The Secret to Becoming Who You Were Meant to Be

Nathan Adams and Loanna Colpitts · Tidal Church Moncton · October 23, 2022 · INdependence series

Nathan Adams and Loanna Colpitts look at Jesus' humble dependence on the Father and the Spirit, from Philippians 2 and the Gospels. Through Celebrate Recovery stories, they show that surrendering to God, not trying harder alone, brings freedom and healing.

More from Nathan Adams · More from Loanna Colpitts · The INdependence series

Topics: Faith, Holy Spirit, Discipleship

Transcript

[0:00] It is great to be here in the spirit of worship and praise to God as we hear these amazing stories of life change of people that are here with us. These aren't people just somewhere, they're right here. And we're in the midst of this series called INdependence. Instead of being independent from God, we're living INdependence upon God. And I'm going to share some high-level biblical theory today that is extremely powerful. And I will share some amazing examples of what depending on God looks like in practice, and they'll be stories from real people that attend Celebrate Recovery here at our church. Thank you, Loanna. These biblical insights that I'm going to share with you, I came to them about the hardest and longest way you possibly could, about 15 years of struggling with some things that I couldn't control in my life.

[0:56] And eventually, I mean, if you want to do this path, you can go on eight mission trips and read a bunch of books and 15 years, and then maybe you'll break free. But God did, after 15 years, get a hold of my life and freed me, and I knew He had. And then a friend of mine from the Saint John area got together with me and said, I said, what's been going on in your life? He goes, you know what's been going on my life? A thing called Celebrate Recovery, and he laid out this thing, and I realized that here was a program that in 12 weeks or 12, sorry, in 12 months could do what took 15 years for me to do on my own. And I said, we have to have this at Moncton Wesleyan, and I spoke to Pastor Mike Tapper at the time, and he rallied up a team with Spencer Mason, my wife, and others, and built upon earlier work by the Beemans, and we got a full-fledged Celebrate Recovery program going. It widened my own freedom, solidified it.

[1:46] And more than that, I got to see these stories you're seeing today all the time. It was most, it was without a doubt the most exciting ministry I've ever been part of. I showed up at Moncton Wesleyan with my husband in the fall of 2018. And I noticed the Celebrate Recovery sign in the atrium right away. And I thought, this is so cool that a church would have a program to help those people. In the April of 2019, I found myself reaching out to that program looking for any kind of support, help, information, because we had found out that a family member was in active addiction.

[2:31] After coming to Celebrate Recovery, sitting in on one of the women's open share groups, I realized that I was relating to what these women shared. I did have anxiety. I did struggle with people pleasing. I couldn't fix everything and everyone, and honestly, it was exhausting. I realized that Celebrate Recovery was for me, and I kept coming back. I've served in every area of CR to date. I'm currently the Director of Recovery. It's been an amazing journey every day. I surrender pieces of God, of myself, sorry, to God, every day. And most recently I've had to surrender emotionally eating, like I would have saw in the video this morning, and sugar addiction.

[3:23] And by God's grace and power today, I am 69 days sugar free. So before we get into some incredibly practical application, we've got to have some good theory. If you're Sheldon from Big Bang, you're gonna be really excited about this next section. But you heard in the worship, we read that powerful passage from Philippians chapter 2, and it talked about God the Son having that divine nature and also taking on human nature. And how that happened. So we see in that passage that not only did God the Son take on human nature in addition to His divine nature, He humbly chose to live within the constraints of human nature.

[4:15] Jesus' disciples got a glimpse of His divine nature at the Transfiguration, which is recorded in the Gospels. Jesus is up on a mountain praying, and all of a sudden He's transfigured. He becomes brilliant, blazing white. It's, it's a heavenly experience. They get to see who He is in His nature and His essence, and they want to stay on that mountain and worship and be up there, but Jesus says, no, we got to go back down and do ministry, and it's down below in the ordinary world that you and I live, that Jesus lived His life in a thoroughly human way. He had all the power of God as part of His nature. And yet He chose to live in a manner that was thoroughly human and humbly dependent upon God. Jesus chose, chooses to access power not through His divine nature but through His relationship with the Father and the Spirit.

[5:10] Just like we have to. We see it at His baptism, as He goes and He submits Himself to the Father's plan for His life. And as He comes up, the heavens open and the Spirit descends, it's descending like a dove upon Him. And so He's living from that anointing, that presence of the Holy Spirit on His life. Luke chapter 4, verses 18 through 19, said, This is Jesus announcing His ministry. He said, the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, for He has anointed Me to bring good news to the poor. He sent Me to proclaim that captives will be released, right? And that the blind will see and that the oppressed will be set free. And the time of the Lord's favor has come.

[5:58] This idea of the anointing of the Holy Spirit on Jesus is so basic that you can't even say His name, Jesus Christ, without actually saying Jesus who is the Messiah, which means anointed one. You can't even say Jesus Christ without saying Jesus the Anointed One. In Matthew chapter 12 verse 28, Jesus said, it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons. He's saying the power is not flowing from here. The power is flowing this way. In Luke chapter 5 verse 15, it says great crowds gathered to hear Jesus and to be healed of their infirmities, their sicknesses, but He would withdraw to desolate places and pray. And the power of the Lord was with Him to heal. He had to refill in prayer. And before His biggest decision, perhaps, choosing His 12 disciples who would carry the message to us, even as today we're reading one of the, we're reading from their accounts.

[7:03] Before that big decision, He goes up all night in prayer. Luke chapter 6. Just like you and me, He needed guidance. And is His command, and as His passion commenced in the lead up to His crucifixion, He felt the weight of the sins of the world coming down upon Him. And so He withdraws to the Garden of Gethsemane, and He says to His disciples, His small group, His CR, pray for Me, and there He humbly surrenders His will to the Father and says, not as I will, but as You will. Now I'm trying to cover in 12 minutes what you would normally cover in a systematic theology class.

[7:51] I want to refer you, if you want more information on this, to a link, MW slash MW. Church slash Bruce, and there you will see a theologian named Bruce Ware, who gives a very thorough description of this and avoids some of the pitfalls that can come as you consider these ideas on either side. But I want us to look at the first three steps of the Celebrate Recovery 12 steps. And I want you to look and see if you see any similarities between these steps and Jesus' way of living as a human being. Step one: we admitted that we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable. Now, I realize all of that can't apply to Him.

[8:39] But what does? Step two: we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. And step three: we made a decision to turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God. Jesus, God the Son, had to become human. And in so doing, He chose to live life in the human condition of being powerless and dependent upon the Father and the Spirit. Hebrews 2:17 says that Jesus had to be made like His brothers in every respect. That's us, made like us. Now, He does not have addictions, compulsive behaviors, and the wheels have not come off His life. He has no sin like we do. Hebrews 4:15 says, we do not have a high priest, that's Jesus, our representative to the Father, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

[9:40] What He does have is sympathy. He understands what temptation is like. He actually understands what you're going through right now. And differently than us, He has triumphed over it. One of the early church fathers said that Jesus killed sin. Uranus And when He was tempted, He used the same tools that we have to use. When Satan came to tempt Him, He used the Word of God and that truth to dispel the confusion that comes when we're tempted. He used prayer to access the power of God. And so He really was working step one, just like any other human being, minus the sin. We admitted that we were, if we can get the highlight, powerless.

[10:28] And Jesus was doing that. He was also working step two, relying on a power greater than Himself, because living out of His human nature, He is finding that He needs that power from the Father. And is also, of course, living step three. He is a living example. We made a decision to turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God, and I'm wondering if there are people here today that are ready to do that for the first time, again, or on a deeper level. Listen to Jesus' sense of dependence upon the Father in these verses from John. John 5: "Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself." Why do we think we can?

[11:15] "He can only do what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does, the Son also does." John 5:30: "I can do nothing on my own. As I hear from the Father, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will, but the will of Him who sent me." John 7:16, so Jesus answered them, "My teaching is not even my own, but from Him who sent me." And John 8:54: "If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is the Father who glorifies me." And John 14:10: "The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does His works."

[12:03] These are powerful verses that we can easily miss because we often tend to think of Jesus as a Superman, but you know what Superman actually was? An alien in disguise. And Jesus is no alien in disguise. In Romans 5, Jesus is identified as the second Adam. He is redoing what it means to be a human. He's becoming the kind of human that God had always intended us to be. Adam had messed up what it meant to be a human. It says in Romans 5:19, "For as by that one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous."

[12:50] You see, Adam and Eve had rebelled against God and sought to live independently from God, and Jesus, in every breath of His life, is reversing that and establishing an unbreakable dependence upon God the Father. It is a dependence that not even all the sins of the world heaped upon Him could break. Living in dependence on God is the absolute secret to being a human being. And this one program, which is not the be-all and end- all, because no program is, has tapped into that fundamental principle. And as Loanna comes now to share some concrete stories, I want you to open your heart and think what a life can be like when the power of God is flowing into it.

[13:51] At Celebrate Recovery, the sharing of our stories plays a vital role, as they take away shame, encourage others, and give God the glory. I'd like, I'd like to start, actually, with prayer. I need a little prayer. God, I thank You that You are in the service, that You have given the words that You would have said. And Lord, I just pray right now against any plans of the enemy, against shame, against fear, and I just pray for Your peace that passes all understanding, in Jesus' name. Amen. So I'd like to start by sharing pieces of testimonies that have been given at our Celebrate Recovery in the last 12 months.

[14:37] In order to adhere to the rules of anonymity and confidentiality, I won't be sharing any names with you this morning. The first one is from a woman who is progressively overcoming anxiety, depression, PTSD, and codependency, and she's given me permission to share. She writes, "I had lost control of my mind. I had a hard time to talk, to write. I even stopped driving my car for a period of time because of the anxiety. Mental illness became a reality for me. I heard of CR through church, and I would drive here and stay in my car the first two or three weeks, thinking this wasn't for me.

[15:22] I finally went in, fearful of being judged, and was shaking. When I first started coming to CR, my mind was really mixed up, and I had a hard time to concentrate. The medication I was on was too strong, and it made me numb. What really helped me at Celebrate Recovery was listening to the testimonies." Seeing how God had helped people from hard drugs and alcohol. So if God could do this for them, He could also heal my mind. I needed to stop running from God and start dealing with things from my past and leave it all in God's hands. My secrets had become like a germ infecting my soul. Step four: we made a searching and moral, searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

[16:15] "Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord." Lamentations 3:40. Now I continually remind myself that God is in control and taking care of me every day. When I wake up, I spend some quiet time with God. When I feel worse, I pray to God for help. He is my security, my everything. I have real trust issues. Through prayer, I am learning to trust Him, God, with my life and most of all my future. Trusting God with all of my life and all of my future. That's really what dependence is, isn't it? It's trusting God. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths."

[17:10] That's a promise, Church. When I trust God, when I depend on Him, He will direct my path. I just need to continue to take one step forward. I don't have to stress. I don't have to figure it out. God's got me. And He promised us to do the same for you if you'll let Him. This lady allowed God to lead. She depended on Him and she continues to do so. She's gone from debilitating anxiety and PTSD to being able to share in front of her forever family at Celebrate Recovery, and it's even taken on some leadership roles. God does not fail.

[18:09] The next story that I'd like to share is also from a woman who is celebrating two plus years of sobriety from alcohol. She says, "I've always had an addictive personality and needed something to take the edge off life, be it exercise, pot, work, house cleaning, cigarettes, and eventually alcohol. I needed an artificial buzz to get through life. My reliance on God was weak at best, and there was no joy or hope in my heart. When I was hurt on the job for a second time, something snapped in my brain. I began to be scared to go to work, and as the months progressed I became scared of everything and could not leave my house and was diagnosed with PTSD.

[18:54] Using my illness, the devil had found a way in, and I turned my back on God, and alcohol had become my comfort and religion. I work the 12 steps. The fourth step has had a huge impact. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. In my opinion, the willingness to do this step, as described, can make or break someone's recovery. This is the particular step of finding out what my character flaws are and working to change them. There was one character flaw that stood out as an overriding theme for how I dealt with life, and that was I needed control at all costs. I chose control over happiness, contentment, or joy, not to mention that I could not give control of my life to God. I was denying myself of all the good that God wanted for me and to give freely to others.

[19:55] I had to go back to rehab in July of 2020. While there, I had a breakthrough, connecting my lack of self-worth to believing that God did love me. I woke up to the fact that I had to get sober for myself and not for my children, as I had previously done. I realized I deserved a stable, sober life in order to live as God had planned for me. He has given me the specific qualifications needed to help a fellow alcoholic. I surrendered to His will for my life. The Lord is indeed my shepherd, and I do not want for anything, because with Him I have it all. I'm a faithful follower of God and Jesus' teachings while He was on this earth.

[20:40] I am more content than I have ever been, and I owe it all to God." Wow. I could just share story after story of what dependence on God has accomplished, but time won't allow us to do that this morning. So we'd like to share with you one last story. This story is going to be shared by the person who wanted to not be anonymous. And I think it's an important story for us. Many of you are new to the church, but many of you have been here for decades, and I remember 20 years ago watching an excited young man helping out in the children's ministry.

[21:27] And his father would take a leadership role and so on. I see a happy family. And I watched him grow. He ministered to my kids, but then I just didn't see him. And I didn't know what was going on. And I'd like to welcome Adam Watson to share with us his story right now. Okay. Thank you. My name is Adam Watson, and I too am a grateful follower of Jesus Christ. I grew up in the church here since birth. I grew up in a Christian home. We did Bible study and devotions. I went to the Moncton Christian Academy, used to be called Moncton Wesleyan Academy back then. I had a very happy childhood.

[22:17] Yeah, so I was heavily involved in the ministry here at the church, and there was a new person in the ministry who worked with me. He was new to the faith, but he was a drug user. We began to hang out, go to parties and things like that. One time when we were hanging out, he asked if I wanted to try smoking some marijuana. Eventually, you know, we did that for a while, and then eventually we ended up getting into chemical-based drugs, hard drugs, and we even ended up stealing to support our habits. This began a 16-year battle with drug addiction. My lowest point was when I had been roaming the streets all night on pills during the winter, and I didn't want to go home. I tried to get into a friend's apartment to get out of the cold.

[23:03] Just outside of his apartment door, there's a dark basement room. I managed to get into the building. I laid face down on the metal framework of an old bed. My father knew that I hung out with this friend, and so he came looking for me. When he saw me there, he cried his eyes out and was so disappointed, and it was hard for him, hard for him to take. You know, that he saw me like that, sleeping face down in a cold hideaway, still high on drugs. My life had hit ground zero, rock bottom. I decided to go with my dad. I realized I needed help. Now that I was home, my parents urged me to attend Celebrate Recovery. It's been a rocky road over the years, as I relapsed different times and even got involved in a drug gang, but I would always come back to Celebrate Recovery.

[23:52] Step two: we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. I had totally lost my mind and was drowning in fear and anxiety. I was injuring myself, cutting my arms. I had many thoughts of violence. I literally talked to several voices in my head. The enemy thought he had victory over me and had me totally defeated. However, I claim this verse in the face of the enemy: You dear children are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

[24:39] We need to realize that we are powerless to stop doing wrong on our own, and to break tough addictions, and that we are terrible at the management of our hearts and the spiritual sense. Principle two: earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to Him, and that He has the power to help me recover. As I embrace the life of repentance and seeking my higher power, Jesus Christ, I learned that I cannot recover on my own. It's only by leaving those drugs at the feet of the cross and not taking them back. I struggled with drugs from the age of 21 until I turned 37. Thank Jesus for His restorative power, as I have almost five consecutive years of abstinence from any substance.

[25:32] Hallelujah! I now have an amazing career with a major company. I just won an award for being in the top 1% of all the employees across Canada. I am living proof that God is still in the restoration business and can turn anyone around regardless of their situation. Thank you. Here, where to go when we finally realize that depending on God and ourselves isn't working.

[26:34] And depend and surrender our lives to God. It is then when we can begin healing from the inside out. If there's only one thing that I could say to you today: Don't wait. Don't wait 15 years. Don't wait 15 months. Don't wait 15 more minutes. I'm sorry, but you can't do it by yourself. Stop believing the lie that if you try harder and just press hard a little bit more and get the next book, that you can do it, because you can't.

[27:27] My goodness. Jesus depended on God and surrounded Himself with 12 men. Why? Why would we think we could do it by ourselves? Step out of that debilitating, isolating mindset and surrender. Just surrender. I brought some milestone chips with me this morning. It's what we use to measure our sobriety days, or the days that we surrender whatever it is over to God. The first chip is a blue chip, and it reminds us to surrender to Christ and to Him only.

[28:20] Maybe you've identified an area of your life this morning that you would like to surrender to Him. I'd like to give you the opportunity to come forward, just like we do on chip night at Celebrate Recovery, and take a blue chip to remember today, the day that you surrendered to Jesus Christ. I'm going to step down over here, and I'm going to invite my friend Nathan back up to join me. And we want to invite you to step out of your seat, out of your comfort zone, and take that first step. There'll be no questions asked, no judgment. You don't need to tell us why you took that chip. We won't even pray with you if you don't want us to. You can just simply come forward, take a chip, you know, God knows, and you can just go back to your seat.

[29:11] However, if you do want prayer, please stay at the front, as our prayer team will be joining us shortly, and they would love to pray with you as well. And I'd also like to say, if you do choose to take a chip tonight, or tonight, it's this morning, but I want to see you Tuesday night at Celebrate Recovery at 6:30. So, Nathan, would you come with me?