In my book, Recovery Rules, I start with Rule #1 – If you are 90% in, you’re 100% out. Case in point – King Amaziah “Amaziah was 25 years old when he became king, and he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem. He did right in the sight of the Lord, yet not with a whole…
“Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from lustful desires, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). Over my past ten years of sobriety, I have learned two things: Recovery is a war. It never ends. We never get to the point when the enemy backs off and says,…
Let’s talk lightning and giraffes. We’ll start with lightning. There are 1.4 billion lightning strikes per year across the globe, which comes to 44 strikes per second. Lightning hits 270 people per year, and about 10 percent of those unfortunates die as a result. But the news is even worse for giraffes. From 1996 to…
One day, Charlie Brown was depressed. Lucy diagnosed the problem: “Charlie Brown, the problem with you is that you’re you.” Charlie responded, “Oh, and what can I do about that?” Lucy said, “I’m not here to give any prescriptions. I’m just here to point out the problems.” Do you have people like that in your…
“Abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). The key word in that command is “desires.” Peter didn’t warn us to not engage in sinful activities. The desire is bad enough. Why? Because that is what torments our souls. And wherever we indulge our mind today, our body will follow…
Spencer Johnson wrote a popular book called The Present: The Secret to Enjoying Your Work and Life Now. His premise was that to have a life that is effective, you have to learn how to be “fully present.” Most of us have trouble with that. We are too concerned about yesterday, even though we can’t…
If you’re really old, you will recall what happened on this date in 1879. That was the day the light came on. On December 31, 1879, in the first public demonstration of his incandescent light bulb, American inventor Thomas Alva Edison lit up a street in Menlo Park, New Jersey. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company ran…
The Bible never says, “Be loud and know that I am God.” Nope, it says, “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Still is the antidote to stress. Stress is a primary trigger of addiction. Few things are a worse enemy than stress. According to the Center for Disease Control, stress can…
Moments after President Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., his body was carried across the street to the Petersen House. The Petersen were out of town at the time, but theirs was the closest place Lincoln’s people could find with a bed. It was in that bed that the president drew…
It’s one of my 100 Recovery Rules. Addiction cripples, but secrets kill. Dr. Alex Lickerman, the author of The Undefeated Mind, writes, “Deciding to not reveal a hurtful secret is usually easy while deciding to reveal it is hard. But if it’s a secret you’re withholding from someone with whom you’re intimate, it represents a…