Recovery in a Petri Dish ...

In general, surgeries are performed in a sterile environment and recovery is done under close examination and in as clean and germ-free an environment as is possible.  This is done to protect the patient from a further infection and give them every opportunity to heal properly.  But in our world, our spiritual Doctor must perform His work in us under the worst of conditions, and our recovery is too often confined to a petri dish where every risk of infection is ever present and ready to retake the lost ground our Lord gives us.  The same sins we are made free from surround us on all sides.  The same friends and family that may have inadvertently inspired us to stray remain ever present in our lives, and often do the same things and say the same words that in times past helped lead to our downfalls.  So how are we to recover without relapse?  And if relapse occurs, does it negate the idea of re-creation and reformation in the first place?

For too long many Christians have espoused the idea that only isolation away from sin will help to keep them clean from it.  The idea being that a recovering alcoholic is less likely to drink in church, than in a bar.  If one avoids going to a bar, or near a liquor store, then one may avoid drinking again, or at least stand a better chance at it.  This seems to make sense.  But what happens when overindulgence of a chemical is not the sin we discuss, what happens when lust itself is the culprit?  Under this kind of logic, one would have to avoid contact with members of the opposite sex entirely.  But even if a man prone to lust avoids contact with women who attract him, he will still encounter a barrage of images in advertising, media, and the internet that could re-stoke his former passions.  Even in the church a heart prone to lust has many objects to find itself in error with.  The only way then to deny oneself the opportunity to relapse might be to move to a cabin in the woods, drop off “the grid”, and become a self-reliant hermit.  But therein lies the problem with the isolationist approach, it is an attempt to remove the idea of relapse from the work of Christ, and place it once again in human hands.  So what then is the alternative?

Surely it makes no sense for a Christian who has been given the gift of removing a certain evil from their lives to maintain a routine that in times past was a pathway to self-destruction.  Surely we must “do” something to maintain the gift God has given us?  So what might that be?  The answer for maintaining our cure, or remaining in recovery if you will, is no different than what it was to obtain the cure in the first place.  We must remain willing to be changed, and daily ask to have our Lord continue His work within us to remove every evil from our hearts and minds.  A daily commitment to release control to God is our “part” in getting the surgery from our God, and is also our part in maintaining the cure.  No other actions on our part would ever be sufficient to keep us away from temptations.  The devil has made a career out of defeating mere mortals in the arts of temptation.  Adam and Eve were likely much more difficult prey, than you or I who suffer from 6000 years of genetic influences, and a finely tuned marketing machine from which we are unable to escape.  It is therefore no more our job to attempt to avoid relapse, than it was to attempt to avoid falling in the first place.  Our role remains one of surrender to Christ, nothing more.  We must continue to trust in His work of salvation within us.

Keep in mind that part of the cure God offers is not just the cessation of sinful actions; it is the removal of sinful desires.  When once an alcoholic, the place where they craved to drink mattered little.  In fact most chemically dependent people hide bottles or drugs in all manner of places so that it is available to them “as needed”.  Under that level of disease, avoiding a bar or liquor store was no more a cure than was going to church.  A person determined to drink, who “needs” to drink, will find a way and a time to do so no matter what other level of distractions exist.  But a person who has no desire to drink, one who finds alcohol distasteful, one whose body may even react very poorly if they do drink, is not likely to find themselves drinking in any conditions.  In short, if you don’t want it, you probably will not do it.  Where before the cure, an entire regimen of time was spent in the pursuit of a drink, after the cure this time is spent in other ways.  It is made free by the cure itself.  This is the miracle our God performs, not just the ideas of a power of self-control to restrain one’s desires, but a re-creation in the core level of what one wants.  In time, the sins we once craved lose their hold over us.  We lose the desire for them, and begin to find what we once craved now something that is entirely distasteful to us.  This is not just applied to alcoholics but to those who lust, those who perpetually lie, those who gossip, those who over-eat and are unable to change, no matter what our former weakness, the cure remains the same.

We must also remember that not all change is instant and all encompassing.  The work the Lord performs within us begins to remove evil and sins one at a time, but does not make us instantly and completely sin-free.  The work will one day reach fulfillment in us, but not by tomorrow morning.  So it is unwise to believe we have been made completely “perfect” at this moment in time.  This kind of thinking places the emphasis all too often right back on self, and inevitably leads right back to failure.  The gift of a victory over a sin, is the beginning of a pattern the Lord will develop on your behalf.  One after another after another, you will find your former interests and actions giving way to new ones, and to new ways of thinking.  Under these conditions the work of perfection is actually being accomplished within you.  But as it is, we are slowly made aware of just how diseased we were, and we remain.  The more the evil is removed from us, the more we see how deep it ran, and how all-encompassing it was as a part of who we were and still are.  It is why scripture calls for us to be willing to die to self.  As we receive victory after victory our gratitude to God grows, our worship and praise to Him for what He has done in us becomes far more genuine.  It begins to find expression not only at times of worship, but in daily opportunities to love someone else.  Those acts of loving another begin to look suspiciously like the acts of Christ in His ministry here on earth; for it is Christ who inspires them, who motivates them, and who allows us to share in them.

The sin we once engaged in, and so desired, is not removed from the world around us.  It is removed from heart within us.  When gone is our desire to sin, and in its place is a deep seated love for those who remain in sin, it is not relapse we fear anymore, it is failure to share what we have experienced in receiving the victories of God over pain.  We begin to lose our fear of temptation, and instead fear only that we are too timid to reach out to those who still suffer from what we once suffered with as well.  It is not a condemnation they will require, or threats of a punishment in hell – that is the condition they exist in today.  No, our message of effect will be an altered life, a different life, a life that is so filled with love it can now no longer be ignored or denied.  The kind of change that Christ brings to the life is indeed a light in darkness that cannot be disputed.  The former alcoholic who has no desire to drink any longer has a powerful testimony to those who think themselves in recovery.  It is not merely how many days one has been clean, but it is a fundamental re-creation of how one thinks about alcohol itself.  The man or woman who in times past knew nothing but promiscuity now finds themselves unequivocally in love and sole fidelity and devotion to their God as well as their spouse has a powerful testimony to all around them.  None need ever know the heights of their former indiscretions, but it is the renewed strength of their marriage that will inspire interest in the eyes of others.  The former pathological liar, who now finds themselves only speaking the truth couched in love, will have such a voice as the world has yet to hear.  The person who formerly was unable to control their dietary habits and now is dropping weight and becoming healthier has a diet plan of divine origin that no other fad or book could ever supplant. 

Talking about these kinds of victories in the abstract, or in the lives of those you know, is different than speaking from a passion that comes because they happened to you.  When they happen to you, your testimony becomes one of what Christ has done for YOU.  It will never be your victory.  It will always be His, done on your behalf.  Your testimony can never be about what you have conquered for you have conquered nothing, but Christ has conquered everything you needed done.  That is the message of hope you can give to others still trapped in weakness you have been freed from.  Not how you did it, for you will have no idea “how” you did it – but instead “who” did it for you.  In this case isolationism is not required for recovery.  All that is required is the genuine daily work of surrender and submission to the will of Christ.  As we allow Him greater and greater control within us we begin to lose the ideas of self, and self-reliance.  We begin to give Him the credit for the work He is doing.  We begin to develop a testimony that actually has meaning and will carry weight.  Without the cure, we have nothing much to say.  A witness of the changes in others is simply not a compelling enough reason for someone else to seek change.  But a personal testimony combined with a life that is evident of change is a hard combination to ignore.  Our witness must be lived to be effective.

The work of saving others is not something that requires a push; instead it requires a reason to find it.  Do you seek marital advice from a couple who fights more than you do, and is now seeking a divorce?  The only thing they may have to offer is what not to do.  We do not seek counsel from those we perceive to be worse off than ourselves on the topic we need help with, simply because we believe them to wise people.  If they were indeed wise, why do they not simply practice what they preach?  But when our marriage is hurting and we see a couple who has been married for many years and has a passion that can hardly be contained, a disposition of charity and giving that hardly has a rival, and a unity that only the Holy Spirit could bring between two people – those are the folks we are going to reach out to.  It does not matter if the couple who surrender to God every day thinks of themselves as formal “counselors”.  Indeed they are probably not.  For it is not the wisdom of men that enables the marriage of pure unity and love, it is Christ alone.  But it is that very message, that is just the thing our aching marriage needs to hear.  We seek it because we see the difference in their lives more so than what we find in our own.  It is how they live that inspires us to seek them out.  It is not what they say, but what we see, that makes the difference in who we seek counsel from.  This is the nature of the gospel and re-creation, and the reason the world will one day hear it so Christ can return.

Words alone will never rule the day.  Words must echo action and be substantiated within them.  When they are in harmony with each other, when the will is fully surrendered to Christ, the actions that follow are as automatic as breathing.  Our marriage does not magically improve because we wish it would, instead it improves because “how” we love our spouse is directed and altered and increased by the indwelling of Christ in us.  Even if our spouse does not share our commitment yet, they will surely notice the changes in how we love them.  Love is hard to ignore, harder still to resist.  The way we live begins to reflect the way He loves.  And it is these acts of loving others that begins to redefine us as His true servants.  No other explanation can account for the total transformation of the human heart from weakness to self-less-ness.   Instead of having our minds consumed with thoughts of fleeing our former sins, they become engaged in reaching out to those we love.  Where we have to go becomes irrelevant.  For we do not wander into bars to drink, but only as we are directed by the will of Christ to find that one lost soul who is in need.  It is not that we idly hang out in places of former weakness, nor are we there to participate in what we now find entirely abhorrent, but there is nothing and no place we would not dare to go, if a lost soul can be reached.  The lost souls will not have reason to seek counsel from those who participate with them in their weakness.  But they will have little resolve against a life they knew to be as bad as their own, that is now full of evidence of the freedom that only Christ can offer.

Christ was not found in only the palaces of the rich.  In fact He was rarely if ever found there.  Instead He was found on “the wrong side of the tracks”, in the bad neighborhoods, where the harlots, the sluts, the cheaters, the thieves, the murderers, in short where the lost were found.  Christ was not there to partake in their weakness.  He was there to offer them freedom from it.  The lost and aching souls of today will rarely be found in the pews next to you.  They do not attend church regularly.  Instead you will find them at work, at play, at places of disrepute, engaged in things you may have once thought of as “fun” and now you find only as painful.  It is there where you will encounter them, in areas of life probably not conducive to church.  It is there where they will “see” you.  They will take note of who you are and of “how” you love.  Will you genuinely care for them, or merely utter inane greetings with no care of the response?  Will you be inclined to participate in their weakness or seem to show no interest in pain, and a great relief from being freed from it?  Who you are will be evident not only in a church pew, but at work, and at play, and perhaps even in an environment that is not the best.  Why you are where you are matters to those in darkness.  To sit in a pew once a week to simply try to demonstrate your holiness offers no compelling reason for anyone else to change.  But to be there because your joy is unbridled, your testimony must find voice, to serve the needs of those who sit beside you – these are the hallmarks of an altered life, an altered heart, and a change that cannot be denied.

Where we recover will never be a perfect place, until Christ returns and remakes the world anew.  But the work of perfection in us can begin here and now, continue if the darkest of times, and find its fulfillment even before He returns, so that on that great day we are able to say … “this is He, the Lamb, who we have waited for”.  The work of perfection does not begin on that day, it reaches completion.  For those who enter the grave before they are able to see His return, they are resurrected in a state of perfection.  But for those who are still alive at His coming, the work of perfecting the character will have already reached its conclusion.  Therefore if persecution, and darkness, a world at war, and plagues that encompass the globe could not deter the Lord from finishing His work in us, why should we think our meager temptations could deter Him from starting it right now?  The freedom Christ came to offer us, was not from oppression and hardship the world is steeped in, it was from the slavery to self each of us is controlled by.  We do not require a sterile environment in which to recover, just a willingness to allow our Lord to make pure the heart within us.  We have only to become what He intends for us to become, for He will surely re-create us completely.