Thyatira: To a Church Going Toxic

But I love kids choirs. Listen, I want to start with some weird local history this morning. And in Santa Cruz we have plenty of weird local history. And not just weird history, weird current news as well. But what I want to do is I want to augment a couple of stories that I tell in the book with some photographs and some of these archival photographs I have never seen before. But they will help to enlighten you about these stories a little bit.

Quick show of hands, how many of you have ever seen the signs that said Holy City while driving over Highway 17? Raise your hand if you've seen those. How many of you have ever gone off and stopped to see what Holy City was? Anybody here? A few of you? Well I want to show you a little bit about it. If you drive there now, you will see a few abandoned buildings that are almost 100 years old now. But hardly a trace of what was once a bizarre cult and one of the most famous tourist attractions in the Bay Area. It was a commune that offered travelers barbecue, dancing, drinking, movies, and messages from God.

Yes, in 1919, a man who called himself Father William Riker decided he would claim to receive messages from God through his nerves. People get on my nerves. That's as close as I get to that kind of a situation. But he started Holy City and it was heaven on earth. His church was called the perfect Christian divine way church. Hundreds of disciples moved up there to the Santa Cruz mountains to the commune. All their money and personal property had to go to Riker, of course. No one in the commune was allowed to be married. There was strict separation of men and women. If you were married when you went there, your marriage was dissolved and you had to live as a single person. Except for one person. Guess who? Yeah, Father Riker. He decided he should be able to marry as many times as he wanted. In fact, he had four wives at the same time.

His message was this. He was a racist who said that God told him through these messages in his nerves that only white people should rule the world. And he drove around through the Bay Area with vans bearing his bizarre racist messages until he sold Holy City in 1957. The arsonists burned most of it down and Riker himself died alone at a hospital in Los Gatos at the age of 96. Now I wish I could say that Holy City was an exception and that no other bizarre religious cult arose here in the Bay Area. But I can't say that.

Do anybody remember this man, the Reverend Jim Jones at People's Temple? Can I see a show of hands? How many of you remember People's Temple? Yeah, everybody. I'm glad you do. In fact, I was up on the balcony and a couple told me, "You know, we were members at People's Temple." And they said, "When we were up there in San Francisco, it was a thriving church, it was a together church, and everyone was proud to say they went to People's Temple." At its height, I want to paint a picture of how normal this place was at first.

At its height, People's Temple had 20,000 members in the 1970s. They were in 12 different locations, so they were ahead of the venue service thing by 30 years. They were known all around the Bay Area for doing good deeds, for working with youth. The Reverend Jones got community service awards from Rotary Clubs and from civic organizations and from the State Assembly. They had a drug rehab clinic. They had after-school programs for kids. Every time the community was in need, they seemed to help out. They even raised money for an animal shelter that went broke. They were by far the most community-minded church in the entire Bay Area.

Politicians like Jerry Brown and Willie Brown and Dianne Feinstein were often seen with Jones at events. In other words, People's Temple was a normal, thriving church, a member in good standing of a denomination, the Disciples of Christ denomination. But then things got weird. Jim Jones started by justifying his sexual promiscuity of all kinds. He called himself "God's prophet on earth." He came out and blatantly said he was the one prophet of God on earth, and no decision he made could be questioned.

And he was apparently very convincing because a thousand members moved with him from California to the jungles of Guyana to start Jonestown, which was to be a utopia, a paradise on earth with agricultural projects where they would learn how to raise crops and help the developing world. And they would have a gospel mission, and they would place an emphasis on training teenagers to serve Jesus Christ overseas. But then on November 18, 1978, 900 of them, 900, died by drinking poisoned punch when commanded to by their senior pastor, Jim Jones.

But did you notice the sign over his pulpit and chair? This was the chair from which he preached his last sermon. Do you see what that sign says? "Those" - read it with me - "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Jim Jones himself provided an unintentional moral to his own story, didn't he? Now we have no idea why he put that sign up there, but we can't just look at stories like Jonestown or Holy City and shrug our shoulders and say, "Whatever! Those lunatics!" and kind of shrug it off like that's something that can never happen around here, because if we don't look at what happened there and examine it, we too will be condemned to repeat it.

And this sad spectacle of churches, good churches, going toxic will happen again and again and again. So let's remember the past today. Grab your message notes from your bulletins. The Seven is the name of our series in the book of Revelation. And today we're going to go back, way back into the past, and learn a lesson from another church that was about to go toxic. But they hear from Jesus Christ, who issues them a warning.

If you have your Bibles, grab them and turn to the book of Revelation. You can also use the Bible right in your pews there. Revelation is very easy to find because it's the very last book of the Bible. So just go to the very end and go to the maps and concordances and then turn left and you're going to be right there. In this series we're looking at seven letters from Jesus to seven ancient churches in Revelation chapter 2 and 3. And the letter we are looking at today is in many ways the most complicated one and the hardest one to understand and the deepest one. And so I'm really going to have to have you engaged today.

And so what I'm going to do once in a while is I'm just going to ask you a question. Are you still with me? And when I ask that question you will answer what? Yes. Yes, please say yes. Please say yes. So let's try it. Are you still with me? Yes. Alright, well we'll see if you stay with me because in this letter we will see that it's written to a church going toxic. You know it's interesting how much time Jesus spent talking about corrupt religious leaders. If you think about it, Jesus said next to nothing about corrupt political leaders. And he said nothing about corrupt entertainment leaders.

But he was constantly criticizing the corrupt religious leaders of his day and warning us, his followers, against false messiahs and false teachers who would come along. And that same warning is echoed in Paul's writings and John's writings and James' writings and Peter's writings. And yet somehow we as Christians sadly miss it again and again and again. And so we've got to listen to his warning here and watch out for leaders who move from emphasizing the power of love to emphasizing the love of power.

Watch this. Write this letter he says in verse 18 of chapter 2. Write this letter to the angel or messenger of the church in Thyatira. Now let's pause for just a second here and let's look at a Thyatira city profile so you can understand what he's about to say. And Thyatira was really an exception in the ancient world. A lot of these ancient cities we've seen so far, their culture has been so bizarre and so different from ours today. But I have a feeling if you and I went back to Thyatira, there would be much less cultural barrier to overcome.

Why? Let me explain this. Thyatira was about 35 miles southeast of the city we looked at last week, Pergamum. In New Testament times, this city was at the junction of three main roads. And three kingdoms, their highways came together right in this town. It wasn't a big city, but it was strategic because it was essentially like an ancient version of a modern truck stop. Travelers would stop there, they'd have to replenish their supplies and replenish their saddles, replenish their water flasks, their armor and so on. And so Thyatira became a very successful business town.

In fact, the only ruins of this town that still remain today are the ruins of the business district. Archaeologists have found no remnant of a theater, no remnant of an amphitheater, no remnant of a stadium, not even a remnant of a big temple or something. The only things that they found in the ruins of Thyatira is the business district and the ruins of the trade guilds. And here's the big thing you need to know to understand this letter. The trade guilds kind of controlled Thyatira. They were kind of like forerunners of our modern labor unions. They were far more organized in Thyatira than in any other ancient Roman city.

And the reason we know this is because of all the inscriptions that we find from labor unions, from trade guilds in Thyatira, bragging about the fact that the guild of the pottery makers, or the guild of the bakers, or the guild of the leather makers, or the guild of the tanners has erected this building or has paid for this service in town or has built this fountain. And the biggest industry in town were the bronze smiths. In fact, on this coin from Thyatira, you can see, if you look carefully, a bronze smith at an anvil working on a bronze helmet for Athena.

So this is interesting because the other ancient coins we looked at from the other cities, they might have pictures of Caesar or of a god, but at Thyatira, what do they have on their coins? A laborer doing his job. This is how much they kind of glorified business. It's a union town. And unlike the cities we've seen so far, there is no religious persecution against the Christians here. There's no government pressure against the Christians here. There's no persecution. This place was so focused on business from all these different neighboring kingdoms that it built in the town a kind of a tolerance.

This town was all about just keep your head down, get your work done, and it doesn't matter what you believe, it doesn't matter what your customers believe, it's all cool, we're totally religiously tolerant, you're a Christian, that's fine. It was a culture of extreme tolerance, and yet the Christians who live here under zero persecution end up being the Christians who are in the most danger of their faith actually being completely extinguished. Why? They were not discerning about who they allowed to lead them.

And so Jesus' main message to them on page two of your notes is to stay discerning. Stay discerning. I've got to be honest with you, let me just reveal my heart to you as a pastor. One of my deepest concerns about the future of Christianity, and sometimes honestly I almost despair, is that I feel like Christians have lost their ability to be discerning about the teaching that they are taking in.

And so you and I really need to know four ways to be discerning about false teachers that might attempt to infiltrate their way into your lives. Are you guys still with me on this? Alright, good, because in our culture everybody wants to be tolerant just like Thyatira. Right? Are we a tolerant culture here in Santa Cruz? But you know, listen, if tolerance means being nice, if tolerance means having intelligent conversations, if tolerance means treating people who don't agree with you with gentleness and respect, if tolerance means recognizing the right of everybody to say and to believe whatever they want, then I am all for tolerance.

But if tolerance steps over the line and implies that somehow if everybody's got a right to say whatever they want, then I should believe everything everybody says, with the same amount of credibility, that's not tolerance anymore, that's gullibility. And what's worse is today, because of the internet and other social media platforms that are associated with that, what happens is false teaching spreads so rapidly.

There's all kinds of people with bizarre blogs and websites teaching all kinds of things that are not historically true, not scripturally true, and you couple that with the fact that Christians today know less than previous generations, previous recent generations, about what the Bible actually says, man, you put those two things together and you just have a recipe for catastrophe. A recipe for Christians believing some wingnut theory that's going to lead them astray in ways that, I mean, I shudder to think what a man like Jim Jones could have done in an age of the internet. Can you imagine? I know.

And so we've really got to be aware of this to keep our church and churches in general from going toxic. Jot these down. Number one, don't assume you're immune. That is the first one, I mean, with a bullet. Don't assume you're immune to false teaching. You know, if you heard the stories about people's temple and Holy City and thought, man, brother, I would never fall for that. Not in a million years. Watch out. Because that's when you fall, when you think you're standing firm, when you get cocky.

You know, researchers have looked at people's temple. They've interviewed hundreds of surviving members. Not many survived Guyana, but there were a lot of members that didn't go down there. And so they've interviewed them. What did you see in people's temple? Why did you follow Jim Jones? Because they thought they would spot a flaw, like these people were like super gullible people. Or maybe they were all like super poor people who were looking for some Messiah. And you know what they discovered is they were not only normal, they were above average people. Type A people. Like the assistant DA of the city of San Francisco was on the elder board of the people's temple.

They were sharp people, they were involved people, they were connected people, they were good people. The only flaw they had was they didn't have discernment. And they began slowly accepting more and more weirdness in their church leadership. And if it happened to them, it could happen to you and me. I know, I see some of the wheels turning. How do you know I'm legit? Yes, seriously. Personally, I've had grave doubts about Mark Spurlock for years now. Years. Just kidding.

Look at what Jesus says. Here's how you can tell. He says, "I know your deeds, your love, and your faith, your service and perseverance." And you're doing now more than you did at first. In other words, there's constant improvement. Now is any of this bad? This is all good stuff. He's not being sarcastic. Faith is good. Love is good. Deeds are good. Constant improvement is good. These are all positives. They only had one problem.

I mean, this sounds like a description of people's temple or of Twin Lakes Church. They only had one problem. Dropping their guard, he says, "Nevertheless, I have this against you. You tolerate that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess." Now, Jesus names her Jezebel. Again, Revelation is a book of symbols. This was not her actual name. How do we know? Nobody in those days would have named a girl Jezebel. It would be like naming a boy Hitler. It was such a negative name. They associated with the Hebrew Scriptures character of Jezebel.

This is about 700 years before Christ. Jezebel was the wife of King Ahab, and she popularized the worship of the Canaanite fertility god Baal. And there were all kinds of crazy sexual orgies and so on that went on in the worship of Baal, and there were also human sacrifices, child sacrifices to Baal. We know that from grisly archaeological discoveries, and this was all popularized by Jezebel, the ultimate cult leader.

Now, hundreds of years later, that same name is being used to describe this woman. And I want to make something clear here. It was not her gender that made her a false teacher. This isn't criticizing a female teacher. The problem wasn't that she was a female teacher. The problem was she was a false teacher. There's plenty of great teachers in the Bible who are female. The disciple Philip had four daughters, according to the book of Acts, who were all prophets, and they were great. The problem with her wasn't her gender. The problem was her agenda, what she was teaching, and this great church is falling for it.

Write this down. Note, good helpful people can be led astray, right? The best, the most ambitious, type A, National Honor Society, Mensa type people, like the people's temple people, can be led astray by some pied piper, and that is one of the lessons of the past that we must remember, or we are going to be doomed to repeat this sort of thing. And that leads right to the next point, number two. Don't believe everything you hear. Please don't believe everything you hear. I'm begging you as your pastor, check out what you find on the internet, or what you hear on some podcast, or what you hear at some conference, or what you hear from me, with the Bible, and with common sense.

Jesus says this in verse 20, "By her teaching, she misleads my servants into sexual immorality, and the eating of food sacrificed to idols." Lots to explain in that verse. First, what was her teaching? Well, remember all those trade guilds in Thyatira? It turns out that in order to get a job in Thyatira, a good job, you had to be in one of these trade guilds. You had to be connected. Like if you were good at making bronze, it didn't matter, you couldn't just hang out your shingle. You had to be in the bronze makers guild, or in the leather makers guild, or in the pottery makers guild. You wouldn't get work if you were not in the guild.

And the guilds were about so much more than just getting jobs. They were a social network. If you were in debt, the guild would help you get out of debt. If you were building a house, the guild would help pay for it. If you were sick, the guild would help pay for your care. So this was a huge thing, being a part of a guild. Everybody wanted to be part of a good guild, but then there was this little problem. When the guilds would have their monthly, you could call them lodge meetings, you know, secret handshake, trade some trade secrets, do some networking.

In addition to the secret handshakes and the trade secrets and the networking, there was a little matter of pagan orgies and gluttonous feasts, devoted to the worship of the pagan gods. See, each guild had a god that was their sponsor deity, and in worship of this sponsor deity, they would have these absolutely crazy, immoral orgies, essentially. And apparently this teacher, this very magnetic teacher in the church comes along and says, "Yeah, that's all okay. It's all right. God understands you need to make a living. God gets it. He's a gracious God, and he knows business is business. It's okay to go to the strip club or the brothel with the guys for work." Kind of what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. What happens in the pagan trade guild stays in the pagan trade guild. And Jesus says, "No."

Now, this teacher probably made it sound very spiritual. I want you to notice in these verses three common signs of false teachers. First, they grab authority. Did you notice how Jesus says she calls herself a prophetess? Underlined her circle, calls herself. Doesn't wait for other people to acknowledge her gift, but they move right into places of authority. Leaders like Jim Jones, Father Ryker, always want to grab authority. They want to be in charge. You know, the Alexander-Higgs syndrome. "I'm in charge now." Beware of people like that.

And they refuse correction. Jesus says, "I have given her time to repent, but she is..." What? What does it say? Unwilling. They're not open to any criticism, not even from Jesus. Jesus himself could come along and point out to these types of teachers what they're doing wrong, and they would have none of it because they consider themselves a prophet of God. So why should they be open to any correction? They are God's anointed. And they claim to teach secrets.

You know what? If you're taking notes, you might want to star this one, circle it, highlight it, memorize it, underline it. Why? This is one thing that all false teachers seem to have in common. Are you still with me? Good. Because Jesus describes her teaching Satan's so-called deep secrets. Listen, false teachers always want to play on the word "secret." What's the fastest way of spreading any news to a large group of people? You go to one person and say what? "I got a secret to tell you." Right? I went on Amazon this week. There are 36,180 books on Amazon right now that are religious or religiously oriented book with the word "secret" in its title.

You know? The secret this, the mystery of the ancient that, the secret diet. Man, if you put together the secret ancient mystery diet of the Bible, man, you would have a bestseller on your hands right there because everybody wants to know the latest secret. And I've noticed over the years there's a type of Christian who's always on the hunt for something new. And these teachers hook people by saying, "I have new teaching. I've got something higher. I've got something super profound to impart that the Lord has given to me." And if you're finding that you're getting discontented with the rich, deep truth of the gospel, and you want to go on to something else, you are going to be vulnerable to these people.

That is one of the lessons from the past we have to learn. Now, if these false groups are so bad, why are they so successful? Because of a vulnerability that we have, and that's number three. Don't confuse success with blessing. Don't confuse success with blessing. In America, we tend to think, "Well, if somebody is powerful or if somebody is rich, well, how can you argue with success?" If a pastor has a big church, a church that's being recognized by the community, "Well, I mean, some of the things kind of maybe I'm not too comfortable with, but how can you argue with God's blessing?" Jot this down. "Prosperity may show God's patience, not God's approval."

Prosperity may show God's patience, not God's approval. Ever thought about that? Jesus says, "I have given her time to repent." You know what? Let me just say this. Maybe there's some people in your life and you wish God would judge them. "God, these people are being so bad. Why aren't you judging them, God?" You know what? Because God loves them, and God's patient with them, and God wants to give them time. And maybe you feel like you're getting away with something. "I'm doing this thing. They told me that this was wrong, but I'm not seeing any bad effects of what I'm doing now." Yeah, maybe God is just being patient with you and giving you time to repent.

Remember last week we saw that the word "repent metanoia" means to change your mind in a way that causes your behavior to do a U-turn. God is giving you time to change your stinking thinking. He says, "I've given you time to repent of her immorality, but she's unwilling, and so I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely unless they repent of her ways." Wow.

Now, some of you are looking at this verse. In fact, maybe you even came with a friend today, and your friend has told you, "Twin Lakes Church is positive, and it's all about God's grace. It's not hellfire and brimstone." And you're going, "Well, there's the hellfire and brimstone right there. That's the kind of like pounding the fist thing that I associate with church." Hang on, because what Jesus Christ is doing here is saying, "I am going to allow you to..." You know, 12-step groups have a phrase called "hitting bottom." Have you ever heard that phrase before? He's saying, "I'm going to let you hit bottom at some point."

And God in all His sovereignty at some point is going to let you bear the consequences of your sin. Now, some of them could be natural consequences, and sometimes God steps in and judges. He's just saying, "There are consequences to sin." Physical, social, relational, emotional, spiritual consequences. You say, "Well, why does He have to put it this way?" By saying, "You guys better repent, or you're going to suffer intensely." Here's another good 12-step group word. Have you ever heard of the word "intervention"? Jesus is doing an intervention for these people.

An intervention happens when somebody that you know and love is an addict on some kind of substance or alcohol, or something else is going upside down in their lives, and you and all of their loved ones, their sisters, their brothers, their mom, their dad, they get together in a room, like a living room, and sometimes it's a surprise. Sometimes the person didn't even know what was going to happen, and they read off their intervention statement. They read something like this and say, "I love you." Something like what we've seen in these verses. "I love you. God loves you. I believe there's a great purpose for your life, but you're messed up.

Let me just observe to you how messed up you are. You may not even remember. You may not even realize. There may be scales on your eyes covering them, so you don't know how you appear to others, and we just have to be blunt to you and tell you you are headed for another catastrophe if you don't accept our intervention." And that's exactly what Jesus Christ is doing for them. Interventions are never done by people who hate you. Interventions are only done by people who love you and want the best for you, and that's what Jesus is doing for these people here.

Are you still with me? Good. Now, before we get to the final point, I know what some of you are going. You're going, "This doesn't apply to me. There are no false teachers in my life. I'm not listening to Jezebel or Jezebel Jones or whatever. I got my guard up against the crazies. In fact, I'm a pretty cynical guy, and my cynicism is for protection against this kind of stuff. I could have missed church today. It doesn't relate to me." Hang on. Because would you agree with this? Most of the time, the false teacher in your life is right up here, right? It's you. It's your own voice in your own head.

Most of us don't need a false teacher to teach us how to rationalize stupid behavior, right? Human beings are pretty much experts at rationalizing self-destructive behavior, kind of like the joke about the guy who wants a doughnut. Have you heard this one? The guy's on a diet, and he wants a doughnut so bad, so he prays, "Okay, God, I'm driving past the doughnut shop right now, and I'm going to circle the block, and if there's a parking space right in front of the door to the shop, then I will know it's your will that I have a doughnut." And sure enough, fifth time around the block, there's a parking space right in front of the shop.

But we all play that game. So what I want you to do is to take the focus from false teachers to the false teacher in your head and ask, "Where have I been rationalizing?" Or, "Where am I at least tempted to rationalize?" Maybe in some sexual area like these people, or maybe something else. You know you're hearing the voice of Jezebel. If you're hearing a whisper in your head that goes something like this, you don't really have a problem. Not you. Those rules are kind of for other people, and not you. And in fact, anyone who tries to even suggest that you are doing something unhealthy is being all judgmental on you.

And what you need to do is throw up the stop sign and get judgmental back, be self-defensive, because they're wrong to judge you that way. Some of you are believing that false teacher in your own head, and you are this close to continuing a compromise, or to starting a compromise that could lead to destruction. And I don't think I'm overstating the case to say that for some of you, you could think of this big building right here as a living room, and the pew you're sitting on as a couch, and Jesus, in his love of you, brought you into church today.

I don't know why you think you came, but he actually brought you here to do an intervention. You see? And he's saying, "I love you, and I've given you time to repent. You've been unwilling so far, and if you don't, it's going to lead to destruction. So I want to give you the chance today to turn around, to do that. You turn in your thinking." You know, doing that, repenting, you know that's not hard? It's not hard. We tell ourselves it is, but it's not. Disobedience is complicated. Disobedience complicates your life, but obedience is actually simple, and that leads right to the final point.

Don't complicate your faith. Don't complicate it. You see, false teachers are always complicators. I want you to notice a phrase in this verse that I think a lot of people miss. Jesus says, watch this now. In fact, read this out loud with me. "I will not impose," what? "any other burden on you, only," what? "Hold on to what you have until I come." Do you see the genius of this? To people being faced with moral compromise, Jesus does not do the knee-jerk reaction that many of us have and burden them with all kinds of extra religious rules and hoops they've got to jump through.

In fact, he said to the Pharisees when they tried to do that, they burden people down with all their rules. Jesus says, "I will not impose a burden on you. Just hold on to what you already have." He's talking about the gospel. In fact, if you look at these seven letters, he never asks any of these churches to do anything complicated. He always just drives them all back to their first love, to what they already have, to return to what already is, and that's the gospel, what they have in Christ, the gospel that Jesus Christ loves you so much.

He died on the cross for your sins, and then he rose again to give you his presence and his power now, and now you love him because he first loved you, and when you develop that relationship, that is when you get the power to turn around and repent and draw closer to him. And now this is specifically an intervention for this church, but listen, watch this. He closes this letter with the line he puts at the end of all his letters. "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." And we've done this once or twice before in this series, but if you have an ear, can I see you raise your hand if you have an ear? Go ahead. Yeah, that means this is for you.

And ask yourself today, will you hear what the Spirit says to this church? Ask yourself, will I keep being vulnerable to false teaching, or am I going to be more discerning, even about the false voices I hear in my own head? And ask yourself, if I'm engaged in some sort of moral compromise right now, or something that could lead to destruction in my family or my relationship with the Lord, will I take Christ's invitation to repent today?

You know, I want to leave you with hope, because sometimes as a pastor, I know a lot of the backstories of a lot of the people here, and most people when they come to church, they look pretty good. You know, they look pretty together. And you might be here today, and you're sitting there in your pew going, "Nobody understands in this church what I'm going through. I am stuck in meth or cocaine or marijuana dependency or alcoholism or porn or sex addiction, or I'm having an affair right now and I don't know how to stop, or something else is going on." And you're thinking, "They do not understand."

I wish floating above everybody's heads here, there would be an icon of the things that everybody here has struggled with. Because you would go, "Oh, everybody here gets it." Not like five people or ten. Everybody here gets it, because everybody in this room struggles with something. And they're not here because they're super holy people. They're here because by the power of God, they've received help in their time of need. And let me just introduce you to just one of those people. You've seen her up front, praying with people after church, because she wears a Stephen Ministry badge, and you probably never guessed her story.

Listen as Buffy shares. My dad raised me. My dad is an alcoholic. So alcoholism started quick in my life. I didn't have a parent to turn to, so I turned to alcohol. Alcohol turned into drugs, men, anything that I would think that would heal the hole in my heart. It got to a point where I ended up having to give my son up for adoption because I was toxic for him, and he was not in a safe environment with me. I could not stop drinking. Hit rock bottom. Thought I was at rock bottom. My rock bottom had a trap door. I just spiraled back down, and I thought, "I can do it. I can do it this time. I can do it. I can go to AA. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it." So I can at one point be back in my son's life.

Ever relapsed, oh gosh, thousands of times. I ended up getting beat up severely by one of the abusive men I was dating, and that's when the pastor at the church I was attending got me into Teen Challenge. Through the program, I just built a relationship with the Lord. I learned to just lean on Him and trust Him and just abide in Him and just love Him. I've been out of the program for almost a year, and I've run across everything in the past that's made me drink, and I am sober. I don't need to drink. I don't want to drink. I feel I've been delivered. It's just amazing. I let my son go because I never thought I'd stop drinking, and he has blessed me with that gift of just not even wanting to.

One thing I would love to tell people is they just think that, "Oh, it might have worked for them, but not for me." He loves us all, and He's here, and He's just waiting. He's a perfect gentleman with His arms open. He's just waiting for you to say, "Come on over and come on into my life. Come into my heart." He'll be there. I know there are people out there that suffer with the hopelessness and just the bondage and just the fear. It's horrible. It's a dark place that I'm crying because I know that there's help, and it's in Jesus. There is hope. I couldn't do it on my own, but this girl who wanted to kill herself and who has attempted suicide several times is sitting here today to tell you that there is hope, that the Lord loves you, and He's just waiting.

Buffy is here in this service, and Buffy's going to be up front with other Steven ministers during our last song, "Waiting to Pray with You." I just want to direct you to the final page there in your bulletin, actually, page 3. There is help here for you. If you're sick and tired of being sick and tired, you can check out the TLC recovery groups. They meet on Mondays and Thursdays. There's more info there. You can get info at the info desk. If you need residential treatment, check out the Freedom Women's Center, the Paaro Men's Center for support with porn or sex addiction. There's xxxchurch.com or yourbrainonporn.com, and the locker room for guys here at TLC. marijuanaanonymous.org, new website that really dispels a lot of myths, and it's very timely. There's a lot more resources today.

It is not impossible. God can change you. There are people all around you in this room who have seen Him do it in their lives, and Jesus loves you so much that He wanted you here today to hear these words, "You can change." Let's pray together. Would you close your eyes with me and bow your heads? With everybody's heads bowed, maybe this is your moment to repent and get help. Jesus did that intervention for the people of this ancient church, and He's doing one for you too in this moment, and here's your chance to respond, maybe even for the very first time turning to Him saying something like this, "Jesus, I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. I want to run into your healing arms. Thank you that you gave your life for me, and now I give my life to you. I want to turn my will and my life over to you and to your care, my Lord and my Savior, and I want to receive the forgiveness that you bought for me on the cross and especially the power you provide for me through your resurrection. God, I need you in my life. I need you changing me from the inside out by your grace. Thank you that you love me so much. I don't understand how it all works, but as much as I understand, I give my life to you. Help me to understand it more and grow more. In your name I pray, amen."