Bury the Dead!
June 27, 2009
Are you finished with living your life through addiction selfishly, satisfying every appetite, every desire…no matter who it hurts or what it costs? Are you done with living your life in conflict with God’s heart and purposes for you?
Good!
If that “old man” addiction is truly dead, than it must be buried: put away forever.
But, this burial is not like any you have known to date. This burial has the promise of a ressurection to a “new man:” a man who is “in Christ.”
“If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his ressurection” – Romans 6:5
Residential Aftercare – New Heart Place
June 26, 2009
New Heart Place gives men an opportunity to rebuild their lives with a new start in a safe environment while they learn how to re-engage into society. New Heart Place is an inpatient facility (Residential Aftercare) set out in a very quiet area in Snohomish outside of town. It offers a quiet and tranquil environment for these men to live.
The program lasts for one year and the focus is on living a Christ-Centered-life and learning to live without addictions. They attend regular groups and have to be able to make the commitment for the entire time. These men are given the opportunity to learn a trade and are placed in job opportunities as well once they are ready for this step.
There are so many treatment facilities out there, but none that have the opportunity’s that we offer. Many of the local Intensive Outpatient programs have low success rate. Most go back out and relapse quite soon after treatment. Our men are showing a good rate of success. They are not only staying clean from drugs and alcohol, but they are becoming strong men of God.
Restoration and Relapse
June 25, 2009
Spiritual Transformation
In aftercare treatment planning, one must include a clear plan of restoration. This plan must include a great deal of accountability and ongoing oversight. Relapse and recidivism rates for addicts still remain relatively high after completion of treatment. One must be on guard to discern the role of spiritual transformation in the life of the addict. Addicts will say—and genuinely believe, along with many others supporting the addict—that they have committed or recommitted their lives to Christ, that God has forgiven their sin, and they have been healed from their addictive desires.
The implication is that if the therapist continues to insist on strong accountability or a need for continued treatment, they are doubting the power of God to change lives. This is very difficult bind for Christian counselors. On one hand we must seriously believe in the power of God to heal and change lives, while also being aware that healing is almost always a gradual process. Furthermore, the Christian counselor knows as well as anyone the subtle power of sin and the ways of the world to tempt the addict to use again. Even in the midst of the healing process, offenders can and do experience relapse—some relapse numerous times—but eventually establish control over the problem.
We must balance the need to affirm healing in the offender with appropriate concern for the reality of relapse and renewed addiction. The church, as a community of grace and healing, looks to the hope of the gospel for the power to change the behavior of addicted persons, to heal the wounds of the their victims, and to provide reconciliation with the body of Christ.
Effective Drug Abuse Treatment
June 23, 2009
Nearly three decades of scientific research has yielded 13 fundamental principles that characterize effective drug abuse treatment. These principles are detailed in NIDA’s Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment: A Research-Based Guide, from the National Institute of Drug Abuse.
1. No single treatment is appropriate for all individuals. Matching treatment settings, interventions, and services to each patient’s problems and needs is critical.
2. Treatment needs to be readily available. Treatment applicants can be lost if treatment is not immediately available or readily accessible.
3. Effective treatment attends to multiple needs of the individual, not just his or her drug use. Treatment must address the individual’s drug use and associated medical, psychological, social, vocational, and legal problems.
4. At different times during treatment, a patient may develop a need for medical services, family therapy, vocational rehabilitation, and social and legal services.
5. Remaining in treatment for an adequate period of time is critical for treatment effectiveness. The time depends on an individual’s needs. For most patients, the threshold of significant improvement is reached at about 3 months in treatment. Additional treatment can produce further progress. Programs should include strategies to prevent patients from leaving treatment prematurely.
6. Individual and/or group counseling and other behavioral therapies are critical components of effective treatment for addiction. In therapy, patients address motivation, build skills to resist drug use, replace drug-using activities with constructive and rewarding nondrug-using activities, and improve problem-solving abilities. Behavioral therapy also facilitates interpersonal relationships.
7. Medications are an important element of treatment for many patients, especially when combined with counseling and other behavioral therapies. Methadone and levo-alpha-acetylmethodol (LAAM) help persons addicted to opiates stabilize their lives and reduce their drug use. Naltrexone is effective for some opiate addicts and some patients with co-occurring alcohol dependence. Nicotine patches or gum, or an oral medication, such as buproprion, can help persons addicted to nicotine.
8. Addicted or drug-abusing individuals with coexisting mental disorders should have both disorders treated in an integrated way.
9. Medical detoxification is only the first stage of addiction treatment and by itself does little to change long-term drug use. Medical detoxification manages the acute physical symptoms of withdrawal. For some individuals it is a precursor to effective drug addiction treatment.
10. Treatment does not need to be voluntary to be effective. Sanctions or enticements in the family, employment setting, or criminal justice system can significantly increase treatment entry, retention, and success.
11. Possible drug use during treatment must be monitored continuously. Monitoring a patient’s drug and alcohol use during treatment, such as through urinalysis, can help the patient withstand urges to use drugs. Such monitoring also can provide early evidence of drug use so that treatment can be adjusted.
12. Treatment programs should provide assessment for HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B and C, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, and counseling to help patients modify or change behaviors that place them or others at risk of infection. Counseling can help patients avoid high-risk behavior and help people who are already infected manage their illness.
13. Recovery from drug addiction can be a long-term process and frequently requires multiple episodes of treatment. As with other chronic illnesses, relapses to drug use can occur during or after successful treatment episodes. Participation in self-help support programs during and following treatment often helps maintain abstinence.
Spiritual Renewal (Part 5)
June 22, 2009
Addicts are spiritually immature by nature. They often search for black-and-white answers to their problems. If addicts have developmental issues it is easy to see that they will also have childish and adolescent beliefs about God (see May, 1988; Miller, 1987). They may have become angry with God for not “delivering” them of their cravings, longings, and lust.
There are several spiritual challenges for addicts when working with Christian counselors, pastors, and lay helpers:
1. Addicts must address their own need to control.
Many of them may have committed to Christ intellectually, but not emotionally. They may be angry with God for not healing or delivering them. They have a hard time letting go of the high and the mood alteration of their addictive activities. Addicts have become accustomed to their ways. Being enslaved to addiction is what they know.
In the 13th and 14th chapters of the book of Numbers we find the story of how God is trying to prepare the people of Israel to go to the Promised Land. God has already done a mighty work in delivering them out of the land of Egypt. They are being led by one of greatest religious leaders of all time, Moses. Ten of twelve spies who have been sent to survey the new land give a negative report of how difficult it will be to go there because of “giants” in the land. In the opening of the 14th chapter, the people cry out for a new leader and declare that it would be better to go back to Egypt and die as slaves than to go to a place they don’t know.
This is how addicts often react. They don’t know a new place or a better way. They will want to hang on to the familiar. They are unable to trust God to see them through unknown and frightening future events. It is an issue of trust and total surrender. They will need to be guided to totally turn their lives over to God and face their own fears and need to control. In John 5, Jesus (our master psychologist) asks the paralyzed man at the pool of Bethesda, “Do you want to get well?” It seems like a silly question for a man who has been lying by this healing water for 38 years. The man, however, doesn’t answer affirmatively but instead gives excuses for why he hasn’t been able to get into the pool.
Christian counselors will also have to ask this hard question, “Do you want to get well and are you willing to take the risks, make the surrender, and do the hard work that will be necessary.” In Numbers 14, it is Joshua who says to the stubborn people, “We can do this with God’s help.”
Do You Want To Be Free?
June 17, 2009
It hasn’t always been this way
I remember brighter days
Before the dark ones came
Stole my mind
Wrapped my soul in chains
Now I live among the dead
Fighting voices in my head
Hoping someone hears me crying in the night
And carries me away
Set me free of the chains holding me
Is anybody out there hearing me?
Set me free
Morning breaks another day
Finds me crying in the rain
All alone with my demons I am
Who is this man that comes my way?
The dark ones shriek
They scream His name
Is this the One they say will set the captives free?
Jesus, rescue me
As the God man passes by
He looks straight through my eyes
And darkness cannot hide
Do you want to be free?
Lift your chains
I hold the key
All power on Heav’n and Earth belong to me
You are free
You are free
You are free
Behavioral Change (Part 2)
June 17, 2009
Addicts have developed strong, highly programmed, even automatic behavior patterns in order to maintain their addiction. They will go to extraordinary lengths to deny, minimize, or rationalize this addictive behavior.
1. Focus honesty and behavior change.
This requires the therapist to maintain a strong initial focus on honesty and behavior change. When the addict seeks to divert discussion to family, emotional, or relationship concerns prematurely, the therapist must redirect attention to behavior. While effective treatment may address these issues, the clinician must help the addict stop using them to escape dealing with his or her addictive behavior.
One way of doing this is to link the tangential topics the client raises with the central issue of their addiction. For example, a counselor might refocus a client’s response toward the behavior in this way: “So how is the way you approach your anger toward your wife similar to the way you acted out your anger in your sex addiction?” “How is your tendency to denigrate yourself reflected in your addiction ritual?” The assumption here is that addiction has a life of its own and operates apart from other concerns. Unlike many other clinical issues, addiction is both symptom and disease.
2. Changing ritual behavior patterns.
All addicts will need to change certain behavior patterns. Even those who engage in substance addictions need to evaluate behaviors that lead them into their use. These behaviors are usually referred to in the addiction community as “rituals.” The competent Christian counselor will help an addict assess the cycle of how he or she acts out. What behaviors always seem to lead to the addictive behaviors? Taking detailed histories of usage and behavioral patterns will be helpful.
When this information has been sorted out, addicts must establish boundaries against those behaviors. Alcoholics will need to avoid certain friends, areas of towns, or stressful situations that lead them to drink. Food addicts may even need to avoid going to the grocery store in the early days of recovery, or they may need to schedule meals at regular times and find help to eat at those times religiously. Sex addicts will need to avoid people and places that trigger them into their fantasies or “connecting” rituals. For example, those sex addicts who use the computer to connect will need to become accountable for every minute of access to it.
Above All Else
June 15, 2009
Sounds important! Could it be that the Holy Spirit has given us insight to the holistic, sustainable healing of a man’s life? Could it be that heart is really the point in the vast world of addiction treatment and recovery?
“Above all else, guard your heart, for out of it proceed the issues of life.” (Proverbs 4:23)
While our culture offers many helpful treatments for the plethora of disorders and issues affecting the human heart, no human therapy has been or will ever be able to actually transform a heart into “something new.” Adjusted, yes. Modified, certainly. Healed, possibly. But, brand new?
Yet, that is the promise…indeed, the offer…of the “Heart Creator Himself.”
“I will give you a new heart, with new and right desires, and I will put a new spirit in you.”
O.K., fair enough. But how?
I’m afraid there is no way, humanly speaking. The transformation of a human heart – the soul of a man – is the exclusive “field of expertise” God has reserved for Himself, alone.
The Apostle Paul describes this amazing transformation to his spiritual children in Ephesus:
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” – Ephesians 2:1-10
If that “heart/soul transformation” has taken place, the addict becomes the disciple, and a new life begins:
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! – 2 Corinthians 5:16-17.
Overcoming Addiction – Lisa’s Testimony
June 5, 2009
My name is Lisa, and I have been saved by Grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Let me begin by telling you a bit about myself.
I have been clean and sober for 29 months, and can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt I would not have been able to do this on my own!
I come from a long line of alcoholism so normal was never part of my culture. I was led by example. I used drugs and alcohol for 31 years. For me, everyday life was a challenge.
At first, I was seemingly part of society. Going through the day to day process I became a chameleon. Fitting in seemed most comfortable where I could numb myself from my pain. It seemed others around me must have been there for all the same reasons.
I lived in darkness; loneliness, resentment and pain, disbelief in man and God is how I lived my life. I was never able to hurdle the walls that kept me sober long enough that I wouldn’t do drugs. They usually came hand in hand for me.
As I got older, more responsibilities, more people to answer to, it became harder to hide. Then somewhere along the way the drugs and alcohol took over. I had lost everything precious to me. I was surrounded by darkness, scared, lonely and tired of fighting a battle I could NOT win on my own.
I cried out to the Lord to PLEASE help me. I didn’t know how to Pray, I just KNEW He was listening. My life has NEVER been the same since.
Surrendering to the Lord and giving Him my earthly will has given me peace, hope and overwhelming joy. I was broken and now I know the sweet aroma of Praise.
I no longer live with the demons that directed my life. I live in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through Faith.
I am no longer angry for my circumstances. I have been forgiven for my sins. I am now grateful and Blessed.
I thank Jesus Christ that I am alive and have this opportunity to stand before you as living proof that you too can be saved. Your not alone, speak to the Lord as a Father and He will save you too.
Thank You
Thank you Lisa for your Testimony! God’s overcoming addiction power in your life is evident.
New Heart Place – A Place of Healing and Restoration
June 1, 2009
In 2006 Westgate Chapel opened a residential home for adult men located on five (5) acres in the beautiful Echo Lake area of Snohomish County: New Heart Place.
The passion and vision of the New Heart Place team is not to somehow get a man clean and sober.
The mission of New Heart Place is far more than recovery. It is simply a faith-investment in the promises of Jesus:
“I will give you a new heart with new and right desires, and I will put a new spirit in you.” (Ezekiel 36:26)
Suddenly, it’s not recovery of something lost. It’s about receiving that which is new: a new heart, new desires, a new spirit.
The staff and ministry team of New Heart Place believes every man welcomed into its warm, relational community is marked with destiny:
“I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” – Jeremiah 29:11
New Heart Place
Healing – Wholeness – Freedom – Destiny