“Lord, you’re so kind and tenderhearted and so patient with people who fail you! Your love is like a flooding river overflowing its banks with kindness.” (‭‭Psalms‬ ‭103‬:‭8‬ ‭TPT‬‬)

Psalm 103 is one of the most beautiful songs of praise and thanksgiving in Scripture that was written by King David. While we don’t know the specific circumstances that were the impetus for this song, we know that David was a man who knew the incredible grace & restoration that the Lord offered to Him. As someone who crossed definite lines of murder and adultery, this song is an account of God’s response to our sin and failings. It gives us a true picture of the God who loves us in spite of the unhealthy decisions we’ve made in life.

I love this psalm for many reasons. It also gives me a picture of God’s miraculous love for me throughout many years of addiction and recovery. And as Mark Denison (There’s Still Hope) says: “I can’t imagine where I’d be if not for that grace. But God’s grace doesn’t take away from our need to do the hard work of recovery.”

I’ve often shared with people that if it weren’t by the grace of God, I don’t know where I would be in life. What the condition of my heart would look like. What the state of my relationships would look like. The kind of person that I would have become if it were not for His hand coming into my life to pull me out of all the crap I was in.

One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned in recovery has been identifying the specific work I need to be doing on a daily basis to care for my heart, my mind, and the choices I make as it relates to my integrity. At the age of 16, God’s grace entered my life in a way that I had never known before. And yet, because I was so young and deeply entrenched in sin, I hadn’t realized my identity. I hadn’t realized how valuable my life was.

Around the Fall of 2009, I began the journey of reclaiming my God-given identity. Through conversations with my wife about my porn addiction and facing the very possible reality of a marriage that would have ended before it began, I sought the help I needed. It wasn’t easy. It required conviction, effort, and sacrifice that was brand new to me. I thank God for that season. The Lord had shown me incredible grace (grace that felt very painful at the time) through helping me to see the damage my decisions were causing not only to my own life but to others as well.

That work has continued over the last 15 years. And today I can say that I’ve experienced more freedom and healing than I ever could have possibly imagined. But it required a choice on my part. It required work. It required taking responsibility for ME. It required uncovering deep places of pain and past trauma that I was trying to medicate.

Denison also shares 3 key questions every person in recovery must ask themselves if they’re to really progress on their journey:

1. What work has God given you to do in the area of recovery?
2. Are you faithfully doing that work?
3. If not, why not?

I believe these questions help us to get very specific in identifying what we’re to go after for ourselves. Every person is different and their needs are different. But these questions serve as a wonderful framework for figuring out the kind of activity that is happening in the recovery journey.

None of us who are in recovery for addiction have any right to abdicate responsibility to anyone but ourselves. We are the ones who got ourselves into the mess we’re in. True, we may have been introduced to something or exposed somehow, but even in those situations, the burden of responsibility still falls to us on how we will steward our hearts into healing.

Thankfully, Small Groups Online helps you identity the areas in your life that need work. And this is done by offering its members a weekly Zoom meeting where they can connect with others who walking along similar paths in life. SGO comes in to help you find life-giving community that will help you grow in a ways you never could on your own.

I want to encourage you this month to check in with your heart. Has it grown stagnant in any way? Have you come to a halt in your progress? Are you feeling unsatisfied with where you’re at? Perhaps it’s because you shifted gears a while back and put your recovery on auto-pilot. Believe me, it’s so easy to do.

Remember: The overwhelming, all consuming grace of God has already forgiven you. But now, it’s time to take the reins and decide the kind of person you want to become. It’s up to you and you alone.

I want to share a little secret with you: I love technology! I think to some degree I always have. And while technology isn’t the be all or end all to life, it does offer convenience and can be very beneficial to life.

One of the devices I have owned and loved has been a wireless charger that charges my iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods. Amazing device! It sits on my nightstand next to my bed. I simply drop all the devices where they go on the charger and by the morning everything is topped off and back at 100%.

But can I share with you a pet peeve of mine? There have been a hand full of days that I’ve woken up before to find that because either my phone or watch wasn’t seated properly that they never charged throughout the night. They never reached 100%.

I’m sure your heart is broken over my first world problem, but bear with me because there is a very specific parallel I want to make to our own lives as it relates to walking with Jesus and in recovery:

Yesterday’s loss is no guarantee of tomorrow’s outcome.

You might need to read that sentence again. Because it’s true. Every single one of us walk through pain, make mistakes, undergo loss, suffer relapse, and screw up somehow. As I think about my own recovery journey, I remember the slips and the setbacks. I wanted to 100% my recovery within the first year. I had all the intentions of getting the W, but often came up short. It was only through much needed healing and maturing that I began to gain momentum. And soon I began to build consistency in recovery.

The word of God speaks very clearly to this frustration as we undergo the struggles and pain in life. Here’s what it says:

“And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” (Philippians‬ ‭1‬:‭6‬ ‭NLT)‬‬

Paul is most likely speaking here to the Philippian church regarding salvation in Christ. Jesus accomplished the work on the cross through his death and resurrection. He freely gave His life for us so that we could spend eternity with Him. But something we must understand is that Jesus didn’t just die for us, come back to life, and then peace out. He promised to send the Comforter, who is the Holy Spirit to be with us every moment of our lives. The reality though, is between the time that we receive Christ and when we take our last breath, there is a TON of work to be done in our hearts.

I like also how The Passion Translation interprets this verse:

“I pray with great faith for you, because I’m fully convinced that the One who began this gracious work in you will faithfully continue the process of maturing you until the unveiling of our Lord Jesus Christ!”

I particularly love the phrase, “the process of maturing you” in that version. If we’re honest with ourselves, none of us enjoy maturity because it’s painful. It requires courage. It requires commitment. The same is true regarding our recovery journey. You must expect that there will be bumps in the road, potholes, and unexpected turns along the way. But if you commit to never give, you WILL cross the finish line!

And not only that, but you will have the greatest Resource available to you through Christ Jesus. He wants to see you succeed more than anyone else on the planet! He will see you through your seasons of struggle. So if you find yourself questioning whether recovery is still worth it, trust me, it is. You have what it takes to succeed. And the work that Christ has started within you, He will finish too. Rest assured that God is committed to your growth.

I really believe we were meant to do more than just limp across the finish line at the end of our lives. We are to run hard and yes suffer a few stumbles along the way. That’s life. But above all, we’re not meant to merely survive, but to thrive. Small Groups Online can help you learn how to thrive — not in isolation — but within safe & healthy community. You will have the opportunity to meet weekly in a safe and secure online meeting space via Zoom to help you process the pain you’re walking through. SGO is both affordable and effective and will help get you started in recovery the right way. Check it out today.

Will you be able to look back at your life and know that you left nothing on the table and gave everything you had to becoming the person that God called you to become?

As I’ve progressed in my recovery journey and work with men on a regular basis do the same, I feel like I’ve learned some pretty important truths along the way. One of those truths is learning to understand how an addiction actually finds its start.

Even before an addiction manifests into some kind of compulsive behavior, the damage has mostly likely already happened in the mind. Why is that the case?

I think it comes down to the common denominator we all share: PAIN. Pain signifies a deeper problem going within a person’s life, just like the lights on the dashboard of the car indicate the need for an oil change or an overheated engine.

When pain in a person’s life is tended to in a healthy way, that person has all the potential to grow and become better from the experience. But when pain is ignored, buried, stuffed down, it doesn’t go away. It begins to infect the entire person. And so people medicate with substances, pornography, or whatever they can get their hands on in an attempt to ease the pain.

Pain, while being an excellent indicator of a problem, can also be interpreted the wrong way as well. Because of how powerful pain can be physically, emotionally, and psychologically, it can also cause us to develop beliefs about ourselves that aren’t true. And so we begin to buy into lies about ourselves and others.

As Christians, this can most certainly bleed over into our spiritual lives as well. When we’re hurting, we’re vulnerable and so oftentimes what happens is that the enemy of our souls, the devil, comes in and whispers lies to us. Remember, he is called the Father of lies for a reason. It’s about the only thing he’s good at.

I love this quote from Pastor Chris Hodges:

“Any time we’ve fallen into the hands of the enemy, it isn’t because he forced it, it’s because we believed it. The devil attacks by putting lies into our mind that we believe.”

How true this can be! Just think about how easy is it to believe even the slightest suggestion of something that isn’t real verses really buying in and committing to the truth. Oftentimes, it takes us effort to really believe in what is true. And I believe this is a good thing because being a person of truth is worth it.

Ephesians 6 takes this so seriously as to suggest that we should be wearing specific armor to fight the battle over our lives:

“Embrace the power of salvation’s full deliverance, like a helmet to protect your thoughts from lies.” (Ephesians 6:17)

But just a few verses earlier, a command is given to us in order to win the hard fought battles against lies:

“Put on truth as a belt to strengthen you to stand in triumph.” (Ephesians 6:14)

I believe for many, this could very well be the starting place for their addiction: Unhealed pain which manifests in unhealthy core beliefs about one’s self. A wound that begins in the heart and travels north to the brain where other voices and opinions are entertained. After a while, agreements and assumptions are made. A scenario that never could have been conceived of before is now imagined and believed to be true. Before you know it, you have believed a lie, which only takes you further down the path of pain. And the cycle continues.

Small Groups Online helps to surround you with a community of men or women who will encourage you with truth. You will have the opportunity to meet weekly in a safe and secure online meeting space via Zoom to help you process the pain you’re walking through. SGO is both affordable and effective and will help get you started in recovery the right way. Check it out today.

Truth has to be something we CHOOSE each day. Despite all that we’ve faced and the pain that we’ve walked through, the choice is still ours to make. No one else is responsible and no one else can make that choice. Scripture is clear that it’s through God and His word that we are victorious against the lies that we’ve believed. Lies don’t have to control us or dictate our future.