Friday, July 11, 2008

Don't try to tie your own Shoelaces!

This is a special blog entry. It is the text of my presentation on "powerlessness" made at Celebrate Recovery on Friday, July 11, 2008. It includes the slides I used and the scripture references that go with them.

SLIDE ONE – Powerless (Introductory Slide)

Tonight’s lesson is officially titled “powerless”, but I’m going to give it a special name:

Don’t try to tie your own shoelaces!

Tonight we are on the second of two lessons revolving around Principle one and Step 1. The first lesson, which began a yearlong trek through the whole CR 12 step curriculum, was called “denial”. This lesson is officially titled “powerless”. To grasp what goes on in the early stages of a recovery program it is important to view these two things together, denial and powerless. I want to give you a visual aid here. I need a volunteer to help me with this.

(Have the volunteer adopt a boxer’s stance, and instruct him or her to gently throw a punch, block it with one arm and counter with a punch of your own, making sure that no contact is actually made)

Now let’s do that again with some instruction first. I am going to name my left arm “denial” and my right arm we are calling “power”. As my volunteer begins to try to deal with their problem, they strike out against it, that is the first punch thrown. BUT, it was blocked by “denial” and they were knocked back down by “power”. Please say thank to my volunteer.

Inside us there is a fight going on, our Soul experiences a deep desire to get out of our problem, but it also has developed a strong denial barrier and a habit of doing things under its own power. Last time we looked at denial, this week we are going to look at coming out from operating under our own power and recognizing that we must adopt an attitude of powerlessness.

Let’s look at tonight’s Principle, Step and associated verses.

SLIDE TWO – Principle 1
SLIDE THREE – Mt 5:3
SLIDE FOUR – Step 1
SLIDE FIVE – Rom 7:18

I’m now going to quickly run through tonight’s acrostic for the lesson, you will find it laid out on the front of the worksheet which should have been on the chair as you came in tonight. The seven items I’m going to cover are called “serenity robbers” in the CR participant guides. I want to first acknowledge that that is a good way of thinking about them, and then I want to add a different description, I call them barriers to personal growth, barriers to becoming powerless, barriers that keep us in our hurts habits and hang-ups. The first one is PRIDE.

SLIDE SIX – Pride
SLIDE SEVEN – Pr 29:23
SLIDE EIGHT – The “deadly mixture” slide.

Pride is a very unique thing. It is deadly to our Soul. Pride is present when we have an overly high opinion of ourselves and our abilities. Pride is what got Satan kicked out of heaven. What is so deadly about it? It is simple, when we are prideful, we think we know it all, and when we operate this way, we exclude God from our lives. In the extreme, we even act as though we are God. My life has been full of pride, born out of self-reliance, and God has been dealing with me about this. He has given me a word picture. He says “Ken, when you are being prideful you are poking me in the eye with a pointed stick”. My interpretation of this message is that my pride is offensive and painful to God, and that when I am that way He is not able to help because I have driven Him away. Does that make sense to you?

SLIDE NINE – Only ifs
SLIDE TEN – Lk 12:2-3

Have you ever had a case of the “if onlys”? If only I could quit gambling, if only he would stop drinking, if only she would quit nagging. If you have you have done this, you have indulged in the great rationalizing strategy of wishful thinking. It is a total emotional energy drain. This “only if” habit can just get you stuck in dreaming about what might be, and it completely stops you in trying to get out of denial. This wishful thinking deludes you into believing you have some sort of personal power to get your wish fulfilled. It is a trap.

SLIDE ELEVEN – Worry
SLIDE TWELVE – Mt 6:34

Does anybody here get anxious? Has anxiety ever helped solve a problem? When Jesus spoke these words for us in the “Sermon on the Mount” He was trying to get us to understand that worrying shuts us down and in some ways shuts God out. It is as if we don’t trust God to protect and provide for us. For those that do worry, that thought about not trusting God might initiate a guilt trip; it is not meant to. It is meant to encourage us to consider if we are pushing out God when we really don’t mean to, if we are taking our reasonable concerns to a level where they control our thoughts and feelings, thereby locking God out. The next time a worry comes your way, try to figure out whether you actually have control over the issue and if you are not allowing God to help you deal with whatever is causing you concern.

SLIDE THIRTEEN – Escape
SLIDE FOURTEEN – Eph 5:13-14.

One of the major characteristics of a state of denial is fantasizing, in this lesson we call it escaping. Did you know that there is a whole industry built around this very problem, it is called the romance industry, and I can give you three big examples, soap operas, romance novels and action movies? All of us escape reality from time to time; the problem comes when we make escape a part of our addiction lifestyle. It is as significant as pride in being a barrier to healing. When we escape, or fantasize, we actually are exercising internal power that allows our mind and heart to ignore our real life issues. We are being powerful not powerless.
I hope I haven’t pricked too many bubbles by exposing soaps and action movies for what they are!

SLIDE FIFTEEN –Resentments
SLIDE SIXTEEN – Eph 4:26-27

Resentments are emotional cancers. If we don’t resolve them, they sit inside our Soul and grow. They grow and take over, and in the extreme all our resentments merge together and totally dominate our lives. The cancer of resentments oozes, it releases a kind of Soul pus in the form of bitterness, strife, anger, and hatred; and this pus takes over our lives, it controls us. In step four we begin to learn to identify and let go of these cancers, but here in step one we have to acknowledge that they exist, and that they are a part of us, and we own them. The relevant truth here is that the resentments are in charge; and as a result we are actually powerless.

SLIDE SEVENTEEN – Loneliness
SLIDE EIGHTEEN – Heb 13:1-2

So many people, who are living in a life driven by a compulsive behavior or addiction, experience significant loneliness. Why do they do this? The short answer is shame, the most powerful negative emotion that exists. For some of us it feels better to be alone than to have our weaknesses exposed. Some of us may not have heard this before; fear of exposure of who we are is the same thing as shame. Psychologists use the term “shame based identity” to describe someone who would rather be alone, and not be exposed, than to relate on an intimate basis with another person. Our loneliness is a choice; we exert our personal energy or power to stay that way. If we choose the alternative, and attempt bonding relationships, we admit we are powerless, allowing God and other people to help us.

SLIDE NINETEEN – Emptiness
SLIDE TWENTY – Jn 10:10

I think this barrier is a relative of loneliness, which we just covered. When we live in a “shame based” existence, we do our best to empty ourselves of all our feelings. It takes a great deal of emotional energy and internal power to do this. This emptying activity leads to a sense of hopelessness about our future. The good news is that Jesus came to change that as our verse states.

SLIDE TWENTY-ONE - Selfishness
SLIDE TWENTY-TWO – Lk 17:33

Okay, it is time to confess. I have prayed Lord, give me, give me, change this, change that and change her! Have you ever wondered something like this? What does God do when the gets these wishes. I think He shakes His divine head saying, “why don’t they get it, the world does not revolve around him or her?” The whole problem with self is that it excludes everyone else, including God. It is an exercise in absolute personal power, and is best thought of as being a complete opposite to powerless. Selfishness is a massive barrier to becoming powerless.

SLIDE TWENTY-THREE – Separation
SLIDE TWENTY-FOUR – Rom 8:38-39

I think of this as the good news. We can retreat into loneliness, and try to empty ourselves, we can become self-centered and prideful, we can try to escape life and even God, but He, the Great Almighty, will never let us do it. He will chase us, He will make us uncomfortable, He will put people in our lives and he will love us constantly. When we try to separate ourselves from His love under our own power, he will work to allow us to be humiliated, and show us how powerless we actually are.

Well, that is the end of the seven “serenity robbers”, now we’ll look very quickly at four active steps we can take to move toward powerlessness.

SLIDE TWENTY-FIVE – Stop Denying the Pain
SLIDE TWENTY-SIX – Ps 6:2-3

Admit it! You can’t do it by yourself, no matter what you have done in life; the emotional pain is still there.

SLIDE TWENTY-SEVEN – Stop playing God
SLIDE TWENTY-EIGHT – Mt 6:24

It is God’s way, which has never failed, or your way, you choose.

SLIDE TWENTY-NINE – Start Admitting Your Powerlessness
SLIDE THIRTY – Mt 19:26

Have you succeeded in dealing with your stuff under your own power? You would not be here if the answer is “yes”. Try God.

SLIDE THIRTY-ONE – Admit Your Life has become Unmanageable
SLIDE THIRTY-TWO – Ps 40:12

Say it! My life is not under control, and I can’t handle it.

I want to finish tonight with a simple exercise we can all do to demonstrate the message that God has for us. Everybody close your eyes, we are going to go into our imaginations. Picture yourself as a five year old. You are sitting on a chair with your shoes on, and your Dad is standing there, waiting. You are trying to tie your shoelaces. Your Dad is saying, “Come on let’s go”. You say, “Dad, let me tie my shoes”. He says “Okay”. But you can’t do it. He says “Come on, we are missing it”, you respond, “Let me tie my shoes”. Now he says, “Let me help you”, you say, “NO, I can do it”, he says “Okay”, but you can’t. He says again “Let me help you”, you reply in anger, “leave me alone, I can do it”, he says “okay”. After a while he says, “Are you ready to go”, knowing that you are not. You say with tears, “I can’t tie my laces”. He says, “I know, I was waiting for you to admit it, now I can help you and we can go forward together”. Okay, we can open our eyes.

Did you get the point? Our heavenly Father wants us to be like children who admit that they can’t go forward in life until they tell the Father, “I’m powerless, I need your help.”

Thank you for listening.