If you want to be sober for the next year, stay sober for the next day. How did God do his work in the Old Testament? When the Israelites were fighting for their very lives, staving off the enemy, God stepped in. They did all they could, then God did what only he could do.…
The opposite of addiction is community. And today, that’s a problem, because most people aren’t too good at personal connection. Case in point: the average person checks his phone 96 times a day. There is nothing more annoying than sitting with someone, trying to hold a meaningful conversation, while they keep checking their phone. The…
Award-winning actor Jim Carrey once wrote himself a check for $10 million – when he had nothing. Early in his acting career, when no one else believed in Carrey, he believed in himself. So one day, he wrote a check to himself in the amount of $10 million, postdated five years. He was telling himself,…
As a young pastor, I read everything I could find about the great evangelist of the 19th century, D.L. Moody. I was once blessed to touch the pulpit he used in Chicago. To me, that was like touching the bat Babe Ruth used to hit his last home run. In Moody’s biography, I read an…
Recovery is the result of good habits, done over and over and over and over. Aristotle said, “Quality is not an act; it is a habit.” And Will Durant added, “We are what we repeatedly do.” Let me give you a simple formula for establishing new habits, which are key to your long-term sobriety. Think…
Humility is a key to success, in recovery or anything else. Malcolm Gladwell said it well: “We are better people when we are humble.” What is humility? Jordan Peterson defines humility as the “recognition of personal insufficiency and the willingness to learn.” I ask you three questions: Are you still willing to learn? Do you…
If your faith is strong enough, you will never be sick, you will always have plenty of money, and life will always be easy. And I will be the next quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys. Of course, none of this is true. The uncomfortable truth is that, even if you do great recovery work, love…
The Author of recovery brings a message of hope for each of us. Isaiah 11:1 reads, “A shoot will come up from the root of Jesse. From his roots a Branch will bear fruit.” This prophetic message was spoken 700 years before the birth of Christ. The message was that from an unexpected source the…
Never underestimate the loudness of a whisper. C.S. Lewis wrote, “It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that…
Sometimes, we assume that for people who become great success stories, life must have come easily. Not so. Take former President Dwight Eisenhower, for example. In late December, 1920, when he was 30 years of age, his son Icky fell seriously ill with scarlet fever. With no antibiotics, little could be done. The young boy…