Frank Graeff experienced just that as a pastor who went through some ve­ry dif­fi­cult tri­als.  Graeff was wrestling through a time of profound de­spond­en­cy, doubt and phys­ic­al pain. When he turned to God’s Word, 1 Peter 5:7 was the text that caught his eye and touched his heart: “casting all your anxieties on him (God), because he cares for you.”

Peter’s words provided a level of com­fort and encouragement that–while not relieving his pain–bolstered his heart with the tender reassurance of God’s loving care: “He cares for you.” Af­ter med­i­ta­ting on that truth, Graeff was inspired to write the lyri­cs to a song that reverberated from a grateful heart that knew what it meant to struggle with despair:

Does Jesus care when my heart is pained Too deeply for mirth and song
As the burdens press, and the cares distress, And the way grows weary and long?

Refrain:
O yes, He cares I know He cares! His heart is touched with my grief
When the days are weary, the long nights dreary, I know my Savior cares

Does Jesus care when my way is dark With a nameless dread and fear?
As the daylight fades into deep night shades, Does He care enough to be near?

Does Jesus care when I’ve tried and failed To resist some temptation strong
When for my deep grief I find no relief Tho my tears flow all the night long?

Does Jesus care when I’ve said goodbye To the dearest on earth to me
And my sad heart aches till it nearly breaks Is it aught to Him? does He see?

So, if you have ever wondered like most of us have as to whether or not Jesus cares about the struggles and pain you are currently facing that seem insurmountable, Frank’s answer is a resounding “Yes!” And I agree.

If you have a story of pain and struggle where you’ve experience the restoration of the God who cares, please feel free to share your story to encourage others along the path that they are not alone and can make it too.

After many other suggestions, Moody picked up a pitcher and filled the glass with water.

“There,” he said, “all the air is now removed.” He then explained that freedom from a sinful habit does not come by working hard to eliminate it, but rather by the allowing the Holy Spirit to take full possession of us.

Is there a sinful habit in your life that you can’t to get rid of, no matter how hard you try? Maybe you should stop striving so hard to eliminate your out of control problem. Generally speaking, we don’t need more self-effort and self-regulation. What we need more of is to humble ourselves before God so that He can fill us with His Spirit.

The more we occupy ourselves with Jesus the less room there is for sin to occupy us.

To read more about freedom from addictions, Check out the Discovery Series Bible Study Released! http://www.dhp.org/Products/Released-Understanding-and-Overcoming-Addiction-%E2%80%94-Study-Guide__Q4066.aspx

Penance is that tricky phase most cycle through after the high and relief of acting out wears off. Whether it’s getting wasted with alcohol or drugs, throwing a temper tantrum or binging on porn, it’s that place we go to when we feel dissatisfied, guilty and foolish for turning again to something that doesn’t last and often makes things worse.

Penance is tricky because we are not what we seem when we go there. We appear to be making amends for our out of control behavior. We start to act kinder and more thoughtful. We start to do things for others that we’ve been resisting to do for years. It can look so genuine, but it doesn’t last because we’re doing it for the wrong reasons. Making amends is not about a healthy desire to change. It’s about finding a quick behavioral fix and ending the dissatisfaction and shame our addiction has caused.

In the penance phase we also appear to be really sorry and contrite. We beat ourselves up. And we claim to really want to change. We promise to try harder. We make plans to never act out again. We say that we really mean it this time. All of our self-loathing seems to prove our sincerity, but we’re not as sincere as we think. We are not seriously open to a work of God in our lives because we are still trying to handle the brokenness of our life on our own. Rather than humbly accepting the forgiveness and grace of Jesus and admitting that we are is helpless to stop without God, we want to stay in charge. And penance, which is little more than self-effort, is our way to staying in control.

Penance is the opposite of repentance. What makes true repentance possible is humility—the realization and acknowledgment that we are helpless to break free from our addiction and go in a new direction without God. If we try to repent without humility, it will be in our own strength. And it will eventually lead to nothing more sin-management and eventually acting out again.

The New Testament book of James says that humbling ourselves before God is the central to standing against evil desires and even the devil himself (James 4:1-10). Humbling ourselves before God is about surrendering a control over life that we often wrestle away from Him. It’s letting Him call the shots. When it comes to our addictions, it involves receiving His forgiveness and accepting the truth about who He’s says we are in Jesus—a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Because the addictive cycle is partly sustained by keeping the addiction a secret from others, it’s best to stop hiding our struggles and humbly allow others access into what is going on. We must start to get our pain and brokenness out in the open with at least a few non-condemning friends who openly admit they don’t have it all together either. Together, friends can speak into each others lives and encourage each other to grow and stand in the grace and truth of all that they are in Christ.

I asked my friend what he thought Jesus would say to him about his sexual sin. He said that Jesus would tell him to stop. Which is true, but I suggested that Jesus would tell him to stop only after he communicated a couple of other thoughts.

I believe Jesus would respond to my friend like He did to the adulterous woman the Pharisees tried to publicly disgrace and condemn (John 8:2-11). After pointing the woman’s accusers back to their own sinfulness—”If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her”—Jesus turned and addressed her.

First, he addressed her as “Woman,” which may seem a bit terse and disrespectful. That’s not how a gentleman is supposed to address a lady. But back in Jesus’ day this was a polite and respectful term. It acknowledged her as a legitimate person, rather than as an object to be used and kicked around.

Jesus then pointed out to her (a woman who must have felt utterly humiliated and condemned) that no one, including Himself, condemned her. Only then, did he tell her to leave behind her life of sin.

Are you feeling condemned because of a sinful addiction in your life? Know this…the same Jesus who calls you to leave a life of sin does not condemn you either.

Pulling from an idea that Jesus taught, I challenged them to try a different approach–to scrutinize themselves first and to the degree that they scrutinize each other. It wasn’t easy and they continued to flirt with going back to finger pointing, but as both of them took the challenge to heart–it started to make a huge a difference. They still had a lot to sort through individually and as a couple, but the more they practiced it, the more they were at peace with themselves and each other rather than just at war.

In Matthew 7:3-4, Jesus threw out a couple of pointed questions that helps explain why doing this helps. He asked, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? ” He goes on to say, “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

At first it can seem like what Jesus is saying is insensitive, especially if we’ve been hurt deeply. But the point of  His “log/speck” analogy is not who has been hurt and offended the most or whose sin is more grievous. His point is about order and clear vision.

Everyone knows that we can’t see very well when something is in our eye. Even a tiny little sliver can seem like a giant log when it’s embedded in our eye. So we have to take it out (however large or small it it is) in order see straight. In the same way, my own sin clouds and distorts my perspective. Even if my junk is a reaction to something a person has done to hurt me: even if my sin pales in comparison to what’s been done to me, I simply can’t see how to best address being sinned against until I first pay attention to my own.

Jesus is not saying to only look at ourselves. If that’s all we did we would never address anything with others. But he is clearly saying that paying attention to my own issues is the place to start because it helps me to see more clearly how to pay attention to yours.

But by mid-Sunday, it all changed. The temperatures plummeted to well below the freezing mark, the winds picked up, and heavy snow started falling. By the next morning, over a half foot of wet snow and ice blanketed the ground and the roads.

Yuk! Winter had settled back in.

I know that Spring will eventually arrive, but from where I sit, the weather didn’t’ have a minor set-back. It seems like a full-blown relapse.

After a period of improvement, the difference between a set-back and a relapse is huge. This is especially the case when it comes to an addiction.

Set-backs or an occasional slip are often part of the messy process of busting loose from the grip of a compulsive behavior. While it is still inexcusable, they don”t occur with the same frequency and intensity as before. A relapse, however, is when one excuses acting out again with no serious intention of stopping. Unlike a set-back, there is no desire to keep going forward and to get well. There is no commitment to own and learn from our mistakes. Instead there is a giving up and a giving into an even greater level of indulgence (Ephesians 4:19).

Set-back versus relapse—two terms that can help us gauge where we or someone else may be at in dealing with (or not dealing with) an addiction.

Here it goes…An Old Testament proverb says, “As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness” (Proverbs 26:11).  Rather than post a photo of that image, let me say, “Woof, woof.” More times than I wish, I feast on my own foolish puke—figuratively speaking. And it always leaves me (and sometimes others) with a bad case of heartburn.

So what gives? Why do we struggle with addictions? They always end up making life worse. You would think we would learn our lesson.

Sadly, the fallen tendency to sin is still alive and lurking in all of us (Romans 7:23). And simply trying really hard to manage an addiction of any kind with more promises to stop and sheer willpower is generally a recipe for more foolishness on our part.  All of us can keep our addictions in check for some period of time, but it rarely addresses the root issues in our hearts that draw us back again and again. In fact, only trying to manage our foolish tendencies only makes resisting urges more difficult than what it already is.

We need to change our approach.

Often the best way to beat an addiction is to get close to Jesus. Instead of working at corralling our addiction, we need to pursue Him daily and give Him regular access to the unsettling issues of our heart.

I know that can sound so simple, but it’s hardly easy. The easiest (and most unhelpful) thing to do is to bury (often with our addictions) those things that haunt us and just get on with life—whatever that means. The hardest thing (and most helpful) approach to take is to regularly face our issues (especially our deepest wounds, failures, and the lies we’ve come to believe about ourselves, others, and God)  and invite Jesus into it.

It’s painful and humbling work . But it’s so freeing!

After winning eight Grand Slam titles and earning millions of dollars, Agassi, (who was forced into playing tennis at a young age by a tyrant father who was driven to make his son a winner), tells of his tragic slide into drug abuse. Despite his enormous success, for most of his life he had followed the script that others wrote for him, and it left it completely empty. To him it felt like it was all a charade.

With no idea of who he really was, the man who once sported the advertisement slogan ”image is everything” turned to heavy drinking and snorting crystal meth.

When asked on a sports radio talk show about how he quit using meth and eventually resurrected his life and his career, Agassi said it wasn’t like he said no to crystal meth as much as it was he began saying yes to something better.

Embracing something better it is central to how any of us break free from addictions that are destroying our lives. At times it can be hard to believe there is more to life than what we’ve been settling for in our addictions. But that is why faith often comes into play. Sometimes faith in the promise of something better is all we have to get us through (2 Corinthians 5:7).

Then it hit me:  God has rolled away the shame of my slavery, too.

Do you have things in your life that creep back into your mind and haunt you?  Things you did when you knew better? Times when you were “hell-bent” on doing whatever it was that made you feel good at the moment?  Actions that if others knew you did it, they’d disown you?

I’m not talking just about immorality and drug addiction, although, those things of course fit into the “shame” category. But even things like missing an opportunity to serve someone. Saying something unkind to another. Harboring hate in your heart. Gossip. Self-righteousness.

I ask you this because today, as I read the Bible, I felt the Holy Spirit comfort me and give me hope with this thought:  God has put away all that ugliness, the shame, in my life. It’s gone because I trust Him at His Word. I don’t deserve His compassion for the things I’ve done in my life, but He wants me to know the joy, love and riches that He has given me (Ephesians 1:7.)

God loves us so much. It was while we were sinners that He sent His son to die for us (Romans 5:8.)   What an amazing love.