When The Bottle Wins.

UPDATED to better reflect.

This is honestly the feeling I get in my pastoral work sometimes.

Especially in marital counseling.

You'll work with a couple, ministering to them with love, patience, and a LOT of prayer and Scripture.

And you'll see changes. Positive changes.

You'll talk to them about being "transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2), and how the "new has come; the old has passed away" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

And you will see growth and changes!

The couple you are talking to now is completely different from the couple you started with six weeks ago.

God is doing MIGHTY works in them.

And then, the Bottle.

Someone will fall into The Bottle and kill the entire process.

One twist off on a Sunday, when they could have been in the church that they professed their love for, when they could have been fishing, when they could have been doing a thousand other things in the world...

But, instead, they chose The Bottle.

The Bottle makes them angry, makes them mean and looking for an argument when their wife comes home from visiting family from out of town over the weekend.

The Bottle empowers them enough to pull a gun and threaten to kill someone.

The Bottle gets the Sheriff called on them, and then arrested for Family Violence.

The Bottle, in one fell swoop, takes away the marriage, the home, the job, everything.

The Bottle Wins.

This is true power of the Demon that is The Bottle.

The Bottle controls the person by making the person think he or she is in control.

How many recovering addicts have said "I'm in control, I can stop it when I need to"? They may have even been functioning addicts, being able to keep a job and keep the bills paid so they must be doing something right.

But, in the end, The Bottle always wins. The Bottle is in control.

When things are good, we can "control" it and feel even better. When things are bad, we "control" it just to feel better. We lose judgement, we become our own worst enemy.

We hurt and injure everyone and everything around us.

The Bottle is in control.

It seems senseless. That's because it is senseless. There is no rationality to it. This demon thrives on irrationality. It thrives on senselessness. It thrives on the deepest of selfishness, rendering the addict powerless to prevent it.

Some will talk of an "out-of-body" experience - watching themselves drink even as they scream inside to stop.  But they can't.

The Bottle is in Control.

It is ironic then that the best way to "control" this demon is to surrender.

Step One of any 12 Step program is to admit that you are powerless against the addiction and that that addiction has made your life unmanageable.

It is admitting that you don't really have control. In a sense, it is giving up control.

Step Two is to seek the help of a Higher Power. Actually, it is letting a Higher Power have control.

Coming before Jesus as you are and letting Him have control of everything from now on.

Its much easier said than done. 

And its not just limited to Alcohol. Drugs, Food, Sex, we all have an addictive personality to something.

And we are broken and imperfect enough to relapse. Repeatedly.

Yet, the Blood on the Cross still saves us. Repeatedly.

Even after the gun, the yelling, the arrest, the probably impending divorce, there is still The Cross.

Even Scripture says so:

"For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39 ESV)

Nothing that we do can get Jesus to stop loving us. Nothing that we do can get the Father to stop loving us. Not even The Bottle.

Jesus has this knack of raising things from the dead, even when He is four days "late".

And that is why I keep ministering. Because the Blood still Works, and so must I.

And I still love these people.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Fox News had a recent story of a possible serial killer, as evidence by the discovery of the remains of three victims.

They are, as follows:

"...48-year-old Jewel King, who vanished in April 2006; 41-year-old Verdell Jefferson, who was reported missing in August 2006; and 43-year-old Dorothy Botts, who was last seen on Christmas Day of that year."

They had died 12 years ago.

While not explicitly stated, I believe that these pictures of the ladies are police mugshots, based upon tone, direction, and style.

I almost missed this story.

I also almost dismissed this story.

Except that my entire work week is ministering to people like these.

I can hear the epithets used now.

"Crack Whore". "Slut". "Welfare Queen." "Stoner". "Hooker." "Thief". "Trash". "Parasite".

Those are the repeatable ones.

The world may look at these ladies with disdain.  One can hear the collective sigh of dismissivness.

"No biggie, no big waste. No one will miss them."

The world finds nothing endearing about them. They didn't care for themselves, why should we?

But these are exactly the people Jesus was referring to in Matthew 25:40: "’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’" (ESV)

And just in case you might think that Jesus was just rambling, remember who He hung out with.

Hookers (Mary Magdalene). Thieves (Levi the Tax Collector, Judas Iscariot).

He was genuinely concerned about the Least of us. He commanded us to Love them.

And so I do. Probably not as well as I should sometimes, but at least I am aware.

I am aware that these ladies were also "Daughters". "Mothers". "Sisters". "Wives". "Friends".  I am humanizing them because that is exactly who they were; human beings created in God's Image and loved by other human beings.

And deserving of being loved simply because of that fact. The fact that they were knit together in their mothers' wombs. Fearfully and Wonderfully made.

Don't miss that!

For Where Your Treasure Is....

I have a gentleman who has been visiting us for some time now. He never misses a Sunday or Wednesday.

Last week, his truck broke down.

He, like a lot of us, simply doesn't have the funds to get the necessary parts to repair it.

He'll repair it himself, he just needs the parts.

So what does he do to continue to get to church?

He gets this:

It's an old bike. It's his niece's bike, in fact.

Our church is about 3 minutes away from his house by truck, but about 20 minutes by bike. Each way.

He rides this bike to and from our church in 90 to 100 degree summer weather. Sundays and Wednesdays.

That got me to thinking.  I asked myself, "What would I value so highly, or need so badly, that I would do whatever it took to get there to get it?"

One could immediately get a mental picture of an addict in the midst of lying, cheating, or stealing to get the next fix, but I am talking about something much deeper than that.

What, or who, in your existence, is something or someone you need so badly in order to not just get through the day, but through life itself?

This particular gentleman comes from some rougher straits than most. He's tried the other stuff, but his current need is Church Family. People who love him for as he is.

In Luke 12:34, Jesus said "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (ESV)

We cannot escape that fact. We will treasure something. Our hearts will be focused on it, and we will do whatever it takes to obtain it.

At root, we look for those things that make us feel good or feel better. If drugs, alcohol, or sex makes us feel good, we take more to feel even better. We crave it even more when we feel bad.

Jesus invites us to crave something that only He can provide, which is not just something that makes us feel better, but some that actually makes us better.

We become better siblings. Better spouses. Better parents. Better people.

When was the last time you did whatever it took to get God in your life?  When was the last time you fought to get to church, instead of fighting the church Herself?

What would happen if Jesus became the Treasure you absolutely had to have in order to live? And live life more abundantly?

You might even borrow your niece's bike.

The Thorns of Boiling Frogs

"8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

9 Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world." 1 Peter 5:6-9 ESV

There is a strange question that we like to ask occasionally down here in Texas.

Question: How do you boil a frog?

Answer: Very slowly.

Its a bit absurd, but the logic goes like this:  you can't drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, because the frog will just immediately jump out. (Yes, I know you can put a lid on the pot, but just go along with this.)

So how do you boil the frog?  

You put the frog in a pot of lukewarm water, and slowly turn up the heat.  As the heat is slowly raised, the frog gets cozy and relaxed, even sleepy.  His will and strength leave him, so by the time he figures out somethings wrong, he's already being cooked.

Its a funny concept, but there is very serious warning in it: Don't get too comfortable.

As husbands, fathers, and as godly men, its very easy to get too comfortable.  And this is Satan's best weapon against us.

Generally speaking, no one wakes up one day and says "Hey, lets ruin my life today."  Satan does not normally make someone have an affair, become an alcoholic, become entangled in pornography, or become a drug addict in one day.  Godly men are too powerful for that.

So Satan tempts VERY slowly. The picture of the very little bikini at the supermarket checkout. The occasional drink. The little extra pain killer. The co-worker who seems to understand you like no one else does.

Little by little, we feel like we can control ourselves in these situation, and since we are "in control", we can stand a little more, and since this feels good, that must mean that more will feel even better! Bikini-less women, the extra drink, the stronger pain killer, the occasional "harmless" flirt.

These lead into pornography diminishing, or even replacing marital relations, an actual affair, or needing a number of stronger drinks or medications just to get through the day.

Then, one day, you wake up in the boiling pot.  A ruined marriage, in jail with a DWI/DUI. And you have to have more of the addiction just to feel numb.

Godly men fall victim to this all of the time. Satan uses our pleasures and desires to pull us down. Pornography (the personal thorn of yours truly) and affairs appeals to the basest of manly nature: sex and power. Substances start off by either numbing pain or increasing feelings of pleasure, but ultimately numb the addict to any feelings of happiness or pleasure.

And Satan has a field day because the Church likes to treat these issues like the elephant in the living room. "Aren't we good Christians because we're not like those people." 

But the very sad fact of the matter is that these issues are affecting families in our own churches all of the time.  Right now. Even pastors. Because pastors are men too.

None of us men are immune to the temptations and desires the world likes to send our way. It takes other men and Godly wives to help resisting the snares.  Even in Genesis 2, God makes this plain when He says "It is not good that you should be alone."

Men, drop the pride, and share the darkest parts of the heart, not only with God, but with your wife, and/or a trusted brother in Christ.

What you do in secret will be brought to the light (I think I've read that somewhere), and no matter how "victimless" it seems, someone is being affected.

PMV