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[SERMON] Surrender to Win: When Moderation Isn't Enough | Vices 3.0 · HOTLCAST

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: But today we get to continue our series called Vices.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, uh, a vice is an immoral or wicked behavior, as a reminder, it's a weakness of character or behavior, it's a bad habit, and immoral or wicked personal characteristics.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: So those are what encompass a vice.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when some of you hear vice, you think Miami Vice, that's why we kind of have the Miami Vice aesthetic.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: For those of you who don't know what it is, I'm sorry, you're not old.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so but um vice is not a good thing.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's not something you should be excited about.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you may be excited if a Miami Vice re run comes on, right, or you're watching it, but like advice is not something you're supposed to be like, yeah, I have a vice, it's supposed to be a bad thing.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, I have a vice, this is bad.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: And a vice is something that's a bad habit, a bad character behavior.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those things that we talked about.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: And often what happens with any of our vices, we've talked about them over the last three years, we've talked about a lot of things: sex, drugs, alcohol, pornography, tobacco.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, then we go into hobbies, then we go into like, so you know, I don't know if you know this, hoarding is hoarding is a vice.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Some of you, you know, if you've got like trash bags full of stuff all over your house, that's a vice.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, different things can be vices.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: I actually have my vice is on our walls in here every week.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I, when I was in my early 20s, being right was an addiction to me.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be right and I believed I was right, and I would not apologize to you because if I was right, I didn't need to apologize.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: You need to apologize because I'm right.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's baked into our culture of honor over here on the wall.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: The fifth one down is you might be right, but is it loving?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Early on in our marriage, we heard that, someone said that, and we're like, oh, that's pretty transformative.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that's true.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one of the things I've worked on.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't really care if I'm right anymore.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've learned that like you've got to let some of those things go, but that was a vice.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't, I lost friendships over being right.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, if they come to me and apologize, we'll be we'll be restored because I'm right and you're wrong.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen this, you know, even with my own kids.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Being an adult, like, I don't mind apologizing anymore.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'll apologize to you if you think I did something, even though I know I didn't, right?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'll just I don't care.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like being right doesn't matter.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: What matters is do I love people?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Do I love my God and do I put people before being right?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so we have different vices.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Some of those are the classic things that we think are bad in society, the sins.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them are just our character weaknesses or character flaws that we have.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm always balancing is my board game collection becoming a vice or not?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's a regular conversation.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it is.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: In my head with my wife.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: So those things.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so what happens with these vices is we often ask the question, how much can I get away with?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: I want to sin, or I want to experience a vice, I want to have a little taste of that, and I want to get as close as I can to it without falling over the cliff edge.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: And some of you, that is how you live life.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, God says, hey, stay all the way back here, read my word, live on this.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, well, everybody else seems to be over here having a good time.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: If I just keep rooted on the foundation Jesus, I can just have a little taste.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is that leads us into sin.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so we want to figure out in this series how do I honor God more with my lifestyle and not trying to just get away with as much sin as I can while still being accepted by God.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's the danger.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: And there's this popular phrase that gets thrown out in the world, and it's this everything is okay in moderation.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone ever heard that?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, everything's okay in moderation if you just have a little bit, not too much.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: I put a question mark on it because is everything okay in moderation?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think we got to go back to God's word.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think everything is.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Moderation just means that I can have self-control, and I don't have too much, and I don't have too little of something.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: I have just right.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the Goldilocks thing, right?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Goldilocks, if we all know the story of Goldilocks of Hope, and like Goldilocks went into this house and bears, and then she went to the bed, and one bed was too hard, and the other was too soft, and then she found one that was just right.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so moderation's a little bit of this, a little bit of that, not so much.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the problem with moderation.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: You don't moderately commit adultery, you don't moderately steal, you don't moderately abuse prescription drugs, and you don't moderately get drugs, drunk.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Those are those are sins.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: You either do the sin or you don't.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And guess what?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: God forgives sins.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the that's the reality of God.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: He loves us in our sin, but we don't moderately sin.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: We don't just sin just a little bit, right?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's either you're all the way in or you're all the way out of sin.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so when it comes down to it, we have to understand that moderation is not permission to moderately sin.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like just because everything's okay in moderation, I can have just a little bit of sin in my life and God still loves me.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: See, biblical moderation, it's bigger than portion control.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like, well, if I got that pizza, I can eat seven out of eight pieces of pizza, and that's moderation, because I left one.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: You probably shouldn't ate seven.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: You probably should have ate two or four, right?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Depending, right?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Depending on how big that pizza is.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: So like it's not portion control of sin in your life.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And some people think that the way that I can love God is I'll just have portion control of the amount of sin that I have, because I if I sin just that, if I just sin a limited amount, God will still love me.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be a little dirty, but he'll still love me.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not really the reality.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Moderation, biblical moderation, it's self-control under the lordship of Jesus.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: That God is in control of my life.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to, if I want to have moderation in my life, it comes through the filter of this lens, the Bible.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like I ask God, hey, should this thing be in my life and how much of this thing should be in my life?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then you navigate that thing, that thought, that behavior, that lifestyle, whatever, through God's word, not through culture.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: What culture says is okay.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes wisdom says that we should limit things in our lives.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: We should.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's why we talk about this series.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about the big stuff: sex, drugs, rock and roll, alcohol.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked about politics.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's coming up.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Voting's coming up.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's that is for some people, that is a vice.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: They love to talk about the politics all year long.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: They live and they breathe it.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's not always a healthy thing.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: You can be active moderately in politics, but it can't drive your whole life.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus does.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes wisdom tells us to limit things in our life.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then sometimes wisdom says that we need to leave that thing altogether.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: We don't just need to moderate, we need to abstain from it.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: We need to have nothing to do with that action, that attitude, that behavior, that thought, that lifestyle.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because some things require moderation, and some some things require abstinence.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Absolute absence.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now I know in 2026, when we say the word absence, everybody always thinks it has to do with sex, and you don't, like absence just means not having sex.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Absence is a much bigger word.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Absence is the voluntary decision to completely refrain from something because you believe not participating is the wisest or most Christ-honoring choice.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's what absence is.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Absence can be with alcohol, it can be with drugs, it can be to politics, it can be with hobbies, it can be with the, you know, um your language, it can be with being right.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can be abstinent from having to be right all the time.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's the thing.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so we all have our issue, like that we have to figure out what that looks like.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I've shared with you in the series that early on for me when I graduated from Michigan and after playing football for four years, I had a real struggle with football.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was, I was, I knew everything about every player, I knew what was going on the season.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was so ingrained into that to the point of which I was not moderating my connection to my alma mater.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it was way too controlling of my life, my behavior, my attitude, and we would lose.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we lost a lot then because that was the Rich Rodriguez era, and it was a bad time to be addicted.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: It was like being a Lions fan from the beginning until now of being a Lions fan.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but when it comes down to it, it was something that was unhealthy that I had to pull back and I had to stop watching games, and I had to stop looking at websites about football, and I start to live my life a different way.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so absence can be in any different aspect of our life.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I know when people think, well, like, oh, I don't, I don't do the big three, right?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't do drugs, I don't do alcohol, or I'm not living a sexually moral life, so I'm good.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need to be absent.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is you could be you need to be absent maybe in your attitude, like your behavior, your lifestyle, your hobbies, those can be issues as well for us.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so, really, the question we've been talking about is should this thing have any place in my life at all?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: We always should be evaluating and reevaluating.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: I am always evaluating and reevaluating my life based on God's word in 1 Corinthians 6.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: This, uh this, I think every single Christian, every single person should know this.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe not memorize it word for word, but you should memorize the three parts of this because we are told over and over again in Scripture, in by Paul, that we need to know this.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: It says this all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: And God will destroy both one and the other.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: The body is not meant for sexual morality, but the body for the Lord and the Lord for the body.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: What was happening in this church in Corinth, which was very similar to us?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: They had everything.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: There are Romans, they be speaking to Roman citizens, both Jewish and um pagan, Gentile.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're fighting about what is permissible as a Christian because Jews didn't eat or drink the same things that Gentiles drank and ate.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: So they were having these arguments in the church.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm a better, I'm a better follower of Jesus because I don't eat pork, right?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm a better follower of Jesus because I don't drink as much alcohol.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: And they were fighting and arguing about lifestyle.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so Paul's giving them a way to figure out how do we all live for God?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: How does his word, how does it change us and transform all of us, whether we're Jew, whether we're Gentile.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: And he's giving us this litmus test.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: So much so that he says it in 1 Corinthians 6, and then later in the same letter, he comes back to it in 1 Corinthians 10, and he says this all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: All things are lawful, but not all things build up.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Let no one seek his own good but the good of his neighbor.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when a pastor repeats something, we do it intentional because we want you to focus on it, remember it, take that home.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: So Paul is a pastor who is reminding them again and again of the same concepts because he wants them to get it.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: They were Roman citizens.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: That was very like much like being an American in 2026.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: They were the top of the world, they had every authority.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: He's saying, yes, you can do whatever you want to do.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: But should you?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Is it helpful to you?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Is it helpful to others?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Is it helpful to your relationship with God?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: And will it build up, encourage, or will it destroy and dominate and enslave you?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if you take it through those filters, you can make decisions about every aspect of your life.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it's drugs and alcohol, whether it's being right, whether it's politics, whether it's a hobby, you can filter through.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Is this helpful for me?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Is this helpful for my marriage?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Is this helpful for my finances?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Is this helpful for my time management?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then go down and does it dominate and enslave me, or does it build others up?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: And just because I can, doesn't mean I should.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's the reality of Scripture.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: And Paul goes on a few verses later, after a second time repeating this, he says, this so whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: So everything we do should be filtered through, does this bring glory to God?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: If it doesn't, we shouldn't.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: If our attitude, our behavior, our actions, our speech, our lifestyle doesn't bring glory to God, if that thing that you're doing, if that sin that you're trying to squeeze into your life by just having a little taste of sin, if it doesn't bring glory to God, you shouldn't do it.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: You should abstain.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now there are things in life that aren't bad that don't detract from the glory of God, but don't bring glory to God.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you shouldn't need to moderate them.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like sports.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think sports is by nature bad.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: We tend to make it bad.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: When we skip church for sports, then we tend to we tend to prioritize, right?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm a big advocate against that.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like I don't, I was Mike was asking me, I was hanging out with Mike yesterday.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: I took a Ohio State fan to a Michigan game, it was great.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um I did tell him I was gonna say this.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: He did say go blue accidentally.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um mishap, so uh or uh divine providence, one of those two.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: But um but we went to the Michigan game, and like it was just it was fun to go and just do life together.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: But when we think about like the freedom, like he could have said, no, I don't do that.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like I would never do that.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't have the freedom to do that as a football fan of a different team.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: He was like, no, I'll go.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm sure he was rooting against us the whole time.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, but we had a great time.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like when you have to think about it, we have the freedom to do these different things with different people, but freedom is, you know, it also is something that allows us to bring glory to God.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: And for us, like just being there at having that time together, that was something that wasn't good or bad.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: We were just hanging out.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think ultimately we brought glory to God because we were being friends and we were doing life together, but like it could become like it gets tense and the score gets tight, we start arguing and fighting because he likes a different team, I like a different, that doesn't bring glory to God.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we have these different rivalries and we're frustrated and we can't talk to people or we're mad at people because their team won and our team lost, that doesn't bring glory to God.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: I've realized this, right?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: What brings glory to God is when we love each other no matter what the differences are.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so sports by nature isn't bad, but we tend to find ways to create rivalries and dissension.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: We tend to choose those sports and things over God, and that's when it becomes a bad thing.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: We do this over and over again with other things in our lives.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: We do it with drugs, we do it with alcohol, we do it with relationships, we do it with people, we do it with pornography.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: We we choose these things over God, and then we don't bring glory to God, we actually bring destruction upon ourselves.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: And see, Christian freedom includes the freedom to walk away from sin.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to, just because everybody can, doesn't mean that you should participate in the behaviors.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Just because your friend jumped off a bridge doesn't mean you have to jump off a bridge.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: My mom would say this, well, so-and-so would jump off a bridge, would you?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Depends how fun it would be, right?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: That was always my answer.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's always probably a condition of when I would, right?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the truth is no.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: The answer is no.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: We shouldn't just do things because someone else does.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: We should do things because it brings glory to God through his word.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so I want to introduce you to my friends Mike and Jen Cook.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just getting to know them over the last few years they've been coming to church here has been profound and amazing to get to hear their story of God has how God has just transformed their life uh in relating to this topic and these devices we've been talking about.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I asked them to come share a little bit about their story with you.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Did I get the right one?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Red for Ohio 8.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Pastor Kyle.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: All right, good morning, Heart of the Lakes.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: We are gonna share our stories with you briefly here.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Mike's gonna start us off.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: Boy, Cal, you're never gonna love me loved with that one down, are you?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: I make one mistake in my life, right?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: I was the truth of the matter is I'm gonna clarify that.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: I was parking my car and a guy said to me, Go blue, and I thought, I don't want my car scratched.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: Go blue.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I will regret saying that the rest of my life.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, I'm Mike and I'm glad to be here today.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um when uh when I was a kid growing up, I grew up kind of a troubled kid.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: I started drinking and doing drugs at a young age, 14, 15 years old.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I uh I then, you know, when I turned 18, I went to Merchant Marines for three years, and I really learned how to drink good there.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh in the Gulf did the Gulf of Mexico and I did the uh the Great Lakes.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: And um and then um I went on and had other jobs.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: I worked at Jeep and other jobs, and uh you know uh I you know I had a lot of fun when I was drinking and doing drugs, uh, you know, uh early, early on.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: But at the end it wasn't so pretty.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I just want to sum it up by saying by the time I was 23 I had four DUIs.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: So even though I didn't think I had a problem, other people seem to think I did.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, I was kind of broken at 22 years old.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: I was I was uh you know kind of broken.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, I was able to find lucky enough to find um the program um of Alcoholics Anonymous and saved my life.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: And uh some of the people that I knew then, I still know now, 45 years later.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I've had an amazing life as a result of that.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: I've I've had an incredible life.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: And but I still go to meetings, and the reason I do is is because you know it's like medicine.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: I know that I need to go, and it renews me.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't this is the this is something I don't want to do right now.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, but the reason I'm doing it is because I know in order for me to keep what I have I have to give it away.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, amen.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: And uh you know, I we Jen started me going to church here a couple years ago, and uh I kind of followed her along.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: First she went, and then I said, Okay, I'll go.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I kind of tagged along.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, a couple weeks ago I got baptized right in front of right in front of my house.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: There's uh amazing, really a really amazing story.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um I uh I was talking to a guy that I sponsored in the program that's the day before I got baptized.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: And um I helped him early on.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: We was in Sarasota, Florida, and I helped him, and for like a year we we went to we went to breakfast almost every day.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: And he couldn't afford to buy his own breakfast.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: And uh three years later, him being sober himself almost three years, uh he's running three car dealerships, you know, and he's married and he's happy and he's doing well.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, and he got baptized, right?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, right?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so he's doing really well.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I was talking to him on the phone, I hung up the phone, and he got on the plane and flew from North Carolina that night to be there so he could be there the next day.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the kind of people, you know, that I've come to know in the program.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, amazing friends, amazing people.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: And uh uh trying to think, am I leaving something out?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: We uh we Jen and I do our devotional every single morning.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: We we get up, we have our coffee hour, and we read a devotional every single morning of our life.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: We spend an hour before we do everything else.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I was so lucky, you know.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: Ten years ago, I met this amazing woman, and and and uh five years together, we've been together five years and married almost three.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and I was yeah, and I was I mean, I wouldn't have none of that if I wasn't sober, so I was really lucky.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, you know, we're here today willing to reach out to anybody who might think they have a problem or want to talk about it, you know.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I got bad news for you.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: If you think you have a problem, you probably do.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, but anyways, we're not here to judge, and and if you think you've had, you know, like you've ashamed or whatever, I promise you I got a story that'll go lower than yours.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: So that's all I'm gonna give you to my wife here.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Mike.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's what a fantastic story.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was doing my Bible study this morning, and it was uh it was the story of Jesus callering calling Lazarus out of the tomb, and I was thinking about addiction and how similar it is to being dead.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can't think about anything else, and you can't focus on anything else.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're just dead to everything but that one thing.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And to be set free from that is just I can't even describe it.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't lived it, you cannot possibly know.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I started drinking and doing drugs when I was in high school and continued on through college.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now I I believed in God, but more of a isn't that nice?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's some kind of God over there, and I know he doesn't want anything to do with me because I'm making some pretty poor choices.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just gonna pretend that he doesn't exist for a while.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: But that worked for a little while.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my drinking career was brief compared to a lot of people, and I wound up in In rehab in my senior year of college.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: When I got out, Alcoholics Anonymous was there to pick me up.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: One of the best things they told me was, hey, not only is there a God, he's real and he's personal and he loves you.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of went, okay, but you don't really know how unlovable I really am.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I was very fortunate to get sober with a lot of young people, and I will never, as long as I live, forget sitting in a circle of a bunch of people, and the young woman directly across from me looked me in the eyes, and she just had this oh, just the compassion of God in her, and she said, We will love you until you can love yourself.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And boy, that took me a while.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: But she was extending the grace of God to me.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: The next thing they told me was to go to church.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I went ahead and I went to church and I found a God who loves me.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, he loves me right where I'm at.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he loves me so much that he sent his only son to die for my sins.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've been sober by the grace of God for 31 years.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: That is absolutely the grace of God and not my doing.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, since I was 23 years old, and I've been following Jesus since then.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And following Jesus is way, way more of an adventure and way more fun than any drug or any drink has ever been.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: I live an amazing life.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: I have this wonderful church, I have the best husband in the world, family and friends, and I'm free.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm free in Jesus.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Still a sinner saved by grace.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I know that that God is there for me.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: He loves me.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: And he wants the same for you.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe this is you, like like Mike said, maybe this is you this morning.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're you're thinking, maybe I drink a little too much.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: I have bad news.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Normal people don't ever think that.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're caught up in something else and you're thinking it's taking over my life, and I don't like the way I feel.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: God is here.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: He is ready to meet you this morning.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: He is ready to give you the freedom in Jesus that we have found.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Please come find us after the service.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: We can help you.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: We can support you.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you love or support somebody who is going through this, we can support you too.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: We can help you find resources.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Psalm 103 says that God is ready to help us out of the pit.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: And addiction is a pit.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot get out alone.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Please don't try.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: But he is ready to pull you out of it.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then it goes further and it says that he crowns us with compassion and love.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when I was drinking and doing drugs, I absolutely didn't feel like I was worthy of compassion or love.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: But it's based on who he is, not who I am, thankfully.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: He is a good God and he loves us and he wants us to come alongside you and rescue you.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you can't talk to us today, give Kyle a call.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: He will give you our phone numbers, call us at any time.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: And just the last thought I want to leave you with is that over and over in the Psalms, God tells us that He is our very strong tower.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: He is He longs to gather us up like chicks under His wings so that He can shield us from the storms of life.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: He wants to do that for you today.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Come to Him.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: God bless.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was over three years ago I met Jenna Mike, and Jen's like, I really have this passion um to share basically this with people.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: So she actually started women's AA group, and um that led to the transformation of Sarah, uh, who then got free from that, came here.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so it is awesome to see how God puts the right people at the right place together, and he's doing all this amazing stuff behind the scenes that we never see until we start connecting the stories of like, wow, look at what God does.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then just getting to know them and getting to be part of their wedding and then getting to Mike's baptism.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's like life transformations happening.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're not invested in people, you're missing it.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yesterday we were driving back from the game.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Mike is the guy that has a lot of micisms.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: If you have coffee with him, like it just just this knowledge just kind of pours from him.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: He's like a humble guy, doesn't really understand it, but he's like, you know, you just gotta surrender to win.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh, he said that when we were driving.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, yeah, I'll put that in my message, it works perfect.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's in the message, it's a micism.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh, you know, you do have to surrender to win.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's this whole thing about abstinence.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes the best thing for you is not to try to squeeze as much sin as you can into your life.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I've surrendered to that thing, I'm done with that thing because I want to win.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you hear their testimony, they're winning.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: They're winning.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: They got each other, life is good, it was it was bad and broken.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then surrender to that and say no more.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so absence can be an act of freedom.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Saying I don't need that thing in my life anymore because it's tearing my life apart, it's tearing my relationships apart, it's destroying who I want to be.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Letting go of that thing forever is an act of freedom.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't have to prove you can handle something you don't need.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have to say, well, I can handle it, right?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: I can hold my liquor.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: I can look we don't have to try to win someone's favor by saying I can have I can handle the sin.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: We can literally just say, I'm done with it.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like I don't need that, like I don't want that in my life.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: The Bible tells us in Galatians 5, 22 and 23, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: Against such things, there is no law.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: We can have self-control.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: We can say, I don't need that thing in my life.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: I want to choose God.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: I want to have a better life.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever that addiction may be, sex, drugs, alcohol, rock and roll, pornography, politics, sports, hobbies, whatever may be food, right?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Tobacco, whatever it may be, you can just say, I'm done.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm done.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: Self-control means my desires don't get the final vote in my life.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's reasons why I don't do things in my life.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm abstent from from I'm absent from cursing.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: I don't curse.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: Not because I don't think the Bible prohibits all those words.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like what I'm absent is because I I have I'm a I'm a known person in the community.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm out saying a bunch of nonsense, it gives people permission and becomes a stumbling block.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't drink for the same reason.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus drank.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know if you know this.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's drinking in the Bible, and there's a whole bunch of different non-alcoholicism, we're not going to make those arguments.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: But the issue is, I don't believe that the Bible bans that.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: I believe when people see me drink, it would give them a permission and lead them down a path of destruction potentially.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so I can abstain from it.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need that in my life.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: My life is good without it.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need to try to mess it up with those things.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so when it comes down to it, I don't want, you know, for self-control, I don't think it means that my desires get the final vote in my life.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: My God does.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: I get to make my own choices through filter through this, and this is what gets the final vote in my life.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so I want to share with you another friend, Michael Walters, who I've just watched his life be transformed by Jesus over the last few years.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I've his story is powerful.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I hope you listen and just let him share with you.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm getting old, so I need my readers.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's uh those times, right?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_03: So good morning.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_03: My name is Michael Walters.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um my story has taken me a while to put into words.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I grew up in a middle class household, um, gave me everything, taught me how to be a good person.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_03: My father, he was an episode priest for 25 years, for that actually.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I didn't have a relationship with God.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: My mom was an accountant and a stay-at-home mom, and I'm truly grateful they adopted me when I was five.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_03: At the Episcopal Church, we always went to potlucks or functions, and the one thing I look back on and remember is that people are always having a good time, and there was always alcohol involved.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_03: That's why I love our church at Heart of the Lakes.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: Because we don't bring alcohol around our children at events, especially.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_03: I was always taught that moderation is a key.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's what blew me away when he started this sermon.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, you haven't even read my testimony, and like you're pulling at it.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, This is a sign, a sign from God.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um I was always taught that moderation is a key, that you don't that you could try anything in life.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that that's half true.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: But going through the hard times I went through, it has changed my mind.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_03: I fell on my face multiple times throughout my life, over 20 years.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um when I had too much to drink, I had always wanted something to make me feel sober.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I do some cocaine.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that's it's ironic to think that I would drink something, then I would smoke something, then I would snort something to make me feel b sober.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: I'd probably risk my life five to or ten times due to alcohol or drugs.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: But I didn't stop.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: I'd always get up in the morning, dust myself off, and go to work.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's how we were raised in the 80s, you know, just do what you gotta do.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_03: But, you know, after I graduated, after I had some time at, you know, I took some time off in 2012 from the University of Kansas.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: Um finally graduated.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: I took off like eight or nine years from college.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so I graduated in 2012.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um it's because I partied and I drank the entire time.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's a bartender downtown at one of the best bars there is.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um and the national championship happened for KU.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm a huge college basketball fan, and when we won, I looked around and was like, man, I gotta graduate and get out of here.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I've been here too long.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: So then I moved to Michigan after I graduated, and I started working for Verizon on Brown Street in Jackson, which is no longer longer there, sadly.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um this is where I met Sarah, my wife.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we started dating a year later, and we moved in together.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_03: It was just Sarah.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_03: Carter and I.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_03: At the time, Carter was just five.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_03: And now he's 18.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: We were happy as can be.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_03: We started going out on the weekends and we found the wrong group of people.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: And we just wanted a party.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: At first I'd only drink and I'd smoke weed, which I thought wasn't bad.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: Then it was more consistent everyday drinking.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: We would both get up for work on a normal day, and we come home, and we have two or three drinks.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: Work hard, play hard.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_03: That was our motto.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: We didn't realize where that that was gonna take us over the years.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_03: We knew that we wanted to be together and we wanted to get married, and we found our person.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: Coming from Lawrence, Kansas, where marijuana was decriminalized, I thought I was a playboy.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: Not only did I smoke marijuana, but I also sold it and a lot of it too.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_03: So when I moved to Michigan, you know, I was selling weed and growing weed in our basement.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_03: Which I look back on now and I was like, wow, that is crazy.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: Why would I put my kids around that?
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_03: I was becoming cocky and cold-hearted and on edge all the time.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: Sarah knew that it wasn't me, and she knew that I was a kind, loving man.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: We tried going to church occasionally, and we just couldn't find our fit.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't our time.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: I guess we just weren't ready to listen to God and we weren't ready to stop partying.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_03: Things got bad when we switched from beer to liquor because beer just wasn't cutting it anymore.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: I can't believe that I would drink and smoke and do cocaine and thought that it was the best thing in the world.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_03: It was horrible what I was putting into my body.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_03: And in 2021, Sarah and I separated.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: And when we separated, I didn't I didn't take that as a sign from God to knock it off.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: I ended up rolling my 1994 25th anniversary transam right in front of Sarah and Carter.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_03: After a heated argument at her house.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: We separated.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um I didn't want to kill myself though, even though I felt like my world was just crashing around me.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_03: I literally lost control of my car because I had just finished my third margarita.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_03: What an idiot, right?
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_03: I got thrown from the car out through the T-tops of my Trans Am.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I broke my my collarbone and shoulder and I fractured my leg and broke all my ribs on my left side, and I also fractured my C5 and C6 vertebrae in my neck, which, you know, now years later, I'm still struggling with feeling in my fingers and going through that right now.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_03: I remember lying on the ground and I'm looking up at the car, it's crashing down on me, and I just turned my head right at the last moment.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_03: Why I would not be here.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_03: I got up, I walked around the car and before, and I collapsed.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_03: And Sarah knew what to do because she was a medical assistant at the time, and she knew that my lung had been punctured by my fractured ribs, and I couldn't breathe.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_03: I ended up in the hospital for two weeks in a coma, and that was probably a sign from God that sent me.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_03: Kyle even showed up and prayed over me while I was in on a ventilator with weaning off the anesthesia, you know.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um I vaguely remember because anesthesia, you know, you're in and out.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_03: And we had a conversation later, and I looked back and I was like, yeah, that's right, you were there.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: So I healed very quickly, you know, I got out of the hospital.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_03: I was determined to get out of the hospital.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_03: There were some crutches in my leg.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: I lost like 30 pounds and three days of water weight.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's insane because I was just wanted to walk around the whole hospital to get out of there.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so when I got out of the hospital, I didn't learn from it.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_03: I continued to drink and do drugs now, even more, because we were in the middle of getting a divorce.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_03: We realized six months later, after living in separate homes, that we just couldn't do this on our own.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_03: We needed to get rid of the bad influences who are always hanging around us.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_03: You know, they're like leeches, they just will not leave.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_03: They they just they know what you're doing and that you want to have a good time, and you'll probably pay for it.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: So we we humbled ourselves, and Sarah and I, you know, we we talked over many weeks, and she finally she sold her home and she moved back into with me and the kids, and we tried to make things better.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_03: We started going to IOP treatment, which is out uh intensive outpatient treatment.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um we also started therapy individually and together because we truly wanted to heal.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_03: But several months went by and we started to drink and do drugs again.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_03: This time it wasn't as bad, but we still went down that path.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_03: We just couldn't seem to find a way to get away from it.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_03: We were stuck.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_03: The devil had a grip on us, and we were just trying to keep our family together.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_03: There was a moment when things started to change.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_03: I remember the day of Lauren's birthday, September 4th, very clearly because it was the first day we got sober from drugs.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_03: We just could not do it anymore.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_03: We could not continue getting high and ruining our kids' lives.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_03: The next morning we got up like normal, and Sarah said, Do you want to go to church this morning?
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_03: She told me about how she prayed the night before, and she woke up and her cravings were gone.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_03: And how she thinks that we need to go to church.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: So we did, and man, I don't think either one of us was ready for what was about to hit us.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: God was about to show off and give us another sign.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_03: Kyle preached about drugs in his Vices' series, being one day sober from drugs.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_03: And then Chris Moffat, he gets up and tells his testimony, changed our lives.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: This is like a ton of bricks just hit us.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_03: And we went up to Chris and Anna right away after the church.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_03: Just thank Chris for sharing.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: I soon found out, you know, it's a small world after all.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_03: I found out that Anna and Sarah used to work together 10 years previously.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: And Chris, he was like an uncle to Carter.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_03: That was truly God working in amazing ways.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_03: We left there on a great note, but again, we the week was just dragging.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_03: We had a couple drinks, and we thought, okay, we can kick the drugs.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe alcohol we can control too.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: We ended up skipping the next week at church and we watched it online, but it just wasn't the same.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_03: The next week was Haley's birthday on the 20th, and we had a huge conviction.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_03: And four days later, on Saturday, together we quit drinking alcohol.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_03: The next day, we came back to Heart of Lakes, and Kyle, his sermon was on alcohol.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_03: We left the day in just tears of happiness.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_03: We both looked at each other and yelled out, okay, God, we're listening.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: About a month later, I went out to breakfast with Kyle and he told me that normally he does drugs and alcohol back to back.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_03: But God told him to hold off, do something else, and do alcohol the next week.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: It was as if God had knew we wouldn't be there the second Sunday and we needed to hear what he had to say.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_03: Another sign.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_03: It blew him away when he saw us walking in the door, knowing that we had struggled.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_03: After that, Sarah and I wanted to be more active and just part of this awesome community.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_03: We actually end up getting remarried here a couple months later by Pascal.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_03: I started going to the men's discipleship group that winter, and I realized that I am not alone.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_03: So many of us in this church struggle in one way or another.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_03: And one thing I've I love about our church is that we don't feel ashamed of our past.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_03: We've all been there, we've done that, and there is absolutely no judgment.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_03: We all just want to love each other, as we say every Sunday.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_03: Love God.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_03: In the fall of 2025, I decided to make Jesus my Lord of my life.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_03: I got baptized, thank you.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_03: I got baptized at Clark Lake, and I was the first one in my family.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, on September 24th.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_03: In four days, I will be sober three years.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: And my wife, man.
• 43:34
  unknown: Amen.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_03: She is, she's truly just blown me away by how much she's grown.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_03: I could not be happier to see my amazing wife just tackle this demon that just took a hold of us for so many years.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_03: God simply just took that want and that need for alcohol and drugs.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: Away from us gave us a better purpose in life.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: So last week when I was out in our yard, just in Brooklyn, I was putting up a vinyl fence in our backyard and every hole.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_03: I was hitting the tree roots and rocks and hitting that clay at the bottom.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_03: Man, it was a struggle for sure.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: My son knows he was out there helping me.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_03: But I didn't give up.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_03: This is the second to last post.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_03: I hit a tree root so hard that my auger smacked me right in my knees.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_03: It was bruised.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: Not broken.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_03: It still hurts a little bit, it's a little tender.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um it took me a minute to close myself and I uh I started on that the last hole.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_03: Just pray and it goes well.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: I started slow and it was going easy.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_03: No rocks, no roots, nothing.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_03: Shocking, man.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_03: And then I hit that hard spot of the clay.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, okay, I'll go a little bit harder.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_03: And all of a sudden the motor revs up.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_03: So I pulled off the auger and I looked down and the blade is detached, it's sticking right in the dirt, and I'm like, and the cotter pin is just it's gone.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_03: Like shirt off or whatever.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what it went.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_03: So I just started shoveling and laughing at just what happened.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, okay, God, I'm listening.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_03: God let me get the last post, and before I broke my auger and I didn't know if I it was even deep enough, you know.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like I'm like, man.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_03: So I went and got the post.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'm telling myself the entire time I'm walking back into the garage, and I was like, you know, this fits perfect.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_03: I know God is trying to talk to me.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I put the post in the hole and I just started smiling from ear to ear.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_03: It was perfect.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_03: I was done with the fence, and I stopped right there.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I realized that God has been trying to show me signs like this my entire life.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_03: I just wasn't paying attention.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_03: You know, so God gives us signs in our entire life, you know, and in those times when you get that smack on the back of your head, and God wants us to know that He loves us and He's going to take care of us.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_03: And when we fall out of line, He's gonna straighten us back up with no judgment.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_03: So today, just start looking for signs of how God is working in your life.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_03: Think about your past and try to notice the signs because God has a way of talking to us.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_03: You know, put God first and make good choices for yourself and your family.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you've got a loving family here at this church, and who's got your back?
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and if anybody wants to talk to me afterwards, get a cup of coffee or breakfast, just get a hold of me.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_03: I've got way more stories that will just blow your mind because it just I God has truly saved me and my family, and I couldn't be happier.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I want to thank you for your time today.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: These stories matter.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: The reason they matter is because God has transformed their lives completely.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and as a church, we don't see the sin, we see the people they are now.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's awesome to see Sarah up here leading worship and like and just praising the Lord.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: And three years later, from God just totally transforming her life and speaking to her in very big, powerful ways.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's awesome if you hear her story.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: God is good.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: And when we we understand this, we understand that like moderation never overrides sobriety.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: The Bible tells us in 1 Peter 5:8, it says this be sober-minded, be watchful.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's you.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: Not someone, you.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: Resist him firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: We need to understand that we're not alone.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: People struggle.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: That may not be your struggle.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: You might not you might be sitting here saying, I don't struggle with drugs and alcohol.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't for me.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody in your life does.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: I've lived long enough.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm surrounded by Christians all the time, and I know a lot of people who struggle with drugs and alcohol.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: So just imagine what more if you're in the real world, not surrounded by Christians all the time.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know people who this is a problem.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: I also know people who struggle with politics, and I know people who struggle with food, and know people who struggle with addiction to these devices.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: We all, some of you might be this one, right?
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, we want to be sober-minded, which means we are clear and in control of our mind.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: And what is why we're clear and in control is because we are filtering that control through this God's word.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's how we're sober-minded, that we are in control, not a substance, not a thing, but we are in control through the power of Jesus Christ.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: So don't surrender the judgment God tells you to guard in your life to something.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: Don't give it to us to a created thing, don't give it to a hobby, don't give it to a sport, don't give it to a substance.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: Give control of your in your judgment over to God.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: See, abstinence may be your conviction.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: You may you may realize I need not to do something because that thing is a bad thing.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: Then good.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: Don't do it.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't mean you say, well, maybe I could do it now.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: No, if you know it's bad, just don't do it, right?
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: For you.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because we we are not all the same.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like I am a stubborn person.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot get me to do a sin or to do a thing unless I want to.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: Not everybody's like that.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: My whole experience in my freshman year college was everybody else came in and there are a lot of Christians when they came in.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: Six months later, I looked around, I was the only one.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody else was lost in the fray because they weren't as stubborn as I was.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you're a stubborn person, moderation might be the thing because you're never going to do something you don't want to do.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: But for most people, absence might be the thing.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: You might need to stay away from that thing that's bad or dangerous for you because it's destroying your life, it's destroying your marriage, destroying your relationships, destroying your finances.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: See, conviction should produce humility.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a conviction of one of those things, conviction to moderation, conviction to abstinence, that should produce a humility in your life where you don't feel you're superior to somebody else because you have you don't have the same struggle or you've had victory of that same struggle.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: We all got struggles, we're all sinners.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: If I if I went through your lives, I could I bet I could find one thing for each of you that you struggle with to the to almost the level of addiction.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's the reality of life.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it may be very different from each other, but it may be a thing.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: We don't, we shouldn't feel that we're superior.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: When I when I see Mike come in, I I was at the hospital with Mike.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: I had known him because Mark plays, his father-in-law plays the piano, and they told me about it, and I hadn't gotten to know them over the last years trying to help him through things, and you know, hadn't seen him in a long time.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I just went and prayed for him.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: He wasn't in good shape.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'll just tell you, I was there.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know he was gonna make it.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: So um I just went and prayed anyways.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: But then God just transformed his life, and it's so cool to see him come in and seem so excited about being a good dad, a good husband, a good person coming in here.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's just so transforming.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: I don't see the old mic, I don't I see the mic that brings glory to God.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's what's exciting.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's who we should be as a church.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: See, what does this mean for you?
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: It really is a question of how close can I walk with Jesus?
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to be here just teedling over the line, see what I can get away with.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be, I want to be here.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be in this.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna be in God's word.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: I want this to transfer my life.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: And Paul tells people that he loves.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: Paul is a pastor who loved the people in the church of Corinth.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: He loved them.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: Those were his people.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: Me telling you guys, we're telling you things to help you.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: And what he wanted them to be left with is is it lawful to do the thing that you're doing?
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: Is it helpful to your life, to your marriage, to your relationships, to your finances, to your freedom, whatever it may be?
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: Or will it dominate you and enslave you?
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like just filter everything through.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: I promise you, I do this to everything.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: And there's times I have to say to myself, yeah, I'm probably doing that too much.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's starting to dominate me, and I need to cut back.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: I need to understand that my moderation is not a good thing, and the best thing may be abstinence from that thing.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's becoming a danger.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is if you can't, if you're not powerful enough of a person inside to say that to yourself, you need to listen to your spouse, you can listen to your friends, you listen to your family.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: The people that are telling you, hey, that enough is enough.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's too much.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: See, sometimes faith says yes.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: We can do something.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes wisdom says, enough.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: You've had enough.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is enough.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes our freedom in Christ says no more.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: We're done.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: See, moderation may honor Christ, but abstinence may honor Christ as well.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: You may need to leave here and say, ah, that thing that I think I can moderate that I'm not doing very well moderating, I just need to be done with.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: I need to abstain from it moving forward.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: That may be a hard question.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think as a just personally, I don't think I need to add more things that I need to try to moderate in my life.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's just more danger.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: I, as I get older and wiser, I'm adding more things that I abstain from.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: Not moderate.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, because I'm recognizing that bondage never honors Christ.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: Never.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to be a person where I honor Jesus Christ.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so this series is really, I know some of you are out there like, well, I don't have any of those big vices, but you probably got one.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it's probably in your pocket.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_01: But you know somebody needs help.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: You do.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: We all do.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing that you could do is if you don't need to seek help for yourself, go seek help for someone else.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: Go have a hard conversation.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: Go say, hey, I love you.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: How can I help you through this?
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: How can I point your direction?
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: These people are saying they'll give they'll give their phone numbers out.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: They will.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: I know because I rely on them and I I call them and I've already given Mike's number out already.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody asked me, Can I get that guy's number?
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Yeah, sure.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'll do it.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: Gave it to him.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um but like they will actually have a coffee and have a conversation and be there for you.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: So what Michael said was Chris Moffat.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: Chris Moffat gave a testimony about how he wanted to come up here and punch me in the face one day.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_01: And um because I uh you might have called his drug dealer.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um so like I did.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um so but like he was just super transparent about his life and his struggle.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's right here.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_01: He is a godly wonderful human being who went through a rough season in life.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so he actually met with Mike for coffee, breakfast.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: He called him all the time.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he drives trucks, so he's just calling all day long.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_01: Would call me, tell me about it.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: And like he personally mentored Mike through that transformation.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's what you do.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's what Mike and Jim were saying.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: They go to a group and they go, Mike's been sober since 1980.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you know that.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's a long time.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: 1980, I was two.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so yeah, actually, no, I was one.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_01: I was one, I was one in 1980.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: But but he's been going, being participant in an Alcoholics Anonymous this entire time.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like the one week I think of recently, he was went three times.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because he's he believes if you don't give it away, you can't keep it.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: Go give your relationship with the Lord away to people by caring about their life.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_01: See what they can do.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: How do we don't care about your sins, we care about you.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: We don't live that out.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're hurt and you're broken and you know you need to do something, do something about it, or go help someone else do something about it.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's why it matters.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's why we're taking time to talk about these struggles and these sins, because these are real problems in the world.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we can fix them through Jesus Christ.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so as we end today, we're just gonna pray.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_01: If it's you, if you're sitting here, you're like, I need to do something.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: Do something.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: The prayer is for you.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: If you're sitting here and it's like, hey, this isn't for me today, there's someone in your life who's on your heart, who's in your mind that you need to go out and do something.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: Have the courage to say, Hey, I love you.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: How can I help you?
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is enough.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: What can we do to get better?
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I can go somewhere with you, maybe we can point you some help.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: But let's pray.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, we want to be a church, Lord, where we understand the need for each other, the need for Jesus, the need that we love each other through our own mess, our own sin.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, we want to be a church where we moderate when we need to, but we abstain when we see the danger.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: That we that we live our lives in a way that honors you, that builds up this your kingdom, Lord, this church, each other, and the world.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: We want to be helpful, Lord, in the way we live, the way we love.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, I just pray for anybody here who's struggling, they have the courage to say, I need help.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: I need to do better.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_01: I need to, I need to choose absence over this thing that's driving my life and ruining it.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, for the rest of us, I pray that we have the courage to say the hard thing, to do the hard thing, to sacrifice our time to give it to somebody who just has need of just a conversation.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe a breakfast, maybe a coffee that leads to help.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, we want to be a church of hurting people, broken people who help heal other hurting and broken people by pointing back to Jesus.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: So you can be glorified.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, we just pray all this in Jesus' name.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.