how do we think about this and how do we move forward?
29:37: So the first thing is what we would want to always share with people when we talk about addiction is that you're not special, you're not special.
29:46: Jesus didn't have like separate messages for particular sins.
29:51: So like, you know, the Sermon on the Mount begins, Jesus doesn't let, you know, sit down and begin teaching and then before he does go, okay, now all my adulterers sit over here, all my liars sit over here, all my drunks sit over here, all the thieves, you guys sit over there.
30:08: He didn't have separate messages. He had a message, the message of the gospel that saves sinners and he didn't break people down into little huddles saying, well, you're very, very special and you require a totally unique message.
30:20: It's the same message and the problem of addiction from our perspective is fundamentally spiritual with physical consequences, but fundamentally spiritual and the problem of addiction is at its bottom, sin, rebellion against God, but it is first and foremost in terms of what's happening there, it's idolatry.
30:41: And what we like to do is we like to go to Romans chapter one for a lot of reasons when we're dealing with generally the gospel or talking about atheists who suppress the truth of God or all of us who suppress the truth of God, what we like to do is talk about addiction in terms of our primary problem as fallen people.
30:58: And what is it? We know the true God, but we don't want him. And what does it say? It says we suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness,
31:05: Romans 1, 18, and it says we know him, he's made himself evident to us, the creation itself is bombarding us with testimony about who
31:15: God is. You can't avoid it. It's just unavoidable. You can't help being what God made you to be.
31:21: But what we end up doing, what our MO is as fallen creatures is knowing the true God, Paul says, we profess to be wise, we become fools.
31:30: And it says we don't want God in our knowledge. We don't want to know him. And so what do we do? We switch
31:35: God, the true God, the creator of all things for a false
31:41: God. So the fundamental problem, and Calvin says this, Calvin says that the human heart is a natural idol -making factory, and it is never idle in making idols.
31:52: And so the problem of addiction and drugs and alcohol is not the disease of addiction, it is really sin and the switching of God for idols.
32:02: So for example, when we would look at an issue like, I'll take this as a great example, whenever I would talk to heroin users,
32:09: I would generally understand the heroin user what their great struggle is.
32:15: They would generally struggle with peace. They have no peace, there's anxiety in their lives, there's worry in their lives, and so they generally are choosing the heroin because it gives them this pseudo -peace, this false peace that is just so temporary and it's just fleeting, but they would go to the heroin for that, generally.
32:38: People who love to get lost in a bottle and to abuse alcohol, drunks, they would usually have the same story, not always, but they would usually have the same story.
32:48: They would say, you know, I feel really guilty, they're trying to wash something away that couldn't be washed away except through Jesus.
32:57: They struggle with guilt and shame, they're trying to forget, and so they would go drink.
33:02: Or somebody who was, well, like myself, addicted to ecstasy and those sorts of things is a person who usually has a lack of joy.
33:11: They're just not happy. They're depressed, they're not happy, they feel sad, they want joy, and so they're off chasing that idol to really get what they can only have in God, but they don't want
33:21: God because they're at war with Him, so they switch God for the idol. So we would try to emphasize is the problem is fundamentally spiritual.
33:28: It's rebellion against a holy God, and it's a switching of God for idols.
33:33: Now often, the switching of God for idols is pretty dramatic in terms of, we can look at religion, and we can say,
33:41: I can spot that switching of God, I get that. Joseph Smith didn't like the God of the
33:46: Bible, and so Joseph Smith created a God in his own image. He created a God that he could understand, the kind of God that looked like him, that he could like.
33:55: So we can go, okay, that's dramatic. I see that religious suppression, that switching of God for idols, because here's the religious text, here's the building, the temple, here are the prophets.
34:07: I see the switching of gods. But sometimes Romans 1 and the switching of God for idols is a little harder to see.
34:15: It's not so much on the surface, like addiction to drugs and alcohol. It's a switching of God for an idol.
34:24: It's trying to get in this substance, this thing which you can only have ultimately satisfied in God.
34:31: Anything you want to say to that? Well, yeah, I mean, a lot of the people that actually came through Apology early on, through the rehab, like you mentioned earlier, people that had gone through rehab time after time after time, and we'll get,
34:49: I know, I see you have AA, we'll get into that and stuff. But ultimately, if you're not replacing that idolatry with Christ, with the gospel, it doesn't work.
35:01: It doesn't do anything. It's like you said, just switching for another idol. And so I've lost count of people that had gone through rehabs or gone through AA, HA, you name it, dozens of times and never worked.
35:16: And they kept ending up in the same spot until they repented and turned to Christ and everything changed from there.
35:23: Yes. And so that's ultimately the answer to addictions is the gospel. That's right. That's right. And so I want to address,
35:30: I mentioned at the beginning that people will go two directions, right? So the unbelievers will go strictly physical, right?
35:36: It's a physical problem. They have an unbelieving Darwinian anthropology, right?
35:43: And so the problem is a disease model. It's something, you know, gone wrong in your brain.
35:49: So we maybe need to give some medication for that. And they're dealing with those aspects. And then sometimes
35:54: Christians even will neglect the physical aspects like you need to make sure we highlight that if the problem is fundamentally spiritual, right?
36:05: You're switching God for idols. It doesn't mean there's not now physical consequences that come with the sin, right?
36:12: It's a package deal. A great example of this is imagine the person who struggles with the spiritual problem of worry.
36:21: Now, Jesus addresses that in the Sermon on the Mount. He commands us people do not worry, and he gives them reasons as to why.
36:27: So it's a command. Do not be anxious about your life. Well, people that struggle with anxiety, they're constantly worried.
36:35: They go into panic attacks, those sorts of things. It's a spiritual problem of not believing who God is, not trusting in God, not trusting in God's governance of the world, not trusting in God's providence, not trusting in God's provision.
36:48: And so what happens is a person that is fully embracing that anxiety and worry, well, that's a spiritual problem.
36:58: You can't solve that with a pill. You won't actually completely solve that with a pill.
37:04: You might be able to bandaid it for a moment, but you can't solve the problem of anxiety and worry. That's a worldview problem.
37:11: That's a new heart kind of problem. But the person that struggles with the worry and anxiety all the time, guess what?
37:18: That spiritual problem impacts them physiologically. So you have people that actually have high blood pressure, right?
37:26: They go into panic attacks and fits. They can pass out. They can have blackouts because they have these panic attacks on a regular basis.
37:34: And where's it come from? Oh, it's all physical, right? You just have this physical... No, no. You're worried about something.
37:40: You're not seeing the world the way that God says that it is. You're not seeing him the way that he says that he is, but you see a spiritual condition that leads to a physiological problem as well.
37:51: You see, we're not just spiritual beings. We're also physical beings and there's impact one way to the other.
37:57: And so with the issue of addiction, the problem isn't first and foremost physical.
38:04: The problem is first and foremost what the Bible says about our condition. And so what will happen though, is that once a person goes down that road of switching
38:15: God for the idol, say with say any number of people that we would minister to, like I think
38:21: I told you that one time I was talking to that guy that would drink, he was drinking 40 beers a day.
38:28: He was drinking 40 beers a day for something like 10 years. I mean, this guy was yellow.
38:33: I mean, yellow. His liver was destroyed. His eyes were yellow. He's yellow. When you get into that situation, the spiritual problem is now led into a very disastrous physical problem.
38:45: And there's an issue of toxicity. And what you can't do as a Christian, this is simply wrong.
38:51: You can't say, well, you just need to repent of your sin, but you just need to repent of your sin.
38:58: I'm sorry. This thing is complicated and yes, God can open the heart and eyes.
39:06: Yes, God can regenerate. But you know what you also need? You need to consider what the pastors like 200 years ago considered.
39:15: By the way, I just want to say this, go look into this. The term alcoholic, we use that often.
39:21: Christians, we use that term a lot in our culture. Christians use the term alcoholic because it's a popular word in our culture.
39:29: We use the term alcoholic. A lot of people don't realize that the term alcoholic was actually coined not long ago, and it was coined to get away from the model of spiritual problem, choice.
39:41: It's a moral issue. The biblical worldview way, alcoholic was coined to point to the disease model.
39:49: So it was to move away from a biblical model to a disease model, right? It's a disease issue.
39:56: You have the disease of addiction. But at any rate, back around that time when pastors had ministries dealing with drunks and people who were addicted to drugs and alcohol, those sorts of things, they understood that you can't simply tell a person who's been drinking 40 beers a day, just repent and believe the gospel because he might.
40:17: God does that. He might repent and believe the gospel and then die in 24 hours because you say, you just need to repent and believe the gospel and then go cold turkey.
40:28: Well then he's dead because there's a couple things, a couple substances you cannot simply stop.
40:36: You will go into a seizure. You will die. You can't just say, just stop.
40:41: It's dangerous. So for example, some of you guys may have been prescribed before something called a benzodiazepine.
40:49: These are popular in our culture today. You've seen the commercials. Do you have social anxiety? Do you struggle with worry and anxiety?
40:56: Take this pill and then you'll develop, of course, the warnings are the worst. You'll develop a case of the gout and you'll grow a third arm in the middle of your chest and those sorts of things.
41:06: But we prescribe these like Tic Tacs in our culture today and benzodiazepines.
41:13: Well, benzodiazepine is essentially the same chemical effect as alcohol in the brain. It's identical and they're dangerous and if you've ever been prescribed those, you know that it says on the bottle, do not stop taking without your physician, you're consulting your physician.
41:36: So you have to taper down and so I got to do this right now.
41:42: Hang on. Hey, babe, I'm doing the dividing line right now. All right,
41:48: I love you, bye. Okay, sorry. She was going to keep calling until I answered. Totally unprofessional.
41:55: So you notice that on the bottle it says, don't stop taking, you need to taper down because same chemical effect as alcohol.
42:02: You can't stop taking it just immediately. It'll do damage to your heart. You can go into a seizure, you can die. And so there's the physical aspect too where if you have somebody that's drinking like excessively, they're drinking like, you know, like 12 beers a day, they're drinking every day, you know, whatever it is, or benzodiazepines, you have to taper them down.
42:23: So what these pastors used to do is when they were dealing with drunks is they would actually preach the gospel to them, try to disciple them, but they would taper them down with whiskey.
42:32: So these are pastors, ministers of the gospel that are giving drunks shots of whiskey over spaced out over, over periods so that they would bring them down over a period of days so that they wouldn't die.
42:46: So that's one of the things, if you have somebody that you love, or if you personally are struggling with an addiction to benzodiazepine or to alcohol, you'd need medical attention to help you.
43:02: And also, by the way, let me just say this, it's the grace of God. It really is truly a mercy of God to be able to have a place that will taper you down and let you do it comfortably.
43:11: I mean, it's painful. One of the things addicts really struggle with is they don't want to go through the process of that painful.
43:19: Well, I'll give you an example. When some, okay, I want to stress this. There are some drugs that you can stop cold turkey and you won't die.
43:27: You will want to, you will want to die, but you won't die.
43:36: Heroin, methamphetamine, ecstasy, marijuana, especially marijuana is toxic.
43:45: There's not even a protocol, a detox protocol for marijuana. But these are things that you can stop, but it will hurt bad, especially like something like heroin or Percocet, oxycodone, oxycontin, these sorts of things, these painkillers.
44:03: It hurts and people will kick all night. You'll see someone getting off these pills and they'll say,
44:08: I'm doing a cold turkey and they won't sleep for days because they'll be laying in bed and their legs just, they can't stop moving their legs.
44:14: And it's awful. So medical treatments and detoxification is really helpful to deal with the physical aspects while you deal with the spiritual aspects, which are the most important.
44:25: So I just want to stress that if you know somebody that is addicted to a substance right now, you really need to consider getting them first to a place that can do medical detox.
44:39: And can I give you one practical reason as to why? Beyond the, it really is a mercy of God and it just helps them and preserves their life.
44:49: I can tell you about early on, I'd be at the hospital and I'm walking around this hospital and I look younger and I didn't have my beard early on and people would like walk through the hallways.
45:02: They're ticked that they're there. And, you know, young people, I'd be in the cafeteria getting a drink or something and somebody walk up to me like, hey, man,
45:09: I hate this place, man. I hate this place, bro. Right, right. They think I'm like a patient, but I'm like, oh,
45:15: I'm the chaplain. Nice to meet you. I'm like, and they're like, oh, but I would have like two hour conversations with people where I'm just preaching the gospel to them and tell them about Jesus and I'm calling them faith in Jesus.
45:26: And I'd walk away going, that was amazing. Praise God for that opportunity. Like that was seriously amazing.
45:31: People with tears in their eyes, just listening on every word. They're like, oh, pastor, so wonderful. Thank you.
45:37: And I would see him the next day. And I'd say, hey, you want to meet up again today? You want to sit down and talk?
45:42: And they would say, I'm sorry, who are you? I'm like, oh,
45:47: I'm Pastor Jeff. We talked yesterday for like two hours and they would say, huh? Like, trust me, it might be better to get them physically stabilized so that you can actually communicate to them with the gospel.
45:59: Like take out the physical factor. Let's get that out of the way so you can deal with the spiritual issues. So you got to work on those things.
46:06: Right. But don't overemphasize the physical aspect because that's not, you can solve that problem. I have seen people get detoxed over and over.
46:17: I would see them in there seven, eight times over four years full time.
46:22: And they would get the system, they would get the drug out of their system and then they would go back out. They never solved the spiritual issue.
46:27: And so they would go use again. And and that just needs to be considered. And I saw, final word on this,
46:35: I saw a number of people die. I did funerals for people that were in front of me one day and were dead the next.
46:43: And so this is a serious issue that we have to, as the church, really deal with from a biblical perspective.
46:49: I'll let you, you want to say anything? No, let's let's move on to.
46:56: So fundamentally, it's a problem of addiction. The problem of addiction is worship. The call is repentance and faith.
47:03: But what we would always try to stress is the need, the need for discipleship, for the local church.
47:11: So one of the things that got me in trouble at the hospital, and Luke knew about this, we were for four years, we were wondering when
47:18: I was going to get fired. It's true. It's the truth. It's true. Yeah. We were always every week, not week to week, things would be going well, but we'd say,
47:25: I don't know what I'm going to get fired because I get called into the principal's office several times a month, a week sometimes.
47:31: You can't say that Jesus is the only way to go. You can't tell people that they need to repent. You can't tell people this.
47:37: So I would say, well, fire me. And so what we would stress to people is that what's vitally important is when you've turned to Christ in faith and you have now experienced his forgiveness and a new heart and you're now alive from the dead, you absolutely must get plugged into the local body.
48:03: You have to come under the authority of local elders and pastors who can shepherd you, love you, speak into your life.
48:10: You need to be in close community with other brothers and sisters who can encourage you, love you, support you, rebuke you, call you to repentance.
48:22: Luke and I have spent hundreds and thousands of hours in front of people dealing with specific discipleship and counseling, dealing with the issues.
48:35: Why do you use? It's first of all, what are you doing? Sinning, right? The issue is what?
48:41: Like, we don't want to make excuses like, well, why is it? Tell me why. Why is it that you decided to do this? Like, but there's a reason, like a spiritual reason.
48:48: What is it? Loneliness, depression, fear, anxiety, a lack of joy, you know, those sorts of, you want to find out what it is so that now they can walk in their new identity in Jesus, their new identity, and that they actually learn now to go to God for those things and not the pill, not the bottle.
49:07: We really try to do what the Bible says to do, renew your mind. And we really try to develop a biblical worldview and everyone that's coming to Christ out of addiction so they see
49:16: God for who he truly is. They know what Jesus has accomplished on their behalf.
49:22: They know that now there's no reason to go get lost in the bottle. There's no reason to go and drink a bottle of vodka to get rid of that guilt and shame because you've been washed.
49:32: You've been justified. You've been cleansed of all your sins. God will never condemn you again.
49:38: And so we would have the memorizing scripture on a regular basis. So that all those things they used to go to the, um, the idol for, they're now going to God for, and they're seeing the world the way that it is.
49:49: But isn't it amazing? This is the same thing that every Christian is going through, right?
49:55: Isn't that just what happens to a person who comes to Jesus is they now have a new identity and they begin having a renewed mind and walking with God and they're in the body and they're having the word of God spoken into their life and they're being held accountable and all that.
50:11: Isn't that, that's just the body of Christ, which is why it's vitally important for someone when they are turning away from drugs and alcohol, that they get into a community where they can be transparent, where the word of God is faithfully proclaimed to them.
50:24: So talk about that, Luke, about just that aspect of the accountability and all that. Um, well, first, like you said, it's, it's, it's always a hard issue.
50:33: It's like, that's why we're saying, ask questions, figure out what their struggles that always come usually comes back to one or two things.
50:39: Like everything, they'll have like this big mess of stuff and it always comes down to one or two, two hard issues.
50:46: Um, but yeah, accountability, it has to be, if it's not there, they're going to fall.
50:53: Um, every time we've had someone that's come through Apologia that falls back and leaves the church and falls back into drug and alcohol or whatever, it's always because they refuse to be held accountable.
51:05: Right. Um, and so, yeah, I always, I always use, um, I always use the example of Paul talks about everybody in the body of Christ as an actual body part, essentially.
51:15: So you might be the finger, you might be the toe, the mouth, the ear, whatever. Everybody has a purpose and it's part of the body.
51:21: And he, you know, he, he talks about, um, or I would say that. So if you say you're the finger and you get cut off, what's going to happen?
51:28: You're going to die naturally because you have to be connected to the body. And it's the same thing, especially with addictions. If you are, have separated yourself from the body, you will die.
51:37: And when it comes to drug and alcohol abuse, sometimes that might be literally. Literally. Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
51:43: So what God has done in our own congregation, um, is taking a lot of people who come from a particular background, um, pursuing idols in this way.
51:59: Um, he's reshaped so many of us and changed us and the way that we see him and, and the way that we see ourselves.
52:07: And I think fundamentally the, the thing that has brought so much healing to our own body is our union with Jesus and our new identity in him, because we're pointing people now to who they are in Jesus and what
52:20: God has done for them. And it heals them when people have gotten to know their father in heaven and what he's really like, guess what?
52:27: That anxiety, it's not like it was before that worry, that fear about the future.
52:34: It just doesn't, um, have the ability to outdo God's promises about his sovereignty.
52:41: That fear isn't there anymore. It's not as potent. The idol, whatever they were pursuing before, loses its luster.
52:49: It's no longer appealing when you taste and see, when you really get to experience
52:55: God. And so that was some of the, that was what God was doing. So what I just want to stress, um, how much time do we have here,
53:03: Rich? Okay. So I'll just try to, to tack on here on the end here, something kind of, it's actually very, very important.
53:12: When I talk about almost getting fired at this hospital, um, on a regular, it's because they had two programs running alongside one another.
53:22: They had a Christian program that they gave me full control of and responsibility over, and it was doing very, very well.
53:30: Um, and, and so you had that, then you had the secular program where, uh, you had, you know, therapists and doctors and, and those sorts of things, um, counselors, and, and it was just completely secular program, but the secular program was based upon AA.
53:44: So Alcoholics Anonymous, uh, and if you know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous and the big book and that whole thing, you know, you have its spinoffs, you have
53:52: AA, you have NA, Narcotics Anonymous, you have, um, uh, SA, um, you know, sexual addicts and those sorts of things, but it's all based upon the 12 steps and those principles.
54:03: And so what had happened was they tried to have it to where they can have a
54:08: Christian program and the AA program, and they were hoping that it would work. Right.
54:15: They were hoping that those would come together and that they, they operated well together. And I think their assumption was it's going to work because there are a lot of churches, a lot of Christians who do try to bring together
54:27: AA and the gospel. And it works for some types of communions.
54:36: You have things like Celebrate Recovery where they essentially take the 12 steps and they just plug Bible verses in, you know, here or there, um, smack a
54:43: Bible verse onto it. But when you have a pastor who comes in there or any Christian and says, no, there's only one
54:49: God and Jesus is the only way to God. And the problem with addiction is fundamentally sin.
54:56: And you need to repent of your sin and come to Jesus for salvation, forgiveness. And you need to come into a local body and you need to be accountable and, you know, work like the
55:05: Bible says, and you need to go out and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. It begins to collide with the 12 step program because the 12 step program is fundamentally at odds with the biblical worldview in many respects.
55:19: Now, I know there are a lot of you right now that might be listening and you might be saying, well, Jeff, I came to Christ going to an
55:25: AA group. I, there was a Christian there leading it and he told me the gospel. Praise God for that. God strikes straight blows with crooked sticks, but it doesn't mean we should be using crooked sticks.
55:36: And God does work many, many times, um, despite our circumstances, because I just want to say this humbly to anybody who might have an affection for AA and those sorts of things.
55:46: Um, we need to really consider the worldview that's propagated through the 12 step program and the soteriology, really what it is, the view of salvation, freedom, so just a couple of things in terms of the collision between a truly
56:02: Christian biblical program or focus on addiction and then say the 12 step.
56:08: So let's just start, we won't be able to do an entire show on this today, but just a couple of things in terms of, we should think about these things.
56:14: These don't really actually match the biblical worldview. Um, first step of the 12 steps.
56:21: Um, we admitted that we are, we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.
56:28: So I'm not a lot wrong with that. Practically speaking, our lives are unmanageable, we're powerless.
56:35: But what you'll notice is as this step is talked about in AA and the 12 step groups, um, and whatever the version of it is, you'll find that this is the place where the disease model is often, um, injected into it.
56:52: You know, you're powerless over alcohol because you have a disease. I would hear people saying all the time in these groups, these are the cards you've been dealt.
57:00: Once an addict, always an addict, you have the disease, the brain disease of addiction. They would say things like you have to fake it until you make it.
57:08: You need to work the steps, work the steps as much as you can. Read the big book, go to your meetings, talk to your sponsor, because you're never not going to be an addict.
57:19: You're never not going to be an addict. You're always going to be an addict. You have the disease of addiction. You have to fake it, work the program until you make it.
57:28: You're never not going to be though, an addict. That's why when you go to an AA group or NA group, how do you announce yourself?
57:34: What do you say is your identity? When you walk in that group and you sit down, room full of strangers, everyone introduces themselves.
57:41: And what do they say? They say, hi, I'm Jeff and I'm a alcoholic.
57:47: Or say, hi, I'm Jeff and I'm a pill addict. Um, I'm Jeff and I'm a sex addict.
57:52: Whatever the, whatever the addiction is, you are, you are asked to identify immediately.
57:59: That is your identity. You have the brain disease of addiction. That's what they say.
58:05: And that's why a lot of times the people that I was ministering to would get in trouble in these groups.
58:10: Because what I would tell them is to be real with the addiction, but to focus on your identity in Christ.
58:17: So sometimes people would be in these groups and they would say, hi, I'm Sarah and I'm free in Jesus Christ.
58:25: I got called in the principal's office a lot for that. Yeah. A lot for that one. Or somebody would say, hi,
58:31: I'm, I'm Bill and I'm forgiven of all my sins in Jesus and emphasizing your identity now in Jesus and not what you once were.
58:43: Like, do we do that as Christians? We tell people who come to Christ to always identify as their past sin.
58:48: Like somebody we know is an adulterer, a thief. We say from now on, when you come to church, you identify yourself as you are
58:55: Jeff, the adulterer. Always forever. Cause you're never not going to be an adulterer. Really? Is that a biblical model?
59:01: Well, that's a lot. That's often where that got plugged in was on that first step. People would talk a lot about the disease of addiction.
59:07: I was just going to say, um, I think how we would say the first one is to say, uh, you're powerless, not against the drugs and alcohol, but against your sin.
59:19: Yes. And so, and this is where, and this goes for alcohol addiction, it goes for homosexuality.
59:26: You name it. It's repent, turn and repent from all your sins. Because it's just this one sin they're focusing on, neglect the other truckload of sins, you know, and so that's where we would flip that one.
59:39: So what I would do, and Luke's exactly right. What I would do is, uh, when I would teach every night, I was in the, the, the community room and everyone would come in, new people every night sometimes.
59:50: And the 12 steps would be behind me and I would, I would go through the steps and I would point to them all. And I would try my best not to get in too much trouble, but I would really refute kind of what they said and show that you really can't make sense of this from a biblical worldview.
01:00:05: Um, and, and, and Luke's right. Um, the problem is Jesus says, whoever commits sin is a slave to sin.
01:00:11: So it's beyond unmanageable and powerless over alcohol. You're a slave to sin. And it's only if the son sets you free that you'll be free indeed.
01:00:20: Okay. Now here's where it gets, I think a little more obvious to Christians who want to listen and want to say, let's consider a more biblical approach to this.
01:00:28: It says, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. That's step number two.
01:00:34: Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Okay. First, a power greater than ourselves, generally speaking, something.
01:00:44: So, and this is the truth before God. This is in no way an exaggeration. I saw these groups operating on a daily basis for four years.
01:00:53: And I heard people say that they worship electricity, that they worship the group, that they worship their son or daughter because they give them inspiration to get better, they would say that the power greater than themselves is, and then they were told to pick something.
01:01:11: And they were literally encouraged, literally encouraged by therapists and people who are part of this secular program to, to pick anything.
01:01:22: So somebody could say, fine, the doorknob and they'd say, okay, okay.
01:01:28: If that's what you want to say is the power greater than yourselves, you just need to acknowledge that there's something greater than yourself that you're going to look to outside of your own powers and people can make up anything.
01:01:39: And I want to stress this. I can't tell you how many times, and I know Luke can testify to this. We know of people who came to Christ and they were forced because sometimes they were on different programs to go to regular meetings.
01:01:51: They had to attend. Sometimes they were forced by the court to go to these regular meetings and they were vilified, sometimes kicked out of these rooms because you would go around the room and somebody would say,
01:02:04: I worship the doorknob. I worship electricity. I worship my son or daughter.
01:02:11: I worship the group. They would just go around the room and say the power greater than themselves was something like this, that as soon as the Christian would say, it's
01:02:18: Jesus, it's Jesus, all of a sudden everyone's squirming in their seats like that.
01:02:25: That's the one name you couldn't say. I knew of someone that got kicked out of a 12 -step group because she merely brought her
01:02:32: Bible. She just had it under her seat and a woman raised her hand and said, I'm sorry, that makes me uncomfortable.
01:02:39: And they asked her to leave because she brought a Bible to her 12 -step group. So a second part of this, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves, anything, could restore us to sanity.
01:02:50: And what they say is insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again, expecting a different result.
01:02:58: And then say, the problem is, is that you need to be restored to sanity. And so you need a power greater than yourselves, anything.
01:03:05: Rich Pierce. Anybody ever say Rich Pierce? I don't know what that thing is, by the way. It's been distracting me this whole time.
01:03:11: This is offensive. Whatever it is. Okay. Um, by the way, what is, by the way, what is this witchcraft?
01:03:18: What is, wait. Is that you? Wait a second. What is this witchcraft? That's, oh, it's a straw man.
01:03:24: Okay. It's a straw man. Got it. Okay. And these are tribbles, tribbles, straw man.
01:03:30: Got it. I don't know. Um, so, so power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity.
01:03:36: The problem is sanity, not according to the scripture. You don't need like, it's not sanity.
01:03:43: That's not the problem. It's salvation. You need, you need salvation, need forgiveness.
01:03:48: You need peace with God. That's what you need. And, uh, this is this, I'm sorry, listen,
01:03:54: I mean this respectfully to anybody that's ever had, uh, an affection for this program. If you really examine it in the light of the scriptures, you can see that this is contrary to what the
01:04:04: Bible says is really wrong and what our need is. Next point, made a decision, third point, to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him, any
01:04:20: God. Now, from a Christian perspective, the problem with addiction is idolatry.
01:04:26: You're not going to solve the problem of idolatry by engaging in more idolatry.
01:04:31: One God to the next, all the while forgetting the God that is there, who actually does forgive and heal and redeem.
01:04:41: And that speaks for itself. Any God you want, you can worship anything you like.
01:04:47: And here you go, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
01:04:55: Well, the problem I would always try to tell people is if you get to the point where you finally start confessing all of your sin and your wrongs, first and foremost, how do you do that without God's word?
01:05:04: By what standard is something a moral failure? If you don't have God's word and Jesus, how do you know it's a moral failure?
01:05:11: Why do you call it a moral failure? That's the first thing. The second thing is, is if you do bring up moral failures, if you finally get to that place where you can sit down in front of your, your, your, um, uh, sponsor and you can start confessing all the evil things that you've done, this moral inventory, you do it, you go, and it's all on the table.
01:05:30: Now what? There it is a reminder of all your shame.
01:05:36: And if you don't have Jesus, now what? It's just all this darkness, all this ugliness, all this sin, and you just spit it out on the table and your sponsor can't mediate for you.
01:05:50: Your sponsor can't heal you. Your sponsor can't atone for you and you can't atone for it either.
01:05:57: And so people are being told that you put all this out there and that's somehow going to heal you because you merely confess it.
01:06:05: Where, where's, where's, where's the covering? Where does it get washed away? Where? And, um, as you move through the steps, you can read them, just Google it.
01:06:14: You'll notice also, um, the 12th step. This is where it gets amazing.
01:06:21: People used to come in, I guess we'll finish on this. People used to come in and they would say, um,
01:06:27: I don't want to do the Christian program. And I would say, why? And they'd say, because I'm not, I'm not religious. I'm spiritual.
01:06:33: I heard that all the time. As always the thing, right? They'd say, I'm more of a spiritual person. I'm not religious. Okay. I would say, well, what do you mean?
01:06:40: I would say it usually in front of the group. I loved when it happened in the group. They'd say, I'm not religious. I'm spiritual.
01:06:46: Um, like we do, do you do the 12 step program? You like AA? And they'd say, yes. Say, so you're not religious. You're spiritual, right?
01:06:53: Um, do you have a, a text you're told to read and to quote from quote from copiously?
01:07:00: Oh yeah. I got the big book. They're told literally to memorize parts of it and to quote it. So when a problem would arise, they would go with a big book says, so there's your religious texts.
01:07:10: I would say, um, do you have mandatory meetings that you're required to attend every week to go over this big book?
01:07:19: They would say, yes. Do you have a person you're supposed to go to, to confess your sins, your moral wrongs?
01:07:27: They'd say, yes. So you got your prophets. You've got Bill and all those guys, big book.
01:07:34: You've got your religious texts that you read and quote from copiously. You've got your mandatory spiritual meetings that you have to go to and the person that you confess your sins to.
01:07:44: And you're not religious. So what's amazing is that at the last step in the 12 step program, the last step says this, tell, tell me how interesting this is after coming to some
01:07:57: God, after confessing your sins, after admitting you're powerless and worshiping something.
01:08:02: The last step says, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles and all of our affairs.
01:08:16: The 12th step is what? Go spread the good news of AA. Isn't it amazing?
01:08:23: Mandatory meetings, got your big book. Yes, I mean, I guess it's the great commission of Alcoholics Anonymous. So what
01:08:30: I guess my reason and point, my purpose in pointing all that out today was just to point to the need for a thoroughly biblical approach to drug and alcohol addiction to, to understand as Christians that when we minister in this area, it needs to be about the gospel.
01:08:50: Here's the thing. Watch, read the Bible. It talks about drunkenness. It's in there.
01:08:56: Galatians chapter five. What's the flesh? It talks about what? Drunkenness, drunkenness
01:09:02: God knew about. And there were drunkards saved as far back as the Bible is.
01:09:07: And God has been healing drunks and drug addicts for hundreds and thousands of years.
01:09:15: And so the problem is not so unique that we're just figuring it out now in the 21st century, oh, now we really know how to deal with this as a church.
01:09:23: We've been so lacking for 2000 years. God didn't know how to handle drunks until AA came along.
01:09:28: God has been healing people from this sin for a long, long time. And he does it through the church.
01:09:34: And so we have to address this the way the Bible does. We need to talk about it the way that God does. And we need to offer what
01:09:40: God says in terms of how peace is made and how transformation takes place.
01:09:45: And it takes place through Jesus, through the gospel, through the power of his word and spirit and through his church, through his church.
01:09:52: Very important. Do you want to say any last comments? Yeah, I was just going to say, you can see why the
01:09:59: AA program was competing with the Christian program at your rehab, like you said, or not your rehab, but any rehab.
01:10:06: Like you said, it's just replacing an idol with another idol. And so what ultimately ends up happening is, you know, people that stay in the program a long time, what becomes their
01:10:17: God is the chip or whatever. Their identity is wrapped up in that chip. Yeah. So as soon as they hit a rough patch and they're struggling and the chip fails them, then they just go right back and then they have to start all over again.
01:10:31: It's devastating. It's devastating because that chip couldn't give them this joy and protection and grace and whatever it is they needed, they couldn't get it, couldn't get it from that.
01:10:43: What Pastor Luke was talking about is like the chips for like, I've been clean for 10 months, 12 months, two years.
01:10:49: I got my five -year chip today. So their identity is really wrapped up in that chip. And that's a problem.
01:10:56: That's a problem. Because in Christ, when you turn to him, you are washed and clean and in Jesus and have his righteousness as a gift through faith from day one.
01:11:06: And that never changes. Your identity isn't wrapped up in how many days you've been sober. I don't even remember.
01:11:12: I don't even remember. I don't have like, that's been, I'm like, generally speaking, I sometime back there, 20 some odd, 20 years ago,
01:11:20: I guess. I don't have a chip. My identity's in Jesus. I'm washed. I'm cleansed.
01:11:25: I'm in Jesus. I was raised up with him. And so, yeah, important stuff to talk about. Love to do many, many more of these, but we thought we could do something to be a blessing to you and be a little different than normal.
01:11:36: And we also wanted to come because we wanted to put that thing there and see how long it stays there.
01:11:43: So we're very proud of that, Dr. White. We'll see how much he loves you. That's right. Very proud of it. So thank you, Rich. Thanks, Rich.
01:11:50: For being on backup today. Thank you for all you do for Alpha and Omega Ministries and this blessing the world.
01:11:55: Pastor Luke, thank you. Thank you. And I'm Jeff. You can get more at ApologiaStudios .com.
01:12:02: Recommend you guys go to AOMEN .org and get a bunch of resources. Support this ministry with all you've got.