Category: addiction

Sin Destroys People that God Loves

Being a sinner does not mean that God doesn’t love you; rather I believe God loves you even more. This is not logical or rational. But His agape love for you goes beyond what is acceptable or sensible.

The Father runs to you. “And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” (Luke 15:20.)

Please don’t doubt, but just believe.

“But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”

Romans 5:8

Let Him see your repentance, that which fully understand the sin which has been destroying you. For some of this, we know. Nobody needs to convince us.

“Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9),

I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could face with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last ‘trick’, whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school.

‘But how?’ We ask.

Then the voice says, ‘They have washed their robes and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’

There they are. There we are – the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life’s tribulations, but through it all clung to faith.

My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace.”

Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

Please consider this that He spoken to us.

“He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector…’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’”

Luke 18:9-10, 13, ESV

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

C.S. Lewis

A Used Heroin Needle

Clarion Alley, 1987

I lived in the inner city of San Francisco from 1986-1989. I was a full-time missionary and lived in community called SOS. There were about 10 believers, and we were committed to doing high visibility evangelism, “taking the Church on the street.” We all lived in an old Victorian in the Mission district. 

I will not minimize the difficulty and danger of the streets combined with our ministry’s approach. Not only was it hard, but we also lived in a hard place. Our neighbors were heroin addicts, and we lived just a couple of doors down from the “largest lesbian rock-roll bar west of the Mississippi.”  

Directly behind our house was an alley that was as bad as you can imagine; addicts and winos had basically taken over. It was full of trash, feces, and urine. And in the hot summer it would make your eyes water. It really was awful. 

Please keep reading. 

One hot summer day I decided to clean up part of our alley. Armed with an old broom, laundry detergent, a hose (and courage) I headed out to scrub away. It took some doing; it was somewhat nauseating. 

I noticed a small hole in the corner of the wall. I reached in to discover a well-used heroin needle hidden inside. I ran that needle into my hand. 

I really didn’t think much about it at the time. 

About six months later I was in San Francisco General outpatient for AIDS testing. I had been terribly tired and had lost some weight. Perhaps I had been infected? It was funny but a part of all of this was having to sit in a circle with a dozen gay men being instructed about safe sex practices. (I remember bananas and condoms were used.) 

It was 1987, and AIDS testing was still primitive; it took 6 weeks for the results. 

That wait was a bit of a challenge. I cried out to the Lord many times. Since the symptoms got even worse, I started to think the worse. I was thinking, “was this considered martyrdom?” or “I can’t ask Lynn to marry me now.” (I had been thinking about this up to then.) 

I was positive that I had AIDS. 

About 20 years later I discovered I had contracted HCV, Hepatitis C. I had a good doctor who knew his stuff. Although my liver had been damaged by that point, he guided me through a maze of testing and found a new med that was supposed to have good results. It did, thank God. I had finally been cured. 

Lynnie and I were married on January 7, 1989. 

What can I say really? I know the Lord directly intervened. We returned to Alaska where I was asked to teach at the Alaska Bible Institute. I was able to draw on my many experiences with SOS in San Francisco to touch the hearts of young men and women going into ministry. 

Lynnie and I went on to pastor a Church in 2000. 

Only God can bring good out of something bad. 

“O Lord my God, I cried to You for help, and You have healed me.” 

Psalm 30:2 

“Christ is the Good Physician. There is no disease He cannot heal; no sin He cannot remove; no trouble He cannot help. He is the Balm of Gilead, the Great Physician who has never yet failed to heal all the spiritual maladies of every soul that has come unto Him in faith and prayer.” 

 James H. Aughey 

For info about SOS Ministries–sosmin.com

The Awful Pain of Job

job-and-his-friends

“Oh, why give light to those in misery,
    and life to those who are bitter?
21 They long for death, and it won’t come.
    They search for death more eagerly than for hidden treasure.22 They’re filled with joy when they finally die, and rejoice when they find the grave.
23 Why is life given to those with no future,
    those God has surrounded with difficulties?”

Job 3:20-23, NLT

Job begins to curse his very existence. Life has become far too brutal. He has lost everything. At this point Job is completely undone.

There is an endless grief that even his tears can’t help.

In Job’s first speech he asks some basic questions:

  • Why is light given to those who are full of pain?
  • Why does life unfold to the one who rather not live anymore?

There is a powerful wish or desire in this three verses. He wants to die, and end the charade. He wishes for non-existence and laments that he can not die fast enough. His terrible pain has taken his life.

People with disabilities and chronic pain can understand Job’s welcome craving for any sort of release. Once they were “whole” people. Death was something to be avoided at all costs. But now it is seen as an escape.

Job simply wants out.

Hurting people will often turn to drinking and drugging as a way of coping. We’ll try anything to numb our thinking. It’s what gets us through the day. We are bitter, and we are lost.

For Job (the patron saint of pain) finds that nothing will fix him. His friends have come, but they seem to only accuse and confuse job. Honestly he is better when they just sat with him in silence. If you read the book of Job you will understand.

“God wants us to choose to love him freely, even when that choice involves pain, because we are committed to him, not to our own good feelings and rewards. He wants us to cleave to him, as Job did, even when we have every reason to deny him hotly.”

–Philip Yancey

“Come quickly, Lord, and answer me, for my depression deepens. Don’t turn away from me, or I will die. Let me hear of your unfailing love each morning, for I am trusting you. Show me where to walk, for I give myself to you.”

Psalm 143:7-8

 

ybic, Bryan

 

Freezing a Brother

 “Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

Colossians 3:13, ESV

Since this blog originates in Alaska, and since winter is upon us, this post seems fitting. It’s cold. And, well, I’ve been thinking about things that have happened to me recently.

We have a sinful tendency to “freeze” people that offend us.

We do it with our words, attitudes, actions. It is called unforgiveness, or stigma, or just plain contempt. It locks another person in a place were they will stay forever, and you won’t ever have to deal with them.

We glaciate others with extraordinary ease.

Someone offends me, or irritates me and I blast them. In my mind I solidify them into one spot, and there they are locked. Sealed away, and out of my thinking. I sometimes call it “discernment.” And then I can avoid those pesky urges to humble myself.

I have been frozen by others, and to be quite honest, I have been the ‘freezer’ as well.

The sad part is that we ourselves are so far from perfect. When we zap someone we will never, ever ‘receive’ from that person. We can even preclude them as outside of the grace of God. (And usually that’s what happens.)

“You offend me, and I will never forget it, and you will never be more than an evil miscreant to me.” My rationale is “life is too short for hassling with jerks like you.” But yet I can’t fully accept that idea. That is not God’s will for me, and I know it.

We end up debasing ourselves by our own unforgiveness.

We restrict others from the Holy Spirit’s transforming ability. In our mind’s eye, the wicked person will never be able to offer up anything of value. We freeze–locking them into a place. And a vast amount comes from an unforgiveness that is ‘fallen,’ and an unbelief in God’s grace and power.

Mr-Freeze-1Furthermore, any use of our ‘freeze gun’ freezes us as well. Unforgiveness turns on us (which we didn’t count on) and the effect is cumulative. We can only absorb so much an we get hard and cold.

One more thing. We do this to whole groups of people. The alcoholics, the mentally ill, other races. This can be called prejudice or stigma. Ask yourself this–have you ever been stigmatized or demonized?  You will usually know it. But we cannot afford to be controlled by our unforgiveness.

There is far too much at stake.

“And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him and let it drop (leave it, let it go), in order that your Father Who is in heaven may also forgive you your [own] failings and shortcomings and let them drop.”

Mark 11:25, Amplified

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