Sanity Lesson

Well, hey everybody, my name is Johnny. I'm a grateful believer. I struggle with alcoholism and codependency, and I'm so glad to be with you right now to talk about this really important topic. We're gonna talk about how to find sanity in our lives. And principle two of the eight principles says this, earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to him, and that he has the power to help me recover. Jesus said in Matthew 5, 4, that happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. And step two of the Christ Center 12 steps says this, we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Philippians 2, 13 says, for it is God who works in you, to will and to act according to his good purpose. So, this topic of sanity can often be a little bit overwhelming because I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Johnny, are you calling me crazy? Well, no, but what I am saying is that we have this idea in recovery, that trying to do the same thing over and over again is called insanity. That's one definition of insanity. And I want you to think about it that way. How many times have you tried to fix a problem

the same way that never worked in the first place? Doesn't that make you feel a little crazy? Doesn't that make you feel a little bit out of it? I know for me, that when I tried to do things on my own power, the same way over and over and over again, and this time I just thought it would be different. Man, it just made me feel like things were just totally out of control. But what we're gonna try to do together is to work past some of those issues, to find a place that, it's more like wholeness of mind. It's more like being together on the right track. It's more like trying something outside of our way and allowing God to do something new in us. Now, if you're brand new to recovery, and we're right at the beginning of this journey together, we're only on principle two and step two. You may not have a relationship with Jesus yet. In fact, you might be looking at this saying, I'm not sure I believe this whole God thing. I get it. What I wanna encourage you to do is just to kinda pause for a second and wonder, what if it's real? What if there is a power greater than myself that can restore me to this wholeness of mind, that can help me overcome these hurts, hangups, and habits? It's not just about finding victory over one area, but it's finding victory in every area of your life. See, I believe there's a difference

between what many of us look for when we come to a program like Celebrate Recovery and what Jesus offers us. For a lot of us, if we come for drug addiction, or alcoholism, or sex addiction, or some of these addiction areas, we're looking for something called sobriety. And for a lot of us in different areas of our life, we're still looking for change, but it's kind of taking something out of our life. That's what sobriety is. It's subtraction. It's no longer doing something. It's stop drinking. It's stop using. It's stop looking. It's stop spending. It's stop getting, whatever those things are. But what Jesus offers us is not just subtraction. It's multiplication. It's recovery. It's freedom in every area of our life. I want you to picture that you have a cold and you have a little scratch in the back of your throat. Now, I know coming out of COVID, this might be a little bit triggering for everybody, but let's just say you're not exactly sure what's going on. And so you decide that to battle this cold, you're gonna go to the grocery store. You're gonna go to the drug store

and you're gonna buy some Theraflu. You're gonna buy some ibuprofen, an ice pack, some gauze bandages, some vitamin C, some throat lozenges, some Atlanta, a bottle of nose spray, and a Gatorade. That should do it, right? Like you're covering all of your bases. I mean, you don't know what's wrong yet, but you've got this. You have all this medicine, all this tools. Surely one of these or a combination of these will make you feel better, right? Well, you might get lucky and take the right thing, but chances are you're just dealing with symptoms of a much larger problem. Now, let's say that instead of all that, you went to the doctor and you told him about the aches and pains. You told her about how you felt and then they wrote you a prescription. The doctor knew what was going on because they're, well, a doctor. They spent years of studying, practicing medicine. If you follow their instructions, you're probably going to feel better. Okay, well, recovery is like that, right? We often come because we have all these things in our lives and we're trying to fix them on our own, but we have a great physician. His name is God.

And this God who made us, who created us, the Bible says knit us together in our mother's wounds. He knows us better than ourselves. So principle one is like making the doctor's appointment. It's coming to terms with the fact that we need the medicine and the tools that he has that we don't have and that we need him to help us. But then what? Well, it's great to know the solution, but, or it's great to know what the solution isn't, but what is the solution? Well, if we look to principle two, we see this. We earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to him and that he has the power to help me recovery. We start to look at God to help us get better. Again, this is how it reads in the Christ-centered 12 steps. We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. And I just want you to think. of a typical day. Because I don't know about you, but there are days in my life where I don't feel particularly sane. There are days where my kids are running out the door. We've got to get to basketball practice. We've got to get to driver's ed. We've got to go to this appointment or that appointment. I've got meetings scheduled and we've got important things happening.

We've got family issues and bills to pay. And I don't feel like I have a wholeness of mind, that I have that peace that we're looking for that transcends understanding. And so what we hope to do is to move from chaos into peace. We hope that we can find the one and only higher power, Jesus Christ, and he can help restore us. That he can help give us the power that we lack. He can restore meaning and purpose to our lives. And here's the deal, only he can do that. It's not about the steps and principles. Those are a tool to help us, but they're all based on the power of Jesus Christ. Now remember, insanity, like I said earlier, it's been defined as doing the same thing over and over again, accepting or expecting different results each time. And so sanity, on the other hand, is defined as a wholeness of mind, making decisions based on the truth. And so we're going to look at our acrostic tonight of sanity to see how Jesus works this out in our lives. Let's jump into it. The S is the first letter and that stands for strength. Think about it this way, you and I have some strength. We do, we have some power in our lives. We all have some God-given strength and ability. You might not feel like it right now, but it's there.

The thing is, God has so much more strength. He is so much more powerful than we are. You and I spend so much time trying to run things on our own power. And God is standing there just like, I have this greater power source so much bigger than you. And we don't even tap into it. Think about it this way. Let's say that you're stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean. And on that boat, you grab a paddle and you start paddling and you're exerting all of this effort. You're making some process, but at the heat of the day, you start to get tired. You feel stuck. You feel like you're never gonna make it back to land. And all the while, right behind you is a huge outboard motor. All you have to do is turn it on. It's gonna scare the fish it's so powerful. And you know it's there. You know it works. You know you have more than enough gas to help you accomplish your goal, but you never turn it on. You never use the power that it has. That's what we do when we try to achieve change and sanity on our own. When we accept Jesus as our higher power, we receive strength to face the fears that in the past

have caused us to fight, flee, or freeze. Now we can say that God is our refuge and strength and ever present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear. That's Psalm 46.1. And my mind and body may grow weak, but God is my strength, is all I ever need. Psalm 73.26. Relying on our own strength and our own power is what got us into this mess in the first place. We believed we didn't need God's strength or help or power. It's almost like we were disconnected from our true power source, God. So choosing to allow my life to finally run on God's power, not my own limited power and my own weaknesses, my failures, my helplessness, my sense of inferiority, turns out to be our greatest strength. God can come in where our helplessness begins. He can do that for each one of us. And even in the day-to-day insanity of our schedules, we know that if we rely on God, he will give us the strength to make us through. So the S is strength, the A is acceptance. Let's face it, people can completely rob us of our sanity. Can't they? It happens all the time. Some of you may have relationships that are like this. It makes you feel like you're going crazy, like you're out of control. If there's someone who's causing you pain,

and if you and I are going to have a healthy relationship, the truth is there's going to have to be change. It can be, though, that if we really want help, if we want that relation to get better faster, we need to accept that they're on their own journey. We need to accept that maybe they're not going to change. Now, that's not to say that the relationship has to stay the same. You may need to put boundaries in place to help you with that. But if you find that you're daily struggling in a relationship, and you're hoping that they change, or you're praying for them to change, or you're trying to make them change, the best thing you can do is accept that you can't help them change at all, that it's up to God to change them. And we know in recovery that none of us change until we're ready for the change. What we need to do is we need to make sure that we're putting ourselves in a good place. So if you're being abused, or hurt, or harmed in any way, I'm not saying that you accept the negative treatment. I'm not saying that you accept that abuse. In fact, what I'm telling you is you need to get yourself safe. But for you to grow forward, you may need to accept that that person is not ready for the change. See, sometimes we're not in those situations,

but a family member, a loved one. isn't changing at the pace we wish they would. And sometimes we need to accept the fact that they're gonna change at their own pace. And by doing so, instead of thinking about them so much, instead of worrying about their recovery, we can accept them for who they are, and we can think about our own side of the street. Romans 15, seven says, accept one another then for the glory of God as Christ has accepted you. Now, I just wanna make sure I say, this does not mean that you accept the behavior. This does not mean that you allow them to harm you. If you're being harmed, I just wanna say it again, you need to get yourself safe. You may need to move out. You may need to put up boundaries. You may need to block that person who keeps calling you or texting you. I don't know what the situation is. But in most relationships, when I'm talking about the 95% of relationships where we just kind of rub each other the wrong way, or maybe you're in recovery and your loved one is dragging their heels getting in, in order for us to have sanity, we have to accept that God's gonna work on them and on us. And it's not up to us to change people. When we take step two,

we begin to learn to have realistic expectations of ourselves and other people. We learn not to relate to people in the same old way, that's the same way that keeps causing us to butt heads or to get in these conflicts. And in fact, it helps us to have the sanity to step out of that pattern and say, is there a new thing I can try? Is there a different way that we can relate to each other? We remember to pray and ask God to give us the power to change the things we can and accept the things we cannot change. And from one codependent to possibly another, can I just tell you, you cannot change anyone. And it is not your job to fix anyone. All we can do is turn to Jesus and ask him to change us and give our relationships to other people and accept that they're gonna be on their own journey. As our faith grows and we get to know our higher power, Jesus, better, it becomes easier for us to accept people. Notice I said easier, not easy, as they really are, not as we wish they would be. With acceptance, however, comes responsibility. We need to stop placing the blame on others for our actions and our hurts that we've caused other people. The next letter is N and that stands for new life. In the pits of our hurts, hang ups, and habits, we are at the very bottom. We can understand the feelings expressed

in 2 Corinthians 1, eight through nine. He says, we were really crushed and overwhelmed and feared we would never live through it. We felt we were doomed to die and saw how powerless we were to help ourselves. But that was good, because then we put everything into the hands of God. The verse goes on to say that God alone could save us and we expect him to do it again and again. Here's the thing, when we put this verse into context, we can see that our past lives were just like that. But Jesus paid for all of our sins by dying for us on the cross. And that allows us to have a new life where we're no longer crushed and overwhelmed, but instead he saved us and we can expect him to do it again and again, because he tells us we're never on our own. We begin to have a hope of a new life, a different life. We can look at our old life and say, I'm not bound to those patterns anymore. I don't have to live that way anymore. I'm not bound to be that person that I've always been. I can live in this new life, in this image of God as he created me. And we can step into the fullness of life that Jesus promised us. In 2 Corinthians 5, 17, Paul tells us that when someone becomes a Christian, he becomes a brand new person inside.

He is not the same anymore, but a new life has begun. And so we find strength, we learn how to accept others and ourselves, and we begin this new life. The next benefit of this step is the I in sanity, and that stands for integrity. We begin to gain integrity as we follow through on our promises. Other people begin to believe us when we tell them something. The Apostle John placed great value on integrity. He said in 3 John 4, nothing gives me greater joy than to hear that my children are following in the way of truth. Here's the deal, integrity means living your same life when you're alone and when you're with other people. It means you're the same at celebrate recovery and at your job. It means you're the same at work and when you're out in the world. Integrity is having this wholeness of being that you're just the same person everywhere you go. It means that we live out our recovery and our devotion to Jesus even when no one is looking. That's integrity. Now, I just wanna say something because sometimes people hear this and they think, oh, good, that means I can treat people however I want as long as I treat them the same way all the time.

Listen, sometimes people will say this when they get into recovery. I just tell the truth like it is. I just don't have a filter. I just tell it, listen, that's not integrity. That's bullying, right? When we tell people the truth at all costs, that's not even biblical. The Bible tells us to speak the truth in love. So integrity isn't blasting people with the truth and just calling yourself a person of integrity. What it is is it's saying, I'm gonna tell you the truth in a loving way because I want you to get better like I'm getting better. And it's saying, I'm gonna. follow through on my promises. It means our yes will be yes, our no will be no. That we tell somebody we're gonna pick them up at five, they know we're gonna be there on time to pick them up. And all of this is a process. Even the new life is a process. It doesn't happen immediately. As we're restored to sanity, we begin to add these traits to our life. And part of it is based on this next letter, and that's the T, it's trust. As we work step two, we begin to trust in our relationship with others and our higher power. Proverbs 29, 25 says, it's dangerous to be concerned of what others think of you,

but if you trust in the Lord, you will be safe. As we learn to let go and let God, right, that's a cliche in recovery, and it's a cliche because, well, it works. We learn and we begin to admit that our lives are power, are unmanageable, that we're powerless to do anything about it. We learn that we can trust ourselves and we can trust other people because we're no longer counting on ourselves to be God. See, when you and I think we've gotta be perfect like Jesus, we can't trust ourselves because we know that's not true. But when we realize we're sinners who have a new life, we can trust God to restore us and we begin to trust other people and other people begin to trust us too. Now, this is a journey, this is a progression. There are gonna be people in your life who have hurt you so badly that you may not be able to trust them right away because trust is earned. And you may find that you've hurt people so badly that they don't trust you when you say you're different. In fact, a lot of people come to recovery and they say, you know, when is my wife or my spouse gonna realize that I've changed? And my question will often be like, well, how long were you out in your addiction or your compulsive behavior? And they'll say, oh, 30 years.

How long have you been in recovery? 30 days. It's gonna take a while, right? We need to show people that we're changing through our actions and then we can trust them, or they can trust us. And when we see people changing, we begin to trust them. The beautiful thing though is that you and I can trust God right away. He is true to his word. He cannot and will not lie. And if we read his word, we can see over and over and over where he comes through. And in fact, as you go to group and your open share group and your step study, if you're someone who has learned that God is trustworthy, would you please share that with the rest of your group? Because we need to hear your stories of victory. We begin to make real friends in recovery, not just fair weather friends, but people who will stick with us through thick and thin. People who will walk in to our pain while other people flee from our pain. People that we can trust and that we can share our victory as we grow in Christ. I'm gonna close with the last letter in the acrostic and that's why, and that stands for your higher power. Jesus Christ loves you just the way that you are. If you walk away from nothing else, I want you to remember this.

And because this is huge. Jesus Christ loves you just as you are. So stop. Seriously, stop for just a second. Maybe even pause this and reflect on this for a minute. Because this is so important. I don't wanna just fast forward through this. Jesus loves you right now exactly how you are. He's not waiting for you to get your life together. He's not ready for you to get recovery. He's not ready for you to get forgiven by other people. He loves you just as you are right now. Now, if you put your faith and your trust and you commit your life to him, he's going to help you grow. So you don't stay how you are right now because he wants you to grow and get deeper in a relationship with him, to get those rough edges worked out, to grow more and more like him. But it's not about earning his love. We can't do it. God's love is a free gift of grace. But Jesus loves you so much right now, just as you are. I just want that to sink in. Because if you're like me, you've always felt like you had to earn God's love but you had no idea how to do it. And the truth is, you can't. It's a free gift given to us by him.

So bask in it. I like to use the word luxuriate. Luxuriate and indulge in God's love. And I know sometimes that feels selfish, but God lavishes his love on us. So indulge in this love and allow God's love to overwhelm you as you think about all the things that he's done. Instead of thinking, I know God will love me once I get sober. I know God will love me as soon as I fix my problems. I know God will love me as soon as I start attending church or reading my Bible or once I'm holy and healed. No, he loves you right now, just as you are. Romans 5.8 says that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He's not waiting for you to get it together. He's not waiting for you to get better first. We can't do it without him. 2000 years before you even considered, before you were a thought by anybody but him, he died for you. You didn't have a chance to get it together before he went to the cross because it was thousands of years before you were born. So remember that and let that begin to change who you are inside, because he loves you so much and he wants to help you overcome. your hurts, hang-ups, and habits.

1 Corinthians 10.13 says, God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out. Why? Because he loves you. So we're gonna face temptation in this life. But with God as our higher power and a sane mind, we can see those escape hatches and those way out so that we don't have to give into those temptations. Psalm 68.19 says, Praise be to the Lord, to God, our Savior, who daily bears our burdens. So what we need to do is turn to him, allow him to restore us to sanity. We accept Jesus. When we accept Jesus as our higher power and our Savior, we're not just guaranteed eternal life, but we also have God's protection in these times of trials. Nahum 1.7 says, As we close, I just wanna say this, recovery is a daily program, and we need a power greater than ourselves, a higher power with the strength, acceptance, new life, integrity, and trust to allow us to make sane decisions based on his truth. And what we're going to do is learn in our next principle, principle three, that we need to turn our lives and our wills over to him. I love this verse as we close. Matthew 6.34 says,

So don't be anxious about tomorrow. God will take care of your tomorrow too. Live one day at a time. Let me pray for us. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this program. We thank you for the ability to come to you, that you will restore us to wholeness of mind. God, I pray for everyone watching this who has been caught up in this trap of trying to do the same thing over and over and over again, expecting something different to change, but finding the same results each time. I pray that you would set them free from that cycle, that you would put them on the path to healing, that you would restore them to sanity and help them as they begin this program. Help us with our strength. Give us power. Help us accept one another and accept ourselves for who we are. Jesus, thank you for the gift of new life that leads us to gifts like integrity and trust. And thank you that you love us so much right where we are right now, but you love us too much to let us stay there. Jesus, we love you. We thank you and it's in your name we pray. Amen.