Not so long ago, I was very sick.
Through literally thousands upon thousands of people praying for me, God moving on behalf of me and a lot of support from my family - I made it.
Today, I am one of the very few people who can say they survived Stage 4, 'Terminal' Cancer.
Occasionally, I think back to that time when I was so sick and still serving a church.
Things never stop in a church - you have the joyful, the proud, those wanting to control, the blissful and of course, the grumps.
And I remember thinking how so unlike the early Church we have become today.
Looking to the New Testament and the early church, they were addicted to grace and drawn to an interdependence upon one another.
I wish, in this day and age, for the sake of the Body of Christ, Christians would refrain from glossing over their sins, quit excusing their actions and just give it up to God and accept forgiveness and grace from His hand.
Funny thing about both forgiveness and grace; they are free but they have to be wanted to be obtained.
Not long ago in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), nobody in leadership ever spoke of our societal, institutional sins like racism.
I am thankful to have lived in the era when this was confessed and forgiveness sought from God and those who were injured by willful sin and ignorance.
Yet, while this sin was institutionalized there were others which were simply ignored; like pride and legalism - although Jesus Himself railed against these as well.
When I was a child, consuming alcohol or befriending or being a homosexual, whom we slammed with our rhetoric of 'faggot' and 'queer'; these were sins which would send a person straight to Hell on a pathway designed for the demons of Lucifer.
I am equally thankful to be living in a time where some, a few strong Christians, are ministering to those in both the homosexual community and the bar scene.God's grace cannot be communicated to another human being by hurting them with words or violence; if every person has equal value before God as a human then they also are equally entitled to His forgiveness, mercy and grace.
But whether the sin is racism, sexual addictions, alcohol addictions, pride or something else; all sin is to be repented of and forgiven by the grace of God.
And this being true, if God so readily forgives, why does the Christian first fail to seek His forgiveness and then once it is obtained, shun those who have sought grace?
One group of people who excel at giving forgiveness without judging one another is Alcoholics Anonymous.
It has been so effected that there are over 250 other 12-step programs in the United States today; attempting to help people with every issue from being over weight to serious narcotic addictions.
A major problem with Christians today - we don't want to admit that we're addicts; we are addicted to our sins, our behaviors we attempt to justify and we're addicted to self-love of that person in the mirror.
Somewhere, when I was sick, I read of this person in the phenomenal Teen Challenge program, working and striving to be free of an addiction to crack cocaine.
The woman stated, 'Crack isn't for people to feel good; it's for people to fill nothing.'
That's right - and that is what all of our sins do - make us numb to that inner conviction which silently shouts what is right and wrong.
We want to silence it; not to hear it - for if we hear it, we might be forced to obey that voice and admit there is something wrong with ourselves.
Whether it is crack, alcohol or any thing else, these things we do and use so that we will feel good; they are for wounds that cannot be seen on the outside but remain dangerous to our heart and soul.
Yet, the woman who explained her addiction to crack in such terms of reality, also insisted a cure began first, only when repentance occurred.
To nearly alcoholics or narcotic addicts in recovery, they will agree that the spiritual element in their restoration is essential.
Yet, to many of them, steeples and pews seem gutless, phony; people masking their true pain and urges so that others will have a 'respectable' opinion of them and their family.
In Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), when a member wants to drink, they can call another member
When was the last time you heard of a church member calling someone other than their pastor at 4 in the morning for some type of help?
Quite frankly, I never have - and many times, even when the pastor is called, it is to deal with a family grieving a death, rather than helping a member deal with a sin.
All member in these recovery programs are treated on the same level; that's why they only use their first names.
And these programs are about radical honesty and radical dependence on one another.
Sound familiar?
It should, because that is what we read in the New Testament.
The recovery programs for addicts in the 21st Century, have their success because they used God's model for the Church...and it still works.
We as the Church can learn a lot from addicts; for we need to become dependent on one another again, while being addicted to grace.
Today, we accept the fact that people are going to lie in church.
For example, 'How are you doing?'
And the person will answer, 'Oh, I'm fine...'
But the truth is something similar to their children being in drugs, their marriage is falling apart and their dog just died an hour ago.
We have allowed the Church to become a society of respectable liars.
As such, those same addicts go to recovery groups instead of the Church because they don't feel comfortable in a 'Holy' place where people lie.
Another reason, to the person whose life is falling apart because of substance abuse, they don't realize that church people aren't all together with their lives either.
In these programs, 'This is who I am and this is my sin...'
I have never heard any person in the body of Christ confess to one another in such a manner, although this may be the most accurate portrayal of what the apostles meant by confessing to one another.
There's an old AA saying: 'Religion is for people who believe in Hell. Spirituality is for people who have been there.'
It is also why so many emerge from Church, Sunday after Sunday, with a self-satisfied pride.
Attending Church is an expression of need; of our need for God and the family of God.
There are millions of Christians who leave their Church parking lot every week with an overwhelming emptiness because reality is often covered in church with a false veneer of respectability.
If the lost and hurting world could see the Church as a place which welcomed broken people so they may be healed and restored, then we as Christians would have a greater impact on the world than all the evangelism programs and events combined.
The Body of Christ should never be done with this work; for, we are never done offering forgiveness to those who are lost, broken and hurting.
Like them, each Christian must be addicted to His grace; only by this can we be restored.
Until next time, win one for the good guys.
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