Rev. David Holwick ZD Spiritual Recovery series
First Baptist Church Step 1
Ledgewood, New Jersey
October 7, 2001
Psalm 30:1-12
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Step 1: Admit you have a problem and are powerless to solve it.
I. Apollo 13 as a metaphor for life.
A. Great movie with Tom Hanks.
1) Rocket is technological pinnacle of American might.
2) Fuel cell explodes, power sinks, systems collapse.
a) Matter-of-fact message: "Houston, we have a problem."
b) Reality: they almost bought the farm, only made it back
by the skin of their teeth.
B. People can crash-and-burn, too.
1) Everything can seem fine in life.
a) Unseen but deadly problem can be just below surface.
b) Unseen - or unacknowledged?
1> Humans have a tremendous ability to color their
reality to suit their needs.
2) The problem surfaces, and the downward spiral begins.
II. We can relate to Psalm 30.
A. David writes after-the-fact. 30:1
1) God has already delivered him, lifted him out of the depths.
2) David had called for help. 30:2
a) His problem was probably physical sickness.
b) The language is applicable to wider, unsolvable
problems all people face.
3) God healed him, saved him from death and damnation. 30:3
a) "Lifted out of depths" in vs. 1 is used for buckets
pulled out of wells.
b) Our pits can seem pretty deep.
B. Pits are not fun.
1) David mentions feeling God's anger. 30:5
a) In hindsight, it lasted only for a moment.
b) He spent a night weeping, figuratively speaking.
2) Often, it takes a crisis to get our attention.
a) It is only when we feel the despair that we
become willing to change.
b) Despair is just a symptom - sin is the disease.
III. Society avoids the concept of sin; so do many Christians.
A. It is common to view individual sins as nuisances.
1) Like parking tickets, sin is a problem only if you
accumulate too many.
2) In reality, sin affects every part of us:
a) Affects us physically. Disease
b) Affects us emotionally. Guilt
c) Affects us spiritually. Hardened heart
3) SIN is not sins, but the underlying, inescapable power
that leads to sins. #2583
a) We are caught in a web of sin.
b) We may not know how we got there, but we cannot
escape by our own power.
c) Trying to escape only catches us deeper in the web.
B. Sin, even if insignificant, can lead to terrible consequences.
Brothers Geno and Russell Capozziello were owners of a
Bridgeport, Connecticut, wrecking company.
In 1991 a judge fined them nearly $900,000 for operating an
illegal dump.
Back in 1986, on the empty lots surrounding their facility,
the brothers began dumping debris from buildings.
Eventually muck covered two acres and reached a height of 35
feet, the equivalent of a three-story building.
The state ordered them to clean it up, but the brothers claimed
there was no place to dump it legally in Bridgeport.
They could not afford to have it hauled away.
The previous year they had spent more than $330,000 to have
debris hauled away, and it barely dented the pile.
According to Geno, "it was never supposed to get this high."
Like garbage, sinful habits have a way of accumulating beyond
our plans and beyond our control.
#1977
A drug like marijuana won't kill you.
But thousands of times it has been a gateway to heroin.
Flirting with someone other than your spouse won't wreck
your marriage.
But if it leads to something deeper...
1) That is why the Bible takes individual sin so seriously.
2) Ignoring it won't make it go away. We must deal with it.
IV. Four simple steps you can take to recovery.
A. You must be aware that you have a problem.
1) Denial just delays the inevitable.
a) "My problem isn't that bad ... yet."
b) "Others are much worse off than me."
c) "I can handle my problem by myself."
d) Or as King David put it, "When I felt secure I said,
I will never be shaken..."
2) If you think you don't have a problem, ask your partner,
your children or your parents.
3) Better yet, compare your lifestyle to what the Bible
demands of a righteous life. You will fail the test.
B. You must be aware that you are powerless over that problem.
1) You can't do anything to solve the problem.
2) Temporarily you may be able to manage it, but eventually
you will have to realize that you can't do it.
[expand this section...]
C. Your life is becoming unmanageable because of the problem.
1) If you don't fix the problem, things will go from bad
to worse.
2) Time does not remove the problem, it only increases the
ultimate damage of the problem.
D. You must ask God for help.
1) You come and tell Him that you can't get fixed on your own.
Someone has said, "We're as sick as our secrets."
Prov. 28:13: "He who hides his problems will not prosper."
2) David had to plead for God's mercy. 30:8
a) God was there for him.
b) God turned him around. 30:11
c) David expressed his thanks to God. 30:12
3) God reaches out to us before we reach out to Him. Rom 5:8
V. Almighty God is greater than any problem we face.
A. He wants us humble, but not humiliated.
B. Millions have been where you are.
A classic story of recovery.
It was 1934.
Bill Wilson was a pretentious, loud-talking New York City alcoholic.
Nearly 40, he was feeding his habit by stealing grocery money
from his wife.
Sometimes he even panhandled.
Several times he had been hospitalized, but he always started drinking
again, no matter what resolutions he made.
One November day an old alcoholic friend, Ebby Thatcher, paid him a
visit.
Thatcher was sober and had come to tell Wilson why.
He had had a religious experience.
Members of an organization called the Oxford Group had visited him in
jail, where he had been incarcerated for drunkenness.
After talking with them, he had yielded his life to God.
The desire to drink was gone, he said.
His life was changed.
After several visits, Thatcher convinced Wilson - who was quite
hostile to religion - to attend a meeting at a Manhattan rescue
mission.
Wilson, though quite drunk, was moved by the testimonies and went
forward to testify to his own changed heart.
This change lasted less than a day: Wilson went on a three-day binge
and was hospitalized again.
Thatcher visited the hospital, and at Wilson's request repeated his
formula for conversion:
"Realize you are licked,
Admit it,
And get willing to turn your life over to the care of God."
After Thatcher left, Wilson fell into a deep depression.
But finally, while still in the hospital, he found himself crying out,
"If there is a God, let him show himself!
I am ready to do anything!"
What followed was a powerful spiritual experience in which Wilson felt
overwhelmed by a sense of freedom, peace and the presence of God.
He never took another drink.
That spring, Wilson went to Akron, Ohio, on a would-be business deal.
The deal fell flat.
Broke and lonely, Wilson felt strongly tempted to drink.
Desperately, he looked in his hotel's phone directory and called a
local Oxford leader, and told her:
"I'm from the Oxford Group and I'm a rum hound from New York."
He poured out his fear of falling, and she invited him over immediately.
She had a project in mind.
For two years she had been working on a surgeon, Bob Smith.
Smith was Wilson's opposite in personality.
The surgeon was a silent drinker, stern and distant.
The group had confessed with him and prayed with him, but his drinking
had remained as uncontrollable as ever.
The next day the two men met in the kitchen of a local home in Akron,
and they hit it off remarkably well.
Within a month Smith took his last drink.
At that kitchen table in Akron, Ohio, in 1934, "Alcoholics Anonymous"
was born.
#2585
C. We must give our whole self to Jesus Christ.
1) He can give us victory.
2) He can give us joy. 30:11
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
#1977 "Sinful Habits," by Michael E. Hardin of Cochran, Georgia;
Leadership Journal, Winter 1992.
#2583 "David and the Sin Cycle," by Philip Yancey, Christianity Today
magazine, March 6, 1987, page 32.
#2585 "The Spiritual Roots of The Twelve Steps," by Tim Stafford,
Recovery Devotional Bible, 1993, page xiii.
These and 18,000 others are part of a database that can be downloaded,
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