I can't. He can.

Where do you feel stuck? Where in your life have you tried and tried and tried to change, and you kind of get some temporary victories, but with no apparent lasting success? Now, in case you are stumped, in case you're going, well, I could have stayed home because I actually have nothing in my life I need to change. I'm perfectly fine. I made a small helpful list for you, all right? Maybe. Drinking. Eating. Shopping. Watching, stewing, fuming, musing, brooding, hoarding, controlling, scrolling, trolling, self-pity, self-indulgence, self-centeredness, self-righteousness. I'm alcoholic, weedaholic, workaholic, porno-holic, shopaholic, spendaholic, newsaholic, phoneaholic, rageaholic, gameaholic, foodaholic, vitriolic. We have all got something. Can I hear an amen from the church today? We all have something. In fact, let me just see, this is honest confession time, this is church. Raise that you would really like to change. Can I see that show of hands right now? Look at that. All right, raise your hand if there's something about the person sitting next to you that you would like to change. Can I just see a show of hands? Wow, there was a lot more eagerness on that one. The good news is this change is possible. It really is. Don't give up hope.

My name's René, if we haven't met. In fact, my name's René, even if we have met. And I'm glad to be back home. We were in Missouri for the last week, and it is really fun to be back here in beautiful Santa Cruz. Today we start a new series called Unstuck. And what this is about is looking at the biblical principles behind the 12 steps of recovery. If you don't know the 12 steps, you're going to love learning them in this series. I didn't have room in your printed notes, but I put them all online at tlc.org/notes. And what we're doing is we're tying into this brand new book by John Ortberg. It is called Steps. I love this book. As you can see, my copy is all dog-eared and marked up, and it goes into way more depth than I could in a sermon. So I really encourage you to check that out. And the really good news is the author, John Ortberg, will be here speaking in this series in about three weeks. So I'm very excited about that, and we have copies of this book available at our lobby bookstore.

By the way, we always make whatever we have in the Lobby Bookstore available for as cheap as we possibly can. Our goal out there is not to make a profit. It's just to get good Christian living material into your hands. And as we launch this series today, I want to start with a story. One day, in 1935, Pastor Sam Shoemaker of Calvary Episcopal Church in downtown New York is leading a small group Bible study near Grand Central Station in Manhattan, when suddenly, coming late, into the room charges a loud-mouthed alcoholic named Bill. Now, in the 1920s and 30s, there was a huge anti-religious feeling in America, especially in the big cities. And so Pastor Sam and some other people started a movement that they called the Oxford Group to revitalize Christian faith in America. He actually wrote a book called Revive Thy Church Beginning With Me. And two of the big ideas about the Oxford group were every one of us is a sinner, every one of us, and every one of us can personally be changed by the grace of God.

And one of their innovations, and this obviously became hugely influential, was to meet not just in churches, but to meet in small groups in homes and in businesses and in community centers and even near railroad stations like Grand Central Station. Well, into this small group bursts in Bill. At the time, Bill is almost 40 years old. He's feeding his drinking habit by stealing grocery money from his wife's purse, and sometimes even by disguising himself as a homeless man and panhandling in the business district there in Manhattan. Now, how did he hear about the group? Well, an old friend of his named Eby had visited him a few days before and had told him members of this church group called the Oxford Group had visited him in jail. And Ebby had turned to Jesus. He is now sober. And so he invites his old friend Bill to the group.

Now, Bill despised, disdained religion, but he reluctantly accepts the invitation because he knows he needs some help. But on the way, he stops at several bars and is roaring drunk by the time he comes to the group. Yet, that night, he hears testimony after testimony of changed lives, and he goes forward to commit his life to the Lord. He announces to everybody in the meeting that his life is changed. And that change lasts less than a day. Because on his way home from the group that night, Bill starts a three-day drinking binge that ends with him hospitalized with alcohol poisoning. He's so disgusted with himself that he can't seem to change that he falls into a deep depression there in his hospital bed. And years later, he wrote about what happened next. He says, all at once, I found myself crying out, if there is a God, let him show himself I'm ready to do anything, anything.

Suddenly, the room lit up with a great white light. I was caught up into an ecstasy which there are no words to describe. And then it burst upon me that I was a free man. Slowly, the ecstasy subsided. I lay on a bed, but for a time I was in another world, a new world of consciousness all about me and through me. There was this wonderful feeling of presence. And I thought to myself, so this is the God of the preachers. A great peace stole over me. And I thought, no matter how wrong things seem to be, they're all right. Things are all right with God and his world. And from that moment, Bill never took another drink. He began attending Sunday night services at Calvary Church. And you've probably guessed by now that Bill was Bill Wilson, also known as Bill W. And with a friend, Bill started a group based on the principles he learned in his small group at Calvary Episcopal Church in Manhattan.

But their group was specifically designed for alcoholics because that's what they both were. Their slogan was, but for the grace of God, the initials of their group were AA, which stands for what? Alcoholics Anonymous. Bill later wrote, the early AA got its ideas straight from the Oxford Group, that small group movement, and directly from Pastor Sam Shoemaker and from nowhere else. In other words, from Bill W.'s own words, 12 steps were based on the Bible. And in this series, what I want to do is rediscover those biblical roots. Now, I know I'm addressing a couple of different groups here. There's a group of us who have discovered these 12 steps and have learned how precious and effective they are for spiritual growth in general. But then there's also a group that maybe you're familiar with and maybe not, but you're thinking to yourself right now, well, I don't have a chemical dependency. I'm not an alcoholic. I'm not a drug addict. So I guess I could have skipped church today because this absolutely doesn't apply to me.

Here is why this is useful for all of us. Learning these principles, as it says in your notes, first, helps me change. Like you and me, no matter what your troubles are, no matter what your struggles are. You know, there's a word you hear a lot in church, repent. And a lot of times people say, well, we should preach more on repentance. And I think, you know, we are actually preaching on that every single week, even though you may not hear the word, but it's a great word. The word means turn around, change my mindset, turn back to God, turn from death to life. And repentance is a good thing. But the question is, how do I actually do it? It's not a very effective message to just yell at people, repent. Okay, yes, but how? Right? I don't want to be walking toward death. I don't want to go toward a dead end. I want to go somewhere with my life, but how do I do that?

What the 12 steps do is give me an actionable, non-legalistic lifestyle of daily repentance. And it's interesting that they originated in the church, yet so many Christians don't understand this. Dallas Willard was a very famous USC professor, and he said this about the 12 steps. He says, it is one of the all-time greatest ironies that the practices of the most successful recovery program ever known, almost 100% borrowed from the Christian movement, are not routinely taught and practiced by churches. And we aim to change that here because it helps me change. And I mean me. I was a young pastor in South Lake Tahoe when a guy named John Hewlin came up to me and he said his brother-in-law, John Baker, was starting a Christian-based recovery program at a little church plant down in Mission Viejo that was just getting launched called Saddleback Church.

This pastor. Nobody had ever heard of Rick Warren was pastoring the church, and John Baker wanted to start a Christian recovery program there. And I told John, well, I don't know. I've heard that was some kind of weird parachurch thing. I don't think we should do that here at Sierra Community Church but Lake Tahoe. And John said, well, René, why don't you just read, well, read the big book and read some other recovery literature. John Baker hadn't written a thing yet that was Christian-based, but he said, I just want you to read this with an open mind, see what you think. I was blown away at how biblical and scriptural these principles were. And though I don't have a chemical dependency or an alcohol dependency, what I discovered was how helpful these steps are just as a Christian growth scaffolding, right?

I struggled at the time with severe OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. I felt completely powerless to change. I was blown away by it. I was so frustrated by it. I would try hard to change and nothing seemed to work. And I found in the 12 steps such an answer for that because step number one is you admit you are powerless and only God can change you. I've never heard anybody say that that could possibly be helpful. I thought the answer to overcoming my obsessive compulsive disorder was to just try harder and it wasn't working. And powerlessness, that was such a breath of fresh air to me, and it worked. Then when I moved down here, I became a pastor here. I struggled with anxiety. Well, I didn't struggle with anxiety. I had severe anxiety attacks that seemed to come from out of the blue that were so bad, I ended up in the hospital under a doctor's care.

And again, it was the idea that this hit me from out of the blue. I wasn't even aware I was worried about something, and suddenly I'm in the hospital, not being able to breathe. I'm powerless over this. Ah, I found a way in and it was my powerlessness that gave me connection to the Lord and helped me get a grip on that. So I know it can help you change because it's literally helped me and it helps me help others. We all have friends and family who struggle with addiction. Maybe your own kids. Maybe your own parents. And you've probably found yourself at some point thinking or yelling, hey, just stop. Why do you keep doing that? What is wrong with you? And how helpful have you found that to be? Not very. When you learn these steps, it gives you compassion and also wisdom, insight into what could actually help.

And then third, it helps me share my faith. I'll give you an example. Some of you know that my career before I was a pastor was broadcasting, and what I did a lot of was voice work, like for little liners for radio stations. Those are little things that they play between songs or before and after commercials, like, if you don't believe me, I'll just do it, you're tuned to the bright and the beautiful. This is K-B-A-Y, San Jose, Oakland, San Francisco. So that was the kind of thing that I did before I became a pastor. Okay. Thank you so much. Well, so several years ago, I mean, I'm talking 20, 25 years ago, I was in the studios of KSCO, the local talk radio station, and they had asked me to record some liners for them, which they're still using.

I'm recording those in that studio, and the production director's on the other side of the glass. He's at the control board, and he is just needling me constantly, like through the intercom. Okay, let's try line 18, and by the way, so you're a pastor right here. Well, that's all a crock. Okay, line 18, take one. And so finally I said, you know what? Let's take a little break. It sounds like there's a story behind that? And so we grabbed a cup of coffee in the back room, and he said, yeah, you know what? I grew up going, I mean, he was really angry. He said, I grew up going to Sunday school, and it completely led me astray. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, the Ten Commandments were hanging on every single Sunday school room, and he said every week, basically the message could be summarized as the teacher pointing to the Ten Commandments saying, try harder to do those.

And he said, well, I became an alcoholic and you know what I discovered? Trying harder doesn't work. You know what does? Admitting you are powerless and that only a higher power can change you, not all this religious churchy stuff. What do you say to that pastor? And I said, well, you just summarized the gospel? And he said, yeah! What? And I said, the 12 steps, I think, summarize the gospel better than a lot of Christians can, because the gospel in the Bible is specifically not about trying harder. It's about admitting I am doomed unless God, by his grace, changes me from the inside out. He said, that's the gospel? And eventually John began attending here at TLC every week and loving it until he moved out of the area for another job.

See, learning these steps will help you share your faith because it helps you speak the language of a culture that's all around you. It's ubiquitous in our society. And so on all these levels, it's so beneficial to study these, especially the biblical foundations. Are you ready for this? Let's dig in. This week what I want to do is look at the first two steps, and I want to show you, I want to summarize them, explain them, and then show you how you see them in Scripture. You could summarize these first two steps this way. I can't, he can't. Say that with me. I can't, he can't. I want you to remember this so that when you're leaving church this morning and you're driving away, you're going, what was the sermon about again? You can remember these four words because this is what it's about. Say it again. I can't. He can.

The way step one, I can't, is usually worded in 12-step groups is like this. We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors. You could put over our troubles that our lives had become unmanageable. Powerless. And again, it's not just alcoholics and drug addicts. It's all of us. Like Isaiah wrote, we all, like sheep, have wandered off and gone astray. And the Apostle Paul wrote this in Romans 7:15. I mean, this is the Apostle Paul. Well, I don't understand what I do. For what I want to do, I don't do. But what I hate, I do. And we've all been there. Now, let me just say that I've heard some people try to justify themselves by saying something like this. Well, you know, drugs and alcohol are actual addictions because you become chemically dependent. But this thing that I'm into, it's not really that bad because it's not an addiction. Like hoarding or raging or porn or pot. Those are not actually chemical addictions. Don't get sidetracked by that pointless debate. Because look at 2 Peter 2:19. Peter says, you're a slave to whatever has mastered you. That's like a mic drop verse right there, right?

Because if you're fantasizing about something, if you're indulging in something, if you're thinking about something that you can't seem to stop. I mean, even if it's as small as just, you know, psychologists talk a lot these days about just phone addiction and not specifically something like gambling or pornography even, just endlessly scrolling. They call it doom scrolling. And some people spend hours and hours and hours and hours just doing this and getting sprains in their thumb. I'm not joking. That really is a thing now because this has just become an addiction. You are a slave to whatever has mastered you. So how do you get free? Well, that's step two. Came to believe. Came to believe, by the way, I love that phrase because it shows that faith is a process. It's not always instant. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Like the Apostle Paul says about his own weakness. He says, but God said to me, this is such a good recovery verse, by the way. This is it. My grace is sufficient for you, for my power, God's power, is perfected in weakness. A lot of times Christians think that spiritually mature people, they don't talk about their weaknesses because they don't really have any weaknesses anymore because they're spiritually mature. This is the most spiritually mature guy in the first century except for Jesus, right? The Apostle Paul. And he's like, well, I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses. I've got to be candid and transparent about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest on me. That is so beautiful. And you see these two steps all through scripture. Again, you could summarize these two steps as I can't, he can't. Say that again with me. I can't. He can. And this is the key to getting through what you are going through.

Think about all the things you cannot control. In a way, it's a blessing when, and I've heard many people who are chemically dependent tell me this, it was a blessing to have an overt weakness like alcoholism or drug addiction because it was undeniable at some point. Even though they did live in denial for a while, it was not, it was apparent to everybody around, right? But many of us still try to control things that we can't really control and it's just not apparent to other people because it's so internal. But these two steps are such a key to freedom because there are so many things that you may be obsessed with that you cannot control. You cannot control the weather. You cannot control what other people think about you. You cannot control the world headlines. You cannot control your adult children. You cannot control your cancer. You cannot control your spouse's cancer, and so on.

And what happens is we try to control things we cannot control. Letting go of the illusion of control is the key to serenity. And you see this all through the Bible. Abraham had to get to a point where he said, I can't, only God can. Moses had to get to a point, and for him it didn't come until he was 80 years old, where he said, I can't, but God can. King David had to get to a point where he said, I can't, God can. And if you flip your notes over, you can see this also in the life of Jonah. In fact, if you have your Bibles, you can turn to the book of Jonah. We're going to be mostly in chapter 2. But each week in this series, I want to show you from the Bible how you can see that week's steps in scripture. And Jonah's story starts, as so many of our stories do start, in the control phase. That's where you imagine that you are in control. You're in the driver's seat. You don't want anyone telling you what to do, not even God.

Look at Jonah 1:1. The word of the Lord came to Jonah. Get up, go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it because its wickedness has come up before me. So Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, and God wants to give them a chance to repent. But Jonah ran away from the Lord. He goes in the exact opposite direction and headed for Tarshish. Now, I want you to look at a map. God calls him to go from Israel, we find him near the port of Joppa, and to go to Nineveh. It's not too far, but it's over here toward the east. That's where modern-day Mosul is in Iraq today. But Jonah hops on a ship and wants to go all the way to Tarshish. That was a colony that was wealthy. It was the furthest westward colony in those days. This happened around 600 BC, and that's in a bay that's right outside the Straits of Gibraltar. So that is as far as he could possibly go in the exact opposite direction from where God wanted him to go.

And I want you to look at how easy it was for Jonah to go the wrong direction. It says he headed for Tarshish, went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that point. Found a ship. It was not like ships for Tarshish were leaving, you know, every hour on the hour. I looked this up. Historians say in those days, ships left from Alexandria, Joppa, that area, for Tarshish, maybe four times a year. But there it is, just when he needs it. Look, it is never hard to do the wrong thing. People say, well, there was an open door. Figured it was like the universe directing me. It's like the joke about the man giving up donuts. And one day he's driving to church, but he feels that craving. And so he prays, Lord, if there's an open parking spot right in front of the donut shop, I will take that as a sign from you. And sure enough, 12th time around the block, there was a spot right there. There are always open doors including in the wrong direction this is why you got to get your guidance from God not from circumstances right then comes the crisis phase the consequences.

Verse 4 then the Lord said a great wind on the sea and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. What happens next? Well, somebody said there are four typical reactions to crisis, and you see them all in Jonah. Pardon me. First, withdrawal. And this is something went wrong. You're in shock. You want to go into hiding. You don't want to see any people. Verse 5 all the sailors were afraid, and each cried out to his own God, and they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he laid down and fell into a deep sleep. This is not the calm sleep of faith. This is the sleep of wanting to numb my brain and not want to see people. And then the next stage, denial and blame. Everybody gets together on deck, and then the sailors said to each other, come, let us cast lots of like throwing dice to find out who is responsible for this collapse. Why didn't they know who was responsible? Jonah knew who was responsible, but Jonah's not volunteering any information. And by his silence, he is implicating anybody else who happens to step forward first. But the lot fell on Jonah.

And so they asked him, tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? They still don't think he's the guy, but they think he might have the info. And now Jonah goes into the next step, partial confession, where you only admit as much as you think you need to. I guess I drank one too many last night when it was 12 too many when it was all last week, right? Verse 9 he answered, I am a Hebrew, and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land the end. That is all I have to say at this moment. What does that tell them? Nothing that they actually want to know. This is a partial truth yet he's still not coming clean but his slip up was he said that the god he worships made the sea and verse 10 says that terrified the sailors because they were like what have you done to offend the god of the sea and now jonah knows he's cornered and he goes all the way from denial to complete self-loathing despair. Despair. And this is kind of a crack-up, but it's very insightful. Verse 12 pick me up and throw me into the sea, he replied, and it'll become calm. I know it's my fault. You know, he goes, why don't you just kill me? He goes from zero to 10 with no stops in between. We're so familiar with the story, right, that we know how it goes. But did God ever tell him? Jump overboard. This is his own idea. You know, couldn't he just have said, oh yeah, turn the ship around. Or can you put me off at the next port? In those days, ships didn't go straight across the sea. They just hugged the coast and they just went from port to port and island to island. He could have said, yeah, you got to put me off at the next port because I got to find my way back. That's probably all God wanted him to say, and the storm would have calmed, and they could have done God's will. And all God needs me to say is, oh, yeah, I'm going to turn around. But instead, I can get all dramatic, just like Jonah. I do not deserve to breathe oxygen. But God wants me to change, not die. In fact, this overreacting self-loathing is part of the problem because it's still all about me.

And in this case, it's still all about Jonah. Think about it. It's still not about the thousands of people in Nineveh that God cares about and wants to reach. He's still only thinking about himself. He's still the center of his own little universe. When my guilty conscience says, I've done it again. I hate myself for it. And God must hate me too. And maybe if I beat myself up emotionally really bad, God might like that or something. If I'm that self-loathing, if I'm just thinking about what a worm I am, that is not a route back to God. That is a route right back to me because I'm still focused on me. Whether I'm self-indulging or self-loathing, it's still all about self, which is the problem. Yet eventually, that downward spiral can bring you to the clarity phase. And in recovery circles, they refer to what they call a moment of clarity. And here is Jonah's moment of clarity. Jonah thinks he's going to die, but the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah.

It's so funny to me to think of God going, oh, he's not going to a port. I got to find a fish that's big enough to swallow this. Anyway, God provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights. Now, let me just pause here in case you're thinking, do we actually believe this part of the story? First, God can do anything. And second, things kind of like this do happen from time to time. And I would venture to suggest that events like this do get written down because they're so unusual. In 2021, June 11, the Cape Cod Times carried the story of lobster diver Michael Packard. In the story, they even show his boat and himself in the hospital after this incident. So, he dove down for lobster, and article says, quote, about 10 feet from the bottom in something truly biblical, Packard was swallowed whole by a humpback whale. As Packard recalled, all of a sudden, I felt this huge shove, and the next thing I knew, it was completely black. I was completely inside its mouth, and I thought to myself, there's no way I'm getting out of here. I'm done. I'm dead. All I could think of was my boys. They're 12 and 15 years old. Well, eventually the whale began shaking its head and swam back toward the surface. He says, and the next thing I knew, I was outside his mouth in the water. So kind of like Jonah.

But the point of this story in the Bible is not check out this Ripley's Believe It or Not type event. Jonah's story is in the Bible because it's meant to personify the arc of the nation of Israel's story and the human story, how God wants us to go this direction toward life and meaning and purpose, but we run from God, and then we get into these almost comically impossible jams where we can turn back to God, and He's there to receive us and to save us when we do. This is the arc of every story in Scripture, right, showing that we humans are not heroic. We humans are powerless to overcome these tendencies often, and we need to turn our will over to God. So it says, from inside the fish, from inside the fish, Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. You know, I was thinking it's nice to pray on the shore, looking at the sunset, but sometimes the best prayers are the inside the fish prayers. And some of you right now, you're inside the fish. Because that's when I finally admit my powerlessness. And look at the beautiful way this is phrased. If you ever need an inside the fish prayer and you can't find the words, try this one on. Jonah 2. Jonah said, In my distress I called to the Lord and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help and you listened to my cry. I sank down to the heart of the sea. The mighty waters engulfed me. I was buried beneath your wild and stormy waves. Can you relate to this just on an emotional level? I sank beneath the waves and the waters closed over me. Seaweed wrapped itself around my head. I read that and I thought, at first I thought that actually happened to me one time when I was surfing on my paddleboard. And then I thought, wait, that actually happened to me one time at the beach baptism. So many of us can relate to that.

But he sinks and sinks and sinks until he really hits bottom. To the roots of the mountains I sank down. The earth beneath barred me in forever. I mean, that's subterranean. That's all the way. Talk about hitting bottom. And maybe you feel like that right now too. What do you do? You can always do what Jonah did. I realize only God can save me. He says, for my salvation comes from the Lord alone. The Lord alone. I can't do it. I can't do it. And God does save him. And Jonah does go to Nineveh. And all the people there do repent. And guess what? They don't even have to go through a crisis. They just hear the word and they turn to God and nothing bad has to happen to them first. And Jonah is kind of mad about that. But I love that their story is in the Bible too because that means you don't have to wait for the crisis. You can turn to God right now and receive this word. Romans 5:6 says, you see, at just the right time, when we were still what? Powerless. Christ died for the ungodly. God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Recognizing this truth will change your life.

And in case you're thinking this is all Sunday school propaganda, every week in this series, I'm going to introduce you to some people right here at TLC, many of them from our recovery groups, who have had their lives changed. I'd like you to meet two of them right now. Watch the screen.

Hi, I'm Rick. This is my wife, Kim. And we live in Soquel. I didn't know that Alcoholics Anonymous was going to lead me to God when I got sober, but I knew I couldn't drink anymore. I didn't want to be like my mother who drank most of her adult life. It took the course of many years for me. You know, I have 44 years now, so it wasn't all very pretty in the beginning. I made a lot of bad decisions, and I didn't understand who God was. I never drank again, because I know that wasn't an option for me, but I made poor decisions about relationships, shopping, thinking, anything, how I relate to other people. I didn't really know any better, and they put me in a place of a period of what I call the dark night of the soul. It was about three years long, and that's when I went out seeking again, there's got to be another way. And I found Twin Lakes, oddly enough, through a funeral that I came to for someone else. And it was about four or five years later, I went, I've got to find that church again. Where was that church? And I came back here, and I've been here ever since. That's when my journey really started of understanding God. And so I had my most honest conversation with God that I've ever had. And it was something like, God, I don't know who you are. I don't trust you. I don't understand you. Please show me who you are. Show me who I am. And I left it at that. It was very simple. And from that point on, everything started to happen in my life that took me in the direction of having a personal relationship with God in my understanding, who I call Jesus Christ.

What got me here in 2001 was my fifth DUI. In 1986, I got my fourth. And it was kind of my first introduction to AA. And my attorney told me to go to meetings to get signatures. So I went to a bunch of meetings and I read the steps and I checked them off of my head and I did them in two days. So when I got my fifth one in 2001, I knew what I, you know, it's like I need to go and get a sponsor. It was having somebody and get involved. It was night and day. So I actually took the steps, not just read them and checked them off in my mind. For me early on in sobriety was it was just thy will was the serenity prayer. I would just say, you know, 20, 30 times a day, God grant me the serenity to accept the things that cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. A couple of weeks ago, Mark gave a sermon and he said, someone had a bumper sticker at one point that says, God is my co-pilot. And I laughed and I remembered that. And I thought, why would you ever want God to be your co-pilot to say, oh, I've got this today. I don't need any help from you. And that's, that is what happens is we take back our power from God on a daily basis. And on a daily basis, we have to give it to God rather than just take it and keep it. Amen.

In other words, we have to say, I can't, he can, right? If you want more information about our recovery groups, you can go to tlc.org/recovery. Our next meeting is tomorrow night, and you are welcome. The big idea is this. God changes people, and he can change you. Let's close in prayer, and I'm going to do it a little bit different. If you flip your notes over to the back, you'll notice that I put a prayer. I wrote it down. And what I'm going to do is pray this out loud. And if this reflects where you're at, you can pray it silently in your heart. It'll also be on the screen. I don't want to push anyone, but some of you are ready for this right now. Ready to pray this.

Dear God, I admit that I am powerless to control this tendency to do things that are unhealthy for me. Today, I am asking for your help. I need your power to break habits I can't break. I need your power to forgive what I can't forgive. I need your power to settle anxieties I can't release. Please heal me, and please help me stick with the process. Amen.