Month: July 2019

Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. Matthew 18:20 In recovery, I’m finding that I must do a lot of things that are the exact opposite of my addictive behavior. In my addiction, I isolated. I know a lot of addicts use with friends, but that wasn’t me. In…
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If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. Matthew 18:15 Being an addict in recovery myself, and working with other addicts, I’ve had opportunity to be on both sides of an intervention. It’s a painful undertaking and is generally something everyone wishes to avoid. Unfortunately, though, it’s…
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If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? Matthew 18:10-12 It’s easy to write off the addict who has failed and let you down a hundred times. I’ve been there. Or…
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If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. Matthew 18:8 I’ve wrestled with more than a few flaws. I’ve engaged in self-destructive…
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Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Matthew 18:6 So, this happened again recently. After speaking at a chemical dependency treatment center, one of…
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The disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Matthew 18:1 A few years ago, while running a distance race, I got passed by a woman who was quite pregnant. I’m not going to lie. That stung. I certainly didn’t have any expectations of winning the race – I’m…
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Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day.” And they were greatly distressed. Matthew 17:22-23 My wife at I recently attended a beautiful wedding, which prompted us to look back at ours.…
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If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you. Matthew 17:20 We enjoy superhero movies at our house which means we’ve often had discussions on what superpower we would want. In our debates,…
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Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Matthew 16:25 While enslaved to my addiction, I wanted out. I knew I’d be much happier if I found sobriety, but I also knew that the cost of sobriety was higher than I was willing to…
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Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. Matthew 16:23 In the disastrous consequences of my addiction, I thought my career as a physician was over. There were those though, who insisted it wasn’t. One such…
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