About 10 years ago, my wife and I were going out for a date night and I got to choose a movie. I thought, since we’re gonna be in a theater with the special sound system and the big screen, I wanted to go to an action flick. So I chose San Andreas, which is sort of a disaster pick base in Southern California. The San Andreas fault has finally begun to split and there’s earthquakes all around. But about 10 minutes into the movie, I realized my mistake. I mean, this is a date night. You’re trying to have this whole romantic scene. And this is the lead, lead actor <laugh> that we were watching for two hours and it set him 90 minutes of humiliation. ’cause He did everything. I mean, he repelled down a cliff, he was captaining a helicopter, and then a plane. He swam underwater for 15 minutes to save his daughter captain’s boat over a tsunami.

I mean, who does that trying to get to the other side. At one point it looked like he was stymied because you see a scene where the faults have split and the tectonic plates have split apart. And so you see, you picture him there looking over at what’s he gonna do? I wanna shout out. Well, why isn’t he just push the tectonic plates back together? He’s the rock. He’s done everything else like that. And so we’re coming outta the movie and feeling a little insecure saying to my wife, man, seems like he’s a different species than me. And Lisa said, Gary, I’m not gonna lie, you’re a great husband. But if there was an earthquake, the rock would be a nice guy to have around <laugh>. I’m trying to defend myself. This is back in my marathon days. And I said, well, could he run 20 miles in Houston’s heat like I did this morning?

And Lisa said, Gary the Rock could run 20 miles in Houston’s heat with you on his back. So just a tip to the younger husbands, if you wanna have a nice date night, take her to go see an old Woody Allen movie or something like that. Be careful about the Rock. But it’s part of a series of movies. They come around every couple of years, these disaster picks. They’re called dystopia, whether it’s environmental collapse, whether it’s an evil, tyrannical dictator, chaos runs rampant. Evil is all over the place. Even hits young adults. There’s a very popular series called Hunger Games. They sold over a hundred million books where Katniss and PETA were trying to stand up against injustice done against children. It just seems like there’s something in this where we just wanna say, I wanna rage against the machine.

What if we’re the machine? What if dystopia comes into our lives not so much by environmental disasters or evil tyrants? What if it’s the decisions that we make, the dependencies that we allow to seep into our lives? Even the addictions that become the most evil ter tyrants in our lives, we fail to realize that it’s often our sins that create the biggest dystopia. James one 15 says this, then desire when his conceived gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. It brings forth dystopia, dystopia to our families. It pulls our families apart to our health, to our finances, to our relationships, to our reputation, even to our peace. And here’s what I wanna stress at the start of this new series. All of us, without exception, bring personal dystopia into our lives. Is it just me or haven’t you been at a moment where, you know, whatever your trigger is, there is a decision, you know that God wants you to go this way and you choose to go that way. And then you wake up after the effect and you’re not just ashamed, you’re, you’re confused and you say, God, the worst thing you could do is allow me to live in this. I despise this. I hate this. I know I chose it, but man, I, I don’t even know why in the after effect, it always feels this way. If you leave me in this sin, I’ll be the most miserable person alive.

I believe that every honest, sincere believer who knows the conviction of the Holy Spirit has prayed this prayer, God, please save me from myself. If we haven’t, we probably just haven’t been listening careful enough, because we’re all tempted to bring dystopia into our lives. And these dependencies or addictions are ruthless taskmaster. Isaiah 56 11 puts it this way, the dogs have a mighty appetite. They never have enough. But here’s the hope. Jesus replied, this is John 8 34 and 36. I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. So if the sun sets you free, you’ll be free. Indeed. We’re starting a new series this week called Everything’s Fine. The lies we tell ourselves, it’s a Christian view of the 12 steps used by Alcoholics Anonymous. How do we deal with these addictions and dependencies that bring so much dystopia into our lives?

They were developed out of a, a powerful movement of God. In the previous century, about 1930s, a man named Frank Buckman launched something and initially was called the Oxford Group ’cause that’s where it started then became called moral Re Armament. And it had a powerful teaching with a worldwide influence. And Bill Wilson was an alcoholic, could never find freedom. And it was his interaction with MRA that led him to develop what we now call the 12 steps. MRA taught five Cs. You’ll see a lot of the steps in these confidence, confession, conviction, conversion and continuance. And what Frank Buckman was known for, and I love this part of his teaching, was the four absolutes, absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness and absolute love. The brilliance of bachman’s teaching in my view was that word absolute. Where does dystopia enter into our lives? It enters into our lives because we say I’m gonna be 85% honest, right?

I’ll be open about something. I wanna keep 15% of my life as a dark corner that nobody gets into. I I’ll be 85% pure, which I think is better than average, but, but give me this 15% of my life, it can just live in darkness. And when Frank Buckman challenged, people know, it’s when we pursue these in an absolute way that we find freedom. And, and I’ll admit MRA had a huge impact on my life in seminary because a mentor of mine in seminary had been greatly impacted by members of MRAI. I have half a shelf in my library of books about Frank Buckman and Moral ment. Unfortunately, the start of this century is happens. The many great movements of God, it just kept drifting. They changed the name. They now are no longer even explicitly Christian. But back about 90 years ago, bill Wilson took these good teachings and he developed the 12 steps that we call now for Alcoholics Anonymous and has been used to help tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people.

Not just alcohol but overeaters anonymous and gambling anonymous and things like this. They are not scripture. So you might be saying, so then why are we preaching on them? Because every one of them is based is scripture. Lemme give you some examples. Step three, I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood him. Romans 12, one says, I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual act of worship. This isn’t pursuing psychological health, it’s an act of worship. Step three, I made a decision I’m sorry, step four. I made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself. We read in Lamentations three 40, let us examine our ways and test them and let us return to the Lord.

Step five, I admitted to God myself and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs. We’re told to do this in James five 16. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. Not just forgiven, healed. Step 12, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, I try to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all of my affairs. And we read in two Corinthians one, four, God comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. All of us deal with addictions or dependencies of some kind. If you think, well this series isn’t for me, I can take the next six weeks off. Let me just suggest, what do you think we mean by addiction or dependency?

Here’s the definition I want to give you. An addiction or dependency is anything less than the glory and will of God that exerts power over us, that motivates us and that ultimately controls us. Now say that again. So you, so you get it. An addiction or dependency is anything less than the glory and will of God that exerts power over us. That motivates us and that ultimately controls us. And if that’s the definition, it’s much wider than we might realize. Here’s some dependencies that we deal with. It’s possible to be addicted to work achievement and success Work is a good thing. But it becomes an addiction. When that is your identity, I will succeed. And you will ignore your health. You will ignore your family. You’ll compromise your integrity. Because what really controls you and motivates you is that people know you are a success, approval addiction.

You freak out if everybody doesn’t like you. You’re controlled by the opinions of others. Not that God has forgiven you, but everybody has to be good with you. You spend so much time trying to manage your reputation, pleasure addictions where sex isn’t a tool of marital connection, it’s an escape from pain and loneliness. Food can be a part of this where it’s not about feeding your body it, it’s really about trying to hit that emptiness in your soul using food. Man, I, I face this as an introvert who’s often on a stage like this and sometimes bigger and I get done on the weekend. In the afternoon, I’m not eating because I’m hungry. I’m just trying to deal with that insecurity, that fear. How did it go? What, what happened? Trying not to lose my wife’s respect. ’cause I know this isn’t about hunger and frankly it beats me more than I beat it.

The pain addictions, things like cutting and tattoos. I I, when I say tattoos, I’m not talking about you have a little star on your ankle. It’s when you really go for, in fact, I saw a woman in Hilton Head a few weeks back when I was speaking himself, Carolina. We went out there, literally had no place left on her body for a tattoo from head to toe. And these can be really painful. And what some psychologists would say is, are you using physical pain? Trying to numb the spiritual pain that’s within you? Substance abuse is a big thing in Colorado. Whether it’s pot, whether it’s alcohol, whether it’s another kind of drug. Just trying to use mind altering substances to numb your pain. Rescue addiction, this looks like a religious thing, right? You have to rescue everyone around you. You’re focused on your kids, your spouse, your friends, everyone else.

Now why is that an issue? If you’re so focused on rescuing everyone else, you never have to think about fixing yourself. That’s a way of controlling your own insecurity. Romance addiction is another one. You always have to be infatuated. You think you don’t matter if somebody isn’t in love with you or you are in love with them. Not that you’ve been adopted by God, but that somebody has head over heels romantically involved with you. You think you disappear. And so you get involved in relationships that are not good for you. You let people mistreat you ’cause you’re controlled by the need for romance. Physical illness can be another one addicted to feeling sick. I’m not talking about people that have real disabilities. They’re fighting cancer and real diseases and whatnot. But the hypochondriacs who are addicted to having others feel sorry for them and care for them, they think they don’t matter unless they’re needy.

And that’s sort of what they use to always be the center of attention. This one’s gonna sound like a good one, but it can be a challenge. Exercise and physical conditioning, both of those are good things that we should all be engaged in. But there’s a difference between exercising to live and living to exercise. And, and you know, this has got it when, when you are injured or you can’t work out and you’re just a different person and your family doesn’t like you very much. And I’ve had a season where I really did with this when I was doing a couple marathons a year and, and I was just sucked into it. And, and I know I made life miserable for Lisa ’cause I was injured. She’s like, are you sure you can’t run? Maybe we put some pillows on your feet or something. ’cause I was using it for something more than getting in shape.

We had a famous story when we were in Maui one summer with all of the kids. And we’ve famously call it the Maui death march because my wife kind of overdoes things on vacation. And so we take off and she’s got this guidebook, you know, 15 minutes farther and we can see this waterfall and 10 minutes over here and there’s a special garden or whatnot. Well you add it up. We came back, it’s hot, it’s humid, we’re exhausted. And I can still picture saying kids, all right you guys jump in the pool. I gotta go get my run in. And my oldest daughter’s like, dad, no, you will die if you do this mom tried to kill us and now you’re gonna complete it. Right? <laugh>, even Tiger Woods couldn’t do this. And I honey wrong sport. You know, I mean that that’s not what what he was in.

But I remember looking at her just kind of dismissing it, saying, honey, look, it’s just eight miles. It won’t take me that long. But you know what it taught me, whether we admit our dependencies or not, your kids know ’em. If I spend two hours with your five or six year olds, <laugh>, if I wanted to, I don’t. But if I wanted to, I could figure out what’s going on in your house. It’s just our kids know what drives us. Another one could be shopping for clothes and excessive cosmetic surgery, spending an inordinate amount of time trying to look good. Now again, this is by degree. Hopefully we all shower, we all shop, we all comb our hair. Well, I don’t comb my hair, but most of you do here. Here’s the difference where it’s a dependency. You are more concerned about looking good than being good because your identity isn’t bringing Jesus to others.

Your identity is making an impression that you look younger than you are. You look better than you are or whatnot. But that’s what controls you. It’s what drives you. So it puts the focus on you instead of ministering to others. Academic pursuits and excessive intellectualizing. And again, study and wisdom are things the scripture tells us to pursue. It becomes a dependency when you have to be the smartest person in the room. You don’t matter if you can’t answer every argument and press everybody with how much you know, it’s kind of related to religious legalism. Religion can be a good thing, but it becomes legalism when I have to be the best Christian of everybody I know, I, I’m not a brother or sister in Christ struggling together to glorify Jesus. It’s, I do this Christianity thing better than anyone else. Materialism. The dopamine hit. You get buying something new even if you don’t need it.

That’s why you keep buying it. It’s that dopamine hit when you get something new. This last one might confuse some of you, but organizing and cleaning, everything has to be in its place. Organization is a good thing. Cleaning is a great thing. My wife is wonderful at both. Where is it a dependency when it’s more important for you to have clean floors than a family that feels loved or neighbors that feel welcomed. You’re controlling things. You’re trying to set a different picture than focusing on love. And here’s the thing. Every one of these things have an agenda. They have an agenda. I was turned onto this by a guy who is fascinating. He had been addicted to porn. He now helps guys get free from it. And he said the words that were so chilling to me, he said, you need to know porn has an agenda.

It has an, it has a purpose. It’s not just trying to provide you with a service that you think this is gonna be fun. It has an agenda to take you somewhere. I’m gonna keep this pg ’cause I know we have kids in every service. But what it does is it gets you in an excited state. You know what I mean by that? And then it’s gonna drop in a picture or video or something that if you weren’t excited, you would be appalled by, it would be repugnant to you. But because you’re in an excited state, you remain excited. And so here’s what happens with your brain. This is so demonic. Your brain connects being excited with seeing that. And now you think you like that women and men. It is trying to turn you into a different kind of person. A person with disordered desires, a person you don’t wanna be.

But it’s slowly taking you down that road. Every one of these has a different path to dystopia. One of them look at gambling. What happens instead of focusing on loving others and listening to God and whatnot, you, your mind is shaped on, you know, the over the under and all of that. And the dopamine hit comes from really the adrenaline of what’s gonna happen if I lose. And so at first you get the big dopamine hit when you lose all of your bank savings. Well, what are you gonna do now to get that same hit? Okay, here’s my 401k, an even bigger rush. Now we’re really gonna be in trouble if I lose my 401k, you lose that, but you like that rush? What am I gonna do? Now, I’m not the kind of person who would gamble with their kids’ educational funds. Surely until you do, you’ve lost out what’s left your house.

No, I couldn’t do that. My family would be in utter ruin. But people do see the agenda is dystopia. Here’s what I want you to get with these dependencies. We make excuses for ’em. There is an evil force behind them. Please hear that there is an evil force behind them. Satan comes not to entertain you, not to comfort you, not to amuse you, but to steal and kill and destroy. The series is not about psychological health. It is about spiritual warfare. And as Christians, we understand that. And since all of us struggle with one or two or maybe many things on that list, I I just want us to start off. There is no room for judgment. We all struggle arguing about which one is worse than another. It, it just doesn’t make sense. Substance abuse counselors always here on one side of the hospital from alcoholics, at least we’re not drug addicts on the other side, the drug addicts say, well, at least we’re not alcoholics.

The porn addicts say, well, at least we’re not going to prostitutes. I, I, I want this, I really hope I’ve been praying for this, that this will be a new era at Cherry Hills where we’re a place of encouragement and honesty and not putting on errors. I think the people who are most embarrassed are those that deal with sex addictions. But in my research, maybe, maybe this will help, I read that over 80% of those that faced that kind of an addiction, they were abused as kids at a spiritually formative part of their personality and brain. Awful things were done to them. And so they were bent. And so they desire things that others of us might not desire. Can we not have compassion for them instead of judgment? Now, it doesn’t excuse anybody acting out, but we can at least say, well, I, I get why this is a temptation, even if I don’t understand it.

Arguing about whose dependency is worse is like somebody in Houston arguing with somebody in Denver about who’s closer to the moon. We all know Denver is right by a mile, but, but in the end, what doesn’t matter. We’re never gonna get there on our own. It just doesn’t make any difference. So we have to get rid, and this is what this series is all about. We have to get rid of the lies that we tell ourselves. Here are some of these lies. I can stop anytime I want to. I don’t really need to get drunk every Friday and Saturday. I just, I just choose to. Okay, if you don’t need to, then don’t take a couple weekends off. Prove that you’re not dependent on this or this one. Well, things aren’t that bad. Yeah, I know this is a little bit of a struggle, but it’s not as bad as you might think.

I was traveling once and there’s this guy ahead of me at the front desk trying to argue with the, the the person there to put him between two women on the next flight. We sounded kind of creepy ’cause kind of is. But but he’s just trying to explain to me, and I didn’t care. I I’m just behind him, but I think he’s embarrassed. He goes, yeah, well ’cause see, on the last flight I was drinking two big guys and they had these big old pop bellies and he goes, I know I’m kind of big too, but I’m v-shaped so, so I can fit and not make life uncomfortable. And I looked at him and I wanted to say, Mr, in denial, can I show you a mirror? You might have been a V-shaped 10 years ago.

I think you’ve become a w <laugh>. But see, we just slowly creep up and we don’t realize it’s gotten hold of us. Or somebody says, well, I don’t really buy that many clothes that I need. It’s not a big deal till you go into their closet. They’ve got 20 pieces of clothing with a price tag still attached ’cause it’s never been worn. So husbands, if your wife is running into the master closet with a pair of scissors this afternoon, do you know what has been hit on or this one? I only practice my addiction because I want to, it doesn’t control me. I control it. Sure Jen, when I get through this crisis, I’ll stop my addiction. Here’s the lie. It’s never easier for you to leave your dependency than today. Neurologically what happens the more you act out, you’re literally creating grooves in your brain that go deeper and deeper and more and more dependent.

You’ll never be freer to leave than today. Today is the day of salvation. Today is the day to pursue freedom. The longer you act out, the more difficult it is to leave. Or this last one, my parent child’s spouse is causing me to act this way. It’s not my problem, it’s theirs. If I didn’t live with them, they weren’t hassling me. I wouldn’t be struggling with this. And the damage of that kind of denial is that the longer we deny these challenges, we, we won’t deal with them. We, we don’t think there’s a problem. So we let them just control us without admitting that they’re controlling us and we minimize the struggle. If we have one tiny little victory, we say, well see. It’s not that bad. ’cause I’ve just had a victory. I loved to watch tennis in the seventies and eighties. Jimmy Connors was my favorite player, and he, he was one of the best in the world. And there was another very popular player. He’s charismatic playboy type called Vitus Ditis. And, and he was always funny at the press conferences and whatnot. Connors owned him over the course of eight years. Connors had beaten him 16 times in a row. But finally in 1980, Madison Square Garden, Vitus Guus defeated Jimmy Connors 7 5 6 2. And he was classic Vitus at the press conference. He says, I want the world to take notice. Nobody beats Vitus Geus 17 times in a row, <laugh>.

And that’s kinda how we act with our dependencies. Yeah, I know I fell 16 times. I had one time a victory. It’s not that bad. Can we just say we’re all struggling with something? So can we just use this summer and say, I wanna address some of these are, are you ready to experience a new freedom to stop believing and telling these lies? So let’s start with step one. Step one is this. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. We see this in Romans three, nine. Paul says, we are all under the power, sin all. What does all mean? There’s no person in this room, nobody watching online that isn’t under the power of sin. Romans seven 14, he says, we are sold into slavery under sin. Galatians 3 22, the scriptures declare that we are all read that next word with me, prisoners of sin.

So we receive God’s promise of freedom only by believing in Jesus Christ. Prisoners means powerless. And there’s only one path out, not through psychology, but by Jesus. We receive God’s promise of freedom only only by believing in Jesus Christ. But admitting our powerlessness is the first step to health. It’s admitting if I’m left to myself, I will ruin myself. I’ll take the good things of this world, work, food, whatever it is, and I will misuse it to numb my pain. And when I do that the first time, I wanna do it a second time and then I wanna do it a third time and I wanna do it a fourth time. Why? Here’s the way that addictions form. Your brain has a great memory and no morals. Great memory, no moral. You know what I mean by that? It knows where it found relief.

And so if it knows that you found some relief from your pain by doing this, the next time you feel that, it says that’s what you need. It doesn’t worry about the ethical implications. It doesn’t worry about dystopia. It says, I want immediate relief. You found it. Go back here. It leads to the cycle of dependency. Here’s a picture of that. It starts off with pain, which we all feel and we want the pain to stop. And then we find maybe by accident, maybe by intention, an addictive agent that brings some temporary relief to the pain. It could be work, alcohol, shopping, gambling, whatever it is, we, we forget it. But that temporary relief will eventually lead to negative consequences. Our, our finances, our relationships, our integrity. That produces shame and guilt. Ah, what does shame and guilt reduce? Result in more pain. And our brain says, okay, more pain.

How did you find relief from the pain again? And pretty much that dependency is just boring, a hole into our soul, making it worse and worse and not just what it causes in a negative sense. How it keeps us from life in Christ in a positive sense. Because when you numb yourself to the pain every time, instead of going through it, you numb yourself psychologically to everything. You numb yourself to joy. You numb yourself to happiness. You numb yourself to God’s conviction and God’s presence. A a, an dependency unaddressed is a choice to become a spiritual zombie. We’ve all seen pictures in the inner city. People stressed out on drugs. They’re just going around and they look like zombies. Ah, but in the suburbs, we’re just well dressed, hair combed zombies in a different way. Jesus wants us to be fully alive. See, here’s Satan agenda. John 10 10. Satan comes to steal, to kill and to destroy. That’s his agenda. He doesn’t care what dependency it is as long as it keeps you from God. Jesus’s agenda is to push back. I’ve come not just that you’re alive.

I want you to have abundant life. And we get there through step one because it points to sin at its most fundamental level. And what’s that thinking that we can live independently of God. See if I think I can already arrived, if I don’t think this is for me, by definition, I’m not going to address it. I’m not going to ask for God, ask God for help. I may think I’ve even arrived. Remember when Jesus described two people and there’s the sinner in step one? God, I’m so ashamed. I’m so sorry I, I can’t even look up to heaven. And here’s the Pharisee. God, thank you that I don’t sin like that. Thank you that I don’t do that. I tithe, I fast. I study scripture. Who did Jesus say went away, healed? Not the person who says, I don’t need that. The person who was living out step one four times, this is significant four times.

The Bible repeats itself when it said that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. And we demonstrate our humility by admitting our powerlessness. This just goes back to the very first two people. What we’re Adam and Eve really fighting about it? It wasn’t about the apple. It wasn’t Eve saying, I think it’s tart. And Adam said, no, I think it’s sour. Or I think it’s juicy. No, I I think it’s kind of soft. They didn’t care about it. They weren’t thinking, Hey, you know what, if we put some caramel over it and some sprinkles, we might have some fact we could sell it for 10 bucks at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, right? Who would pay that?

Nothing to do with the apple. It was this. You can be independent of God. You can be like God. You see, you don’t need God. The original temptation is our current temptation. We’ve never gone away from that. So in the Lord’s Prayer, when Jesus teaches us to pray, deliver me from temptation for dying is the power. We don’t pray, deliver me from temptation. Mine is the power. In fact, the word deliver implies I need a rescuer. I need Jesus. I can’t do this on my own. I have to realize my mind will fail me. Do you know what’s not uncommon for alcoholics to have a drink to celebrate getting sober? I know it seems crazy, but I say I’m about to join the 12 steps. Let’s have a drink and celebrate. I have to realize that my will will have some success, but eventually my will will fail me.

I’m powerless on my own. So counselors say that step one is the most difficult, the most denied and the most avoided step because it gets to that root cause of am I depending on God or not? And when does step one end, not at step two, not at step six, not at step 12. Step one ends. When we die, we will never not be dependent on Jesus. It’s so sad. Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, when he was in a hospital knowing, knowing he was going to die, pleaded with his nurses to give him a drink, they knew who he was. They were, they were horrified. And he got verbally abusive. He was nasty because see that brain? Remember it? No, this is scary. I’m gonna die. Fear. You found relief to the end of his life. This was going to be a struggle.

And for a lot of us, if you’ve, if we’ve created grooves, we’re gonna deal with this. We have to keep going back to God again and again. But when addictions cause that great turn from dependence on ourselves to dependence on God, that can actually be a gift. They remind us that our hero, our savior, is Jesus. That change can happen. If you’ve kept falling again and again and again, this summer can be a new season. Not because you’re gonna try harder. You’re gonna learn to depend on him and follow the steps accordingly. I think God gave me this picture this last week. I had taken a video of what’s behind our house is we don’t own this property. It’s, it’s, it’s the green place behind us. But, but I’ll show it up here. This video, it’s just, trees are dark, they’re stripped. This is in March, right?

This is like it’s ever gonna change. It looks like it’s dead three months later. This was taken in June, this last week filled with life and, and it’s wonderful and it’s colorful and it’s green, and all the animals are back in the trees and whatnot. I didn’t make that happen. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t do anything. God just decided where there was death. I’m going to bring life because that’s the kind of God he is. And that’s what I believe he wants to do to this church where we recognize because of Jesus, this can happen with all of us. If, if we just will admit, number one, we’re not there on our own. I, I’ve seen this transformation happen so many times. People who have wrecked their marriages now work for God, helping other marriages come back together. People who were stuck in their addictions now, helping others get free of that very addiction.

I’ve seen people who brought such dystopia into their life. They didn’t wanna live anymore, maybe even tried to end their own life and now they give new spiritual life to people by the score. But this is just the first step. I I, I know I’m hawking books too much. That’s kind of what an author does. But I recognize limitations of a 35 minute sermon. So I wanna recommend this book by John Ortberg. I hope you’ll read it during this summer while we’re going through it. It’s called Steps. I’m a big Ortberg fan and this may be one of his best books ever. He takes you through the 12 steps, sometimes laugh out loud, funny. He is a psychologist, but he applies scriptures. As a pastor, it really will help you go further this summer. If you go through these steps as we go through this next week, Harvey’s gonna go through steps two and three.

And then we have a group where you don’t have to do this alone. It’s regen. You can find it on our app. If you go to our app, you go find a group, you go to the Rs, you find regen, or you’ve got this QR code. It’s an easier way to find it if you just take out your phone. I just wanna stress regen is not just you think, well, I’m not alcohol dependent. I’m not drug dependent. I’m not dealing with porn or whatnot. The people who’ve benefited most that it’s, it’s some of those other ones I’m talking about. They’re driven by success. They’re driven by approval, they’re driven by food. So many other things. This is not addiction as we think of it and applying the 12 steps with, with mentors and people who have been through this. This is more than just listening to six sermons.

It’s really finding a new path in life. The purpose of this series, what we hope will happen this summer, is that we can identify the lies, reject the lies, and not judge each other. We recognize your struggle is different than mine. We all are the same. When our struggle and we’re all the same, in the same hope, Jesus, not ourself. We need Jesus. And so I’ve asked the worship team to come back to end the sermon because I wanna, I’m praying that this song will just be with you throughout the entire week. Maybe you’re struggling with this and you realize, okay, I, I gotta identify these lies. I gotta stop blind to myself. I need him. If you’re not even a Christian, this is the first step to freedom. And you can find your way over to Trailhead to my left and your right people are gonna go over there because that’s where freedom

Is found. Maybe some of you, if God is really moving, you want to come forward and sing this right here, kneeling down. You can stand up, you can kneel down. Whatever helps you. Remember, this can be a new season. I can go from the winter of March to the spring and summer of June this summer can be different. If I cast myself on my savior. Jesus, let’s sing this together.