Living Story Grace

My husband and I are assigned the task of teaching high school seniors a lesson on the Dangers of Alcohol on Sunday.  WOW.  A sobering subject (no pun intended).  Because as much as we enjoy a good glass of wine, we would willingly trade it for the lives of people lost to us through alcohol-addiction or or alcohol-related-death.

That being said, we can NOT smugly sit aside and point fingers at those who struggle with alcohol addiction.  I have a powerful addiction too, and the Bible tells me you do too:  ADDICTION TO SELF.  Add into that substances, activities, relationships that I think I will die if I cannot do or have.  I am an addict.  That’s why I love grace.  Hear from Samson and the Pirate Monks again on the dire need for community along with the gospel to combat addiction, not to mention the stunning reality that addiction sends us flying to God for grace (though sometimes later rather than sooner.)

“God, in his grace, has used addiction to shatter my moralistic understanding of the Christian faith and force me to accept the gospel. I am not a faithful man. That’s why I need a Savior. I cannot live victoriously on my own. That’s why I need a Helper and brothers. I cannot keep my promises to God—the very act of making them is delusional—but God will keep his promises to me.

As a Christian, I am perpetually reduced to the role of a supplicant. No more can I offer God a bargain, his favor in exchange for my faithfulness, or go toe-to-toe with him, demanding payment for years of service. But when I approach him humbly, as a restored prodigal son, he responds with overwhelming generosity to my requests for aid. No fancy prayers are required. In fact, God finds fancy prayers repugnant. He loves it, however, when I acknowledge my need and my belief in his benevolence with a simple one-word prayer: “Help! ”  Samson and the Pirate Monks, Nate Larkin

I love this book. How can you not love a book that acknowledges on the first page, “I haven’t always had friends.” Other than the fact that it’s written for men (which leaves me with the unfortunate, cowardly, potential escape route of saying, “Well, this ISN’T ABOUT WOMEN!”:), it’s an awesome book on why we need gospel community. Read this quote and — don’t raise your hand — but nod just a little if it nailed you the way it did me.

“Most of us are slow to recognize that we have lost the war against our besetting sin. We deceive ourselves about the progress of that war, taking false comfort in inconsequential successes, distracting ourselves with elaborate battle plans and issuing orders to internal forces we cannot control. Our losses continue to mount, affecting everyone around us, but we ignore them. We imagine that we are “fighting the good fight” against sin, but the battle is already lost. All that remains is the formality of surrender—and the opportunity, the wondrous alternative, of surrendering to God instead. Until we grasp the magnitude of our defeat, the prospect of surrendering to God is distasteful to us. We recoil at the thought of giving up, fearing a loss of our imagined liberty, and we frantically carry on our feeble resistance. But on that great and awful day when the inner defensive ring finally collapses, we fall toward God exhausted, and there to our inexpressible relief we find welcome instead of rebuke, dignity instead of shame, and life instead of death.”