Sunday June 29, 2008

The Road to Recovery – Part 1
Isaiah 57:14-19

I. Introduction

For the last few months I have been speaking from 1 Peter, and for those of you that have attended Grace for any length
of time it will come as no surprise that I am going to interrupt our study in Peter to go in a little different direction for the
next eight weeks that I preach.

Lord willing, we will return to 1 Peter in the fall, but as many of you know, we are kicking off a new ministry
called “Celebrate Recovery.”

Celebrate Recovery is a ministry that is designed to help people discover God’s healing power in relationship to their
hurts, habits and hang-ups.

It is a ministry that originates out of Saddleback Church in California and the messages I will be bringing will be strongly based on a sermon series put together by Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church. I am using his material by permission.

Let me begin today with an illustration:

Recently a father was trying to take an afternoon nap on a Sunday afternoon in his living room and his little boy kept
bugging him saying, “Daddy, I’m bored.” So his father, trying to make up a game, found a picture of the world in the newspaper. He ripped it up in about fifty pieces and he said, “Son this is a puzzle. I want you to put it all back together.”
He laid down to finish his nap, thinking he would get at least another hour and a half to two hours of sleep. In about 15 minutes the little boy woke him up saying, “Daddy, I’ve got it finished. It’s all put together.” “You’re kidding.” He knew
his son didn’t know all the positions of the nations and things like that. He said, “How did you do that?” He said, “Dad,
there was a picture of a person on the back page of that newspaper and when I got my person put together the world
looked just fine.”

Celebrate Recovery and this sermon series is designed to work on your person. It’s amazing how much better the
world looks when your person is put together in the right way.

Over the next few months we are going to talk about how to handle and overcome the hurts, habits and hang-ups that
are messing you up or causing pain in your life.

Listen again to our passage in Isaiah 57:“God says, ‘Rebuild the road! Clear away the rocks and stones so my
people can return from captivity.’ 15 The high and lofty one who lives in eternity, the Holy One, says this: ‘I live
in the high and holy place with those whose spirits are contrite and humble. I restore the crushed spirit of the
humble and revive the courage of those with repentant hearts. 16 For I will not fight against you forever; I will
not always be angry…18 I have seen what they do, but I will heal them anyway! I will lead them. I will comfort
those who mourn, 19 bringing words of praise to their lips. May they have abundant peace, both near and far,
says the Lord, who heals them.” (Isaiah 57:14-19, NLT)

What powerful words of hope to all who have hurts, habits and hang-ups!

We live in an imperfect world. We are hurt by others, we hurt ourselves, and we hurt others.

The Bible says, “All have sinned.” That means none of us is perfect, we’ve all blown it, we’ve all made mistakes.
We hurt and we hurt others.

Celebrate Recovery is for everybody. Everyone in this room needs recovery, unless you’ve lived a perfect life.
If you’ve ever been hurt, if you’ve ever had a hang-up or a habit that you’d like to get rid of, you need recovery.

The good news is this: regardless of the problem, whether it’s emotional, financial, relational, spiritual, sexual or
whatever, the steps to recovery are the same.

We find the principles for recovery in the Bible – it’s the original recovery manual.

In 1935, based on the Scriptures, the classic 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous were created.

Twenty million Americans a week and 500,000 different recovery groups utilize these steps that originated from
a careful study of the Word of God.

Celebrate Recovery summarizes these principles around the word “Recovery.” We’ll take a letter each week and
look at each one as we travel together on the road to recovery.

II. The First Step – Realize

The “R” In Recovery Stands For Realize.

Realize I’m not God. I admit I am powerless to control my tendency to do wrong things and my life is unmanageable.

Do you ever stay up late when you know you need sleep?
Do you ever eat or drink more calories than your body needs?
Do you ever feel you ought to exercise but you don’t?
Do you ever know the right thing to do, but you don’t do it?
Do you ever know something is wrong, but you do it anyway?
Have you ever known you should be unselfish, but you’re selfish instead?
Have you ever tried to control somebody or something and found it was uncontrollable?

If your answer was yes to any of the questions, welcome to the human race. We all need recovery.

A. The Cause of My Problem: My Sin Nature

Scripture calls this tendency to do wrong things our sin nature.

We do things that aren’t good for us – we do them even when they are self-destructive.

We also don’t do the things that are good for us.

You will always have this sin nature with you, this desire to do the wrong thing. You’re going to have it with you
until you get to heaven.

Even after you become a Christian, you still have desires that pull you the wrong way.

The first step of recovery is to understand the cause of this problem. Why does this happen in my life?

The primary problem is this – we want to be God.

We say, “I don’t want anybody telling me what’s right and what’s wrong. I want to call my own shots. I want to make
my own rules. I want to be my own boss, live my own way. I don’t want anybody telling me what to do with my life.”
That’s called playing God.

Control is the real issue here. We want to be in control and we try to control ourselves, other people, everything around us.

B. How Do We Play God?

   1. We try to control our image.

We don’t want people to know what we are really like.

We play games, we wear masks, we pretend, and we fake it. We want people to see certain sides of us and we hide
other parts. We deny our weaknesses and we deny our feelings.

Why don’t we want people to see the real us?

We may have been hurt in the past when we were vulnerable and we vowed never to reveal who we really are
to others again.

We may be afraid that if others truly knew us they would not like or love us.

The problem is, when we try to control our image we are left isolated and alone.

   2. We try to control other people.

Parents try to control kids; kids try to control parents. Wives try to control husbands; husbands try to control wives.
People try to control other people.

We use a lot of tools to manipulate each other. We use guilt, fear, praise, silent treatment, or anger to control. We try
to control people.

   3. We try to control our problems.

We use phrases like: “I can handle it; it’s not really a problem. I don’t need any help and I certainly don’t need counseling.”

We try to control our problems: “I can quit any time; I’ll work it out on my own.” The more you try to fix your problem yourself, the worse the problem gets.

   4. We try to control our pain.

Have you ever thought of how much time you spend running from pain? Trying to avoid it, deny it, escape it,
reduce it, or postpone it.

People try to postpone pain in many different ways. Sometimes we try to postpone our pain by eating or not eating,
getting drunk, smoking, taking drugs, or getting in and out of relationships.

We develop compulsive habits, become abusive, get angry, critical or judgmental – all in an attempt to hide and
control our pain.

Recovery begins when we realize that we are not going to get well on our own.

We need to stop trying to control everything and ask God and others for help.

C. What Are The Consequences Of Playing God?

Four problems that always happen when we try to play God:

   1. Fear

When I try to control everything I get afraid.

We are afraid somebody’s going to find out who we really are, that we’re fakes, we’re phony, we really don’t
have it all together, we’re not perfect.

We are afraid that people will reject us – if they really knew what we were like, they wouldn’t like us.

   2. Frustration

It’s frustrating trying to be the general manager of the universe.

Have you ever played the game where the gophers poke their head out of the hole and you are supposed to
whack them with a mallet?

The moment you hit one down another pops up – our lives can be like that. We whack down one compulsion and
another one pops up. We whack down one problem and another one comes up. We whack down one relational conflict
and another pops up.

It is frustrating because you can’t get them all knocked down at the same time. You walk around pretending you’re
God, but in the end you can’t keep those gophers in the ground.

If you’re frustrated it is a symptom of a deeper problem that you have not dealt with: the root issue – you’re not God.
You’re trying to control everything and it doesn’t work.

   3. Fatigue

It’s tiring playing God. Trying to control everything takes a lot of energy.

In Psalms 32:3-5, David said: “When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long…My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat. Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt…And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.” (NLT)

We try to hide and run from our pain by keeping busy because we don’t like the way we feel when we slow down.
We don’t like the thoughts that go through our mind when we lay our head back on the pillow, so we just keep busy.

If you’re in a constant state of fatigue, always worn out, ask yourself, “What pain am I running from? What problem do
I not want to face up to that motivates and drives me to work and work so that I’m in the constant state of fatigue?”

   4. Failure

When you try to play God, that’s one job description you’re guaranteed to fail at.

Proverbs 28:13 says, “You’ll never succeed in life if you try to hide your sins. Confess them. Give them up. Then
God will show mercy to you.” (GNB)

You need to be honest and open about your weaknesses, faults and failures.

Here at Grace we are committed to becoming a safe place where people, real people, can talk about real problems,
real hurts, real hang-ups and real habits, and not be blown away by judgment.

We are a family of fellow strugglers.

III. Application

The first step on the road to recovery is to admit my powerlessness. The Bible says that in admitting my
weakness I find strength.

Admit you’re powerless to do it on your own. You need other people and you need God.

Admitting I’m not God means I recognize three important facts of life.

   1. I admit that I am powerless to change my past.

It hurt, I still remember it, but all the resentment in the world isn’t going to change it. I’m powerless to change my past.

   2. I admit that I am powerless to control other people.

I try, I like to manipulate them, I use all kinds of little gimmicks, but it doesn’t work. I am responsible for my actions,
not theirs. I can’t control other people.

   3. I admit that I am powerless to cope with my harmful habits, behaviors, actions.

Good intentions are not enough. How many times have you tried and failed? Will power is not enough. You need something more than will power. You need a source of power beyond yourself. You need God, because He made you to need Him.

James 4:6: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

Grace is the power to change. Grace is the power God gives me to make the changes in my life that I want to make
and He wants me to make – the power to change.

For you to recover from the hurts, habits, and hang-ups in your life, you need God’s grace.

How do you get it? Only one way: He gives it to the humble.

What needs changing in your life? What hurt or hang-up or habit have you been trying to ignore?

To admit that I have a problem, a need, a hurt is hard, because it’s humbling.

It says, “I’m not God and I don’t have it all together as much as I’d like everybody to think I do.”

It means being honest and facing a problem that you’ve wanted to ignore for a long time.

Let us humble ourselves and walk on the Road to Freedom, the Road to Recovery.