Celebrate Recovery - Lesson 1 - Denial - Pastor Brandon Ford

My name is Pastor Brandon.

I'm a faithful believer in Jesus Christ who struggles with anger, perfectionism, impatience, sexual purity, and a host of other mixed issues. And tonight, we get to begin a journey together, a journey on the road of recovery. And this journey with Celebrate Recovery begins with principle number one, where we admit that we are powerless to control our tendency to do the wrong thing and that our lives have become unmanageable and out of control. But before we begin this exciting journey together, we need to ask ourselves two very important questions. Number one, am I going to let my past failures prevent me from taking this journey?

And number two, am I afraid to change? Or maybe a better way to put that would be, what are my fears of the future? Let's look at Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 1. It says this. Since we have such a huge crowd of men of faith watching us from the grandstands, let us strip off anything that slows us down or holds us back.

And especially those sins that wrap themselves so tightly around our feet and trip us up and let us run with patience the particular race that God has set before us. There are two things that I want to point out in this verse. First, God has a particular race, a unique plan, if you will, for each and every one of us. A plan for good. Not a life full of dependencies, addictions and obsessions.

And. And the second thing that we need is that we need to be willing to get rid of all of our unnecessary baggage, all of our past failures and our lives that keep us stuck again. It says, let us strip off anything that slows us down or holds us back. And especially those things that wrap themselves so tightly around our feet and trip us up. For many of us, our past hurts, hangups and habits, they can trip us up.

Many of us are stuck in bitterness over what someone else has done to us. We continue to hold on to the hurt, and we refuse to forgive the ones who have hurt us. You may have been hurt deeply. Perhaps you were abused as a child, or maybe you were or are in a marriage where your spouse committed adultery. I want you to know that we here at Celebrate Recovery Canton, we hurt for you and we're truly sorry for you.

Sorry that you. You had to go through that particular hurt. But you have to know that holding onto that hurt and not being willing to forgive the person who hurt you in the past is allowing them to continue to hurt you today in the present. Working this Christ centered recovery program will, with God's power, allow you to find the courage and strength to forgive them. Now, I don't want anybody getting all stressed out, okay?

Because you do not have to forgive them tonight.

But as you travel your road of recovery, God will help you find the willingness to forgive them and be free of their hold on your life. Some of you are here tonight bound up by guilt. You keep beating yourself up over some past failure and you're trapped. You're stuck in your guilt. You think that no one anywhere is as bad as you are.

That no one could actually love the real you and no one could ever forgive you for the terrible things that you've done in your past.

But I'm here tonight to tell you that you're wrong. That is a lie from the pits of hell. God can. Not only can God, God will. That's why Jesus went to the cross.

He went for our sins. He knows everything you've ever done, everything you've ever experienced. And there are many here in this room tonight that have faced similar failures and hurts in their life and have already accepted Christ's forgiveness. And they are here to encourage and support you. The Apostle Paul had a lot to regret about his own past.

So for those that don't know, the Apostle Paul wasn't always the Apostle Paul. He was actually known as Saul of Tarsus before he was known as the Apostle Paul. And the biggest difference between Saul of Tarsus and the Apostle Paul is that Saul of Tarsus was actively seeking out, trying to torment, torture, and ultimately kill Christians. He participated in murder of Christians until one day God got ahold of him. On what the Bible tells us is the road to Damascus.

And that radically changed Paul's life.

So Paul has something to say about regret. Yet In Philippians chapter 3, verse 13, Paul tells us, no, dear brothers, I am still not all I should be. But I am bringing all of my energies to bear on this one thing. Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. Here's the bottom line.

Look at the screen. If you want to be free from your past hurts, your past hang ups and your habits, you need to deal with your past bitterness and guilt once and for all. You need to do as Isaiah 43:18 tells us, forget the former things. Do not dwell on the past. That doesn't mean ignoring the past, though.

We all need to learn from our past, offer forgiveness, make amends, and then ultimately release it. Only then can you be free from your guilt, from your grudges, and from your grief. Face it, we all have stumbled over a hurt, a hang up, or a habit. That's why we're here. Tonight.

But I got some good news. Our race isn't over yet. God isn't interested in how we started, but rather he's interested in how we finish the race. You may worry about your future and be afraid to change. We all worry about things that we ultimately don't have any control over and do not have the power to change, right?

And we all know worrying is ultimately a lack of trust in God. If I can be honest with you all tonight, we've been preparing since June of last year for tonight and my core leadership team has heard me say at every single one of our weekly gatherings that whether one person shows up or a hundred people show up, that doesn't matter. What matters is God's going to bring in who he wants to bring in. And that sounds great. That's a very preachy pastor thing to say.

But I got to be honest. About an hour before those doors open, I was all up in my flesh worrying and not trusting that God was going to ultimately come through and bring the people in the doors. And yet here we are. Look at God go. Amen.

The truth is this we can say without any doubt or fear. Hebrews 13:6 the Lord is my helper and I am not afraid of anything that mere man can do to me. You may have been in your hurt, your habit or your hang up for so long that it is now become your identity. You may be thinking what will happen if I really give Celebrate Recovery a chance? Will I change if I give up my old hurts, hang ups and habits?

What will I become? Who will I be? You may have been abusing alcohol, prescription drugs or food. You're afraid of what you will do without your substance of choice. You have been enabling someone in a dysfunctional relationship for years.

Or perhaps you wonder what if I change and my alcoholic husband gets mad at me? God doesn't want you to stay frozen in an unhappy healthy relationship or a bad habit. He wants you to do your part in becoming healthy. Even if our past was extremely painful, we may still resist change and freedom that can be found in really working this program that is known as Celebrate Recovery. Because of our fear of the unknown or because of our despair, we just close our minds because we think that maybe we don't deserve any better.

As you work the principles and steps of this program, I want you to remember this verse. It comes from 1st John 4:18. Where God's love is, there is no fear because God's perfect love drives out fear. You are not here by mistake tonight. This room is absolutely filled with changed lives.

You guys have been prayed over for months and it is my prayer for each of you that you will not let your past failures or your fear of your future stop you from giving Celebrate Recovery a real try.

Are you wearing a mask of denial tonight? Before you can make any progress in your own recovery, you need to face your denial. And as soon as you remove your mask, recovery can begin. Or it can begin again. It doesn't matter if you're new in recovery or have been in recovery working the steps for years, denial can rear its ugly head and return at any time.

You may trade addictions or maybe get into a new relationship that's unhealthy for you in a different way than the previous one. So tonight's lesson. This is ultimately, it's for all of us. So here's my question. What is denial?

Denial has been defined as a false system of beliefs that are not based on reality. And it's also been defined as a self protecting behavior that keeps us from honestly facing the truth. As kids, we all learned various forms of coping, various coping skills, and they came in handy when we didn't get the attention we wanted from our parents and others. Or maybe to block our pain and our fears. For a time, these coping systems, they worked.

But as the years progressed, they confused and clouded our view of the truth of our lives. And as we grew, our perception of ourselves and our expectations of all those around us also grew. But because we retained our childish methods of coping, our perceptions of reality became increasingly more unrealistic and more distorted.

Our coping skills ultimately grew into denial, and most of our relationships ended up broken or less fulfilling than they could have been. Did you ever deny that your parents had problems when you were growing up? Did you ever deny that you had problems when you were growing up? The truth is, we can all answer yes to these questions to some extent. But for some of us, that denial turned into shame and turned into guilt.

Denial is the pink elephant sitting in the middle of your living room. No one in the family talks about it or acknowledges it in any way. Do any of the following comments I believe they're gonna put them on the screen. Do any of these sound familiar to you? Can't we stop talking about it?

Talking only makes it worse. Or if we don't talk about it, it'll go away. Or let's pretend that it really didn't happen. Or if I tell her that it hurts me when she says that, I'm afraid that she'll leave me.

He really doesn't drink that much it really doesn't hurt when he does that. I'm fine. He actually drinks more than I do.

She's been married three times. I've only been married twice.

I eat because you make me so mad. If you didn't nag me all the time, I wouldn't fill in the blank. Look, honey, I got a tough job, I work hard, and I just need a few drinks after work to relax. It doesn't mean that I have a problem. Listen, every single one of those statements is what Denial As I said earlier, before we can take the first step of our recovery, we must first face and admit our denial.

God says in Jeremiah 6:14, you can't heal a wound by saying it's not there.

If you have the denial sheet that was handed out on your way in, let's head to the Denial acrostic. The D in Denial. There's also pins in the back of the chairs too, if you want to grab one. If you don't have one. The D in denial stands for Disables Our Feelings Hiding Our Feelings.

Living in denial freezes our emotions and binds us. Understanding and feeling our feelings is where we find freedom. Second Peter 2:19 tells us, they promised them freedom while they themselves are slaves of destructive habits, for we are slaves of anything that has conquered us. For me, the basic test of freedom is not ultimately what I'm free to do, it's what I'm free not to do. You see, I'm free not to look at that video when I'm home alone.

I'm free not to get impatient and angry on the roads when I'm trying to get to and from this building.

We find freedom to get our true feelings when we find Christ and step out of our denial. The next letter in denial is E, which stands for energy lost. A major side effect of denial, believe it or not, is anxiety. Anxiety causes us to waste precious energy dealing with past hurts, failures, and the fear of the future. And as you go through this program, you will learn that it is only in the present that positive change can occur.

Worrying about the past and dreading the future makes us unable to live and enjoy God's plan for us in the present. We let our fears and our worries paralyze us, but the only lasting way we can be free from them is by giving them over to God. Psalms 146:7 says, he frees the prisoners. He lifts the burdens from those bent down beneath their loads. Listen, if you will transfer the energy required to maintain your denial into learning God's truth A healthy love for others and yourself will ultimately occur.

As you depend more and more on your higher power, Jesus Christ, you will see the light of truth reality in your life. Denial negates growth. We are as sick as our secrets. And again, we cannot grow in recovery until we are ready to step out of our denial and into truth. God is waiting to take your hand and bring you out.

The Bible says in Psalms 107, they cried to the Lord in their troubles and and he rescued them. He led them from darkness and shadow of death and snapped their chains. As you travel the road of recovery, you will come to understand that God never wastes a hurt. And God will never waste your darkness either. But he can't use it unless you step out of your denial and into the light of his truth.

Denial also isolates us from God. Adam and Eve, they're actually a great example of how secrets and denial separate us from true worship with God. You see, after they sinned, their secret separated them from God. Genesis 3:7 tells us that Adam and Eve hid from God because they what felt naked, ashamed. And of course, good old Adam, he actually tried to rationalize this whole thing.

He said to God, listen, Genesis 3:12. I'm going to read this whole verse. You ready? The woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree. First he tried to blame God by saying, the woman you put here with me.

Then he tried to blame it on Eve, she gave me some fruit. Remember, God's light shines on the truth, and our denial keeps us in the dark. First John 1:5:7 says, God is light. In him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.

But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And the blood of Jesus, his son, purifies us from all sin. Our denial not only isolates us from God, it alienates us from our relationships. Denial tells us we are getting away with it. We think no one knows, but they do.

But while denial may not shield us from the hurt, it also keeps us from helping ourselves or the people that we love the most. We don't dare reveal our true selves to others for fear of what they will think or say if they knew the real us. So we must protect ourselves, protect our secrets that any cost. So we isolate and thereby minimize the risk of exposure and possible rejection from others. But at what price?

The eventual loss of all of our important relationships. So what's the answer. Listen to Ephesians chapter 4, verse 25 Stop lying to each other. Tell the truth, for we are parts of each other and when we lie to each other we are hurting ourselves. Remember that it's always better to tell the ugly, ugly truth rather than a beautiful sugar coated lie.

Finally, denial lengthens the pain. We have the false belief that denial protects us from our pain. In reality, denial allows our pain to fester and grow and turn into shame and into guilt. Denial extends your hurt. It multiplies your problems.

And truth, like surgery, may hurt for a while, but ultimately it cures. Jeremiah 30:17 God promises this I will give you back your health again, heal your wounds. And so tonight as we wrap up this part, I want to encourage you to step out of your denial tonight. Walking out of your denial is not easy and taking off that mask, it can be hard. Everything about you is going to shout don't do it.

It's not safe. But again, that is a lie from the pits of hell. Because ultimately it is safe at Celebrate Recovery. It is safe here. You have people who care about you and love you for who you are, people who will stand beside you as truth ultimately becomes a way of life.

Jesus tells us in John 8:32, Know the truth and the truth will set you free. Step out of your denial so you can step into Jesus unconditional love and grace and begin your healing journey of recovery. Amen.