Slide 1
Recovery is the journey from a life of enslavement and self-destruction to a life of self-care, enabling us to become free, loving, connected, and worshipful servants of God

Slide 2
Step 10
 “Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”

Slide 3
Psalm 139:23-24
Search me, God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting.

Slide 4
Colossians 3:8-12
Take off sexual immorality, anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language, and lying

Put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience and love 

Slide 5
1 Timothy 4:16: “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.”

Slide 6
I Corinthians 10:12 – So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall.

Slide 7
Dr. Mark Denison
“Every day you will either feed your addiction, or you will feed your recovery.”

Slide 8
Milton Magness and Marsha Means, “As recovery progresses, cravings and urges to act out lessen in both frequency and intensity. That being said, most sex addicts with long-term sobriety will report they have occasional thoughts of acting out. One of the gifts of recovery is learning to recognize the thoughts, emotions, and experiences that trigger cravings and then use the tools of recovery to counteract them. Since you are a sexual being, you will have sexual thoughts throughout your life. Recovery will help you make peace with your sexual thoughts so you can live in co-existence with them instead of returning to the chaos of addiction.”

Slide 9
Lorenzo Scupoli
“Distrust of yourself is so necessary in the spiritual combat that, without it, you may be assured that you will neither gain the desired victory, nor be able to overcome even the weakest of your passions.”

Slide 10
HALT
· Hungry
· Angry
· Lonely
· Tired

Slide 11
         The tree that grows from an acorn is an… (oak)
         The noise a frog makes is called a ….
         The funny story a comedian tells is called a ….
         The white of an egg is called a …..

Slide 12
STEP 11: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”

Slide 13
Col. 1:21-23
“Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation— if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.

Slide 14
This is NOT about losing our salvation because we sin, but losing our focus because we forget        

Slide 15
David Garland
“Chronic sinful behavior twists the mind so that it becomes even more at enmity with God, and the twisted mind hurtles us into ever greater depravity. The depraved mind then commends evil behavior as good or natural or as an alternative lifestyle…Those who become enemies of God become Sin’s lackeys and Sin inflicts only ruin on them as their lives spiral out of control.”

Slide 16
Martin Luther: “This life, therefore, is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it; the process is not yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end, but it is the road; all does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”

Slide 17
Colossians 1:13-14
“For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

Hey, this is a little embarrassing, but it didn’t work last service a few weeks ago. Somebody dropped off something with me as they were going out the door just with some college swag. And I’m, look, I’m praying for people, I’m talking to people, I’m shaking hundreds of hands, and I didn’t really get a chance to look into it, and I really didn’t thank you appropriately. So if that was you, would you please come talk to me afterwards? , You owe more than what I was able to give you. , If you have been dealing with stress, there’s something going around on the internet that has this exercise supposed to put you at ease. So I’m gonna read it, and I want you to imagine some nice spa music going on behind, Anne, maybe the sounds of trinkling water as you try to release your stress.

Picture yourself near a stream. Birds are singing in the crisp, cool mountain air. Nothing can bother you here. No one knows this secret place. You are in total seclusion from that place called the world. The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with the cascade of serenity. The water is clear. You can easily make out the face of the person whose head you’re holding underwater. <Laugh> I hope it’s a joke, but it’s kind of a common belief that we will find serenity when we finally have control over people who have done us wrong and we can make them pay. We live in a world that is hyper aware of the wrongs done to us. And so much of our focus is how do we pay them back? But that’s the opposite of steps eight and nine in our series, everything’s fine. The lies we tell ourselves when we’re trying to place the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous into a biblical context.

And steps eight and nine wrench us from the focus that’s our natural bent, the wrongs that have been done to us, the victim mentality, to become newly sensitive and then to address the wrongs that we have done. Now I need your help in this sermon. I’m gonna have you sort of be the course for that and I’ve gotta divide you in half. So I want this room up to about here. You are exactly in the middle. So I’m splitting you into right here and up to the balcony. There’s five words I want you to remember if you think you can do it. , The five words that I want you to repeat when I point at you are me, me, me, me, me. Then you can do that. Say after me. Me, me, me, me, me. Now this side of the room you picked wisely, you get to say five words.

You, you, you, you, you. Can you say that with me? You, you, you, you, you. If you talk to an addict who is not in recovery or who has, but hasn’t gotten to steps eight and nine, and I’ve talked to many, you hear this me, me, me, me, me just pouring out of them. I need this. I want that. I did it because I, I need this. Even in recovery, again, if they haven’t got to eight, nine, well, I need a spouse who will support me. I need a community who understands me. I need a church that does for that. They’re still encased in this thinking of me, me, me, me, me. You talk to a person who’s gone through steps eight and nine, and it is a glorious transformation. Suddenly, you’re talking to someone who’s made this dramatic spiritual shift and their thinking is you, you, you, you, you.

Going from me, me, me, me, me to you, you, you, you, you is really one of the most significant spiritual shifts we can make in our life. And I know I’m talking to some young people. The sooner you make this shift, it is one of the life, most life-transforming shifts you can make. And if you can think about it even through these, going through the scriptures that we’re gonna talk about, you will mature 10 years spiritually by thinking along these lines alone. How do we think of me, me, me, me, me? You talk to an alcoholic. They know they’ve had too much to drink. They’re at a bar or something. It’d be such a hassle to take an Uber home because then they’re gonna leave their car. And how do they explain that they couldn’t drive home? And they know they’re putting themselves and others in danger, but they still decide to do it.

Why? They’re thinking, me, me, me, me, me. Steps eight and nine are designed to take us from this self-focus to learn how to think about others. Step eight is this. We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. And step nine, we made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so when injure them or others. This a biblical truth. It’s clearly from numbers five: six through seven. Say to the Israelites, any man or woman who wrongs another in any way and so is unfaithful to the Lord is guilty and must confess the sin they have committed. They must make full restitution for the wrong they have done, add a fifth of the value to it, and give it all to the person they have wronged. So these steps lead us to make a list.

, It’s, it’s something where you go through and you write it down. Who have I hurt emotionally? Who have I hurt physically? Who have I hurt financially? And then we ask, how do I make this right? I’ve gone through this a couple different times in my life. I’d heard a sermon back when I was in college and I was so grateful. It was based off of Samuel and one Samuel 12: three, where he said this, “Here I stand. Testify against me in the presence of the Lord in his anointed. Whose ox have I taken? Whose donkey have I taken? Whom have I cheated? Whom have I oppressed? From whose hand have I accepted a bribe to make me shut my eyes? If I have done any of these things, I will make it right.” And from that point on in my life, I just realized I don’t want there to be anyone that could say they have a grievance against me.

Samuel was an old man. I was a young man when I did that. The reason I liked it is I realized if I cheat someone, God’s gonna make me say it right. And having done that, I don’t wanna do that again. And it just changed the way I wanted to live. One of the things I went through in college, it seems trivial, but, , to some of you perhaps, but when I was in high school, I went to a Taco Bell, and that’s not the sin. My wife might call it a sin, but that’s not what I’m calling the sin. And I knew the woman. She’s a classmate of mine who was the cashier. And so I went to take it my wash she goes, “Oh, just take it.” I go, “No, no I put. No, no, no. Just take it. It’s no big deal.” And so I did.

But later I realized that’s stealing. She didn’t have the right to give it to me just because she worked there. So I came back from college. I went to that Taco Bell. I asked for the manager. I said, “Hey, look, when I was here a couple years ago, , the person behind the cash register just gave me the meal.” Who was it? It doesn’t matter. She’s not here. But I took out $10. I just want you to give this to the owner. That’s twice what I paid for it. I’m sorry I did it. And it was just amazing to see all of the workers were just looking at me like I’m just some alien. And I think part of them are guilty thinking they had probably done that as well. But I just wanna say, I don’t want there to be anyone that can say I cheated them.

Now, making amends, this is so key, doesn’t mean I haven’t been sinned against even by the person I’m making amends to. It means I’m just owning up to what I’ve done wrong. Given the recent news about the possible connection between explosive diarrhea and Taco Bell, you could make the case that they’ve sinned against a lot of people, right? Our job is to say, what have I done wrong? Our job is to take the focus from me, me, me, me, me to you, you, you, you, you. One Peter talks about making this shift. It’s amazing when you get into the scriptures. They don’t use the word addiction because it wasn’t a psychological concept back then. But the concept is woven through just about every New Testament writer. And Peter talks in one Peter four, what happens when we understand God’s love and forgiveness? Peter says this, “You won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires.” Doesn’t that sound like addictions?

But you will be anxious to do the will of God. Look, you’ve had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy, their immorality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties and their terrible worship of idols, i.e. Addictions. These are a lot of the things that we would call addictions day. But I want you to notice the turn to verse eight. This is so key. Because in the Bible, and frankly, in good recovery programs, the opposite of sobriety, the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection or what the Bible would call love. Look at verse eight. Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other. Love is Peter saying, “Stop with the bad behavior. Start with the good. Stop with the addiction. Start with the love.” Why? Because love covers a multitude of sins.

Cheerfully, share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay. God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. Unrecovered addicts don’t serve people. They use people. And so they collapse into me, me, me, me, me instead of you, you, you, you, you. Patrick Carnes is writing about a behavioral addiction. And he said this, “Our survey revealed that out of the many losses addicts experience, 10 were the most painful. We’re only gonna read six. In order of priority, they are loss of primary relationships, loss of children, which can involve abortions, deaths, loss of custody, loss of significant friends, unavailability to children, including neglect, financial losses, and the guilt of having hurt others. Five, , sorry, five of the top six have to do with relationships. Why? Unrecovered, unaddressed addictions are a wrecking ball in our relationships and with those that we love.

One study found that each addiction leaves in its wake 10 people who are harmed by our actions. Last week and dropped the rock, we stressed. It makes no sense for us to sin. We talk about the damage it does to us. Steps eight and nine say,” But also now, be sensitive to the damage. Your unaddressed issues deal with others. “If We don’t deal with our stuff, we know this. Our family members, our fellow employees, our children, our spouses, our parents will have to deal with the fallout. I hope this has become clear throughout these last five weeks we’ve been dealing with this. We will all, all, there are no exceptions in this room or watching online. We will all deal with certain temptations and certain sins and certain character deficiencies until the day we die. And we know we can be forgiven in Christ, and that’s a glorious news.

But here’s the thing, if we’re not careful, if we don’t go through steps eight and nine, we think, so what does it really matter? If Jesus is just gonna forgive me and I’m not gonna go to hell because of it, do I really need to address these issues? Do I really need to get rid of this behavior? But if I know if I don’t deal with it, my family’s gonna deal with it. That’s why I keep fighting. That’s why I don’t just give in. I’m not gonna fight perfectly. I’m going to stumble. But I want to fight for this church. I, I wanna fight for my marriage. I wanna fight for my family. I might fight imperfectly, but I don’t give up because it’s not just about me. It’s not just about me, me, me, me, me. It’s about you, you, you, you, you. ‘Cause If we don’t deal with our stuff, our family will have to.

When I was in college, I had a good group of friends and we were talking about childhood stories. One of my good friends, Richard, was talking about growing up, he was nine years old, lived in kinda rural parts of Montana. And it was a terrible winter. And there’s like near blizzard-like conditions. And his mom tells him, he’s nine years old. “Honey, I need you to go to the drug store and pick something up for me. “He Goes,” Mom, it’s like a blizzard outside. You can’t send it. You’ll be fine. You’re a Montanan. You can do this. “So She gave him the money. She said,” I’ve already called the pharmacy. They’ll have the bag for you when you get there. “So He got to the pharmacy, one, mile and a half through heavy dress of snow. Handed over the money. The pharmacist gave him the bag, , , stapled paper bag.

He gets home. And I mean, he’s just like,” Do I have frostbite? He can’t believe he made it. His cheeks sting. “He Hands the bag to his mom. She opens it up. She pulls out a carton of cigarettes.

See, she would risk her son’s health because she hadn’t dealt with her issues. Every addiction leads to alienation. Why is dad always in the basement? Why is that couple, they’re not married? Why do they go away to Boulder to get together for coffee if nothing weird is going on? What, why does mom go into the closet to eat and hide her wrappers? Why does my husband hold onto his phone like his life would end if I ever looked at it or found out the passcode? My wife and I were listening to a radio program. It’s one of those advice programs one time. And a woman called in, she felt mortified because her husband had caught her looking through his wallet. And she said, “I feel so terrible.” And the host said, “You should. I can’t believe you would do that.” And Lisa’s the second I’m like, “What’s wrong with that?” And Lisa says that because my wallet is her personal ATM.

I mean, she’s going through it all the time. We count on it. She hadn’t been to an ATM for three years one time because she just goes to my wallet. And so I would know, back in Houston, she would go to the farmer’s market on Saturday morning. So I’d have to go Friday to get my money, but then she’d be frustrated with me. She goes, “You only have 20s. I need tens and fives and ones.” I’m like, “I’m on it, your royal highness. All right. I will make some cash transactions so that you can have the smaller change.” But, but this shows how addictions damage relationships. Can I just say it doesn’t sound like marriage to me? If I’ve got to do something, I’m ashamed I’m locking myself in a closet or I’m going out of town or hiding myself in a basement or guarding my phone or wallet.

That doesn’t sound like a marriage. That sounds like hell. And it’s the addictions that I let go on, the unaddressed issues in my life that will push me away from those I love the most. Keeping an addiction alive and unaddressed is like living with a hand grenade and the pin is half pulled. It’s gonna relationally explode. You may not get to choose when, but it’s going to happen. Ed Welch, counselor, said this. Any steps toward isolation and independence are steps into darkness. See, the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety. It’s connection. Addictions push us away from people. Steps eight and nine are the tools to bring us back together. See, an addict is just obsessed with my needs matter. I need this. I need that. Christian who’s gone through steps eight and nine thinks your needs matter. And that’s what I wanna be sensitive to. We’re five weeks in.

We haven’t dealt with some of the most common addictions. If you look at the studies, let me just talk about porn for a second to some of the guys. And I know women can deal with this too. My whole view of this area was, I, I guess expanded some years ago when I talked to a woman. She told me she had been sexually abused as a young girl. I mean, it was awful. It was vile. And it’s not uncommon. She responded by acting out. She was promiscuous in her teens and in her 20s. And even when she got married, she would make intimate videos of her and her husband and she would post them on site somewhere where, where they would do that. And she told me at first it felt empowering. I’m taking it back. This is my body. This is my choice. I get, I, I like this, that, that I’m choosing to do it.

But then she met Jesus and she was healed. And she realized, I’m God’s daughter. I need to respect myself. And she realized, I’m responding to my abuse as a little girl and I was abusing myself. So she wanted to get those back, but she goes and she found out that they’re laughing at her. They can’t do it. It’s everywhere. And, and so when any guy is clicking on that, he’s participating in her abuse, you as well. She gave her consent. 20 years ago, she gave her consent. She does not consent to it today. And she lives with the fear of what if somebody recognizes me and, and sees me now? See, often when, when we’re dealing with things, we think of our guilt, but we’re not thinking of how am I hurting others? I, I think of this. You see it every couple of years when some intimate stuff from celebrities are exposed and put online.

What would happen if we would all go through steps eight and nine and nobody clicked on it? And the celebrity’s handler said, “Man, I’ve got some really bad news. The- these things have been posted online to hurt you.” And they’re like, “But here’s the good news. Nobody’s clicked on it.” See, to do that isn’t just to incur guilt for us. It’s to harm others. And step eight nine says, “Think about who you’re harming. You don’t know if it’s revenge porn. You don’t know if they still give consent. And it’s just about organizing your life so that you’re not hurting people. I’ve mentioned gambling before. I know that makes me sound so fundamentalist, but he- here’s. Tell me how I’m wrong. Thinking about this as a Christian. For me to win money gambling, somebody has to lose. That’s the whole thing about. I’m going to hurt you for me to gain.

How as a Christian do I feel good about that? I- I’m not providing a service. I’m not selling a book. It’s just one of us wins, one of us loses. Now, full disclosure, I- I’m. I- I played low-stakes poker with my Christian friends in college. No- nobody got hurt. Nobody lost more money than we’d spend going to the movies or going out to eat. So I- I think there are degrees. Or golf buddies or whatnot. They put a little. I- I’m talking about the kind of gambling where it becomes obsessive and it’s really growing in our culture. It’s becoming a growing problem. And- and you know why there’s an increase in domestic violence after major sporting events? It’s not because the guy’s team is lost. It’s because his bet didn’t come through. So I- I don’t wanna engage in an activity that is going to lead me to harm others because it’s the addict who only thinks about me, me, me, me, me.

But it’s the recovered Christian who thinks you, you, you, you, you. We just have to train our brains. And when we do that, here’s the glorious shift. We just start thinking about others. We’re not obsessed with ourself. I- I spend a lot of times in hotel rooms. , I’m a proud diamond member with Hilton Hotels. You gotta stay there 50 nights a year to become diamonds. So I get to park in those little spaces that say diamond only. It’s so pathetic, but it makes me so happy. <Laugh> And I always wanna police people. Are you sure you’re a diamond? I mean, I could show you my card, but, you know. But when I was in a hotel one time, this happened years ago. This changed my outlook about being there. There was a knock on the door one morning and it was a cleaning woman.

99% of the time, it’s a woman. I said, “Look, I’m, I’m still working at my desk, but go ahead and come in and, and, and it’ll be fine. You can clean up.” And she walks in. I, I gotta tell, it was just like she just heed this huge sigh of relief. It’s like, “Whoa. It’s already climbing, you made your own bed.” She goes, “And it smells good too. If you want your room to smell good, Tip, eucalyptus soap, eucalyptus shower steamers. Look it up. You can thank me later. You can have the same experience.” But it, it made me sensitive that there’s a real person cleaning my room. And what must it be like to work for substandard wages? And you go through a hotel after a Friday night. What do you think those women see? The messes. Sometimes it’s gross. And I realized there’s another person doing that.

And so when I’m checking out, I’m never gonna see her. Often I don’t see them at all. I’m opening the curtains because I opened the door. I wanted it to be light. I want this room to be different because I’m thinking about the person that’s doing it. Most of the time, churches will give us these welcome baskets with a lot of treats and goodies. And, and frankly, a lot of times it’s stuff that just Lisa and I don’t eat. Well, I don’t eat if Lisa is with me. , If Lisa’s with me, sometimes I nibble. That bit about hiding wrappers. Yeah, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve done that. So, , we leave the package with all these goodies, but then still leave the cash tip. And I remember one time walking out and I saw the woman who’s gonna clean our room. And I thought she’s gonna be so happy in about five rooms.

She’s got this and this girls and this. She’s gonna come in and the room’s gonna be pretty nice. There’s gonna be some treats for lunch or to take home to her family and some cash trips. It, it’s like going through eight and nine says, this world doesn’t revolve around you. You don’t want to hurt others. It changes the way you think. And, and here’s the thing. It’s selfish for me to do that. Living by thinking of others is a thousand times more joyful than acting out in ways that we are ashamed of and that hurt others. But here’s the reality. Regardless of our intentions, the best of intentions, we mess up. James three: two is exhaustive. We, what’s that next word? Awe. There’s nobody in this room. There is nobody watching online that doesn’t stumble. How often? In many ways. Jesus is the only hero of the Christian life.

We will never graduate from steps eight and nine. We will never stop messing up. But steps eight and nine help us come back together when we do. I was working with a premarital couple once and the guy just would not open up with his wife to be. He, he just wouldn’t be honest about what hurt him and this and that. And I said, “What, what’s, what’s going on?” I finally pressed him. He said, “Well, Gary, I just don’t wanna hurt her.” He thought that was a good Christian response. Said, “Oh, okay. Well, let’s just call off the wedding.” “What? “I Go,” If you don’t wanna hurt her, you better not marry her. “I Go,” You’re not Jesus, right? You’re going to hurt her. I’m not talking about abuse. I’m not talking about high levels of cruelty. I’m just saying we all stumble in many ways.

If this marriage is gonna work, you’ve gotta try as hard as you can to love her, but you recognize you’re gonna fail. And here’s the process. You ask for forgiveness. You learn to make amends, which makes you not wanna do it again. And that’s how you reestablish your relationship. Relationships amongst broken people will get messy. It’s forgiveness and confession that does the repair. Look, you have no idea how much I wish I could be a perfect pastor. James three: two is written of teachers. I wish I didn’t stumble in many ways. I wish with all my heart, I could be a perfect husband. I have such an amazing wife. I wish I would never hurt her. I wish I tried so hard. I wish I could have been a perfect parent. But I fail on all accounts. Steps eight and nine restore my sanity. Okay?

This is gonna happen. But this is how you respond. You go ask for forgiveness and you make amends. So what does that mean? Well, first we say we’re sorry. If we cheated somebody financially, we give them back the money and more. But amends is more than words. That’s what I love about this phrase that we make amends. In Houston, there’s this couple where the woman caught her husband at a strip club. She’d gotten late at night, this notice from her bank that somebody withdrawn a thousand dollars from an ATM. Of course, she’s in a panic. She’s trying to figure it out. She looks at what the ATM is. It’s right across the street from a strip club. She’s calling her husband. She’s texting her husband for three hours. He gets home really late. Smells like smoke and other things. She shows him the receipts. He finally confesses.

And one of the reasons she was willing to work through it and the way it worked is that he was willing to make amends. Guys, amends doesn’t mean saying, “I’m sorry, get over it.” Amends is following through in a way that you recognize the hurt you’ve caused and you’re trying to alleviate it. He joined a ministry in Houston called Castimonia, where they take you through the 12 steps. He engaged in his phone, tracked my iPhone. He says, “You will know where I am at any time. You can find out exactly where I am.” At Castimonia, they even have lie detector tests you can sign up for four times a year so she could ask him if he has been acting out. He did all the things that he had to do to tell her, “I’m sorry I’ve hurt you, but I’m willing to do the steps so that I don’t keep hurting you.” And when a guy says, “I’m sorry, why can’t she get over it?” I’m like, “That’s saying you’re sorry, but amends means I’m willing to process with you the hurt I cause.

I’m not gonna say get over it. It’s my fault. And part of making amends is being patient to help you get through that. But what if you can’t make amends? Another case of a young man when he was much younger, he had a child aborted. He didn’t encourage it. He didn’t press for it, but he didn’t try to stop it. It kinda made his life convenient. When he got older and he grew in the Lord, he realized,” Yeah, I was supposed to be that kid’s dad. Dad is supposed to defend his kids. I, I didn’t even try. It just was so convenient. And here’s what he found to make amends. There was a YMCA that had a big building project and you could buy bricks where you could dedicate it to the memory of someone. He gave a name to his son. And he put that brick there and you can see it to this day.

His child is remembered. He said, “I, I don’t wanna just say I’m sorry. I wanna make amends that people will read the name of my son that he mattered.” If we don’t deal with addictions with step eight and nine, we just become selfish people that are all focused on me, me, me, me, that there’s more than 10 people there. They’re focused on you. Instead of you, you, you, you, you. Another man worked that had a huge drug and alcohol problem for over a decade. He had made his wife’s life miserable. Now he was working recovery. They came to one of my marriage conferences. This one was on Cherish. I said, “Guy, this is a great opportunity for you. You take all of that energy that you use acting out and hiding from your wife. Now you’re cherishing your wife, you’re spoiling your wife, you’re putting all of his attention.” And he goes, “No, no, no, no, no.” I go, “What are you talking about?” He goes, “Gary, wouldn’t that be making my wife an idol?

If it was holy to throttle someone, I really wanted to.” And I, I said, “Dude, if you spend the next 10 years trying to make her life, or 20 years trying to make her life feel like heaven, it won’t make up for the 10 years you’ve made her life feel like hell.” See, he hadn’t gone through these steps. He’s still thinking, “Well, I don’t wanna be an idolater. I don’t wanna do this.” He hadn’t made that transformation from me, me, me, me, me to you, you, you, you, you. There was a fascinating study. This was, this open up so many doors for me. If you talk to a lot of addicts, one of the things they’ll try to do to dismiss themselves, or we try to do to dismiss ourselves is, “I have an addictive personality.” You see, see, it’s my brain’s fault. I, I can’t help but I have this one of those addictive personalities and it just makes me go astray.

But what this study found is you don’t have an addictive personality, you have an addicted personality. The difference is the addiction caused your brain to respond this way. It makes you a selfish person. It makes you focus on yourself. And when you act out, you reinforce this personality that doesn’t think about people you’re hurting, you’re only thinking about your own needs. Now, this is what’s fascinating. What is the repair for an addicted brain? Because it can be repaired. The repair is asking for forgiveness and making amends. So you stop thinking about you and you start thinking about others. Now, I, I’ve mentioned a lot of the struggles that men have, so let me just address women for a second. There was a study in 2009, a Jesuit study that tried to figure out what are the most commonly confessed to sins by women in the confessional.

That got your attention. What do you think they are? In this order, number one was pride. Number two was envy. So how does that really hurt people? How is that so bad? The Christian classics called pride the chief of sins. If you’re a prideful woman in an office and you’re convinced, your boss is an idiot and your colleagues are idiots as well. And so what do you do? You gossip and you undermine and you do a lot of harm. You can tear an office or a church apart with pride. If it’s in marriage, I’ve seen this applied to marriage where a woman is so aware of how her husband has sinned against her, she’s done working on herself. Look, we will be better, Gary, when he deals with his stuff. This isn’t about me. He deals with his. Our marriage will be better without once looking into her own heart.

As I said this before, amends aren’t owed only to people who have never hurt us. Amends are owed to anyone we’ve hurt. Eight and nine says, “Drop the victim mentality and say, what do I have to own up to?” If you want healing in your relationships, whether it’s at marriage or at work, you have to say, “How have I dishonored you? You imperfect you, but how have I dishonored? How have I disrespected you? Have I spoken behind your back? Has my pride made me feel superior to you and you inferior?” If you haven’t addressed your envy wives, does your husband feel like he never measures up that your life is a colossal disappointment and it’s really all his fault? And he said, “And, and out of my disappointment, maybe I’ve withheld from you something that, that, that would matter to you. I haven’t talked about how that would hurt you.

I’m never, ever blaming a wife for a husband’s sin.” But she’s gotta look at is, am I responding to my husband’s sin by sinning against him myself? So what are the amends for pride and envy? How, how do you amend for that? Well, there are two phrases that prideful people and envious people rarely would say. And they’re also the repair for that. They’re the amends. Wives, when’s the last time you said to your husband, “I’m sorry.” See, prideful person rarely ever would say that. And the envy person, envious person when, when is the last time you said to your husband or your boss, thank you. Thank you. That repairs that disrespect. A few cautions. Step nine says, “We made direct amends to each pe – to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” I- if you had a prior relationship with an abusive man, women, and there’s something you did that he doesn’t know about, please don’t go and confess to him.

You shouldn’t be offering yourself as a punching beg to make amends. There are other ways you can do that. Similarly, if, if there’s someone that you know will not keep your confidence and it will blow up your life, you have to be willing to make amends, but AA and Smart Recovery Group says, “But you have to be wise about whether you do it.” That includes past relationships. When I went through this much later in life, there were some relationships in my past that made me wince. And the counselor said, “Gary, don’t you dare go back and contact her. You don’t know what situation she’s in, what’s going on with her marriage, whether she’s married.” He goes, “I’ve seen this happen too many times. You confess to me. We talk about other ways to make amends, but it’s too dangerous to go back.” , or it might be that there’s just, you can’t, they don’t know about it.

And if you bring it up, it’s gonna bring disconnection. There’s no amends to be made, but you realize this isn’t about connecting. This will bring disconnect. And, and just know they may not be received all that well. Hebrews 12:18 says this, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” I just wanna say, I know I’m gonna mess up. I’m gonna try and make it right. You may not accept it, but my job is to try to make it right. Now, there’s a key point behind steps eight and nine, that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction in recovery circles is called connection. I would call it love. Think about the Pharisees live for sobriety. I don’t look at this. I don’t taste this. I don’t touch that. But if the goal of my life is not to do something, at best, I’ve achieved nothing.

The Bible says we wanna stop. Remember Peter, we stop this so that we can do that. And what is that? One John four, that is love. Dear friends, let us love one another. For love comes from God. See, one Peter, one John say, we go from me, me, me, me, me, to you, you, you, you, you. And it creates a beautiful life. We’re not defined by our bank accounts, our physical appearance, our jobs, our titles, our marital status, our kids. We’re defined as people who love each others. We’re not trying to impress people anymore. As we say, Jesus is the only hero in this church. And so I can courageously confess, , , you don’t accept me because I’m perfect. It’s because if I sin against you, I’m gonna ask for forgiveness and I’m gonna seek to make amends because we’re to be known by our love.

I end my sacred marriage conferences saying that, that, you know, the goal that I want for everyone that goes through that at the very end is this. That I’ll know my life was lived with integrity. If on the day I die and somebody talks to my wife and she’ll say, look, Gary dealt with this, he dealt with that, he dealt with that character weakness until the day he died. But that man loved me like I’ve never been loved and never will be loved. He asked for forgiveness where it was essential. He made amends. And what that means is that the challenges of dictions become gifts of grace. We stop seeing ourselves as our own heroes. We put ourselves on the mercy of Jesus. We have short accounts with others. We ask for forgiveness. We give forgiveness. We make amends. We say we’re sorry. And then we make the great transformation that steps eight and nine call us to from me, me, me, me, me, to you, you, you, you, you.

For some of you, if you didn’t drop your rock last week, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can go back and listen to last week’s sermon. Maybe this is another reason to drop your rock. Last week, it’s all about the absurdity of sin, how we hurt ourselves. Why are we even tempted to sin? This week. Well, another reason to drop the rock is if we don’t drop that rock, we’re gonna use it to hurt others. So if you’re ready, you’ll see some baskets with a sign. You can drop the rock, , and I hope you’ll consider to do that. You can still bring

It back the next week or two if you’re still working through that. Let’s pray. Lord, I thank you for Jesus. I thank you for his forgiveness and grace where we can admit where we are weak, that we all stumble in many ways, but we have a savior that you died for us. And out of that acceptance, we can go to others, not knowing whether we’ll be forgiven or accepted by them, but to do what is right, to say we’re sorry and to make amends. Lord, I don’t know how many broken relationships are represented in this church or those walking, watching online. But I just pray through these steps, you would call us back to love. Call us back to grace. Have you called us back to you? We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.