We became entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

I’m single-minded in pursuit of you; don’t let me miss the road signs you’ve posted. I’ve banked your promises in the vault of my heart so I won’t sin myself bankrupt. Be blessed, GOD; train me in your ways of wise living. Psalm 119:10-12 The Message

“When our desire is focused on loving God and others, we will realize our deepest longings for life fulfilled.” – An Anonymous Recovering Alcoholic

Reversing the Past

None of us will ever eliminate our character defects on our own, no matter how hard we try. While it is not possible for us to remove our character defects on our own, we can learn to change the way we think, the way we act and the way we live our lives. Letting go of character defects is never passive. Like everything else we do in recovery, character change requires action. Personal growth and change is a divine interaction between God’s grace and our choices. When we change our actions, we interrupt habitual patterns of thinking, believing and feeling. Motion changes emotion!

If we are willing to change, we will not make the same mistakes time after time. It takes some practice, but with a little commitment and a few failures (which we will want to share with another person), the changes to the way we think, the way we feel and the way we act will begin to come quite quickly. People from religious backgrounds call this repentance and that’s exactly what it is. Grassroots, down and dirty, rubber meets the road repentance. The simplest definition of repentance is to “change one’s mind.” It’s an about face. Turning and going in the other direction. Whatever you call it, it works.

Scripture offers an overwhelming abundance of practical insight and guidance for those of us who are looking for renewal and strength. There are some things that just cannot be said any better than the way Scripture has already said it.

“And so I insist – and God backs me up on this – that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty- headed, mindless crowd. They’ve refused for so long to deal with God that they’ve lost touch not only with God but with reality itself. They can’t think straight anymore. Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual obsession, addicted to every sort of perversion. But that’s no life for you! You learned Christ! My assumption is that you have paid careful attention to him, been well instructed in the truth precisely as we have it in Jesus. Since then, we do not have the excuse of ignorance, everything – and I do mean everything – connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life – a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you.” Ephesians 4:19 – 23 The Message

Any questions?

Insights and Inspirations for Christian Twelve Step Recovery By David Zailer and The Men and Women of Operation Integrity Chapter Six Segment Seven Copyright David Zailer, 2008 Operation Integrity 24040 Camino del Avion #A115 Monarch Beach CA 92629 1-800-762-0430 operationintegrity@cox.net

I am realizing more than ever that purity is a lifestyle. It’s not the result of a single decision we make to be sexually pure. Rather, purity is the result of the little decisions I make each and every day.

From an addiction standpoint, the decisions that lead to purity aren’t simply to avoid objects of lust and arenas of temptation. It is more than that. The decision to maintain my spiritual, emotional, physical and mental health are paramount. I have to decide to take care of myself, which is so foreign to someone who has been steeped in the shame of addiction.

After being in recovery for a while, you realize that addiction of any sort, porn/sexual addiction included, is an attempt to meet legitimate needs through illegitimate means. The way we define sexual addiction on the Higher-Calling.com FAQ further explains this perspective.

With that in mind, I have come to believe that temptation to engage in acting out behavior is like the check engine light on the dashboard of my car. The pull toward pornography is an indicator that I need to check under the hood.

In recovery terms, this is known as identifying your triggers. The acronym HALT is a well-known list of common triggers (Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired). This article further explains HALT.

It is very helpful to identify triggers in two categories: visual/physical or emotional. HALT identifies two physical triggers (hungry or tired) and two emotional triggers (angry or lonely). Seeing a person or picture with certain physical attributes or wearing specific clothing can visually trigger arousal.

Emotional triggers are much more difficult to identify. In part this is because addicts are generally not connected to their emotional selves and therefore have a hard time identifying and expressing their emotions. Shame is probably the most powerful triggering emotion for addicts. Often confused with guilt, which is the negative feeling tied to wrong behavior, shame is a much deeper sense that we are fundamentally worthless and unacceptable. Anything that triggers our shame is sure to kick off a strong pull to act out.

Being aroused by certain physical/visual or even emotional stimulus is not abnormal. However, addicts take it a step further and engage in acting out behavior. Acting out repeatedly over time hard-wires our brains to associate arousal of any sort with our acting out behaviors. All arousal, regardless of the trigger, leads us to the same place.

Coming back to our metaphor, these triggers are glaring check engine lights on the dashboard of our consciousness. They indicate places where we may need to grow, establish accountability, forgive ourselves or others, or simply confess past sins in a safe place. The point is to not let the “service required” indicator go unnoticed.

Take a few minutes to reflect on what is going on under the hood the next time you are triggered to act out. It is an essential element of keeping the engine of our sobriety running smoothly.

In the last chapter of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” the author, Stephen Covey, hits upon an incredible principle. It goes like this:

There is a gap or a space between stimulus and response. The key to both our growth and happiness is how we use that space.

We so often go through our lives on autopilot, not really aware of our own responses to what is going on around us. Then we wake up one day and find ourselves in an undesirable place perhaps not knowing how we got there.

The truth of the principle of stimulus and response means that we are not victims of our circumstances. We have the freedom to choose our responses. The problem is we often forfeit that freedom. Our “proactivity muscles”, which would pay attention through self-awareness to what is going on around us, are flabby and need to be exercised. If we are oblivious to how we respond to what happens to us, we have given up our ability to choose differently.

This is obviously a critical principle in the realm of sexual addiction and recovery. We have trained our minds over time and repetition to respond sexually to a whole range of things, both physical and emotional. The space between stimulus and response becomes razor thin. Rather than choosing a response based upon our values, we experience a Pavlovian response.

Start to pay attention and exercise your self-awareness. You will be amazed at how over time the gap between stimulus and response can grow. It brings new freedom to choose and apply your conscience to situations which previously acted upon you. You can choose differently!

I have recently been reading “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey. In it he talks about living our lives from a principle center rather than any other. One of the principles he alludes to early in the book is that of habit.

We have all heard the maxim, “we are creatures of habit.” That is a true statement. What Covey points out that is very relevant to those of us struggling with sexual integrity issues is that habits can work for you or against you. If you are struggling with habitual sexual sin, then obviously this principle of human behavior is not working in your favor.

We can live out the scripts that we have developed over a lifetime, or we can take responsibility for them and choose to develop new, healthy habits.

If this is intriguing to you, get a copy of the book and get to work using the principle of habit to your advantage!

A friend on Facebook updated their profile with this statement today.

Righteousness is believing the promises of God, being fully persuaded He’ll keep his word.

I was really taken aback by it. I had to go to Romans 4 and clear up my understanding!

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father ofmany nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspringbe.” Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” (Romans 4:18-22)

This really is an amazing thing. I’ll explain more later, but the remainder of this passage is even more amazing…

The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. (Romans 4:23-24)

I’m sorry, did that just say that God will credit me with righteousness for my belief in Jesus Christ and his resurrection from the dead? Why yes, I believe it did!

If someone were to ask you, “What is the definition of righteousness?” How would you answer? Would it be something along the lines of, “Well, it is obeying God and doing what is ‘right’”? Perhaps you would more correctly say that righteousness is “being in a right standing with God.” That is still quite vague. How do you attain this right standing?

True to form, God’s word cuts to the heart of the issue. Righteousness is a result of our belief; our faith in Jesus Christ. Nothing more, nothing less.

It is living from this center that we can really see the change we so crave, including sexual purity. If our definition of righteousness is skewed, we can be certain that we will live out a works-centered religion that will not result in the changes we desire.

Here are a couple of other helpful verses that come to mind.

Colossians 2:20-23Hebrews 6:1-3

I was really challenged by a post on Steven Furtick’s blog today. It is entitled, “Who told you that?“

It is a short devotion on Genesis 3:11 where God asked Adam and Eve who told them that they were naked? The blog goes on to ask some other more personal questions…who told you those things about yourself?

Check it out…

I was listening to Mere Christianity this morning, continuing my C. S. Lewis kick, and was amazed by one of the descriptions of the Christian life. Lewis first explained the difference between being created and begotten. That which is created is different from the creator. A statue created by a man is not like a man. Even if it is fashioned in the likeness of a man, it is not like him in essence. Stone is not flesh. That which is begotten, on the other hand, is like that from which it comes both in essence and likeness. There are some really deep implications of these concepts, but I am going to focus on one in particular.

Jesus is the only begotten of the Father (John 3:16). Lewis describes the entire life of the Christian as the process of being made into Christ’s likeness. Most of us have heard that before. What I had not heard before was another way of saying it: that we are being made from the created into the begotten. This is what it means to become “sons of God” (Gal. 3:26-27)

When we are born again, our human spirit becomes one with Christ. Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, takes up residence within our mortal bodies. In this way, our created human spirit is made into the begotten spirit of Christ and we become sons of God. That is the beginning; the foundation upon which the work of changing us from the created into the begotten begins. The remainder of our humanity remains a created thing that must be changed into a begotten thing. Our soul, the mind, will and emotions, are changed into Christ-likeness through the process of sanctification. Our physical bodies will follow suit at the resurrection of the dead when our mortal bodies will be changed into immortal just like the body Jesus now has was changed following his resurrection from the dead.

I threw out a lot of theology there. But there is a point. There is a lot of talk in Christian recovery circles about the whole notion of self-effort vs. grace. While we all agree that Christian recovery is an extension of the sanctification process, how it progresses is at times hotly debated. I would like to slightly reshape the debate using the concept of changing from a created thing into a begotten thing.

The soul cannot change itself into a begotten thing. The thoughts of the created mind, feelings of the created emotions, nor choices of the created will are of any value in the process at all. If they are to be changed they must be submitted to the only begotten, Jesus himself, so that he can do the work of changing them into his likeness. We cannot change ourselves into that likeness any more than Pinocchio could have made himself into a real boy (borrowing a little myth here). It is God’s effort, not our own, that makes this change possible.

When the whole concept of surrender is brought up in recovery, this is really the back of what is being said. We cannot change ourselves, we have to be changed. To that end, we can only surrender to the One who has the power to change us. Any effort should be expended as a means to surrender. Self-control, for instance, is a result of that surrender.

For brevity’s sake, here are a several relevant scripture references. Most are familiar passages, but take on new meaning in the context of being changed from created to begotten.

John 3:16John 15:1-8Romans 8:1-26Romans 12:1-2Galations 3:1-3Galations 5:16-25Philippians 1:3-6Titus 2:11-12

I don’t have HBO, but I am interested in a documentary that is airing tomorrow called, “The Trials of Ted Haggard“.

It is always interesting and frankly sad to see how the church shoots its own wounded. That is not to condone Mr. Haggard’s behavior, but rather to indict the church for vehemently distancing itself from a man in obvious need of the grace of Christ to rebuild the brokenness in his life.

Somewhat ironically, Ted Haggard spoke at my graduation dinner from Christ for the Nations Institute back in 1999. I was inspired by his passion and knew that he was a prominent evangelical Christian leader. The irony is that now I have been through to a certain degree some of the process that he must be undergoing in recovery from sexual sin. He spoke encouraging words to us about going out and doing God’s work. Now I feel I can with some authority encourage him to do the same!

Those of us who struggle with habitual sin know that the outward behavior is a reflection of the inward condition of the heart. Jesus put it this way…

For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.- Matthew 15:19

The point is that the behavior was merely an expression of a heart that needed changing. We all have one of those, don’t we?

If you get to watch the documentary, comment here on it. I’d be interested to hear about it.

By the way, Ted Haggard is going to be on Larry King Live tonight to talk about the film.