It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak. Romans 14:21
Jesus Christ is Lord of my life and I struggle with rage and lust. I have since I was a child, and I gave my life to Christ when I was eleven, although I haven’t lived it for Him nearly as well as I should have and occasionally have lived it against His will. I was called to the ministry as a child and spent most of the last 25 years ignoring that call out of a combination of fear and disbelief that God wanted to use me for anything. Since I was saved, I have rarely missed a day when I haven’t read my Bible or prayed, but there have been many days when I felt alone or ineffectual in my praying, and I certainly haven’t been as effectual for God’s kingdom as I should.
Before coming to Celebrate Recovery, I had no fellowship with other Christian men outside casual relationships; I certainly had no strong spiritual fellowship with other Christian men with whom I felt comfortable sharing in a way that anyone who regularly attends Celebrate Recovery recognizes as meaningful. Frankly, I have never believed in accountability partners because I see no need to create a new label for something the Bible already tells us we’re to do with our trusted Christian brothers. I believe in the principle of accountability but never found anyone with whom to practice it effectively - Biblically - prior to coming to Celebrate Recovery. And, the normal activities for which accountability partners are usually most effective, I am blessed at accomplishing without a partner. I needed a sponsor – I didn’t know it – and I found one at Celebrate Recovery. We don’t share the same struggle, but I can certainly relate in my struggle to the types of temptations he can relate to in his, and he certainly has a peace and effectiveness for Christ that has eluded me. I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church where many, some, I couldn’t tell you the number, of men committed adultery with the wives of other men in the church, and the wives of men outside the church. Many of them attended the same parties as my parents, and I went to school with their children. Many of those men were pillars of our community and church. I saw and heard churchgoing men demean and objectify women constantly in our community. I swore to myself – and forgot to ask God’s protection – that I would never betray my wife – or Him – as the other men in my family had. Then, as now, the following verse has special meaning for me; I knew and know it to be true, and more than once have forgotten the power of its meaning:
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: 1 Peter 5:8
I have suffered spiritual attack for many years. I can sense the presence of evil very often in the darkest hours of the night, and I am not a man prone to flights of fancy or baseless fear. At those times, I have often sensed a malevolent presence in my room, and it is only dispelled by intense prayer for spiritual protection. These presences are visited upon my wife and son, as well.
I’m sure the circumstances of my struggle are very typical of anyone with similar struggles, but I sometimes feel the temptation so strongly that it’s as if a power outside me drives the temptation, including the palpable sense of peace and pleasure that begins to build in mere anticipation of allowing lust to build or the anger to flow. I would spend hours finding different sources of pornography for the sheer variety of it – television, Internet, adult bookstores. I never did it at work, I never left work to do it. But, at home in the evenings or on my day off, it would consume hours of my time, hours that should have been spent with God and my family. When I was finished looking for it, I was never satisfied – not surprising, but it was still compelling at the time. Look harder, look over here, you just haven’t found what will make you happy, yet. I never heard the words, but I felt them.
All that time, from when I first heard the call to ministry and ignored it to when I came to Celebrate Recovery in August of 2005, my relationship with God was far less intimate, less rich, than it should have been because I was keeping God pushed away despite daily confession to Him and prayers for healing. I hadn’t realized that He had already given me the power to resist temptation; I had but to exercise it. And, my attitude toward others isn’t worth discussing. I said I suffer from rage and lust. I also suffer a component part of rage that manifests as an intense lack of patience and tolerance for inconvenience, and most inconvenience can conveniently be blamed – most of the time erroneously – on others. That intolerance was nearly always present, and always near the surface, before I came to Celebrate Recovery. Again, God had given me the power to overcome it, but I was waiting for Him to take it away rather than giving it up myself.
I came to the end of my rope, or as George often quotes, realized God was all I needed when God was all I had. I realized that when I confessed to my wife – that wonderful gift from God of a spirit truly complementary to mine - that I had committed fornication many years before and she modeled God’s forgiveness and grace in a way that would have made not coming to Celebrate Recovery an ongoing betrayal. She didn’t ask me to come, didn’t yell at me, didn’t call me names, didn’t do anything but tell me we would get through it together with God’s help. For many years, God has impressed upon me the call to start a sexual recovery ministry, and like the earlier call, I found myriad excuses for delay. One night while I was helping with the some work at the church, the Holy Spirit poked me and asked why I didn’t talk to George about my desire to start a ministry and about Celebrate Recovery. I started in reverse order, and when George told me Celebrate Recovery is for anyone, including people with sexual addictions, I said I figured God didn’t need me to start such a ministry here. George’s answer was clearly God-given: “Wait a few months and pray about it; I’m planning to start a separate men’s sexual addiction group when there are enough people and when we begin the new year.” I sorely needed those few months to better understand what God wanted from me and to gain a better understanding of how Celebrate Recovery operates. And, I suspect, for George to have the opportunity to determine whether I was serious.
Defilement of the temple of the Holy Spirit is no trivial matter. It alienates one from fellowship with God, Who cannot allow sin into His presence. Keeping accounts short is prudent advice, but daily asking forgiveness for the same sin, committed the same way, with the same selfish motivations, is entirely another matter. We are told in I Corinthians 6:18-19,
Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
We are also told in Ephesians 4:30a,
Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God…
Continually grieving the Holy Spirit and defiling His temple is a grave insult to His person and it weakens the voice of conscience, and I have defiled several temples of the Holy Spirit. We are told in II Timothy 2:15,
Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
I found that continually grieving the Holy Spirit impaired my ability to divide the word of truth when I heard it and when I read it, and my ability to interpret Scripture stopped developing. Portions of God’s Word remained obscure for decades; many still do, but I believe many remain unclear due to my lack of spiritual discipline.
Since I have been coming to Celebrate Recovery, my relationship with Christ has grown: I still suffer great temptation to lust and to let anger flow through me like a torrent, but Christ’s ability to bear the load far exceeds my own, and yielding the load to Him enriches my walk, makes it easier to yield the load on successive occasions, and demonstrates faith. I've been in the step study for many months, and I can attest that it is a truly wonderful blessing to be able to share weekly with others, and the study books are essentially Christ-centered, structured journaling. The step study contains specific, detailed steps on how to conduct certain aspects of recovery that I had often wondered about but didn’t know how to approach.
He has, however, made remarkable changes in how I perceive and respond to other people. I still get angry, I still get frustrated, and I still quite easily see how many problems lie clearly at the feet of other people. I now see how many problems lie clearly at my feet, and I am beginning to be able to relate to others without casting blame or becoming infuriated by confusing a need for help with inexcusable incompetence. I also have begun to recognize clearly that God’s gifts to me are manifold, and to share them with others, not hold them up as sources of ridicule when others need my help. I can listen to others talk about their problems, I can pray with and for them, and I can feel compassion for their pain.
For the present, the spiritual attacks have also stopped, and I pray continually that God keeps a hedge of protection around my family and those of all of his children. My walk with Christ has become deeper, although it has a long, long way to go, and I feel my prayers are received by God. I can again sense the direction of the Holy Spirit in my life, guiding, illuminating, and correcting.
I would say to newcomers that the first of the two hardest parts is over. You’ve come to a meeting where you probably felt you would be the only person in the world with your problem, your pain. You may not have wanted to come; your presence might be the product of an ultimatum from a loved one. Or, you may be here of your own free will as an act of conscience or desperation. Regardless, you are here. If you already believe in Christ’s saving power and recognize you are powerless to prevent or control sin on your own, then all of the hardest parts are over, although the journey is lifelong and isn't always easy.. If you have yet to recognize that you are ultimately powerless to control your sinful nature, that is the second hardest part because you are denying Christ’s saving power. Not everyone here is a Christian, not everyone here will be a Christian, but we earnestly pray that all who come will be saved; after all, this is a Christ-centered recovery group and we recognize that without Christ’s saving power, we are lost.