Tag: grace

Addressing Addiction

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

Addiction is as much a part of our culture and society as dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, or weeds in the garden.  For the person who wants to encourage and help someone caught in a destructive pattern of alcoholism, pornography, drugs, smoking, or any other addiction it is absolutely imperative to understand and use the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to address the situation.  This is not to say that approaching addiction from the medical end of things with a sensible regimen of appropriate meds is not necessary; in fact, it is.  However, people are not only fundamentally physical creatures; they are also spiritual beings and, therefore, addiction needs to be addressed from the spiritual angle with a vigorous biblical regimen.  It is important to understand that theology is not just something to passively believe but a powerful reality to be actively lived.  Here is one of the most incredible summaries of the gospel and shortest theological statements for our daily practical lives that you will find in Holy Scripture from Romans chapter 8, verses 1-4:

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.  For what the law was  powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.  And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.


          The culprit of addiction is sin.  The answer to addiction is grace.  Radical, unconditional, unlimited grace.  In fact, grace is the answer to everything.  Law can’t save a thing; it isn’t designed to do so. Yet, the addict tries and tries to will himself to change but cannot.  He cannot because he is weak, and the law doesn’t help since it is inadequate to counter addiction.  It only hinders genuine help.  Sin is all too ready to attach itself like a cancer to the weakness of the flesh (NIV – “sinful nature”).  And it uses the law to do so by believing that addiction can be overcome through sheer willpower, effort, and turning over a new leaf.  So, the addict may get caught in a vicious cycle of sin, regret, expressions of never doing it again, and then returning to the addictive behavior.  The availability of sin plus the lack of accountability combines with a lethal dose of the flesh to equal addiction.

Only God can save.  Its called grace.  God sent his Son to deal with the the problem of sin and addiction.  He shared our humanity, and the weakness of being a flesh and blood person.  Jesus experienced human frailty to the full; he knew, personally, what desire and enticement is – and he never sinned.  Moreover, Jesus became a sin offering for us.  So, he condemned addiction in the flesh.  The power of addiction has such a hold on us as people that there is no other path than destruction if we go the way of the law.  The law itself is not evil (it shows us how sinful we are), but is not able to bring deliverance.  New Testament scholar James D.G. Dunn describes the work of God using the metaphor of disease:  “God is the divine surgeon who recognizes that the cancer of sin has so eaten into the flesh of humanity that there is no salvation for humanity other than by radical surgery, by the complete destruction of that cancerous tissue.  That radical surgery took place, as it were, on the cross.  The humanity which emerged from the operation is free from the cancer.”

Through Christ, and only through Christ, we are free.  It is our task, then, to enter into this grace and forgiveness through faith in the cross of Jesus.  That’s it.  God has brought an intervention through Jesus Christ in order to rescue and rehabilitate.  God’s rehab program is the Holy Spirit, which deals with the weakness of the law from within the life of the believer in Jesus.  In the Spirit, using the gospel of grace, we have the resources to put to death the sinful nature of addiction.

If you are helping a person caught in some addiction, here are some practicalities to consider:

  • If the person does not know Jesus, or you are not sure, start with communicating the gospel of grace – that there is forgiveness through the cross for all the addictive behavior and thoughts and offenses.
  • Have the person commit the entire chapter of Romans 8 to memory.  Focus on discussing aspects of this material in several conversations.  Memorize it yourself, and meditate on it regularly.
  • Be an accountability partner and an encouraging person; do not condemn.
  • Help the person think through what things need to go and what behaviors need to change, so that the flesh has no opportunity to rear its ugly weak head.
  • Pray with and for the person consistently.
          If you are a person caught in an addiction, seek the help of a trusted Pastor or church layperson immediately.  Christianity is not a private religion; it is designed to be lived and practiced in community.  The reason your private efforts have failed is that you have been created in the image of God and hardwired for relationships and community.  Find a church with a support group that addresses your addiction.
          Remember, Christianity is a paced journey of walking, a long obedience in the same direction, and not a magic pill to swallow.  Let us journey together along the road until we reach the heavenly city where there will be no more addiction.  Even so, come Lord Jesus.

Distracted by Grace

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

 

          With summer, church ministries typically take a hiatus from their normal schedules.  Along with that reality, our own spirituality may suffer as we turn to other things like vacations or being around the kids all the time.  Summer distractions may overwhelm our good intentions toward walking with God, as if we have a condition of spiritual A.D.D.  We seem to… “squirrel!”… be easily distracted by the next thing that comes running along, and have a hard time focusing on what is important in life.

But before we get too perturbed with ourselves, think about the nature of our lives. Teenagers and twenty-somethings are learning to flex their independent muscles and are developing a whole new skill set of handling a budget, paying bills on their own, creating new social networks, adjusting to new schedules, and finding and holding a job.  Young families are constantly adjusting to the next crazy thing their pre-school kids are doing, trying to coordinate both parents working, all while attempting to keep both sets of grandparents happy.  Parents of teens probably aren’t even reading this article because they are driving kids from one end of the planet to the other (it seems), and wonder if they will ever catch up on the sleep they need.  And grandparents in our culture today are just as busy, but with the added irritation of constantly dealing with the next ache and pain.  It is easy in the daily demands of life to have Jesus squeezed to the margins.

Let me suggest that rather than feeling guilty for our spiritual lives because of all the distractions and seeming lack of discipline, that we shift our distractions by being distracted by grace.  When we sense our schedules are awry, our financial budgets won’t budge, and our work never seems to get done, that we use these situations to be distracted by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.  When we are forever chasing the next shiny thing that comes along, and/or complain about our own schedules as if there are not enough minutes in the day to accomplish God’s will, let us be distracted with the forgiveness that is available to us through the cross.  After all, the Christian life is about having a realization of our sin, and of a renewal to our relationship with God.  Allow our distraction to point us to grace.

Most of life, frankly, is lived in the mundane. How we live for God day in and day out, through all the details and tedium, speaks volumes to those for whom we seek to minister to, whether it is our own children, fellow believers in the Church, or others who do not know God.   Establishing solid spiritual patterns of life can be hard.  But maybe a key for us is in allowing grace to distract us enough to connect us with accepting God’s forgiveness, instead of just running around like a chicken with its head cut off.  Allow grace to distract us toward thinking on these questions:

–Am I living in a consistent rhythm of life that reflects my most precious values?
–Have I learned to practice the presence of Christ in the mundane activities of life?
–Do I have healthy patterns of work, rest, and play that others can emulate?

In being distracted by grace, we may find that we have actually become engaged with God.

What My Grandson Has Taught Me About Ministry

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

It is hard to believe that such a sweet, happy, and healthy looking child is actually not healthy at all.  About a year ago my daughter began to notice that something was not quite right with little Kolten.  He would have episodes in which his body would not act or respond in certain situations, sometimes even twitch or contort in a small way.  Instead of going away they became more frequent.  After thorough testing the diagnosis was confirmed:  epilepsy.

On the day he went to the hospital for a week of testing to determine the nature and frequency of his situation, his little head was covered with so many electrodes and wires that he looked like something out of an old Frankenstein movie.  The plan was that he would spend five days all wired up to collect as much data from his brain as the doctors could get.  However, after just 36 hours, he had already experienced 170 seizures and given the hospital staff more than enough data to interpret.

In this last year Kolten has taught me as much about ministry to people as any one of my incredible seminary professors or any of a number of lay persons who have impacted my life.  Here are just a few of the things I have learned, and am still learning:

1. Ministry is about loving people, and loving people always limits your life.  That’s right.  Anything worth loving brings boundaries and limits to life.  I love being with my grandson.  But when I am with him it isn’t about what he can give to me, how he can enrich my life, or ways in which he can further my career.  No, its all about loving Kolten.  As I write this I am in the middle of several days alone with Kolten.  He is two years old.  I’m fifty years old.  I’m tired.  And its a good tired.  I’m always watching him, even more so than the average two year old.  He takes a lot of medicine.  He falls down a lot.  He gets frustrated with dropping his toys.  It limits my life – a lot!  There are things I don’t do, there are places I don’t go.  It has helped me to ponder:  how committed am I to loving the people of my congregation?  Am I committed enough to do everything necessary to watch out for them and ensure their spiritual growth?  Are their selfish places in my heart that prevent me from being the best minister I can for them?

2. Its all about grace.  Yes, I said all.  I’m not given to exaggeration.  Everything comes down to grace, and grace trumps everything.  On the day back at the hospital when the data was collected and interpreted, an incredible illumination happened.  When Kolten has a seizure his entire brain lights up, except one small area – the area where his emotion center is.  I am told by doctors that if the emotion center of a child’s brain is constantly bombarded by seizures that that child will be always angry, will continually bite themselves, and will hit and abuse siblings and parents.  But, as you can see, Kolten is happy.  The interpretation of the data for me could not be any more clear:  in this arena of heartache and struggle with epilepsy, there is an incredible display of God’s grace in the midst of disease.  When it comes to ministry, things can never get so bad, people can never be so far from where you would like to see them that they are not displaying some form of God’s wonderful mercy and grace.  I have to look for it sometimes, but I know its there.  And Kolten has taught me to look for it in ways and in places in the Church I have been unable to see.

Well, Kolten is waking up from his nap.  Its time to go.  Its time to see grace in action.  Its time for me to love again.  Its time for God to keep working through the broken and flawed and fallen world to show forth the riches of his grace to us.

An Assault of Grace

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

Getting a phone call at 4:00am is rarely good news. As a Pastor I have had my share of them over the years and it has always meant someone is in trouble. A few years ago a young man gave us one of those calls. Something was wrong with his girlfriend (I will call her “Jane”), she was upset and hostile and could not talk to him. My wife and I got out of bed and came right over. Upon arriving we found a beautiful college-age woman sitting in the driveway crying uncontrollably. Coming up to Jane, she had the stale stench of beer and could not stand or talk, but could only heave great sobs of distress. We helped Jane up, got her into our car, and took her to our house. There Jane began to sober up and began telling her story: she had been at party near campus and got pretty drunk. At midnight she decided to go home, but made the decision to walk by herself across campus to try and make it back to her place. What happened next Jane could only remember in bits and pieces, and is perhaps every young woman’s nightmare….

According to the American Association of University Women, somewhere between 20%-25% of college women are raped sometime during their college career; 65% of these attacks go unreported; and, alcohol is involved in 75% of the assaults.  The Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault reports that 14% of women over 18 years of age are raped in their lifetime, and that over 17 million women nationwide have been victims of sexual assault.  Disturbingly, 11-15 year old children are the highest victimized age group.

When a rape occurs, the victim should get to a safe place, resist taking a shower, get medical attention immediately, report the abuse, and receive counseling as soon as possible. Certainly, Jane made some bad decisions: excessive partying, having amorphous relationships (did no one try and stop Jane from leaving the party by herself?), and sexual license that was occurring at that party.

How should we respond and help in such a situation? Jane is not the only victim I have worked with, and I wish I could tell you that all the cases I have seen have a happy ending. Unfortunately, I must say that I have seen far too many believers in Jesus only add to the hurt by pointing out the bad decisions made on the part of the victim, as if they were not a victim at all but brought the assault upon themselves. Even in situations completely out of the victim’s control, guilt is sometimes applied by probing what the victim could have done differently….

To put this in perspective, let me tell a hypothetical story. When my daughter was small she rarely walked, but ran everywhere she went. In public, I always had to hold her hand so she would not run off alone. As we walk down the sidewalk I tell her to hold my hand and not let go, but she pulls away and runs into the street, and is hit by a car. What will be my response? “Well, that’s what you get for disobeying me!” No! Instead, I will have the reaction of much tears and doing everything I can to get her the help she needs, while all the time assuring her that I love her and will not leave her….

The way to handle a sexual assault of any kind is to turn it around and offer an assault of grace. All ministry is grace, and the grace of God is the thing that heals. The way people change is not through pointing out their poor judgments or finding out what could have been done differently, but through the grace of extending mercy and help in time of need, no matter the circumstance. In the novel, Les Miserables, ex-convict Jean Valjean makes the decision of stealing from the priest who extended hospitality to him. When caught by the police and brought to the priest, the man of God responds in grace by saying that the items were a gift. What is more, the old priest chastises Jean for leaving in such a rush the night before that he forgot to take the two silver candlesticks. This act of mercy and kindness changes Jean’s life forever, and in turn, changes an entire town.

The cross of Christ is scandalous simply because of its radical nature of grace to all of us who are undeserving of it. So, if God can be gracious to people who are not even victims, how much more should we, as his followers, be about the kingdom business of extending vast resources of mercy and grace to genuine victims of abuse?

Are you prepared to respond to sexual abuse when it occurs?
–Have numbers in your cell phone of state and local counseling services, and of your local rape hotline.
–Local law enforcement is ready and equipped to handle abuse situations. The victim will most likely need help filing formal reports.
–Many colleges and county services also have a comprehensive referral list of services to help the victim.
–The police are ready to respond, even if the victim does not want to pursue criminal charges, through advising victims of their options and helping to create a safety plan for the future.
–Get to know all the services, agencies, and key people in your area.
–Teach and equip church congregations in the way of grace in ministry through using the Bible to comfort a victim with assurance that God is close to the broken-hearted. Resist playing arm-chair psychologist and instead demonstrate grace through your presence and reassuring words.