Good Morning All,
A few years ago, I was
listening to a radio program where the host was interviewing a recovering
addict. That is how he referred to
himself as “recovering;” he said,” The beast is never far away.” As I listened, in my cynical judgmental
fashion, I thought he really has a way with words. Yet I kept listening and his story got more intriguing. He had tried to defeat his addiction many
times and many times he failed. He was
addicted to cocaine for over 26 years and with his family’s encouragement and
demands; he went through 8 different rehab stints. None of them lasted longer than 9 months
before he was back using cocaine.
The interviewer asked
him how he finally won. The man’s answer
was refreshing. He told her that he
didn’t win but that Jesus won for him.
He told her that until he accepted Jesus as his personal savior (not
exactly a Lutheran phrase but it was his phrase) his battle with the beast was
always won by the beast but Jesus is stronger than the beast. He ended the interview with an observation
that intrigued me. He said,” we are all
addicts; we all have destructive beasts within us which we can never defeat on
our own. As long as we battle them by
our power we will lose, we need something else to win; for me it is Jesus
Christ.”
We are all addicts;
Paul said we are all sinners. Yet I
really like how he phrased the idea that we are all “addicts.” We all have those sins which just seem so
hard to shake. We maybe aren’t addicted
to drugs or even to many other sins but there is always one or two which seem
to really pull us down. The early Church
used to speak of the seven deadly sins, wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy,
and gluttony, as the fallen human tendency toward sin. If we look at this list, it pretty much gets
to all our issues. We may have some
subsets that have appeared given our technology and current style of living but
for the most part we can find our self in this list.
There are a lot of
things that can be said about this list but one thing I hope we all take away
from this is that we are ALL on this list.
You might be one sin and I might be another but we are all sinners and
thus we should not judge others for where we think they sit on the list. I may think that one person is greedy or
another is lustful yet if I am envious of my neighbor; I am no different than
they are.
So, what do we do? First, we see life as Jeremiah does, “Heal
me, O lord, and I shall be healed, save me and I will be saved.” Jesus is our only true salvation and our only
way to defeat our addictions, our sins. So,
we struggle on as recovering addicts, fighting the beast within our sinful
nature. With Christ, we are all in this
together, offering each other comfort, hope and consolation because of Christ’s
free gift to us. We are all recovering
addicts and we need each other’s prayers and support.
Gracious Lord,
defend me from the beasts that seek to devour me. Keep me close to you so that I may remain in
you. In Jesus name we pray, amen.
God’s Peace,
Pastor Bret
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