This Week’s Recovery Application Challenge
Please be sure to complete this week’s TWIRL 024 prior to moving on to TWRAC 024.
That’s All I Need!
Scratching our itch is our obsession as human beings. As long as we’re dissatisfied we’ll itch. As long as we itch we’ll scratch. Perhaps President Barack Obama said it best when asked about his greatest moral failure at the Saddleback Presidential Forum, August 16, 2008.
Responding to the question asked by Rick Warren, renowned author and Senior Pastor at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, then-Senator Obama said, “I was selfish…I was so obsessed with me and the reasons that I might be dissatisfied that I couldn’t focus on other people. When I find myself taking the wrong step, I think a lot of the times it’s because I’m trying to protect myself instead of trying to do God’s work.”
Our obsession with ourselves is indeed our primary addiction. What we discover is that, like Adam and Eve, the more we pursue control according to our understanding of what we need to be comfortable, the less we depend on God, and the less we are committed to doing his will in our life, therefore creating greater separation from God. We discover that the less we live our life God’s way and endeavor to living life our own way, the more we learn one way or another that our way does not work.
It is insufficient and impractical to live according to our own set of expectations, values and standards of morality. Our morals and values are tainted. They are flawed because they are shaped by so many other people throughout our maturation process and social culture whose own morality and value standards are tainted and flawed. This sequence is bent on its own destruction, yet it goes on. In our search for pleasure, and in time, relief from the discomfort of unmet expectations, we tend to continue in destructive patterns of behavior. We become consumed with somehow getting things under control. The net result is the increased severity of our illness into addictive patterns of behavior and the resulting chaos. Our chaos and conflict becomes amplified and we become sicker because our efforts to fix things continues to be infected by sin.
The core issue of sin is its addictive quality. It takes over as it becomes full-grown and we become slaves to it. Eventually circumstances are impacted enough that we experience increasing discomfort in our dissatisfaction. We hurt badly enough to either pursue help or begin to lose one thing after another that is important to us. Unless we seek help to recover from our problem, we invariably experience loss.
Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin when it is full grown, brings forth death. James 1:14-15 (NKJV)
What about this problem of sin? What is it to continually and habitually choose a thing or a behavior that inevitably leads to greater discomfort, loss, destruction, and ultimately death? The clinical world refers compulsive lifestyle patterns of behavior as addiction. We are obsessed with what dissatisfies in order to achieve satisfaction and overcome discomfort. It is the driving force that distracts us from focusing on the person who has the ability and the resources to change everything that detracts us from what is truly fulfilling. I’ll say it again: I am addicted to me, and you are addicted to you.
Addiction is our repetitive surrender to habitual patterns of behavior that render us defective in the very core of our being. Our brains get reprogrammed to the point that the slightest stimulation leads to compulsive thought and feelings that drive our behavior. This is the harsh reality of the problem of addiction. Let’s do the math. If addiction is the result of surrendering to that which is physically, cognitively, behaviorally and spiritually unhealthy, then the solution to the problem of addiction is surrendering to that which is physically, cognitively, behaviorally and spiritually healthy. Since addiction is at its root the surrender to that which is ungodly, then recovery from addiction must be the surrender to that which is godly. Therefore, addiction is a spiritual problem desperately in need of a spiritual solution.
- According to the quote at the top of this page, what would you say you have in common with President Obama?
- What in your life is dissatisfying? Please make a list being somewhat specific.
- How does what dissatisfies you distract you from focusing on other people?
- How does what dissatisfies you distract you from doing God’s work in your life?
- What do you do to seek a remedy for what dissatisfies you? What are the substitutes in your life for what you might find satisfying?
- How do these remedies—substitutes for satisfaction—distract you from focusing on others and pleasing God in your life?
- How are you addicted to your remedies from dissatisfaction/substitutes for satisfaction?
- How does your addiction to such remedies and substitutes affect others in your life… from your most primary relationships, to more secondary relationships, to casual acquaintances?
- What have you risked and lost in order to satisfy your addiction to selfish sin?
- How would you say you can identify with the message of the passage above from James 1:14-15?
- What can you do differently to minimize risk of loss that comes from hurting others, and maximizing your opportunity for blessing that would prove to be satisfying?
- Please take some time now to pray and express to God what you have identified in this challenging application. If you have not already, continue by reviewing published TWIRLs and TWRAPs geared to empower you along this path of satisfying recovery.
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