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Overcoming Anger

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Recovery isn’t a substance abuse problem alone; it is a heart problem that brings alongside it many other behaviors and emotions. Among other emotional problems, people struggling with addiction carry a lot of anger. Anger, much like substance abuse, numbs the heart from having feel. But for whatever short-term benefits it provides, it will lead a person into full-blown bondage.

What is Anger?

Anger is a defensive emotion that arises when we feel we have been violated. Anger is an attempt to maintain what we have; to validate how we feel or to protect what we feel entitled to possess. We can also experience anger when our own sense of worth is threatened, our basic needs are not properly met or when we feel our beliefs are under attack. Anger is a secondary emotion—it is driven by a deeper emotion that masks the initial emotion. (Adapted from The Christian Codependence Workbook by Stephanie Tucker).

Anger manifests in a variety of ways:
• Through defensiveness, blaming and denying
• Through criticizing, fault-finding and shaming
• Through resentment and bitterness
• Through fighting, yelling and verbal attacks
• Through physical violence and abuse
• Through frustration and outbursts
• Through hate and malicious intents to destroy others
• Through inward repression and outward “good doing”

When we use anger, we are manifesting our own sense of power and control to overcome a problem. The Bible tells us that not all anger is sin (Eph 4:26). Initially, anger can be used to take a stand or come against something that we have a right to protect, including our own life and safety. This is justifiable anger, like the anger Jesus had towards Pharisees that were abusing God’s temple.

But anger that is allowed to control us and to grow in our hearts without a redemptive protocol eventually becomes dominant. It in essence swallows up all other emotions. Anger can bring us into dark and terrifying places. It can imprint an angry identity over our lives where we become back-biting, critical, hateful, ornery, hardened and potentially violent people.

While anger looks and feels stand-alone, it is not. It is driven by an initial emotion that oftentimes is hidden and buried deep behind the anger. Those raw emotions are what we try to avoid, but they are what need to be exposed.

Some of these raw emotions include:

• Fear
• Depression
• Sadness
• Betrayal
• Guilt
• Shame
• Loneliness
• Abandonment
• Rejection
• Unworthiness

These raw emotions aren’t wrong or sinful. They have a reason and God cares very much about what is happening in our internal world. Jesus can meet us in our pain – but when we are angry – we become unreachable. Left without solution, these emotions, alongside anger, will destroy us from the inside. Simply put, anger needs to be understood and managed or it can ruin our lives.

Anger triggers

Anger is triggered whenever a current situation leaves us feeling threatened. That’s why it is a guardian emotion. It may stick its fists up in the air (sometime literally) and push a perceived “intruder” away. There are many ways anger will manifest in the moment of a trigger – including verbal and even physical abuse. But sometimes anger is passive aggressive. It seems outwardly friendly, but inwardly it is plotting revenge.

Bridget’s anger results in foul-language and accusations. When triggered, she feels an explosion of every built up issue she ever had with her husband. She uses anger to attack him with her tongue. Her anger is a weapon – but in truth, it is an expression of pain. Bridget isn’t really that mean and vicious woman that she projects; she is a scared little girl that has been offended by an insensitive comment that mimicked her abusive father. But her anger can be costly. One wrong move, and anger can erupt in violence and even worse. When angers isn’t managed, it can destroy our lives. It starts as innocent pain, but becomes a sinful stronghold.

Ted hides his anger and continues to comply in relationships where he feels offense. When he feels used or violated, he keeps track of every detail of that situation and inwardly condemns the responsible party. Outwardly, no one would know he’s angry; perhaps he’d never admit to anger either. But then his relationships are infected by resentment, and when he can, he develops a method to hurt or “pay back” the offender. It doesn’t matter if our anger seemingly doesn’t hurt others, it will hurt our own hearts and will ultimately cause disconnection in our relationships.

What to Do with Anger:

Anger doesn’t mean a person is terribly evil. While the behaviors can be extremely damaging, anger is an expression of needs and of pain. Thus, where anger exists, it means we need to process situations and events, and also work through relationship struggles. This is good news. This makes anger more like a smoke detector than simply a defective human being. Anger alerts us that there is a problem that needs to be dealt with. Usually there are resentments and offenses that took root and created an entire system of anger. God’s goal is to teach us to find the pain first, and deal with it in its raw form. This requires the ability to be vulnerable and to feel the pain, rather than immediately switch to anger.

The first step in aiding our lives from anger’s destructive influence is to recognize the reason it exists. If you identify with an anger problem, you really are identifying a pain problem. Instead of running from anger, feeling shame from it or pretending it isn’t there, listen to your anger. Write down, if at all possible, what goes through your head when you are angry. It may be hard to do in the moment, but you’ll be surprised by what you discover. Our anger will be directed towards another person initially, but if we listen closely, we’ll find that it is actually our own woundedness that is speaking.

If anger feels unmanageable, develop an anger management plan. This can be a safe place you go in your anger. You won’t want to in the moment – so planning ahead can help. You may want to have prepared reading, workshop music or bible scriptures that will aid you in identifying the triggering of anger. It is amazing how anger can break into the pain with God’s help. If you embrace the what you are feeling and ask God to help you in it, you’ll discover that He can address the pain.

When you are ready to face pain through God’s healing – He can bring transformation. But this requires we stop medicating our pain – both through anger and through any other drug or behavior that causes other emotions to shut down.

Releasing our anger isn’t about being weak or not being able to set boundaries. Just because you release anger, doesn’t mean you have to be defenseless. We use anger to empower ourselves wrongfully. As we allow God to administer healing, He also seeks to equip us with healthy weapons of defense. These are His ways of overcoming the pain and the problems we have people and with ourselves. God always has a better alternative and His ways will lead us into peace and joy!

New Life Spirit Recovery is a Christian drug and alcohol rehabilitation center that believes that God is Healer and has a redemptive plan in our lives. You can’t even be too far from His grasp. Call today to learn how to overcome your anger issues. 866.543.3361.

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Why Look Back?

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People will oftentimes question the purpose of looking back into the past since it can’t be changed. Looking at the past isn’t about living in the past; it’s about finding the seeds that were sewn that continue to affect us today. It provides access to understand why we do what we do, and how and where our learned styles of coping were formed. Some “seeded examples:”

  • We fear abandonment in the here and now because we were abandoned by a parent
  • We repeat the same behaviors of our parents, even though we vowed we wouldn’t
  • We believe we are unlovable because we weren’t cared for when we were young
  • We don’t know how to be intimate in relationships because intimacy wasn’t modeled to us effectively
  • We abuse substance to escape from trauma and not wanting to feel

Most of the journey of uprooting is finding exactly how and where those roots were formed. Once we recognize them, we have the opportunity to do something with them. When people avoid the presence of rooted issues,  they try to stifle or avoid the “fruit” in the here and now.  Fruit is produced after the seed rooted and the structure itself grew. Fear, shame, guilt and ultimately drug and alcohol abuse are fruit – they aren’t the root. 

Facing our history is extremely painful for some. It can be deeply difficult to recognize the very things that we prayed would be removed still affect us. We can feel that we are somehow a failure as a Christian because we can’t walk into the promises of God. However, God marvels and delights when we are willing to let Him dig deeply. He knows what’s there. Like a true Gardener, He comes ready to aid us and to bring redemptive tools to weed out the harmful things that are blocking us from the abundance He has stored up for our future. God wants to uproot the things choking us, and prepare us to walk redeemed. Once He is allowed, then the seeds He plants can at last prosper. We will have the room in our heart to grow up in our God-created design.

In recovery, we’ll always need to deal with the things we can change and those we can’t change.  We have no power to change what people have done or the choices we ourselves made in the past. But we change our mindsets. We can allow God to redeem the very places where faulty messages, beliefs and shame have sabotaged us. We can allow God to re-message our lives with the firm foundation of His truth and the power of grace so He can touch and heal what was broken in the past. We can trust that God can overcome. We can choose to believe that whatever happened in the past, God will somehow use it to better our future and fulfill His purpose in our lives (Romans 8:38-39).

New Life Spirit Recovery is a drug and alcohol treatment committed to seeing men and women walk into freedom, hope and new beginnings. www.newlifespiritrecovery.com or 866.543.3361.

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Addiction is a Stronghold; but What Does That Mean?

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What is a stronghold? Does it have a valid context in the bible and can that be applied to addictions, problems and conflicts?

In biblical times, strongholds were fortresses of protection used to hide from the enemy on the battlefield. A stronghold, therefore, represented a place of security from the oppressive elements of battle. In the spiritual battle of our lives a stronghold acts this same way – but depending on where that stronghold has been built, it can have dramatically different results. For example, Psalm 94:22 says “But the LORD has become my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge.” This is a picture of God acting as a safe haven and point of security. This is a stronghold that buffers us from the enemy.

However, the Bible also reveals that strongholds can be fiercely oppositional to our well being. They can be the very places where the enemy traps us into systems of thinking, feeling and behaving that single-handedly destroy our lives. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 says:

We are humans, but we don’t wage war as humans do. We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God.

In this context, strongholds are something to be rid of; something that obstruct our ability to know God. To know God is to have faith to believe He is real even though He can’t be seen, and then to pursue Him intimately in relationship. Through that relationship, we are fed and nourished by His truths and His purposes for our lives. To be kept from the knowledge of God, therefore is a state of being blinded and bound – as if we were taken away from life-giving resources. Imagine a fortress in your heart that is designed to keep  you away from God by overtaking your mind and heart with wrongful ideas, mindsets and attitudes. This is a stronghold.

Strongholds are not reserved for people filled with total and complete darkness and evil. That’s why Christians are so easily deceived. Very simply, strongholds are lies that become our truths. Strongholds eventually can erupt into addiction, codependence or numerous other ailments. But those are the effects, not the cause of a stronghold.  In 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 notice that the reference to a stronghold is “human reasoning and false arguments”. This is referring to the chatter we house internally in our everyday situations. We analyze, think, build conclusions, develop reasonable truths that become so much a part of who we are. Overtime, we can adapt thousands of false beliefs that are our inward truth. We typically normalize these lies (strongholds) and reject the remedy of truth.

Identifying a Stronghold:

Strongholds are spiritual, but show up in our soul. Our soul is composed of our mind (thinking), emotions (feeling) and will (choosing). Just because a person is Biblically literate doesn’t exclude the potential for strongholds. Strongholds (lies) are much deeper than surface level,and often times we don’t even know what we’ve agreed with as truth in our heart. Once we come in agreement with a lie, our perception of ourselves, God and others gets tainted. Depending on the information we are digesting, this can be extremely toxic.

Examples include:

A man uses heroine as a way of managing his fears. He feels powerful and insists his life is manageable. He rejects any help and places his addiction above everything and everyone. His stronghold isn’t just the drug, but hundred of messages he believed that brought him to the point of wanting to leave reality through a substance.

A teenager believes she’s “fat” even though her thin figure weights in at only 65 pounds. She continues to starve herself to death and will not adhere to the insistence of those who say she needs help. Her stronghold isn’t just an eating disorder, but rather it’s her low self image and the obsessive way she’s tried to control how she is viewed.

A woman is abused by her boyfriend but faithfully remains in the relationship and is unwilling to leave in the name of “love.” She protects him and rejects people who want to help. Her stronghold isn’t just the boyfriend, but the lack of value and preciousness she has assigned to her life. She believed the message at some point that she didn’t deserve to be treated with love and dignity.

A child is ignored and neglected early in life, feeling invisible and unwanted. He brings that sense of rejection into all future relationships, recycling its message over and over again. His relationships suffer, but the lies he believed at a young age are the real problem.

There are thousands, perhaps millions of ways we can believe a lie as truth. But how can we actually find those lies?  We don’t learn by studying the lies, but by understanding God’s perspective in all situations.  Pursuing truth is the greatest feat in the Christian journey, especially in a culture that contradicts it at all levels. Many times Christians mistake knowing and memorizing God’s Word as the complete source of truth, believing that intellectualism can solve their inward crisis. Learning God’s Word is vital – but it’s not enough. Just as a fancy piece of gym equipment has no effect unless its used and applied, so God’s Word has to be “worked out” into us for it be effective. We desperately need for God to take that Word and place it into our heart like a flashlight. When we see our shortcomings, the lies we believe and the spiritual needs we house, we become positioned to let God change us. His greatest act of love is helping us find the mentalities, behaviors and choices that are creating barriers to us “knowing Him.” This can feel uncomfortable, but it is, in reality, the way He delivers from perilous battle conditions. We are then transferred into the safety of His love and protection. His goal is to become our stronghold.

Overcoming Strongholds

What about you? What lies have you believed? If you don’t know where to start, pray for Holy Spirit to reveal it and ask God to send truth into your heart. In program, our main focus is to help people identify where those strongholds have been built and to transfer unhealthy strongholds into God’s hands.  This happens by doing a fearless inventory, and being willing to submit to God’s truth. Oftentimes, we don’t know that a lie exists because they can rise up quietly within, creating obstructive messages without us even knowing they exist. Issues from childhood, abuse, negative relationship and the culture at large are typically the culprit.

Here are some ways you can try to capture and demolish strongholds in your own life.

Pray to the Father to help you see and comprehend the strongholds and beliefs you might house. Be open to their existence, and ask to visualize them like a fortress that the enemy has resurrected in your soul. Allow righteous anger at the enemy to give you the courage to pursue what lies within. Refuse to let fear prohibit you from seeking truth’s remedy.

Inventory yours thoughts and continue to assault them as they try to get placement. Trace your emotions and behaviors back to potential lies that you are believing.If you know of an area of weakness (addiction, relationship struggles, low self esteem) find resources specific to that area so you can better identify this. This might be a 12-step meeting, a workshop, counseling, treatment or a friend you know has similar issues.

Stay in God’s Word, even if only in small increments. God’s Word is the power you have to speak over lies. God’s Word is literally like an arsenal. It can detonate strongholds, just so long as we believe in the words and through faith activate them.

Ask for help. Seek prayer, support from others and maintain a connective community as a lifestyle where you can hear from others in a similar battle as your own. Isolation is where all strongholds are formed.

A Prayer to Overcome Strongholds

Father God,

Help me to overcome the power of the lies I harbored, protected and listened to as my truth. Show me where lies have taken ownership of my heart. I submit myself to you so you can shine light into the darkness, and you can expel the tactics of the evil one. I choose to take hold of the weapon of truth. Make me hungry and thirsty for your Word – and help me to not only read your Word, but let it become my nature – who I am. Claim my heart to be a safe haven to your Truth, and protect that Truth at all costs. I cast out the lie that ____________________ and I replace it with the truth that ___________________.

In Jesus name – Amen

 

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Surrender

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A true brokenness is a divine appointment only God can orchestrate. Through various situations, God is pleading with us to realize our helplessness and thus realize our need for Him. When this occurs, it gives us the ability to transfer control. When and if we are ready to surrender, we must take two basic transactions:

-Die to self. What does that mean? We choose to cease control. We choose to strip off our own defense mechanisms and strategies of battle, recognizing that we are losing the war. THe death of self is not the death of our God given destiny, identity, personality and giftedness. It’s the death of our self-will (flesh) that is programmed to meet needs independent of God.

-Ask God to take control of our life. That means we no longer call the shots based on our own needs, perceptions, survival strategies, and so forth. Instead, we let God call the shots for us. We allow Him to lead and guide us into His ultimate plan and purpose for our life.

While this sounds simple enough, it can be a fierce internal struggle. By nature, we are prone to be in a mode of self-survival and self-defense. Being asked to abandon those strategies, admit defeat and truly surrender can leave us with a complete sense of vulnerability. So what would motivate us to do such a thing?

John 12:24-26 provides a summary of the purpose and goal of true surrender. (Bracket’s enclose author’s words for emphasis).

“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies (our self-will), it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels – a plentiful harvest of new lives (a life surrendered). Those who love their life in this world will lose it (those who choose to live independently of God). Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity (those who give God control). Anyone who wants to be my disciple must follow me, because my servants must be where I am. And the Father will honor anyone who serves me.”

Through this scripture, we learn that ultimately the entire destination of our lives rests upon our willingness to die to self so Christ can live through us. Living for God brings amazing blessings – the access to all God’s resources and an endless supply of His love, mercy, grace and power.

 

-Christian Codependence Workbook, ©New Life Spirit Recovery

 

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Honor and Recovery

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God’s love honors us. To honor is to assign value and preciousness as prescribed by the Beholder. Honor isn’t based on what we do or even the contents we carry internally. Honor is imputed to us by the God that both created us and redeemed us. God’s honor means the price and value of our life is high. For God to honor us is the highest position we will ever carry in this world. Kings and queens; presidents and diplomats are honored by the standards of this world; we are honored by the King of Kings and Lord and Lords. There simply is no greater privilege.

When we enter into healing, we can easily misinterpret God’s intents if we don’t understand honor drives the essence of everything He does. Through honor, God meets us where we are at and loves us without conditions. Before commanding we change or barging into our world to tell us what’s wrong; He tenderly injects Himself in our pain and perspective. It’s vital we know that God does this first, lest we can mistake His actions as a rejection of who we are at the moment.

God doesn’t speak down to us as though we are wretched, or dirty or defective. He loves us in the broken places and sees our value far surpassing the adjustment that needs to be made. Through honor, God allows us to feel, to hurt, to have needs, and to be where we are. In essence, He doesn’t ask us to come up to His level. He drops down and sits in the pits of our life situations with us.

Most of us will enter seasons in our life when we don’t want someone to fix us; we want someone to hear our heart. This is very much a human need, and God knows that need more than anyone. The challenge that arises is that in our pit we typically surround ourselves with faulty messaging and toxic mindsets that will destroy our inner world. The injuries we carry at a heart level can create filters that wrongly judge the situation and circumstances. We can have misplaced intimacy and misguided insights into relational principles. Thus, should God leave us where we are without offering us a redemptive tool, it wouldn’t be love at all. He will challenge us to make the choice to heal in the midst of our awareness of what’s wrong – but not because He won’t accept us and love us exactly how we are. But because He calls us to more. He calls us to freedom and wholeness in Him. He calls us into a relationship with people that allow us to give and receive love as He intended.

He loves us too much to enable us to stay in the pit and create that as our own “normal”. But the ability to leave the pit will always, always be activated through the choices we make. People will try to fix us in the pit; but only God owns the tools of redemption. And because God honors us; He lets us make a choice. We can stay in the pit if we choose.

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Uprooting old systems

Looking at rooted issues in life may seem backwards but the roots drive what is happening in the here and now.

“Most of us are unaware of how deep our methods of self-protection and survival run. We often developed unhealthy roots that have dug down and formed internal mindsets that dictated the way we see life, relationships, and our identity. As we grow, life experiences drive these roots deeper and produce wrongful fruits: fear, anger, discord, bitterness, drinking, drugs, codependency, love addiction, anxiety, inferiority, depression, people pleasing are merely fruits. As we are driven further away from our ordained purpose by harmful behaviors and emotions, we lose touch with the nature of God’s redemptive heart, and the perspective He houses toward us.

Many times, we want to change our “fruit” without the comprehension of how deep that fruit links with the rooted system. We, in essence, want to plant over areas in our lives with the “good stuff” we hope to attain, only to continually experience failure. Not understanding that we can’t plant something new where deeper rooted systems were already formed, we wrongly conclude that healthy growth is impossible or that we are stuck in our circumstances with no way out. Misunderstanding the nature of God’s love and the power He claims on our behalf, we do not walk with the authority to overcome; but we live as though we are spiritual paupers – having a Heavenly Father, but being unable to live under His promises.

It’s not that God can’t emerge us into our design, but rather that we need to uproot sometimes before that positive growth can occur. Looking at the rooted issues in our life may seem backwards, but it drives what is happening in the here and now. You can chop the fruit off a tree, but until it’s roots are eliminated, it will continue to grow back. So it is with the “fruit” we eliminated in our own lives.

While looking at roots is imperative, it’s not enough. God calls us out of bondage by speaking vision, destiny, and purpose into our lives. He gives us a picture of our potential; much like viewing the eventual fruit meant to be harvested from a tiny seed. So just as God comes to uproot, He comes to plant you into your original design. God never paints a picture of our future with doom and gloom; He has a redemptive scope on our life. God may not immediately change or fix what’s wrong; but He places His grace on to our situation and somehow, someway, He can resurrect life and goodness in the very places of pain and destruction. “
Thrive, Spirit of Life Recovery

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Goal setting: Where the practical meets the miraculous.

Most all of the work that needs to be accomplished in our lives happens in the messy and ordinary routines of life.

 

Sometimes we need God to perform something miraculous in our life; things are that are utterly impossible for us to change without His intervention. God specializes in the field of miracles and absolutely will bypass our natural circumstances in Divine ways. What we can fail to understand is that while God has His part, we have our part. More often, God uses our normal, everyday situation to initiate change. Change typically starts in small increments that increases to larger things. God may inject Himself supernaturally along the way with breakthrough moments to encourage us – but we will not stay there. Most of all the work that needs to be accomplished in our lives happens in the messy and ordinary routines of life.

Think of the Israelites. They had to have the Red Sea parted and all sorts of signs and wonders performed by God before they accessed the pathway of freedom. God opened that pathway, they needed to choose to walk in it. But when they got to the other side of the miracle, there was more work to be done. A journey unfolded in the desert that tested, tried them and prepared them for a new destiny. Through that voyage, there were more choices, and at times a sinking desire to return to comfort of the familiar. The desert even made them doubt God’s direction. God was not surprised, however. He knew that would happen and expected more work needed to be done.
Rest assured when you set out to change you will experience set-backs and will discover the contents of your heart may need cleansing. By writing down some goals, you are staking a claim in an area of your life and saying you are willing to let God orchestrate redemption. If God needs to part your “Red Sea” wait for Him to do that. But in the midst of relying on the miracle, don’t forget the step you need to take right now, today.

-Thrive, Live by Goals

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Breakdown of the Natural and Spiritual life:

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When we seek spiritual solutions to life’s problems, we need to understand how to navigate between the earthly realities we face, and the heavenly perspective God offers. This is typically where things break down. We are in fact human beings, living in a human world and subjected to the cruel realities of life’s imperfections and pain. We can know what the Bible says, but feel unable to make that into a way of life. Thus, there is a dramatic separation between the natural circumstances of our lives, and the spiritual realities of the Word of God. When we are unable to tap into the spiritual resources of God’s power, the natural circumstances are dominant, and our natural coping mechanisms quickly follow suit. Not only that, we begin to seek the cultural ideas of a true solution, negating and invalidating the power God offers to us as His children. That doesn’t mean that we don’t need to have a deeper understanding of our problems, and use resources that address our needs as human beings. We want to remain relevant and real. But at the end of the day, the natural, what we see with our eyes, was created from the spiritual, God’s Kingdom. Jesus is the Creator of all life, and because He possesses authorship, He is the ONLY one qualified to change us. We find this is in Colossians 1:15-17:

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see-such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him. He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.

The essence of our being is spiritual because we were created by a spiritual God with a spiritual purpose. We are not trying to take our human experiences and add God to it. Quite the contrary, we need to unravel our human experience and give it spiritual dominion. From there we can begin to place remedies that are both practical and spiritual according to God’s designs.

In the natural realm, there is very little we can do to change our circumstances, much less our hearts. Despite our best efforts, we do not possess the rightful ingredients to take us into our God prescribed destiny. Not to mention that we are at war with our own flesh, the corrupt world system and a demonic agenda set to destroy God’s purposes. This is why natural weapons won’t work. Even education in and of itself won’t be enough. The outcome of our lives rests completely on the choices we make moment to moment to walk with God or rely on our own resources. Our actions will either be a reaction in our natural, or a response to the Spirit of God living inside us.

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Whoever shapes your choices determines your destiny

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“The essence of God’s love to us is expressed through free will. God gave us the incredible gift of choice that allows us to decide how to interact with Him and others. Had God not offered us this relational style, we’d be enslaved to Him by force. We’d be like pre programmed machines used to perform a function rather than engage intimately and through love. Therefore, while God desires that we give Him control, He makes it optional. He is a leader who respects His followers and doesn’t “cram” Himself down their throats.
When God isn’t in control, a human system takes His place of authority. In fact, when we aren’t allowing God to be in control, it often means we are in the operating seat. Or we may have allowed someone or something else to make decisions on our behalf. Human-controlled structures will always bring damage. That’s because human beings could never offer the resources God Almighty provides! Even the most well-intentioned human lacks the wisdom, pure love and power to act on our behalf. Imagine comparing the strength of a gnat with that of a lion.-there is no comparison! Comparing human strength with God’s power is insanely ridiculous. God is the Potter; we are the clay. The clay can’t independently grow in beauty and design unless it is allowed to be shaped by the Maker.”
-Christian Families in Recovery

 

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Beyond Sobriety: A Look at the Critical Goals of Recovery

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Anyone entering or having a loved one enter a recovery program has one goal in mind: get and stay sober. However, most don’t understand that sobriety in and of itself is not enough. People can get sober, but not necessarily set free. The removal of the substance isn’t the removal of the contributing factors, the problems in that person’s life that may have led to their use or abuse. In fact, quite often addiction is used as an unhealthy form of coping, thus the situations that caused the person to “check out” in the first place must be addressed.  We’ve broken down the five areas we feel are most vital to a long-term, successful recovery program.

Five Critical Goals for Long-term Recovery

1. Gaining a personal relationship with Jesus and learning how to be connected to the Holy Spirit is most important ingredient.  Jesus is a person, not merely a principle. Meeting Him isn’t done though religious technique, shaming, cohesion, control or guilt. Sadly, we live in a culture that has framed Christianity as intolerant and out of touch. Many times, people have had negative experiences in the church and thus have labeled God as mean, hard, demanding and unloving. Some people won’t enter into a Christian program because they are assuming they will find out how “bad” they are, and get a bunch of lists of what they “should do.” That’s a lie! The goal of a healthy Christian program is to introduce the character of God and begin to establish an atmosphere to dialogue with Him in the heart. The Bible is used to establish truth, and to display the radical promises it contains. The Bible isn’t a letter of judgement, but a redemptive story of love and grace.

People in recovery must learn to see themselves as precious sons and daughters of a God who loves them deeply and has plans and purposes for their lives.  Rarely do people decline the invitation God gives to enter into this type of relationship.  They decline because they have the wrong idea of who He is. Simply put, they don’t know Him. Imagine if you were hearing rumors about someone’s character, and had drawn up a horrible idea of who they were, only to discover that the information you had been given was wrong.  That same person someone tried to frame as “bad”, in fact was a carrier of love and generosity; kindness and compassion. Perhaps that’s why God despises slander so much – it defames character wrongfully. And could anyone know that any better than Jesus? He was accused as being demonic, a drunkard and a fraud. Many people have a very toxic idea of Him because they have been fed lies. Simply put, they have false information about His character and nature! Recovery that aims at the heart gives the opportunity to let God reveal Himself on the basis of who He is really is. This is where change truly begins. From there,  a person is able to view Him and self accurately: as objects of His love and affection. This one truth can single-handedly change the course of a person’s life forever.

2. Understand that God seeks to change the heart, not modify behaviors.  Behaviors have a root and a drive. They are the result of the choices a person makes, and those choices are attached to deeper things. By not focusing on behaviors alone (while holding people accountable to certain standards), we can learn the “why” of the heart. Asking  a person to confront the deeper situations, experiences and injuries of the heart is to gain insight, to reject lies and to let Jesus touch the places that have led a person to “check out” through unhealthy coping. Addicts will continue to struggle with character defects, and if behavioral perfection is the goal, they will not succeed. Perfection is never God’s goal – He is looking for the belief or the mindset that opposes the truth of who He is. He is teaching us to come as we are and openly confess our sin and brokenness before Him so that we can be set free.   Forgiveness is the beginning of all freedom. Learning to forgive others and let God forgive us is where change begins. But sometimes that requires a deeper surgical work of the Holy Spirit. Not all areas of the heart automatically reveal themselves – there can be hidden places where secrets, injuries, resentment and other hazardous human conditions hide. Loving confrontational processes through the tools of recovery allow people to assess, view, comprehend and apply spiritual remedy to the places of hurt, sin and damage.

3. The tool of grace need to be attained as the cure. The dreaded term “cure” makes many in recovery cringe. They will remind us that addiction is a brain disease and can never end. True. It does cause brain defects and an addict should never consume drugs or alcohol again. Some need additional help through diet and a doctor, as to not negate physical problems. But overall, there is a cure. Yes, there is. It’s the same cure that was bought on the cross. When the words “it is finished” were uttered by Jesus, it referred to completion and the all-sufficiency of His grace. But that doesn’t mean the term “cure” magically allows an addict to drink again. Substance will need to be released, permanently. Rather, the cure comes when the bondage of sin, the torment of temptation, the chronic sense of unworthiness, the lack of purpose, the relationship injuries are replaced with this one truth – Jesus is enough. When grace, the very nature of Jesus Christ, is acquired, each stumble can drive a person back into the arms of Jesus rather than in the deceitful hands of the false comforter. A person who walks by grace fully understands the inability to do anything or to move even an inch through self effort. They live, breath and move as a result of connection to Him. Should they stumble or fall at any point, grace is able to pick them up and say “let’s keep going…don’t give up!” That is the heart of God. If people can learn to engage with the language of grace, they will forever be driven to Jesus – and that is by far the best relapse prevention and recovery plan a person can find.

4. Relationship skills and interests must be addressed. A person can’t get sober and maintain toxic relationships that created the atmosphere for drug use. Lines will need to be drawn. Some people will need to be released altogether. Others, such as parents and spouses, perhaps can’t be released, but new skills must be attained. We focus on relationship issues in our program, knowing they drive almost 100% of the addiction issues that led up to using drugs or alcohol in the first place. Learning new relationship skills, identifying potential relationship triggers and seeking God’s heart in walking in relationship as He intended is vital for true sobriety to occur. We recently surveyed all our alumni that had come through program since 2005. Of relapses that were reported, every person that responded indicated that it occurred due to a relationship trigger. That’s enormous! Therefore, sitting around in a class all day and talking about the drug use won’t resolve those issues. A person who wants to be free from substance must also be willing to learn and walk in new relationship styles.

5. Family support and education must be present. Yes, the addict has a problem, there is no question. But the family has been impacted and affected – big time. In our own experience at New Life, we found that families had a resistance to the family education processes. After enduring the pain caused by the addict, getting lectured on “their part” hardly seemed justifiable, and was in fact, insulting in some cases. Obviously, that was far from our intention. But we listened and moved from a workshop setting into an individual process. Instead of mere education, we began letting families share with us what has occurred from their point of view. We began to affirm their injuries and let them know that they need support during this critical transition. But at the same time, we began to introduce solution – to expose unhealthy dynamics and to give them the tools to plan, set boundaries and make good choices.  Instead of being mere victims, they began to discover how they could be empowered. They also learn to understand the addict’s needs as well as their own. The result? A complete and total shift in the relationship between the addict and family member; and a far more stable transition back home.  This caused us to scream the message as loud as we can that including family members in a loving and empathetic way isn’t just wise, it’s vital. Thankfully, there are tools for families to overcome the pain of addiction. Education has a place. Families have a choice in that educational process. But it is our desire to offer the gift of empathy to both sides. It takes time, but when everyone is involved, reconciliation and new beginning is attainable. Watch this short video on the power of empathy. 

If you are faced with treatment needs, remember these five factors. If you have a family in recovery, embrace this as a divine season of change and the potential for something new. If you are feeling defeated by someone’s ongoing relapse, equip yourself, but don’t give up! Education will empower you and recovery will offer you the much-needed support you deserve!  Learn what you can do and where to draw by reading our resource Christian Families in Recovery. Click here to learn more or order a copy today. (Family members in our program receive a free copy!)

Want to learn more? We’d be happy to chat! Call us at 866.543.3361