Relationships . . .

Most Saturday nights I hang out with a group of alcoholics and drug addicts for a while. I love those folks, and I love hanging with them. I do that at a drug and alcohol rehab facility in Corpus Christi; I go there along with a group from my Church. The place we go is called “Charlie’s Place” . . . and the leader of our group is also named Charlie . . . Charlie Williams; however, our Charlie is not the guy for whom the facility was named. Our Charlie has been laboring in this type ministry for many years in the D/FW area. After he moved here a few years back, he looked for an opportunity to start such a work in this area.

The truth is the administration at Charlie’s Place was reluctant to allow our group access to their clients/patients and to allow us space and time in their facility. They are trained professions in human behavior and fully believe their clients/patients struggle with addictions is either mental or psychological. We, on the other hand, believe the struggle is a spiritual matter.

When Charlie first visited with them and made the request, he was denied permission, but he didn’t simply take no for the final answer. He continued to pursue it in a polite and respectful manner. Finally, the head guy told him, “Look, it’s not that we are opposed to a church group being involved, it is just that the last group that was here was loud, rude, confusing, and constantly told the clients: ‘You don’t need Charlie’s Place, you don’t need any 12-Step Programs; you just need Jesus’ . . . and they were always trying to cast demons out of the clients and laying hands on others and they often left our clients confused, humiliated, hurt, and further damaged.”

Charlie offered assurance that we would not behave in such a foolish and reckless manner . . . further that we would always remember and respect that we were guests in their place and would always be respectful of the clients and accountable for what we did and said. Charlie explained the agreement to our team and asked for everyone to agree with and abide by his commitment. I was just blown away by what the previous group had done and the foolishness of it.

Since I was to be the teacher/presenter for our group, I challenged the team to be mindful that we would be working with individuals who were already fragile . . . people who did things they hated and then . . . struggled with crippling feelings of failure and guilt afterward. I reminded our folks there was no healing or setting free in condemnation . . . and that guilt and condemnation simply make the addict’s problems seem more overwhelming. I also cautioned them to remember that religious condemnation is both man-made and destructive . . . and no individual, group, denomination, or religion has any authority by which to condemn anyone . . . Believers and the Church have a calling to “Love . . . and operate in love and to reflect God’s love into a dark world.” That is our sole purpose in going to Charlie’s Place.

For my lessons/presentations, I search the New Testament regularly looking for events, stories, and situations where Jesus encountered an individual or a group who struggled with a life-altering, life-impacting problem, handicap, issue, or pain. I always try to get a sense of what life was like for that person, at that moment in time, and then watch and see how that situation changed as soon as Jesus entered the equation. I am amazed; it seems there is an endless supply of such Biblical illustrations about the life-changing power of Jesus. Last night I used the two blind men sitting by the road in Jericho as Jesus passed by. Their encounter with Jesus radically changed their lives.

In this I have learned something about relationships. Let me try to explain:
I think there are four levels of any and every relationship, as follows:

Legal (law);
Ethical;
Moral; and
Spiritual

I also believe that God created and fashioned relationships. He created Adam and established a relationship with him. He then created Eve and instructed Adam about the relationship he was to have with Eve. Each of those relationships were ethical, moral, and spiritual in nature. Then Adam and Eve sinned . . . and their relationship with God and with each other turned to a legal relationship . . . it is interesting that of the Ten Commandments . . . one is Ceremonial (Keep the Sabbath) . . . and the other nine address the relationship we are to have with God . . . and with each other.

The tragedy of it all is that the legal level is the weakest and poorest level of a relationship . . . that is why Jesus rescues a broken, hurting, and troubled person from the curse of the law and places the person into a spiritual relationship with God (which is simply not possible without Jesus) . . . a relationship governed by love, grace, and mercy! That is what Jesus came to do . . . and it is what He will continue to do until the trumpet blows . . .

After having lived in seven decades . . . two centuries . . . and in two millenniums, I finally get two really important truths in all of this:

1. There is only one right and proper role I can play in that work Jesus came to do . . . and that is the role of a messenger (tell what I know and what I have experienced); and

2. A messenger cannot be very effective when dragging a load of judgment around.

Perhaps, that is why we do well to develop an attitude of: “except by the grace of God, there go I.”

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