Dr. Mark E. Shaw welcomes special guest Oliver Underwood, who is a Commissioned Addictions Biblical Counselor (CABC) and serves as an Advisory Team Member with The Addiction Connection.
Mark opens by reading Isaiah 6:5-8. Oliver shares a little about himself and how he started reading Proverbs regularly.
He refers to Matthew 24:12: “the love of many will grow cold” and Hebrews 2:1 “lest we drift away.” In Revelation 2, the church at Ephesus is said to have “left your first love” (or you have left the love that you had at first). These warnings are to churches who are drifting into apathy, complacency, quitting, and growing cold. Oliver calls all of God’s people to wake up, to link arm in arm, and to truly be the hands and feet of Christ and be a light in a dark world. To put the light on a lampstand so all can see.
1) We need to be careful and quit farming people who struggle with addictions out to secular treatment centers.
2) Logistics and building structures should not be the emphasis that they are. Focus on those things can blind us to the real work of the Body of Christ.
Oliver challenges us: "Let’s get back to brokenness to when we were blind and our eyes were opened when we were lost and now we went from hopelessness to hope in Christ."
Mark exhorts us: "How often we try to cover our humanity and show ourselves as people who never make mistakes and as superheroes. We don’t want others to see us as weak, needy, dependent, or flawed. The brokenness (the humanity that we try to cover up) is something that drives the addicted heart. Just one more. It’s never enough."
The heart of Isaiah is in response to being in the presence of the Most Holy God.
1) All the details of what Isaiah is in awe of the presence of the Most Holy God. We as the church must be in awe of who God is. We must be captured by the Creator who made us. It should be something that captures our thoughts throughout the day…. Whether we’re looking at our bank accounts or our friendships, we should stay in awe at how God is relating to us. It’s an awe and a reverent heart toward who He really is.
2) We compare ourselves to each other instead of comparing ourselves to God. Jesus came for those “who are sick.” He came to the heavy laden who need rest. We are to be honest with ourselves that we need Jesus – that apart from Him we can do nothing.
Speaking to any unbelievers out there, Oliver explains:
“[Jesus is] not waiting for you to pick yourself up by your bootstraps… He will make you who he wants you to be.”
In the 4th step of the Twelve Steps… moral inventory can only be done by looking at God’s holiness. The right conclusion is: “I’m dead meat!” That’s Isaiah’s response: “woe is me… I deserve to die. I’m doomed. I’m lost. I‘ve seen God!” And Isaiah gets to a place of despair. That is what leads us to say, “God will you save me?” Not the fake me, not the polished me, but here I am, broken as we look to Jesus to be our hope. Here I am – send me.
Getting people equipped to do ministry even though they don’t have seminary degrees is one of the main heartbeats of The Addiction Connection.
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