Route1520

(I posted this on Reflections of a Ragamuffin and wanted to repost here as well. TL)

“Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.”
James 5:16a

Can I be honest?

I mean really honest?

For years I conveniently glossed over verses like this when I would came across them in scripture. Because my core belief was that I seriously defective and the only guy struggling with big, significant sins (in my case pornography, adult chat rooms, and infidelity), I conveniently rationalized that James must have been speaking only to those Christians who wrestled with sins along the lines of speeding on the freeway, getting angry with a co-worker, or laughing at a racy SNL sketch. Even if James did mean confess all sins, I pictured everyone running for the exits after I confessed to a deliberate one-night stand…especially if I was following the guy whose confession was that he failed to witness to his neighbor.

I was a big sinner in a little sinner paradigm.

Frankly, a little sinner paradigm has no place for James 5:16. Or if we do take a stab at confessing sins while living in this little sinner paradigm, even our confessions are often manipulations to ensure that others see just how spiritual we are. I was a master at this technique.

Confused? Follow me on this…

I’m in a small group of guys meeting for accountability and we are to that point in the meeting where we bare our souls and get real with each other…to share any struggles and challenges that we are facing. This is what I share, complete with pauses and concerned facial expressions for effect…

“Guys, please pray for me. I’ve been reading Andrew Murray’s book on prayer and committed last week that I was going to start getting up at 4:30 every morning and pray for the lost around me. Well guys, I slept in til 5:00 the last two mornings and didn’t feel like my heart really wanted to pray when I did finally get out of bed. Pray that I’ll be more disciplined to stick to my commitment.”

Or what about this one?

“Guys, I’m really embarrassed to tell you this, but it has been two weeks since I have shared my faith. There are at least 4 or 5 guys at work who really need Jesus and as far as I know, they don’t even know that I’m a Christian. Pray that I will have the courage to share with all of them before we get together next week.”

The whole point of those “confessions” was to leave the other guys thinking “Man, I’m not even thinking about prayer and sharing my faith and not only is Tray thinking about it, he is upset with himself that he slept til 5 and hasn’t shared Christ with his co-workers! I sure need to start developing more discipline in my Christian life like Tray has in his.”

When we live in the little sinner paradigm, we are forced to hide, pose, and pretend because, frankly, we are not little sinners. The fig leaves that we hide behind are often noble, but at the end of the day, we are still hiding. The gospel paradigm makes it clear that we don’t have to hide anymore…we are free to be the big sinners that we are.

Big sinners need a big Savior.

Little sinners need a little Savior.

Martin Luther had a friend who was living in the little sinner paradigm. Luther wrote him a letter calling him out of his little sinner paradigm and into a big sinner, gospel paradigm…

Here is a portion of that letter…

“It seems to me, my dear Spalatin, that you have still but a limited experience in battling against sin, an evil conscience, the Law, and the terrors of death. Or Satan has removed from your vision and memory every consolation which you have read in the Scriptures. In days when you were not afflicted, you were well fortified and knew very well what the office and benefits of Christ are. To be sure, the devil has now plucked from your heart all the beautiful Christian sermons concerning the grace and mercy of God in Christ by which you used to teach, admonish, and comfort others with a cheerful spirit and a great, buoyant courage. Or it must surely be that heretofore you have been only a trifling sinner, conscious only of paltry and insignificant faults and frailties.

Therefore my faithful request and admonition is that you join our company and associate with us, who are real, great, and hard-boiled sinners. You must by no means make Christ to seem paltry and trifling to us, as though He could be our Helper only when we want to be rid from imaginary, nominal, and childish sins. No, no! That would not be good for us. He must rather be a Savior and Redeemer from real, great, grievous, and damnable transgressions and iniquities, yea, from the very greatest and most shocking sins; to be brief, from all sins added together in a grand total.”

I am thankful that I have a group of “hard-boiled sinners” I meet with every week. Men who have a big sinner paradigm. Because we understand how scandalous and damnable our transgressions are, we also know how wonderfully amazing God’s grace is.

Last Monday night, one of our guys shared a public confession in a room full of thirty men. The sins confessed publicly weren’t nominal…they were great and shocking. My friend feared that men might run for the exits or pass judgments because of the nature of what he confessed.

He discovered just the opposite.

He found the healing James promised in James 5:16. Rather than run away from him, he experienced true intimacy as men came toward him and affirmed him. There were lots of tears. His courageous confession led four more guys to do the same. Our experience in community Monday night swallowed up the lies that each of us brought into that meeting…

“If they really knew me, they wouldn’t love me.”

“I’m the only one who is struggling at this level.”

“I am not so sure this group is safe for me to share my particular sins.”

Because of our brother’s courage, each of us had our lies exposed.

Are you living in a little sinner paradigm? Could you be missing a deeper healing because you are hiding?

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All too often in recovery we are introduced to individuals who come wanting the “quick fix” for their problem. They are seeking the missing element that will help them overcome their struggle once and for all and with as little pain as possible.

The reality is that recovery is a process and it is painful. But our healing comes on the other side of the pain. When we embrace this truth rather than spending so much energy trying to avoid pain, we begin to see progress.

A friend sent me this poem on Facebook last week and I think it offers a great reminder for those who are on the recovery road…success is getting up every time you fall.

The Race
“Quit, give up, you’re beaten”
They shout at you and plead
“There’s just too much against you
This time you can’t succeed”.

And as I start to hang my head
In front of failures face
My downward fall is broken by
The memory of a race

And hope refills my weakened will
As I recall that scene
Or just the thought of that short race
Rejuvenates my being

Childrens race, young boys
Young men, how I remember well
Excitement sure, but also fear
It wasn’t hard to tell

They all lined up so full of hope
Each thought to win that race
Or tie for first, or if not that
At least take second place

The fathers watched from off the side
Each cheering for his son
And each boy hoped to show his dad
That he could be the one

The whistle blew and off they went
Young hearts and hopes afire
To win and be the hero there
Was each young boys desire

And one boy in particular
Whose dad was in the crowd
Was running near the lead and thought
“My dad will be so proud”

But as they speeded down the field
Across a shallow dip
The little boy who thought to win
Lost his step and slipped

Trying hard to catch himself
With hands flew out to brace
And amid the laughter of the crowd
He fell flat on his face

But as he fell his dad stood up
And showed his anxious face
Which to the boy so clearly said
“Get up and win the race”

He quickly rose, no damage done
Behind a bit that’s all
And ran with all his night and mind
To make up for the fall

So anxious to restore himself
To catch up and to win
His mind went faster than his legs
He slipped and fell again

He wised then that he had quit before
With only one disgrace
“I’m hopeless as a runner now
I shouldn’t try to race”

But in the laughing crowd he searched
And found his fathers face
That steady look which said again
“Get up and win the race”

So up he jumped to try again
Ten yards behind the last
If I’m going to gain those yards he though
I’ve got to move real fast

Exerting everything he had
He regained eight or ten
But trying hard to catch the lead
He slipped and fell again

Defeat, he lay there silently
A tear dropped from his eye
There’s no sense running anymore
Three strikes, I’m out, why try?

The will to rise had disappeared
All hope had fled away
So far behind so error prone
A loser all the way

“I’ve lost, so what”, he thought
I’ll live with my disgrace
But then he thought about his dad
Whom soon he’d have to face

“Get up” the echo sounded low
“Get up” and take your place
You were not meant for failure here
“Get up”, and win the race

With borrowed will “Get up” it said
“You haven’t lost at all”
For winning is no more than this
To rise each time you fall

So up he rose to run once more
And with a new commit
He resolved, that win or lose
At least he shouldn’t quit

So far behind the others now
The most he’d ever been
Still he’d give it all he had
And run as though to win

Three times he’d fallen, stumbling
Three times he’d rose again
Too far behind to hope to win
He still ran to the end

They cheered the winning runner
As he crossed the line first place
Head high and proud and happy
No falling, no disgrace

But when the fallen youngster
Crossed the line, last place
The crowd gave him the greater cheer
For finishing the race

And even though he came in last
With head bent low, unproud
You would have thought he’d won the race
To listen to the crowd

And to his dad he sadly said
“I didn’t do too well”
“To me you won”, his father said
“You rose each time you fell”

by D. H. Groberg

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Every Monday night during Band of Brothers, we include Question 1 and Question 60 of the Heidelberg Catechism in our opening comments. We do this in large part because of our tendency to so quickly forget the Gospel of grace and start putting emphasis on our behavior and effort instead.

Use the forward and back arrows to click through these presentations and be reminded of the scandalous grace that has set us free.

In what ways do you struggle believing the simple truth of God’s grace? Do you ever feel like you need to do something to earn God’s favor? If so, how might this lead to living as an orphan and not a beloved son or daughter?

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Recently a Christian journal featured the work of two Christian counselors. Here’s how the reporter saw the essence of their work:

“Their vision of God is not that of a vengeful force who punishes man for his sins, but rather one who loves, forgives and guides. So often, people have a distorted image of God…Therapy may help overcome that.”

The phrase, “their vision of God,” puzzles me. Am I as a Christian counselor supposed to order up my own god? Is God merely a projection of my own problems and moods? Or do my clients determine the kind of god I see?

Then there are the situational adjustments. Although I may tilt in favor of a loving, forgiving God, are there times when a vengeful one comes in handy? If so, when? I guess a personally customized God comforts some people, but it (he? she?) leaves me anxious and confused.

People smarter than I tell me that we live in a “post-modern” world. The Enlightenment jettisoned God in the eighteenth century and replaced Him with reason. The twentieth century threw out reason and replaced it with relativism. There are no timeless truths today; everything is relative and every person decides for himself or herself what makes life worth living and who God is. (Sounds a lot like the book of Judges, doesn’t it?)

This relativism I see reflected on fundamental believers bumper stickers:

“God says it, I believe it, Therefore, it’s true.”

Do you see the relativistic error? We have made God’s truth conditional on our believing it! It should read:

“God says it, Therefore, it’s true.”

And His Word remains true whether you or I believe it or not.

Culture corrupts the church as much as the church changes culture, unfortunately. So we shouldn’t be surprised that modern relativism shapes the thinking of many Christian counselors and other church ministries. Systematic theology (much too rational!) has been junked; you may as well burn your Hodge and Strong. Instead, welcome to the world of Chinese take-out theology, where you can order the god who fits your taste.
Are you in the mood for a stern god? Maybe your neighbor did something to offend you and he needs some punitive justice to put him in his place. Then choose from Column A. Or maybe you are in a tight spot and need some rescuing. Look to Column B. There you find the Omni-God-you know, all powerful, all-knowing, etc. Or maybe you want some warm fuzzies. Column C is loaded with them: love, mercy, compassion, patience, and all the other comforting stuff of which a victimized culture believes it has been cheated. Pay your money and take your choice, but be sure to ask yourself,

“Is this really the God that I will meet at the Judgment?”

Who is that God? He is the God of the Bible who is perfect in all of His attributes. He is both loving and jealous, merciful and angry, transcendent and imminent, vengeful and forgiving. He is all that He is, and He encounters us in the completeness of His being, not merely as our alter ego. Your ministry becomes robust and far-reaching when you embrace the fullness of God, but it becomes still and ineffective when you narrow God to those attributes that you or your parishioners find personally comfortable. Let God shape your ministry; don’t let your ministry shape your god.
Encounter all that God is in Jesus Christ, “for God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him” (Col. 1:19). Follow Him in a discipling ministry that comforts, confronts, challenges, forgives, calls down judgment and offers the touch of mercy. In Him “loving kindness and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Ps. 85:10).

With that kind of theology, you won’t feel hungry an hour later.

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Picked up a memoir yesterday of a man who has battled addiction to cocaine and alcohol. The name of the book is “Broken” and this quote is on the first page…

A disciple asks the rabbi, “Why does Torah tell us to ‘place these words upon your hearts’? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?”
The rabbi answers, “It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.”
—From “The Politics of the Brokenhearted,” by Parker J. Palmer

This speaks to the painful “beautiful undoing” that each of us must experience in order to truly know ourselves and our desperate need for God’s amazing grace. In recovery circles, we refer to this as our “bottom”…that point in time where we realize that not only have we put it in the ditch, but that we are powerless to get our lives out of the ditch. As God lovingly exposes our desperate need for Him, our self-sufficiency is stripped away and we begin to understand in new terms what a daily life of faith looks like.

Unfortunately, so much energy is spent among Christians trying to hide weakness and brokenness, rather than embracing it and connecting with others at that level. At the heart of our hiding is a deep unbelief of the Gospel. We say we believe that God loves us as we are, but live as if God is disappointed and even angry when we fall short. This line of thinking causes us to live as orphans separated from God trying to manage sin on our own and keeps us on a perpetual cycle of shame. We then put on our masks and “Sunday Best” and parade into church comparing what we know to be true about ourselves with what we think is true about those around us. What we fail to realize is that comparing our true selves with someone else’s pristine mask is always an unfair comparison. We are left believing that we must be the only one struggling, which causes us to retreat even further into the shadows.

Are you living today as a beloved child or as an abandoned orphan? In what ways are you hiding in the shadows instead of living boldly in the Light?

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(This post also posted on Reflections of a Ragamuffin.)

I heard this catchy tune today and it reminded me of a great talk my friend Jim Doggett gave a few weeks ago…

One of the main points that Jim made to that room full of young men has been on my mind since…

“Evil wants to make little of where you have been and much of what is left to do. God wants to flip that and make much of where you have been and little of what is left to do.”

Our growth in the Christian life and the daily transformations that God is bringing about are never as quick or as dramatic as we would like for them to be. Evil is constantly whispering in our ear…taunting us with our past failures and shortcomings and encouraging us to give up and throw in the towel. When we look to the future, evil shouts “you’ll never get there”, or “it will be too hard”, or “how will you ever figure out where you are going?”

My youngest two have been at my parent’s farm all week this week. When I see them tonight, I will most likely notice slight changes because in the last week that they have been gone, they will have grown. This growth is happening all the time, but when I see them everyday, I don’t notice the subtle changes that their growth brings about. When I see them in the morning and my mind is comparing their image to what I saw the night before, the change is so slight that I can’t see any contrast. When a week goes by, however, enough time has passed for me to pick up change that their growth has brought about.

Rather than allowing evil to beat us up over our past, let’s take a long look and realize “just how far we’ve come.” Instead of comparing yourself to the way you were yesterday, why not remember where you were 6 months ago…a year ago…5 years ago…20 years ago. If you keep a journal, go back and read entries from June of 2009 or even June of 1999. Most likely you will be amazed and encouraged by the growth you have experienced spiritually between now and then.

As you look to the future, God wants you to realize it is not a big deal because He is leading the way. Your recovery…your sanctification…your changed life is in His hands and is in His control. Ours is to simply live in the moment in absolute freedom because of the finished work of Christ.

Watch the video again and remember. Remember how far you’ve come and celebrate! God is at work in you and no matter where you find yourself today…He is not finished with you yet!

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Here are a few new badges to help us spread the word about Route1520 and the recovery movement that is currently underway. Please feel free to grab any of these that you like, post them to your site, and link back to us here at www.route1520.com. The code is available at the end of this post.

To post any of these badges on your blog or website, follow these instructions for the HTML code:

• Decide which badge you want and hold your mouse over it until the filename appears.
• Substitute the name of the badge that you want with “FILENAME” in the following code:
  <a href= “http://www.route1520.com” target=”blank”><img src=”http://route1520.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/FILENAME.jpg” border=”0″/></a>
  For example: If you wanted the first graphic that says “grace”, this is what your code would look like:
  <a href= “http://www.route1520.com” target=”blank”><img src=”http://route1520.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/grace21.jpg” border=”0″/></a>

Please let us know where you post these badges! Thanks in advance for helping us get the word out! If you have ideas about more badges, send them our way!

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As startling and eye-opening as these statistics are, they don’t accurately reflect what is actually going on when it comes to pornography on the Internet. Frankly, so many new adult-related sites are going online daily that it is almost impossible to accurately keep track of them all.

Via: Online MBA

At Route1520, we see the effects of these statistics daily as we journey alongside men and women whose lives have been shattered by pornography and sexual addiction.

Join us in offering hope and recovery to those whose lives have been wrecked by this addiction.

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Ok, so this is you fighting porn/sex alone. Maybe you are an addict, and maybe you are not, but if you try and fight it alone, this is what you look like. Really, if you fight any sin issue alone in your life, this is what you look like. The Gospel, my friends, is meant to be lived in community. We are to be Proverbs 27:17 people – iron sharpening iron. We are to encourage each other on in the race to win the prize.

This clip is such a great metaphor. The Black Knight initially does not talk with his adversary – that was the right call. But then, he engages in conversation, and ultimately in combat, and he winds up a bloody stump in complete denial. How many times have you been there?

Your alone, and the urge hits. You try and shut it down, or walk away from the computer. That’s the right call. Even better is to call your friends and accountability team. But you don’t, and soon the rationalizing begins and you stay at the computer, and you are engaging. Well, I’ll just look at a splash screen, and then I’ll stop. An arm falls off, and you claim it is only a scratch. Hours later, there you are, a bloody stump in denial.

Think about it – when you isolate yourself from your community, isn’t that when you get into the most trouble?

Watch this, get a laugh, and get a point. None of us are invincible…

Fight alone, and you wind up a bloody stump in complete denial. It’s just that simple.

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One of the primary questions that must be answered by any ministry, especially a ministry focused on an individual’s personal recovery, is “How do people change?” In his classic sermon titled The Expulsive Power of a New Affection,  Thomas Chalmers (1780 – 1847), does a fantastic and thorough job of answering that question.

Chalmers begins his sermon with these poignant words…

“A moralist will be unsuccessful in trying to displace his love of the world by reviewing the ills of the world. Misplaced affections need to be replaced by the far greater power of the affection of the gospel.”

Chalmer’s message meets the rampant moralism and behavioralism of our day head on and offers the only solution to change the hearts of men…the gospel of Jesus Christ. All too often we meet individuals who are struggling in the area of sexual sin who are completely debilitated by guilt and shame. The church has done a great job of telling them what not to do…what to “put off”, as Paul states in Colossians chapter 3. And so they spend day and night in a vicious cycle of acting out, promising vehemently to NEVER do it again, acting out again, making more promises, and ultimately coming to believe that God is mad at them because they can’t get their act together.

We want to help men and women who are currently trapped in sexual sin to expose the lies that God is somehow mad or disappointed in them and point them toward a bigger, more adventurous story. We seek to help them “put off the old” and “put on the new” by discovering that the gospel is a wonderful scandal…that God loves them as they are and is every day singing over them. This is indeed the “power of a new affection.”

As we prepare to celebrate Easter, may Chalmer’s message ring loudly in our ears and may we find this new affection ourselves.

Take the time to read Chalmer’s entire sermon.
For more information on Thomas Chalmer’s life and accomplishments, check out this link.

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