Slide 1 
John 5:6
Jesus: “Do you want to get well?”

Slide 2
Step 6: “We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.”

Slide 3
Entirely

Slide 4
Colossians 3:5-10
“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”

Slide 5
Colossians 3:5-10
·Take off sexual immorality, anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language and lying
·Put on Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and love

Slide 6
2 Timothy 3:13 “Evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.”

Slide 7
Proverbs compares addiction/sin to a path that leads to:
· death (2:18);
· an ox going to the slaughter (7:22);
· a bird darting into a snare (7:23)
· it “bites like a snake” (23:32).

Slide 8
Ed Welch: “Your goal is to nurture a hatred of the past addiction”

Slides 9
How do we squirm?
1. “This isn’t the right time to drop the rock. I’ll deal with it later.”
2. Working on everything BUT dropping the rock.
Gerald May: “I must spend months, perhaps years, trying to identify and solve my psychological problems (and while all this goes on, I have an excuse to keep on being addicted).”
3. You want self-control like taking a pill–without having to sweat or work the twelve steps
4. You want it so that you can control your addiction instead of having your addiction control you—but you still want the “option” of indulging in your addiction
5. You want it, but you are waiting for God to remove your cravings first
6. You want it because it will make your life a little easier, save you some money, or save your marriage.
7. You want to be able to take a “vacation” from your sin but you don’t want to kill your sin

Slide 10
Jesus
“Repent.” (Matthew 4:17)

Slide 11
Step 6: “We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.”
Step 7: “We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings”

Slide 12
“Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness, in your great tenderness, wipe away all my faults, wash me clean of my guilt, and purify me from all my sin.” Psalm 51:1-2

Slide 13
NOT:
· Overlook
· Ignore
· Cover
· Compare

Slide 14
“We humbly asked Him to REMOVE our shortcomings”

Slide 15
TITUS 2:2-6
“Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance. Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good.
Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.
Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled…

Slide 16
Titus 2:11-15
“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are His very own, eager to do what is good. These, then, are the things you should teach.”

Slide 17
Don’t be addicted; LOVE others.
Don’t be obsessed with bad things; be eager to do good things

Slide 18
Gerald May:
“Psychologically, addiction uses up desire.  It is like a psychic malignancy, sucking our life energy into specific obsessions and compulsions, leaving less and less energy available for other people and other pursuits.  Spiritually, addiction is a deep-seated form of idolatry.  The objects of our addictions become our false gods.  These are what we worship, what we attend to, where we give our time and energy, instead of love.  Addiction, then, displaces and supplants God’s love as the source and object of our deepest true desire.”

Slide 19
The Choice:         
A fulfilling life of being loved by God and loving others or:
A life of desperation: being disappointed by others, and chasing fulfillment through empty promises of addictive elements that also eventually disappoint

Slide 20
The Grace of God is calling me to a NEW LIFE and NEW IDENTITY

Notice the difference between, “Hi, I’m Jim/Sarah and I’m an alcoholic” and ‘I’m Jim/Sarah. I am a forgiven, saved, and deeply loved son/daughter of God, created to do good works”

Hey, if you ever thought these church votes don’t matter, the Miami Dolphin colors beat the Denver Bronco Colors by two votes. I’m not making this up. Two votes. Just saying. Hey, we’re in, , the middle of a series on the 12 steps, putting them into the context of the gospel where it’s steps six and seven, a series called Everything’s Fine. , The lies we tell ourselves. When you get up to steps six and seven, there’s a popular story in Alcoholics Anonymous circles. There’s even a book by the name called Drop the Rock. And I’ve seen five or six different recountings of this story. I think the one that makes the most sense to me is that if we look at the pressures we bring into our life with character deficiencies and addictions, it’s like we’re treading water in the middle of a lake. And, and we’re able to keep our head above water, but we get more and more tired.

And then we get to a point where we wonder, “I, I don’t know if I can keep going on. ” And then somebody comes out and they throw us a life preserver. And we put it around and they’re gonna pull us in, but they can’t pull us. We don’t know why until they say, “Hey, you gotta drop the rock that’s around your neck. You’ve got this huge rock that’s making you too heavy for them to pull you in. ” And some of us are so, I don’t know, i- ignorant of our character deficiencies. We don’t even know there’s a rock around our neck. What, what do you mean a rock? , What are you talking about it? Some of us are well aware of these things that we used to cope, but they become so much a part of us we might even identify with them that we’re not willing to drop the rock to be free and to be healed.

And the person keeps screaming at us, “I can’t help you if you won’t drop the rock.” And steps six and seven are all about dropping the rock. It’s the addictions that we have to drop, but also the character deficiencies that often fuel what’s behind the addiction. Again, this is a biblical truth. You’ll remember in John chapter five, it’s a pretty familiar passage. John, Jesus is walking by the pole of Bethseda and there’s, , a number of people there. They try to jump in the water when it’s stirred, hoping they can be healed. Jesus comes up to a paralytic. And remember what he asked him? It seems kind of curious at first, but in John five: six, he looks at the paralytic and the first thing he asks is, “Do you want to get well?” And it seems like a crazy question because why else would he be there?

He’s there every day hoping to get well, but Jesus knows to go to the heart before he touches the body. Do you really want to get well? I believe that’s the question he would ask us this morning in the middle of this series or if you’re watching online. Do you really want to be free? Do you? If so, we have to drop the rock. Step six is this. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. One of the most important words here is entirely. We’ve got to get to the point where we just say, I am so done with this or we won’t. We’ll just try to manage it. Talked to a man in California at one of my conferences. He had been stuck in drug and alcohol addiction for over a decade. He was finally free for a few years and I asked him what was one of the main things that helped him get free.

He said, Gary, my, my wife sat me down and she says, I, I’m done putting up with this. If you act out one more time, I’m divorcing you and I’m taking our daughter and you’re never gona see her again. He said to me, Gary, if I though there was a 1% chance that I could have my addiction and my family, as crazy as it sounds, I would’ve taken that 1% chance. I was so deep into the woods of my addiction. If I though there was any way I could do it and have my family, I would’ve done it. He goes, but my wife made it clear. There is not a 1% chance. There is a 0% chance. And for him, that was the moment where he realized, I gotta drop this rock. If I don’t drop this rock, I’m gonna lose my family. And the reason we need to get there is that we just carry these character deficiencies.

We, we hold onto our addictions and we don’t realize how dangerous they are. There’s the old story about a mom who was watching her kids in the backyard through a window and she was shocked because they all had these cute little animals that they were playing with. She wasn’t sure what they were so she looked more closely. They were baby skunks. She’s terrified. She opens up the sliding glass door, run children run. They were startled. And so they each picked up a baby skunk and ran. It’s so cute. It’s so cuddly till it makes you stink. And so we cuddle our skunks. We carry our rocks instead of dropping them. And we need to come to the point where we say, enough is enough. I’m done with this. Again, this whole time we’re putting this in the context of the gospel because step six is really Colossians three: 5-10.

Paul says this, put to death therefore. He doesn’t say main. He doesn’t say reduce. He doesn’t say manage. He doesn’t say try to control. He says, put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Those can represent a lot of the addictions that we allow to remain. Paul says, “You gotta kill them.” He says, “Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways before you knew Jesus in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these.” And this next list often could be represented as character deficiencies that keep the addictions alive. They’re the things that make us weak so that we act out. Anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language, and then do not lie to each other. It’s, it’s addicts who have told me how key deception is to an addiction.

It is really hard to be addicted if you’re not a liar. If you don’t learn to use deception, it is one of the primary tools for an addict to keep acting out. We’ve got to get rid of those. Since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator, that’s, that’s really step six. And, and to get to this point that we’re entirely ready, one of the things that I think is so helpful is that we have to learn to talk about the absurdity of sin. A- as a pastor, when I’m talking with people, one of the hangups is that they’re using sin to fill some need or purpose. It gives them something or they wouldn’t be doing it. They go, “How do I exist without that way of coping?

How do I live without this pleasure?” And I know your sin is giving you pleasure or you wouldn’t do it. What I want you to do with step six is consider how much it’s costing you. Indeed, it’s probably giving you something, but what I’m saying is it’s taking more from you. Woman I’ll call Rhonda got married right after college. It was kind of a catch. All of her friends thought that. He loved the Lord. He was a musician. He was a celebrated athlete in college, a good guy. A couple years into their marriage, she really got into performative bodybuilding. Now there’s nothing wrong with lifting weights. In fact, when you’re my age, I’d say lifting is pretty much an obligation. It’s something good we should do. But like a lot of things, too much of a good thing can become idolatry. And she got so into performative bodybuilding that she was doing it every night.

She worked a 40-hour a week job. So every evening she’s there, mostly at the gym on the weekends. And her husband is just like, “Honey, can we have one night alone together? Do, do you have to go there every evening?” But she did for some whatever reason. And, and here’s the question I would wanna ask her. Why is it more important for you to look good than to have a good marriage? Instead of just addressing the behavior, what’s behind the behavior? Why do you think you’re gonna be happier if you look good rather than spend the time to build a good marriage? She wouldn’t drop that rock. And it led to her divorce. She’s now in her 60s. And I’d like to ask her, looking back on her life, was it worth it losing that guy? I- is the glory of your life now in your 60s?

Oh, you should’ve seen these pictures of me when I was in my 30s. I was buff. I like this and that. I got these trophies. I was all that and more. W- w- was it worth it?

Steps six and seven encourage us to be curious about our dependencies and addictions. Why do I act this way? What are the triggers that set me off? I- is it resentment? Is there anger? Is there unforgiveness? Is there, are there insecurities that, that make me make a poor choice? Why do I think winning a competition will fulfill me more than winning at marriage? There’s gotta be a reason. Six, step six says, what might that be? He- here’s the vision I’m hoping we get. The Bible calls us to a truly beautiful and wonderful life. It, it really does. But to live that life that we can live with Christ and the Holy Spirit, we’ve gotta drop the rock. It’s what Colossians three is all about. You wanna repeat what it said earlier? It says we have to take off, this is dropping the rock. We take off sexual immorality, anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language and lying.

We drop that. Why? So that we can put on. Consider this. This is what God is saying you can become. We can put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, love.

Every one of those attributes beautiful and wonderful. You put them all together, you have a whole different person. And God is saying that’s the person you could be. That’s who Jesus is in you. But you gotta get rid of the other things that keep you. You’ve got to drop the rock. He’s thrown us a life preserver. I’ll take you away from an anger, a life of anger and obsessions and selfishness. I’ll make you a person who’s kind and loving, but for me to pull you in, you gotta drop the rock. Here’s what you need to know so you’re ready to drop the rock. Those addictions and character deficiencies that you don’t will deal with, they’re turning you into someone that you probably don’t wanna be.

This last week, France celebrated, , Bastille Day, the storming of the Bastille started the French Revolution. Key figure in it was Robus Pierre. He was a French lawyer and politician. He as a young man resigned his job as a provincial judge because he was overseeing a capital crime, man that had clearly was guilty. And capital crime meant he was supposed to be sentenced to death. Robus Pierre couldn’t do it. He couldn’t send a man to be executed. And so he resigned his position as a judge. He says, “If I can’t do my job, if I can’t send him to commit him to his just punishment, I, I can’t be a judge.” But something happened. When the French revolution began to come up, it was just a feverish time. Robus Pierre became one of the leading advocates calling for the execution of Louis XVI without a trial.

He said, “We don’t want a trial. We need swift justice that we’re, we’re done with the royalty. We’re just gonna get rid of them.” And then he began leading what is now known as the reign of terror during which officials and noble people and whatnot wide net. 300,000 people were arrested. 17,000 were killed. They were executed most by a guillotine. And, and Robus Pierre is saying, “This is what we have to do. This is what we need to do to remake the state.” I mean, he was the leading advocate for that. And you ask, , how does that happen? How does a man go, , from a young man who can’t sentence one guilty person to death to overseeing and promoting the death of thousands of people without a trial?

Here’s the chilling truth. The second killing is a whole lot easier than the first. The thousands is a whole lot easier than a hundredth. It gets a lot easier once you start to walk that road. It’s true of every sin. As a pastor who works a lot on marriage, some people have said to me, Gary, how can a husband cheat on his wife for five years? How does he live with that deception and that betrayal? And the answer is the first month was the hardest. Then it just kind of becomes a way of life. I read this last week about a woman who stole $400,000 from her church.

How does she do that? Well, her heart was beating pretty hard for the first thousand. The next 399, that’s just how she thought she would feed her family. Here’s the scary story behind Robus Pierre and these other people that I’m mentioning. This is why we need to drop our rocks. We don’t get to choose where the sin takes us. What we choose is what road we continue to walk. Paul talked to Timothy about this. Two Timothy 3:13. Evil men and imposters will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. We don’t get to stay at bad. We go to worse. We start out deceiving others. Now we’re deceiving ourselves because it pollutes us. Well, I can’t kill one person, but we can kill the king. Well, if we can kill the king, we can kill this noble me and it goes from there to there.

We go from bad to worse. Proverbs talks about how addiction and sin is a path that leads to death. An ox going to the slaughter. A bird darting into a snare. Says it bites like a snake. See, we’re so… But I like this. It gives me this. It helps me this. And Proverbs says, “Don’t be deceived. When you walk into sin, it’s like you’re walking into a trap. It will exact its price.” Which is why Ed Welch, who’s a great counselor, said this. Your goal is to nurture a hatred of the past addiction. If you don’t learn to hate that addiction, it’s gonna keep its hold on you. You don’t see it appropriately. We desire things that will destroy us and we run from what will free us. When I lived in Houston every summer, I would have to sweep dead crispy worms off of my driveway.

Because when you irrigate the lawn, for whatever reason, they’ll jump onto your driveway and try to walk across, but the sun was so hot and the driveway was so hot, they would literally dry up. I could have built a little children’s house with dead dried worms. I mean, they were that many. I’m coming back from a run. I’m all hot and sweaty and groggy from running into humidity. And I see this worm that had crawled onto the driveway. I realized he’s not gona make it. And I tried to pick him up, but I’m sweating and I’m tired and he’s trying to squirm away and I’m shouting at the worm, “You stupid worm.” Now, I don’t know who was more stupid, the worm or a person talking to a worm. But I’m trying to say, “I’m just trying to save you. If you don’t let me, if you squirm away, you, you, you’ll die.” And I did rescue him.

I threw him on the grass and I’m sure he said, “Ah, I’m home.” But here’s the thing. God is throwing us a life preserver and we squirm out of it or we won’t drop the rock. Say, h- how am I squirming? We get really passive-aggressive. Here are seven ways that we squirm. We say this, “This isn’t the right time for me to drop the rock. I’ll, I’ll deal with it later. Not, not this summer. Let, let me finish this work project. After we, we get done planning this wedding, then, then I’ll drop the rock.” Or we work on everything but dropping the rock. Gerald May, you’ve heard me mention Don Orberg’s book, Steps, which I still recommend you get. Gerald May wrote a, a classical book called Addiction and Grace. It’s phenomenal. , And in that he talks about how we use other people to keep from dealing with our problems.

He says this, somebody says this, “I must spend months, perhaps years trying to identify and solve my psychological problems. And while all this goes on, I have an excuse to keep on being addicted. See, until I figure out how much my mom messed me up, till I figure out how much my dad wasn’t there for me, I don’t have to deal with my addiction. I’m just gonna spend my life blaming others. That allows me to keep holding ont my rock. Or three, you want self-control like taking a pill without having to sweat or work the steps. I- if God will just completely take it away and you don’t have to do any work, we’ll, we’ll do it. Well, God is throwing us a life preserver, but we gotta drop the rock. And here’s the thing, because of Christ’s forgiveness, because of the power of the Holy Spirit, you’re a part of a church as Regen on Wednesday.

We’re going through these series. You can go back and listen to other sermons. You can find freedom. You can promise that in Christ, but there’s a little bit of work for you to do. Not doing the work is choosing to hold on to the rock. It’s a passive way of saying,” Well, if God just makes it happen, if he just zaps me, I’ll do it. If not, I’m gona keep carrying the rock. Four, you want to control the addiction instead of having your addiction control you, but you still want the option of indulging in your addiction. You, you hate that you’re a slave to this addiction. You hate it. But you would kinda like it if you could control it so you’re not ready to drop it. You want to drop the rock, but you’re waiting for God to remove your cravings first. I just think this is what our society doesn’t understand.

Well, if God doesn’t take away the desire, it must not be a bad desire. , God, I’ll get ready. I’ll get rid of it when you get rid of the desire. It doesn’t work that way. We’re fallen people. We have fallen desires. You may have to put up and learn, and that’s what Regen is about and other books are about learning how to handle the desires without doing activities that will destroy you without trying to squirm away from God who’s throwing you that life preserver.

You want to drop the rock because it will make your life a little easier. Maybe it’ll save you some money. Maybe it’ll save your marriage. In other words, you, you wanna get rid of the misery of the addiction and its consequences. But if you could have the addiction without the consequences, despite the fact that it offends God and isn’t healthy for you, you, you would keep the addiction. You just don’t like the consequences. You still love the addiction. You don’t want to kill it. Or this one, you want to take a vacation from your sin. But you don’t wanna kill your sin. You wanna put your rock in your pocket. I wanna be able to forget about it, but I wanna be able to take it out when I need it. I’m not gonna drop it and get rid of it. Here’s the thing. Jesus, without a doubt, the teacher of love.

He showed us a love and a grace that no teacher has ever had or ever demonstrated certainly on the cross. He was filled with love every syllable of Jesus’ teaching co- colored by love. And so his first sermon, the first word of his first sermon, you know what that is? What was Jesus’s word of love? Matthew 4:17. This will surprise some people. That word of love was repent. It seems like a harsh word. It is a word of love. It’s Jesus like he said to the paralytic, “Do you wanna get well? Maybe you gotta repent. Do you want to be free? I think so. Then you gotta repent. You’ve gotta drop the rock before I reel you in. Drop the rock.” And so step six, were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character, which leads us to step seven. This is why we do it as Christians.

We could admit our weaknesses. We could admit our addictions because we have a God who will forgive us. Step seven, we humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings. Now, some people distinguish between defects of characters and shortcomings. Others put them together. Bill Wilson, the founder of AA, put them together. But one counselor I heard, and somebody just told me about this between services, I though it was a great analogy. The, the, the defects of characters like you have a flat tire. Every one of us has a flat tire. The shortcoming is choosing to keep driving your car with a flat tire. Do we all have these issues we have to deal with? We, we shouldn’t have shame because none of us are perfect. We’re all fallen. The frustrating thing is why do we keep driving a car with a flat tire when God says there’s healing?

There’s redemption. This is a biblical thing to go to God for our sin. Psalm 51: one through have mercy on me, oh God, in your goodness. In great tenderness. This is the God we go to. Wipe away all my faults. Wash me clean of my guilt and purify me from all my sin. Remove my shortcomings. This isn’t… These are the four things we use to get around this in our passive-aggressive way. We don’t ask God to overlook our sin. God, I, I only act out once a week and only when somebody’s really mean to me. Can, can’t we just let it go? We don’t ask God to ignore our sin. God, you and I both know this is just gonna, this is just who I am. Why don’t we just not talk about it anymore? Or we want him to cover our sin. God, I still wanna do this sin.

I just don’t wanna be exposed. I don’t wanna face the consequences. Y- you’re my God, right? You’re gonna forgive me. Can you cover my shortcomings? And this one, this last one is where I really fail compare. God, I, I know this isn’t the best, but if you compare me to others, I, I think I do okay. I, I have… I feel this every summer at this time because I’d love to watch the Tour de France, which is a really long race. They, these guys ride over 2,000 miles. And it takes a lot of time. I couldn’t do it when I had kids at home. I didn’t have that. And I feel a little bit guilty watching so much of it. And I try to assuage my guilt by saying, “But God, there are people all weekend they’re watching the open. , There, there are people that have spent weeks watching the World Cup hoping that one team scores a goal.

And then Britain scores one goal and spends a whole rest of the time playing defense. Yeah, that’s a sport, that’s a good time. Sorry.

But here’s the thing, none of that matters. You stand alone before God. I stand alone before God. God doesn’t determine Christian ethics by a democratic vote. Just because we think everybody else doing it, it’s still unhealthy for us. It’s still offensive to God. We don’t compare ourselves. We don’t over – we don’t ask God to overlook our sin, ignore our sin, cover our sin, or compare. We ask him to remove our shortcomings. God, I’m gonna drop the rock so that you can pull me in. These steps are necessary for us to become the person God wants us to be. They’re what keep us from love. And that’s where we’re gonna end up. It’s really a focus on loving. If we don’t deal with these character defects, we let the worst of us come out at the worst moments just when we should love. One dad, he’s, he’s an introvert.

He’s hard driving. He works a lot. And he, he didn’t put the most time into parenting because he just didn’t like to be bothered. And so his little daughter one night asked if she could stay up late to watch Bambi. He knew that wasn’t healthy. She needed to get to sleep. But he didn’t wanna have the struggle of saying no. He didn’t wanna go through all that because he wanted to get back to his project. So he just kinda gave in and said, “Fine, go watch Bambi.” Well, you all know what happens early on in Bambi. What happens? Bambi’s mom gets shot. Now, if that’s a spoiler alert, it’s been out for 50 years, people. Okay? That’s not on me. Of course, the daughter’s devastated. Now he’s got this whole problem in his hands. He’s gotta deal with the grieving daughter.Da, they shot Bambi’s mom.

Why did they shoot Bambi’s mom? He said, “Y – you wanna know why they shot Bambi’s mom? Yes. Because Bambi wouldn’t go to bed on time. If Bambi had gone to bed on time, Bambi’s mom would be with Bambi and everybody would be alive today, right? Not, not the best moment of parenting, but that’s what this do. We, we just carry these things. We push them down the line. We keep carrying these rocks. And then we don’t do what we wanna do to become people of love. I, I wanna s – I wish I could say this five times without boring you. This is not about piety. I’m not calling this as some empty pious existence. It’s about love. It’s about being a person who loves. That’s what Paul stresses. We love our family. We love our friends. We love our church. Titus two: 2-6, Paul says this.

Teach the older men to be temperate. I, not alcoholics, but other temperate things. Worthy of respect, self-controlled and sound in faith, love, and in endurance. Sounds like a manual for handling addiction and confronting addiction. He says, “Likewise, teach the older women.” Now, I’ve done a lot of study in the pastoral epistles. When Paul says older women, he’s actually talking to women in their early 30s. I know some of you are gonna be upset. Gary, are you calling me old? No, I am not calling you old. I’m saying the Bible calls you old. Teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live. Not to be slanderous or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, i.e. Not addicted. T be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husband so that no one will malign the word of God.

Similarly, encourage the young me to be self-controlled, i.e. Not addicted. Paul doesn’t see this as legalism. It’s not about getting to heaven. It’s the fruit of the gospel. We become forgiven so that we can become a different kind of person. Not one that ignores our sin or covers our sin or compares our sin, but one that puts our sin to death. Slip down to verse 11. For the grace of God that brings salvation. So he’s already brought us salvation, has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age while we wait for the blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us not just from hell, from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, catch this, eager to do what is good.

From the first century, Paul says, “These then are the things you should teach. Don’t be addicted.” He says, “Love. Don’t be obsessed with bad things. Be devoted to doing good things.” What we have to understand is how addiction wages war on our souls. I have to choose, do I wanna become a person who loves or do I wanna be a selfish person always He’s needing to get my fix, angry at others, short with others, impatient with others. It, it’s one or the other. When Paul tells Titus to teach older men, don’t be addicted, love. Teach older women, don’t be addicted, love. Teach younger women, don’t be addicted. Love. Teach younger men. Don’t become addicted. Love. The clear implication is it’s one or the other. It’s one or the other. We have to choose. It’s why Jesus said when he’s talking about an addiction to money, you can’t love God and money.

It’s one or the other. In my book on marriage cherish, one of the things I hit hard is that if you wanna cherish your spouse, I do with all my heart. I don’t wanna just love her. I wanna cherish her. I can cherish a spouse or I can cherish an addiction. I can’t do both because the addiction soaks up my energy, my thoughts and my attention. Gerald May talks about this so beautifully again in his book, Addiction and Grace. Psychologically, addiction uses up desire. It’s like a psychic malignancy sucking our life energy into specific obsessions and compulsions. Here’s the point. Leaving less and less energy available for other people and other pursuits. Spiritually, addiction is a deep seated form of idolatry. The objects of our addictions become our false gods. These are what we worship, what we attend to, what we give our time and energy instead of love.

Addiction then displaces and supplants God’s love as the source and object of our deepest, true desire. There’s a question I’m asking you. What is your sin costing you? It’s the ability to love. You can’t be the spouse you wanna be, the friend you wanna be, the child you wanna be, or the parent you wanna be if addiction is soaking up your time, thoughts, energy and desire. Arthur Brooks has written a number of great books. , He did one, talked about happiness using a long study from Harvard. And he talks about this woman who was mega successful on Wall Street. She had made more money than you could count in a lifetime, but she wasn’t happy and she wanted to talk to him about it. She said that she had few friends. They were really work colleagues, not friends. She had a miserable marriage because she’d always put her work above her husband.

She was distant from her kids because she missed all of their events because she had to be at work. She was chronically exhausted because she got up early and stayed up late. And when you live a life like that, something’s gona fill the void and for her it was alcohol. It starts out with one glass of wine then maybe a shot and then worse and more and whatnot. She’s just, I, I’m, I’m just not happy. Arthur Brooks though, this isn’t that difficult. Why don’t you decide that you’re gonna work a little les, take that time and invest it into your marriage, reconnect with your kids, maybe get another hour of sleep, stop drinking. You know it’s not good for you. Why don’t you do that?

She gave him the saddest and most honest answer he’s ever heard talking to somebody. She thought about it for a moment and she said this. I guess I’d prefer to be special rather than happy. She’s not, that’s what was driving her. It’s more important for me that everybody see I’m special. I’ve made it. More than that she loves a spouse, loves and is loved by her kids more than that she’s happy and takes care of herself. She’s gotta be special. And that’s the character defect that was running her addiction. It’s a rock that she wouldn’t drop and she will never be free or happy until she drops that rock. She’s a special holic.

So as we wrap this up, I wanna ask you, what’s your rock? We all have them. We all carry them. Is it like her, you need to be special? Maybe your rock is you’re like the bambie dad. You’re driven by ambition. You feel like you’re over your head in parenting and so you’re just kind of passive aggressive and then blows up in a bad moment. Maybe you’re like Robis Pierre or the guy cheating on his wife for five years or the woman who stole $400,000 from church. What did they have in common? They all thought they could stop at once. This one death, this one act of infidelity, this one dollar until they realized it becomes a way of life. Step six and seven invite us to be curious with these three things. Step one, weigh the cost of your sin. You’re aware of what it gives you.

Use your mind to push back and say, why is this even a temptation? I, I could be praying for people and listening to God and, and encouraging people and I’m driven by greed or lust or selfishness. And I never realized my just default goes into the gutter when God wants to lift it up to heaven. Why am I even tempted by this? Live with what it’s costing you so that you can go to step two and say, okay, I’m ready to get rid of it. When I see what it’s costing me, I’m, I’m done with it. It’s turning me into someone I don’t wanna be and it’s keeping me from being the person I want to be. Person of compassion, kindness, a person who’s like Jesus. And then the third step, we thank Jesus for this. We turn it over to God. I, I’m ready to drop my rock.

God, I, I, I’m giving it up to you. I want you to entirely remove it. Jesus makes that possible. So this morning as you walked in, you were, you were given a rock. There, some groups that work on this with the steps, they’ll take them down to the river and you hold up these big 10 or 15 pound rocks and they have you hold them out like this. They say, how long are you gonna hold onto this? And you hold it out like this and your arms start to spasm. So that’s what your addiction, that’s what the character deficiencies are doing to you. You keep holding it up. When are you gonna drop it?

The facilities were kind enough to let me have these rocks. They weren’t excited about bringing in 4,000 10 pound rocks. So this is a metaphor. What is your rock? We all have them. If you don’t know yours, just ask the person you came here with. They might say, I could give you a pocket full of rocks. All right? One isn’t gona do it for you. And if you’re ready, with the grace of Jesus, as we have another worship song, if you’re ready to say, I’m convinced by Colossians, by Proverbs, by Timothy, I wanna drop this rock. God’s calling me to it. I’m gonna get rid of this. I’m gonna invite you to come up and drop your rock in this box in, in a prayer. God, I’m, I’m done with this. There are boxes behind you. Basically wherever you get communion, you’re gonna find a box.

They’re also up in the balcony. Some of you, this is gonna surprise you, I don’t want you to drop your rock yet because you’re not ready. You’re still doing one of those sev – you’re squirming like a worm. I want you to take it. Don’t, don’t let it just be a service or a sermon. Live with this rock throughout a week. Let it be an inconvenience. There’ll be more of an inconvenience if you’re a woman because it, guys, we have pockets. I can put it in my pocket. I forget about it. Women have less pockets. That’s why I’m always carrying my wife’s stuff, right? She comes out, can you carry my phone because they don’t have pockets. So even better if it inconveniences you because I want you to see how inconvenient it is for you to live with bitterness or anger or materialism or dissatisfaction or all of those things.

Live with it so that next week you can come back. We’ve still got three more weeks in this and there’ll be a box in the lobby that says drop the rock. And prayerfully, just on your own, you can say, okay, now I’m ready to drop the rock. But if God is moving you today, I wanna encourage you to be ready to drop your rock. Maybe you wanna come up and pray before you do it. This is the last service. Nobody’s gonna bother you. You can come up while the worship is going. If you’re ready, just

Walk forward or behind you and drop the rock. , And then Halle will send us out after she’s done with the song. But prayerfully before God. Jesus said to the man at Beseda, do you really wanna get well? You gotta drop the rock. Are you ready to drop your rock? I