October 7, 2025 • 45 mins
While the Christian community loves stories of salvation, it struggles with stories of sanctification--the often-messy journey of becoming like Jesus. As a result, many Christians who stumble are mired in shame, especially when it comes to one of society's biggest post-Covid obsessions: alcohol. But there is hope for those willing to rethink their drinking. Jonathon M. Seidl will join us to tell his own story of disordered drinking. Not only will he address the roots of addiction, trauma, and the often-overlooked reality that Christians aren't immune to sin struggles, he will also reframe the term alcoholic and share the practical yet spiritual four-step process he used to break free.
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S1 (00:00):
Hi friend, thank you so much for downloading this podcast
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Love of the Lord by my friend and frequent guest,
(00:22):
Doctor Sam Storms. You know, he tells us that so
often we struggle with this idea of feeling like we're
loved by God, or that somehow we've done something that
separates us from the love of God. But we fail
to remember the Scripture that reminds us that while we
were yet sinners, not perfect, not all put together, not
everything's all been worked out while we were yet sinners.
That's when Christ died. For us. Love is an action word,
(00:44):
and that's what Doctor Sam Storms reminds us in his book,
The Steadfast Love of God. I don't know about you,
but with the headlines of the day, being reminded of
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(01:26):
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And now with all my heart, I hope you hear
(02:10):
something today that really changes your perspective and makes you
excited about being a follower of Jesus Christ. Enjoy the program!
S2 (02:19):
Here are some of the news headlines we're watching.
S3 (02:21):
The conference was over. The president won a pledge.
S4 (02:23):
Americans worshiping government over God.
S3 (02:25):
Extremely rare safety move by a 17 years.
S5 (02:29):
The Palestinians and Israelis negotiated.
S3 (02:31):
This is not over. Hi friends.
S1 (02:47):
Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall. Thank you
so much for joining me this hour. And you know what?
First of all, I have to tell you in advance,
I'm so looking forward to this conversation. Second of all,
I think it's going to stun some of the people
that are listening right now. And there's a boatload of
people listening from Guam all the way to the Cayman Islands,
because we're going to talk about, well, addiction, and we're
(03:08):
going to talk about, well, telling the story when you're
a Christian alcoholic. Oh, wait, don't don't hit the car
in front of you when you drive home. I know,
I know, but, you know, let's just put it all
out there. I think we should, by the way, because
in doing so, we recognize the power of the gospel,
and the gospel changes everything. We are broken, fractured, earthen vessels.
(03:31):
And in the midst of all of that, God pours
his message into us, this imperishable message. I don't get it.
It's the antithesis of how me, as a mere mortal,
thinks it should be done. You'd only pour this into
Waterford Crystal or Royal Doulton, wouldn't you? Not fractured clay pots.
But he does. And I love talking to other fractured
clay pots because I am one. And I'm so glad
that Jonathan Settle is back on the program. Boy, can
(03:52):
this guy tell a story? He's been doing it for
a long time. He's written over 10,000 stories. Talk about creativity. First,
after helping start a successful news website and then as
the editor in chief of the popular nonprofit I Am Second,
which I love. If you don't know anything about that ministry.
He writes and speaks all across the country on the
power of storytelling, radical vulnerability, faith, mental health and addiction. Now,
(04:18):
as much as Jonathan loves to tell a story, I'm
wondering if this was a story he thought maybe he'd
never have to tell, but soon discovered it was a
story he needed to tell. So he wrote it all
in a book. He asked sports fans with a beer
can on the cover that says confessions of a Christian Alcoholic,
a candid conversation on drinking addiction and how to break Free.
(04:39):
Pull up a chair. Jonathan. We've got a lot to
talk about. First high five. Kudos. Way to go. Thanks
for your courage and your transparency.
S6 (04:46):
Well, Janet, that means a lot coming from you because
I'll be honest, this is one of the interviews when
my PR team said that you wanted to talk. I
was nervous about because I've talked to you before, right.
I came on the program when I was talking about
faith and mental health, and not that I didn't trust
that you would handle the story well, but I think
it's just what you said is, is not something that
(05:10):
is as prominent. Right? This idea that we're all on
this journey of sanctification and that we're all these clay pots,
you know, and I think the church has to do
a little bit better with that. And so I was like,
all right, well, Janet, I love her. I'm going to
give it to her. So here we go.
S1 (05:28):
Well, thank you for that because I'll tell you what,
more of us are messes than most people know. And
I think when we say, and this is just bad theology, Jonathan,
you know this. I'm a Christian, therefore I'm a fill
in the blank. I will never fill in the blank.
Are you kidding? I mean, there's no time temptation, right,
that any of us haven't experienced. Our Savior knows that
full well. And so why would we think that addiction
(05:50):
only happens to people outside the family of faith, but
never happens to people inside the family of faith? And
the problem is, and that's one of the reasons why
I love your work, is this radical vulnerability, is that
when you got your mid-week prayer meeting, are they still
happening cricket out there? That's how I grew up, by
the way. You'd have those mid-week prayer meetings, and after
you study the word, you'd have that prayer time and
someone says, I'm struggling with alcohol. What would we do
(06:11):
that today? No, because we still have this idea that
you come to faith in Christ and then everything is perfect.
What a delusional gospel message it is. Anything but Christianity
is not for cowards, and it's filled with broken people.
Broken people who can only put one foot in front
of the other because of what Christ has done in,
for and through us. That's why, Jonathan, your story is
so important, and that's why I made that little reference
(06:33):
to don't hit the car in front of you, because
I bet right now you're talking to a boatload of
Christians who struggle with addiction. Whether it's alcohol, sex, porn, drugs.
I don't know what it is, I don't care. It's addiction.
And we're going to talk about that. And not a 12,
but a four step program as we go in into
this conversation with Jonathan. But I want to start first
with your story. So deep breath. It all started at
deer camp. Tell me about this.
S6 (06:55):
Yeah. You know, I always had an up and down
relationship with alcohol. Janet. You know, I think the first
time I got drunk, I was 13. I grew up
in Wisconsin, which I know you have listeners there, and
it's it's it's, you know, this is not an exaggeration.
It is literally ground zero for alcoholism and drunkenness. It is.
S1 (07:11):
Can we name all the beers out of Wisconsin? Yeah,
I'm a former Wisconsinite. Right.
S6 (07:15):
Exactly, exactly.
S1 (07:16):
You go to Milwaukee. It was brewery. It's Schlitz, all
of those beers.
S7 (07:20):
Schlitz. Yeah, exactly. So I have to pause right now. Yes.
The playoffs is the Brewers.
S1 (07:26):
Yes. Okay. Now. So yay Brewers. That's absolutely fascinating. And
by the way, you can take the man out of
Wisconsin and the woman for that matter. But you can't
take the Packers out of the man or the woman.
Are you still a Packers fan because you live in
Texas or are you now Cowboys?
S6 (07:40):
Oh, no, I'm a Packers owner.
S7 (07:41):
Yes, sir. You know, this is why I love Jonathan. Okay. So,
you know, I grew up.
S6 (07:47):
Where it was just it is not just culturally accepted
but culturally expected, you know. And so I got drunk
at deer camp, you know, hunting in the north woods
of Wisconsin for the first time. And I will say, though,
what's interesting is it's not that I got drunk for
the first time, and then it was just all downhill
(08:07):
from there. But what I remembered from what that time
and what my body remembered and what my mind remembered,
is the feeling that that gave me. And as someone
and we talked about this last time I was in
the show, I had undiagnosed anxiety and OCD for so long. Right.
And so it was instant relief. Now it scared me.
It scared me enough to keep me from getting drunk
(08:30):
until I was 21. But I still remembered, right? And
so what happened in my life, especially in my adult life,
is as I would hit hard times in my life,
I would I would drink more, right? And I was
able to cut back and I was able to pull back.
But it was always kind of that thing that when
things got really bad, a little more drinking was helpful.
(08:52):
And here's the thing that's true, right? It is true.
I say like, alcohol wasn't my problem. It was the
solution to my problems, right? It gave me relief. And
so my ultimate addiction, though, was to escapism. Okay. I
wanted to escape. And so, you know, as life continued,
(09:15):
you know, I say like there were healed and whole and,
and great parts of myself and those parts of myself
that I had given to Jesus were parts that wrote
that best selling book on faith and mental health. And
all the stuff I wrote in there was true. In fact, Janet,
I even wrote in that book, I need to be
careful how much I know that I need to be
careful how much I drink. Right? That was true. Now,
(09:38):
what I didn't realize is the hardest part of my
life was coming up, and I was going to go
headlong into the easy and quick escape.
S1 (09:48):
Wow, what a perfect setup to our conversation. I am
so happy that Jonathan is here and I just know
I believe this to the marrow of my bones. We
are talking to somebody today who struggles in this area.
Hasn't told a soul. This is your closeted problem, your pain.
You're dealing with this and you think you can't tell
a soul really well. Jonathan's telling a national audience right now.
(10:09):
If he can say it out loud, you can say
it out loud because you can find healing, just like
Jonathan did. Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic back after this.
Zephaniah 317 tells us, God loves us so much that
he breaks out in song over his children. That's why
I have chosen the steadfast love of the Lord as
(10:29):
this month's truth tool. Learn to know the everlasting, unchanging,
soul saving love of God. Ask for your copy of
the steadfast Love of the Lord. When you give a
gift of any amount to in the end the market.
Call eight 7758. That's 877 Janet 58 or go to
in the market with Janet Parshall. Jonathan Seidel is with us,
(10:50):
by the way. He referenced his best selling book. I'm
going to say it again because you need to read
this one as well. So many people struggle in the
area of anxiety. It's called finding rest. It's skyrocketed to
a bestseller, and he currently runs the popular daily devotional
website The Veritas Daily. And that's easy to find. The
Veritas Daily.com, he writes on faith, culture and addiction. And
(11:11):
in the meantime, when he's not doing all of this,
you're working on your masters, which you hope to get
by the end of the year. Tell me what you're
getting your masters in, Jonathan.
S6 (11:19):
Masters in Theological Studies. And so I'll be graduating seminary, uh,
December 5th. So I'm in my last classes.
S1 (11:28):
I can hear the smile on your face.
S7 (11:30):
Yeah, it's it's definitely there for sure.
S1 (11:32):
I'm so glad. All right, let me go back to this.
And by the way, Jonathan's here today because of his
second book, which I think is going to be a bestseller,
although a lot of people might not want other people
to know they bought the book. But let's just get
real here. Radical vulnerability. One of the things Jonathan is
passionate about. Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic. This is part memoir.
He breaks the book up into different sections, but it
(11:53):
starts with his story. So I want to go back
to something you said before talking about Deer Camp 13,
drinking in an environment. There is nobody who, when they
get their high school yearbook, says, I want to become
an addict in four years. Everybody who deals with addiction
does it because there's some kind of pain. Why? Because
whether it's porn or drugs or alcohol or shopping or
(12:14):
whatever it is, it numbs the senses. And when your
arm wrestling with anxiety every day you have a little alcohol,
you're thinking it'll dial me down. This is exactly what
I'm looking at. And so you you gravitate toward it
because of the effect that it gives. But nobody thinks
I'm going to get to a point where it runs
my life, right?
S6 (12:31):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's interesting because someone once
asked me, you know, um, well, they said they said so. John,
are you just kind of like, drinking away the bad
things that happen to you as a child? Because I
did have, um, dealt with trauma undealt with things that, um, frankly,
I just didn't want to talk about. And I said, well,
you know, in some ways, yes, but in other ways
(12:54):
you learn habits of escapism. Right? And so at six, it's,
you know, Tonka toys and Barney at 36 it's tequila
and bourbon, right. You learn I just I just don't
want to sit with this, whatever this is. And even
though after I wrote that first book, life was Good,
(13:15):
you know, that's kind of what I was referencing going
into break. It's like then life got really tough, tougher
than I ever thought it could be. And in that moment,
if you will, or in that season, it was so
much easier to just drink and and what's interesting to
back to your point, Janet, it's not like I sat
down one night and said, okay, I'm gonna get hammered
(13:37):
every night. You know, it's it's that it's that one
glass of bourbon led to two, and then two led
to three, and then three led to five. And then
you start putting and you're just like, you know what?
It is so much easier to just check out now
that has consequences. And that's what started to take over.
So from 2021, you know, last time we talked 2021,
(14:00):
I wrote that book. And unfortunately, even though it did well,
I realized I had unrealized or unmet expectations. I had
a friend call me up and he said, you know,
be careful. You're going to write the book. And a
little bit after that, you're just going to feel a
little lost because you've been working on this for two years,
(14:21):
you know? And once you get done, it's just kind
of like you're like, what do I do with myself?
You know, you hear this with athletes that retire all
the time, they retire. And and even though they complained
about training camp now, now training camp comes along and
they just like I don't know what to do. Right.
And that was the first domino for me is I
started feeling that. And then the second domino, I was
(14:43):
running my own consulting company in digital media, and I
lost my biggest client two weeks before Christmas. And, you know,
people listening to this, it's like you do. You're in
any type of client work. You can't find new clients
two weeks before Christmas, you know, and then you fast
forward to the spring. And my son started limping around
and he was four at the time. And we're looking
at him and we take him to the pediatrician and
(15:05):
they say, oh, he's fine. But my wife, being the
being the good mama bear that she is, says, no, no, no, no, no,
something's wrong. And we take him to a pediatric specialist. And,
you know, it's kind of those one of those out
of the movie. By the end of the day, we're
set up with a with an appointment with an oncologist,
and my son's got a tumor in his shin. And
(15:27):
even though, by God's grace, it ended up being benign.
That process was still hard. And so those type of things,
those little things that just kept chipping away at my
resolve and it was so much easier. And it is
so much easier. It's so much easier to take whatever
(15:48):
the pull, the ripcord, the food, the alcohol, the porn,
the work.
S7 (15:53):
Right.
S6 (15:54):
Or how about this the ministry, you know, how many
times do ministers throw themselves into all the problems at
church because they don't want to deal with the problems
at home, right? And it's so much easier to do that.
And that's what I did. And so May 2023 Janet.
It really comes to a head. My wife and I
are on a trip in Miami. Uh, we our anniversary
(16:17):
is right around Memorial Day, so we always kind of
have a built in, you know, three day weekend. And
so we we always try to pick a new place.
And so we had picked Miami. We've been planning this
for about a year. and we go down there and
we're a couple days in and my wife says, hey,
I'd love to have just a night in. She's an introvert,
I'm an extrovert. And, uh, and I said, okay, that's fine.
(16:39):
And by this time she had started, even though I
was quote unquote hiding it, I wasn't hiding it as well.
Which newsflash to those people listening who think they're hiding it.
Even if even if your spouse or your significant other,
someone doesn't know exactly what's going on, they know something
is going on, right? That's what sin does. Sin is
not a private matter, right? And so I, um, I
(17:03):
look at her or she looks at me and she says, um,
all right, why don't you go do something? And I'm like,
I'm just going to go down to the hotel bar.
I'll have a couple appetizers, I'll have a couple drinks,
and she says, okay, but don't get drunk. And I said,
I will not get drunk. And I can tell you, Janet,
that I had every intention of not getting drunk. And
(17:24):
so I go down to the hotel bar. I have
my first drink and I can't tell you how many
I have after that, because at that point it became
the only drink I can say no to is the
first one. And? And by the end of the night, I.
Down at the beach. It's one in the morning. I'm
waiting in the ocean because I have to go to
(17:44):
the bathroom. There's nothing around. I start going to the bathroom.
It starts coming out of all ends. And I look
up and I'm like, what has my life become?
S1 (17:55):
What a place to take a break. But it doesn't
end there. That's why I'm so glad we're talking to Jonathan.
It doesn't end there. The book is divided into three parts.
First is Jonathan's story. The second part is making sense
of it. The third part of it is how you
break free. And oh, I could spend hours talking to
Jonathan about this topic, but I want to give you
a sense. So if this is you, you need this book,
(18:16):
confessions of a Christian Alcoholic back after this. We are
spending the hour with Jonathan Seidel, who is a wonderful
storyteller and author. He understands the power of digital platforms.
I understands the power of a testimony. I am second,
(18:38):
and he's just written a couple of excellent books. The
first one talks about his struggle with anxiety called Finding Rest,
and the other is even more bold and transparent, and
it really puts into practice his belief in radical vulnerability.
It's called confessions of a Christian Alcoholic, a candid conversation
on drinking addiction and how to Break Free. I want
to linger here a little bit with your story, because
(19:00):
it really puts into the court record the ethos as
well as the pathos, and I think that's paramount that
you know exactly what you're talking about. Been there, done that,
standing in the water in Miami. Don't lecture me. I
was there. And it raises a panoply of questions like
people who think, well, the Bible says, don't get drunk
with wine so I can drink it as long as
I'm not getting drunk. I bet you said that to
yourself a time or two as well. And then you're
(19:22):
sitting there realizing, and you said something important in the
last segment. You had to say no to the first drink.
You didn't. And then it was just a cascade after that.
What happened? That was that moment. And, you know, the
wonderful thing sometimes about going as low as you can
go is that you have no choice but to look up.
And that's exactly what you did. Take me from your
journey that night in the water in Miami for what happened?
S6 (19:43):
Yeah. You know, I say you don't realize how much
you need Jesus until he's all you have to hold
on to you. And when.
S7 (19:49):
You're.
S6 (19:50):
You know, drunk and waiting in your own feces, you
realize this. Doing it on my own thing, even as
a Christian. Right? Even as a Christian, you said something
really important in the introduction, Janet. The gospel is not
just for unbelievers. It is for believers. Be transformed by
the renewing of your mind. Right. We have to. That
transformation continues, right? It's called sanctification. It's that ongoing process
(20:14):
of becoming more like Jesus. Salvation is a lifeline. Sanctification
is a is a lifetime. So I'm sitting there and
you might think as I'm looking up and saying, what
does my life become that that is in a sense
the rock bottom moment. And in some ways it is.
But then I sober up. I guess you could say.
I go back to the hotel room, I wake up
(20:35):
the next day and my wife is already down by
the beach, and I come down there and she looks
at me and she says, John, did you get drunk
last night? And just so quickly and so easily I
lie and I say, nope. And I even surprised me, right?
You know, just just how how quickly and easily that
(20:56):
came out of my mouth. And I call this my
Peter moment because two other times throughout the day, she
asked me, John, did you get drunk last night? No, no,
I did not get maybe, maybe a little tipsy, you know.
But that whole time, Janet, the Holy Spirit is just
cranking on me on the inside. And there's some people
listening to this that I hope the Holy Spirit is
(21:16):
just cranking on you with this. And, um, I go
to that to dinner that night, and I'm just like, okay,
I gotta come clean. And so over dinner, I say, babe,
I need to tell you something. I did get drunk
last night, and she breaks down pretty easily. And she says,
you know, I know you did. I just needed you
(21:37):
to say it. She says, I don't think you know
what that does to a woman, though, you know, what
else are you lying about? And I start making all
the promises, and, you know, we pay for dinner, barely
eat anything. We actually end up walking back down to
the beach to almost exactly where I was the night before.
And we're sitting there and she looks at me after
(21:58):
I make all the promises, I'm never going to drink again.
I know I need help, you know something's wrong. And
she says, John, I don't care if you never drink again.
Like that's not what I want from you. I don't
want you to promise me that you'll never drink again,
she said. You have to get to the root of
why you're drinking the way that you are. Because if
(22:19):
you don't, it's just going to be something else. And
I kind of think in my head, I didn't say
this out loud, but I'm thinking there. I'm like, can
we just go back to the not drinking part? You know.
S7 (22:29):
Like, yeah.
S6 (22:30):
That would be.
S7 (22:30):
Easier. Yes. Right.
S6 (22:32):
Um, but she said, you know, you have root issues,
you have trauma that you've never dealt with. You have,
you know, abuse in your past. You got to get
to the root to get to the root. And so
the commitment that I made to her that day was
not to never drink again. The commitment I made to
(22:53):
her was, okay, I'm I'm going to start doing surgery
on the soul, and I'm going to invite Jesus into
all of the parts of myself. See, Janet, I think,
you know, you invite a guest over, right? And you
clean up the living room. You clean up the kitchen.
In fact, maybe there are even a family member and
they're going to help you clean up the living room.
They're going to help you clean up the kitchen. But
(23:13):
you know what you do. You close that bedroom door.
Especially if it's your kids, right? You close that. You
close that kid's bedroom door because that thing is messy.
You don't want anyone seeing it in there. And I
think what so many of us do is we invite
Jesus in and we're okay with him helping us clean
up the living room and the kitchen. But we close
that bedroom door and we say, you, you two shall
(23:34):
not pass. Right. You are not going to go in there.
And what ends up happening is the is the junk,
and the food that is rotting in there ends up
spilling over into those clean parts that that smell, you know,
takes over the living room and and soon it just
destroys the whole house. And Jesus says, no, I want
it all. I'm coming for it all. Right. And so
(23:57):
those those healthy parts of us can do great things,
but those wounded, those traumatized, those parts that we've we've
walled off from Jesus, you know, those start to spill over.
And that's what happened in my life. And that's what
I committed Added to rooting out in my what I
call my year of intensive therapy. Started seeing a Christian
(24:17):
therapist and I got here's what I tell people I.
The light slowly started coming on. You know, I started
stopped drinking. It was like I took a limitless pill.
That old movie from Bradley Cooper. Start using 100% of
your brain, you know. Didn't realize how much. How much
I was fighting with one hand tied behind my back.
And so, so so I start, I start, I say,
(24:39):
I started smelling colors, I started seeing sounds, right. The
world just became alive to me. And Jesus started healing
those parts of my soul. And I say this I
got and I have the best life now. Not the easiest,
not the easiest, but I have the best life possible now.
S3 (25:01):
Wow.
S1 (25:02):
So when we come back, Jonathan's going to tell you
how this happens and how you can really and truly
break free. This is about addiction. It might not be
alcohol for you, but is there a propensity for you
to be addicted to something because there's pain that you
haven't dealt with? Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic, newest book
by Jonathan Seidel. Back after this. We live in complicated
(25:36):
times and in the market. We're helping you interpret complex
cultural issues through the lens of Scripture. Our team of
partial partners is growing. And to say thank you, they
receive exclusive information from me. In fact, I talked to
you directly from my personal computer to yours by email.
Become a partial partner today and you'll receive these exclusive benefits.
Call 877 Janet 58 or go online to In the
(25:57):
market with Janet Parshall. I'm loving this conversation with Jonathan Seidel.
His new book is called confessions of a Christian Alcoholic
A Candid conversation on drinking addiction and how to break
free in our conversation has been utterly candid up to
this point, and I'm so glad, because I really think
that reaches out into those dark nights of the soul
(26:19):
that so many of you might be dealing with, with addiction.
Maybe it isn't alcohol for you. Alcoholic is simply identifying
that addiction as being tied to alcohol, but there are
a myriad of other addictions out there, and sometimes in
the church, we don't talk about it because we think
it doesn't happen inside the church, which is absolutely, positively ludicrous.
It does. And I think God raises up men like
(26:39):
Jonathan to be able to be bold and say, listen,
this was me. I'm going to tell you how low
I went, and I'm going to tell you what Christ
has done in for and through me. And I want
to go to the second part of the book. I
could linger for a lot longer on your story about
what you went through, but I think people get the
sense of what it was like to just fall so
far down and praise God for a loving wife who
really challenged you and gave you the impetus to go
(27:01):
and start dealing with the cancer, which, by the way,
in and of itself is like, oh, good. So you
drink to numb the pain. Now somebody is asking you
to tear the bandage off so the wound is completely exposed.
Won't this be fun? And yet you know that unless
you get to that trauma, the propensity is going to
be to grab for that which numbs you all over again.
And I want to drop this into a theological context.
So you have a whole section in part two where
(27:22):
you talk about messy sanctification. I wrote this down, Jonathan,
because it's so good. Justification is a lifeline. Sanctification is
a life time. You know, the father of lies, I'm
quite sure, because he does it for all of us.
Might have jumped on your shoulder and said, you think
you were ever saved. You think you'd be forgiven for this?
I mean, really and truly give it a break. How
do we deal with our sanctification, which is every day
(27:45):
being conformed and transformed to the image of Christ moment
by moment? Is it easy? Absolutely not. Is it required?
If you love Jesus and you want to be like
him and you understand how holy he is, absolutely. It
is a part of the Christian life and it's utterly countercultural.
Talk to me about how you work this idea of
Sanctification in the midst of your addiction, particularly tied back
(28:07):
to trauma, because there had to be a part of
you saying, wait, it wasn't my fault that stuff was
happening to me. I didn't choose it to happen to me.
S6 (28:14):
You know, you brought up seminary earlier, and this is
one of the big reasons why I wanted to go
to seminary, right? I knew that it wasn't true, that
when some people and they said this to me, when
some people said, you know what, John, now that you're sober, um,
we don't doubt that you're a Christian, but we're not
sure about your salvation. Leading up to this, because the
(28:37):
Bible says, you know, ongoing sin. You know, if you
if you keep engaging in that, you're a child of
the devil, right? And and I knew I said, you
know what? I know that's wrong. Right. And and there was,
you know, scriptures I could point to, but I really
wanted to understand it. Right. And so this last year
in seminary has been exploring this question. And here's what
(29:01):
I can say with 100% certainty. Right? And you said this, Janet,
but it's so beautiful, is that as Christians, we will sin.
If you look at the Bible, God only works through sinners.
There was only one person that he worked through that
wasn't a sinner. That was Jesus Christ. Everyone else is sinners.
(29:23):
Everyone else who loves Jesus and follows Jesus, who loves
God and follows God. They are sinners. That doesn't stop
the moment they start following Jesus, right? Look at the disciples, right?
You look at Paul and this is the one that
really stands out to me. There's two people that I
point to, Paul and Matthew. Paul, if you if you
(29:45):
read Paul's epistles, he is constantly reminding people about what
a wretched man he is.
S7 (29:51):
That's a quote, right?
S6 (29:52):
He says, wretched man that I am. Not that I was.
What a wretch! Oh, wretched man, that I am.
S7 (30:01):
Right.
S1 (30:01):
How about that body of death? Exactly.
S7 (30:03):
Exactly.
S6 (30:05):
And so Paul in Romans seven spends so many verses explaining,
I do that which I don't want to do, and
that which I don't want to do, I do right.
So that's the first example, Paul. Now I'm going to jump.
I'm going to save Matthew for a second. I'm going
to jump to first John because first John, that's where
you have these verses that talk about, you know, you
(30:26):
can't be a follower of Jesus. You can't be a Christian.
That is that is still engaging in ongoing sin. And
here's what I do. And I do this way more
in depth in the book. But I look at this
and I say, you know what? That's true. That's 100% true.
But here's the thing. You got to realize about the Bible,
there's this thing called context. And if you look in
(30:48):
in first John, first John opens with this statement early
on where John says, my children, I wish that none
of you would sin, but if you do so, let's
stop there. He's. He's already making room. Like, man, I
don't want you guys to sin. But I know, I
know there's there's going to be people who sin. Right.
(31:08):
So then you have to look at and say, okay, well,
what is he talking about? Here's the thing, Janet. Is
it true that if you are caught or if you
are engaging in unrepentant sin for all of your life,
that your salvation is in question? I think so, but
when I look at my own life, I say, you
know what? The Holy Spirit didn't let me write that
(31:31):
it was true. Now, maybe my sin lasted a year
and a half, right? Maybe for someone it's a week,
maybe for someone it's a decade. But the truth is,
we don't get to decide how long they engage in
unrepentant sin before they're not a Christian or never were
a Christian, right? The Holy Spirit, God gets to decide that.
(31:53):
And what was made clear to me is I Absolutely.
Those verses are absolutely true. And they were true in
my life. They were true in my life. The Holy
Spirit would not let me continue. It took a year
and a half, but he would not let me continue.
The final person I point to is Matthew. Uh, Brennan Manning,
(32:14):
very famous, uh, Christian author, Christian alcoholic, actually wrote the
ragamuffin gospel. And in there he points something out that
it was so fascinating to me. He says, you know,
if you look at Mark, Luke and John, how they
talk about Matthew, they always they call him Levi or Matthew.
But if you look at how Matthew talks about Matthew,
(32:36):
Matthew always says, Matthew the tax collector. Now, tax collector,
in those days, you know, this, it was like it
was traitor. It was the it was trash. You were
you were the bottom of the bottom. And here's Matthew
writing this after encountering Jesus. Right. He's writing this years
(32:56):
after after the Risen Christ, and he's saying, Matthew the
tax collector. He's reminding people that's how far Jesus had
to stoop for me. Right. And so I think I
look at Paul, I look at Matthew, I look at
these verses in first John, and I say, sanctification is
messy and we don't make enough room for that in
(33:17):
the church. We want to talk so much about sin.
And I'm not saying we talk less about sin. What
I'm saying, though, is we gotta also talk about grace.
And we get so worried. Janet, we're so scared that
if we talk about grace, people are going to take
this as, hey, you can do whatever you want. And
what I tell.
S7 (33:35):
People is.
S6 (33:36):
Just tell them they can't do whatever they want, you know, like,
it doesn't it doesn't have to be this big, nuanced thing.
You can talk about grace. You can talk about grace
being available for the for the quote unquote non-Christian and
the Christian alike. And you can do that without saying
I condone everything you ever do. No, no, that's not true.
(33:56):
But we need to talk about God's grace. It is
disruptive and it is radical.
S7 (34:00):
Yeah.
S1 (34:01):
Well, let me go back to Brother Paul because again,
he's such an example here. He is the author of
two thirds of the New Testament. And he makes this
declaration that the things I should do, I don't, the
things I don't do, I do. So if Brother Paul
is struggling in this particular area, and this isn't a
license to sin, which takes me to the second point
about Brother Paul, which is you don't have a Mastercard
to sin. All right? Right. You might have the liberty.
(34:22):
You had the liberty to have six Bourbons sitting at
a bar if you wanted to. But the next part
says it all. Was it profitable as your standing defecating
in the ocean in Miami? So the point is what
I think the part of the heft of that verse
to me is that make stupid choices and see what
the consequences are. God is not the author of confusion.
They're going to be consequences for what you do. But
(34:44):
it breaks my heart, actually, Jonathan, that there would be
anyone who would call into question your salvation because it
says to every single person who has a struggle and
I get emails all the time from people who say,
I can't get rid of my addiction to porn or
fill in the blank. And my my fervent prayer is
there is a kind of conviction there, or you wouldn't
have written an email to a radio host.
S7 (35:04):
To say.
S1 (35:04):
I'm struggling in this particular area. That's my first sense
that you're not spiritually dead because you wouldn't be saying,
how do I break this chain, right? So and I
love what you said about I don't see a timetable
in any Bible concordance that says unrepentant sin for a moment,
a week, a year, whatever it is. The point is,
if you know that you're struggling, there's still a quickening
of the Holy Spirit inside of you. And if you
(35:26):
have any question, you know, you can say, Lord, if
there's any questions about my salvation, I ask right now
for you to come into my life and get that
taken care of. But father, I also need to be redeemed. Help!
You need to throw out a lifeline. I cannot do
this by myself. And that's why I like the way
you couple the words messy sanctification. Is anybody sanctification? Clean?
(35:46):
It's a mess. I take one step forward, two steps back,
one step forward, two steps back. Today I'm going to
have a short lecture. You bet. In 27 seconds after
I've said that, bam! I've got an issue that I
need to keep short. You know, short file in front
of the Lord. So, um, I think we get the
problem is, if I can be perfectly honest, is that
we get a little sloppy with the idea of grace, but. Yeah.
(36:08):
And the problem is, we think that it's a license
to sin, you know, like a James Bond movie, right?
This is your license to sin. No it's not. You've
been forgiven. But that grace gives you the liberty to
go back to him, fall on your face and say,
I've messed up. Grace actually gives me the liberty to
recognize my sin, to fall on my face and to confess.
S6 (36:29):
You know, Romans six talks about that, right? Shall you sin?
So grace abounds more? No, which is kind of interesting, right?
Romans six sets that up. And then in Romans seven
he says, but I keep doing the things I don't
want to do. So which I think is interesting. Paul
himself is saying, I don't think I have a license
to do this stuff, and yet I still Struggle, right?
And I just want us to embrace that concept more.
(36:52):
If there's one thing that people grab from this book,
it is that process of messy sanctification is on going
and there is still hope for you, whatever your addiction is,
because we're all addicted to something.
S1 (37:04):
Exactly. And it isn't about being cavalier and sloppy with grace.
It's about understanding that that lifeline has been thrown out
to you because of what Christ can and does do
in for and through you. So when we come back,
exactly how does this process of breaking free work? We're
going to talk about that brand new book, confessions of
a Christian Alcoholic. Fill in whatever your addiction is, it
(37:25):
still applies to you and to me. Back after this.
Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic. It is the brand new
book by Jonathan Seidel. The subtitle says it all A
Candid Conversation on Drinking addiction and How to Break Free.
So again, let me underscore the book is beautifully broken
(37:46):
up into three parts. My story, that's Jonathan's and you're
just part of it here, making sense of it. How
does this happen? Etc. and that's where the messy sanctification
part is discussed. The third part is breaking free. Now, Jonathan,
I didn't miss the fact that this is not a
12 step program. This is a four step program. Do
you have aught against the 12 step and if so, why?
(38:06):
And if not, how did you reduce it down to four?
S6 (38:09):
Yeah, right. So this is what I tell people. I
am not against 12 step recovery programs. I didn't do
one because the way just the way that it worked
out for me. Um, you know, I joke that I
didn't have a sponsor. I paid my sponsor $150 a
week to listen to me. Um, in the form of
my counselor. Um, but what I tell people is, if
(38:30):
12 step recovery is something that you need and that
you resonate with, then please do it right now. I
think don't get caught in the trap of the quote unquote,
higher power, right? So I tell people, if you need it,
do it. But you gotta you gotta plug in and
know who your higher power is. Now I've, you know,
(38:51):
I've heard and I've seen people not really be welcomed
when they start talking about their higher power being Jesus.
And so there are Christian alternatives like celebrate Recovery. But
what I tell people is my four steps are not
meant to replace the 12 steps. If the 12 steps
are foundational for you, these four steps are bedrock. They
(39:11):
are what the 12 steps are built off of. They
are what any program are built into. And that's why
I get I get pretty bold here. Janet, I say,
that's why I can guarantee you that if you implement
these steps and implement them correctly, you will find freedom. Now, again,
(39:32):
it doesn't mean your life will get just, you know,
roses and butterflies, right? But you will find more of Jesus.
And that's what this is, you know, really hinging on.
I tried for years, many times to stop drinking, but
I wrote this article. I said, how was I able
to finally stop drinking? I stopped trying to stop drinking.
(39:54):
I shot for Jesus and I got sobriety thrown in.
It's like what C.S. Lewis says, aim for heaven and
get the earth thrown in. And that's what these four
steps are about.
S1 (40:05):
Yeah, exactly. So the four steps are abiding in Christ,
finding your true identity, practicing radical vulnerability, and obeying what
God tells you to do. Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ. All
four steps. Talk to me first about abiding in Christ because,
you know, waking up one day and saying, that's it,
I'm going to go cold turkey. Good luck with that one. Right.
(40:25):
So we talk about how often, um, going back into
addiction happens. It's I talked about a step forward and
two steps back. Very common in the addiction journey. Talk
to me about abiding in Christ and how really and truly,
if you want to be able to break the shackles
of this, it is only through Christ.
S6 (40:44):
This is really the foundational step. It really is you.
You cannot truly break free. And I say this are
there people who can get sober without Jesus? Absolutely right.
But are there people who can live the most flourishing,
fulfilled life without Jesus? Absolutely not. I met a guy
a few weeks ago. He'd been sober for 22 years,
(41:06):
22 years. He white knuckled it. He did it for
22 years. And then something happened. The hardest part of
his life happened, and he went on a 17 year bender.
17 years. He went back to the bottle. My point is,
you can you can white knuckle anything for as long
as you no longer than you think you can. My
seven year old can do that, right. But abiding in
(41:29):
Christ is the foundational step because that's where it all starts.
You know, I kind of chuckled at this one. I'm like,
I'm not the guy that needs to be writing about
abiding in Christ. I never was a quiet time guy,
you know? And that's why I go through pains in
the book to say, I don't know what yours is
going to look like. Mine looks like getting up at five,
(41:49):
but yours might look like going on a walk with
the dog for an hour. And you just you just
abide with Jesus. But it has to start there. That
is step number one.
S7 (42:01):
Yeah, absolutely.
S1 (42:02):
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, you know that the
whole the myriad of verses here coming to mind, the
idea that when I'm weak, I'm strong, I can do
all things through Christ who strengthens me, this moment by
moment by moment. You know, addiction might come in waves,
but it's a moment by moment. Surrender, is it not?
S6 (42:18):
Oh my goodness. Yes. Right. I mean, there is a
lot of truth and wisdom, right? To one of the
concepts of the 12 steps, which is this I'm just
committing to not drink today. Right? And for a long time,
that was my mantra. I'm just committing to it today.
And there's a, there's a, there's a sign that I
(42:38):
have in my office. My wife got it for me
for Christmas last year. And it's a quote from Martin Luther.
And he's been just transformational to me. It says, I
have so much to do today that I must spend
the first three hours in prayer. Oh my goodness.
S7 (42:51):
Think about that, right?
S6 (42:53):
Like, how many times do we say, you know, hey,
I don't there's so much I gotta get done and okay,
I'll get I'll get to that when I get to that.
And I think what Martin Luther reminds us is, no,
it's because you have so much to do that you
have to you have to spend time with Jesus. And
what I have found over and over and over again
is that when I choose Jesus every day, it gets
(43:15):
so much easier. It does. And I know that for
a lot of people, that can't make sense. If you
are sitting there and listening to this and maybe you're
buzzed right now, right? Or maybe you did something stupid
and it's just you can't imagine this. You just got
to start somewhere. And I talk about that in the
book and show you how to do that. So abiding
in Christ is really the foundation for all of the
other steps. The absolutely finding your true identity, the radical
(43:37):
vulnerability and the obedience.
S1 (43:39):
So let me go to the finding your true identity
because you write, I think, beautifully on this identity is
who you are, including your characteristics, your purpose, and your
calling as defined and given by God. Boy, you take
that as part off. And that's just a lot of
secular pulp. But if you say as defined by God,
you know, it's isn't it, Paul in acts 17, in
(44:02):
him we live and move and have our being or
the other verse that says, I've been crucified with Christ
and I no longer live. How do I find my identity?
How did you do this? How did you make sure
that you found your true identity in Christ?
S6 (44:14):
Yeah. And I think it's really important to point out
it's not the general identity. We all have a general identity, right?
Children of God. Man. I went through a book, uh,
author Jamie Winship. Right. And he tells you, and I
detail this in the book, how you can find that.
And it involves asking and and guess what? No shocker
(44:34):
involves spending time with Jesus. So what you're learning in
first step abiding right is what leads to finding your
true identity. And here's what I found. My true identity
is a bold, courageous, decisive, vulnerable storyteller. And man, am
I finally living that out, right? And when I'm living
that out, I feel so fulfilled. And the life that
(44:55):
I have now again is the best. Not the easiest,
but the best.
S1 (44:58):
Wow. And again, the last two points are practicing. Practicing
radical vulnerability. God sees it all. We should live like
we know that God sees it all. And last, obeying
what God tells you to do, find that in the
power of His Word. I hate to have flown over
the last two points. You now need to read the book.
It's called confessions of a Christian Alcoholic. If you are
struggling with addiction in any area at all, read this book.
(45:22):
Thank you, Jonathan, for your courage, your radical vulnerability, and
the gift of your time. The Lord opened many doors
for you. See you next time, friends.
Hi friend, thank you so much for downloading this podcast
of In the Market with Janet Parshall, and it is
my most sincere hope that you are edified, equipped, enlightened,
encouraged and then it makes you just want to get
out there in the marketplace of ideas and influence and
occupy until he comes. But before you start listening, let
me just take a moment of your time to tell
you about this month's truth tool. It's called The Steadfast
Love of the Lord by my friend and frequent guest,
(00:22):
Doctor Sam Storms. You know, he tells us that so
often we struggle with this idea of feeling like we're
loved by God, or that somehow we've done something that
separates us from the love of God. But we fail
to remember the Scripture that reminds us that while we
were yet sinners, not perfect, not all put together, not
everything's all been worked out while we were yet sinners.
That's when Christ died. For us. Love is an action word,
(00:44):
and that's what Doctor Sam Storms reminds us in his book,
The Steadfast Love of God. I don't know about you,
but with the headlines of the day, being reminded of
who God is is about the most precious news I
could hear on a regular basis. And I'd love for
you to have a copy written by a man who
understands the Bible and always delivers rich theology. So just
call eight seven, seven Janet 58. When you give a
(01:05):
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Same thing. Scroll down on the page. You'll see the
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(01:26):
you again. Listener supported. And when you give a gift,
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(01:49):
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And now with all my heart, I hope you hear
(02:10):
something today that really changes your perspective and makes you
excited about being a follower of Jesus Christ. Enjoy the program!
S2 (02:19):
Here are some of the news headlines we're watching.
S3 (02:21):
The conference was over. The president won a pledge.
S4 (02:23):
Americans worshiping government over God.
S3 (02:25):
Extremely rare safety move by a 17 years.
S5 (02:29):
The Palestinians and Israelis negotiated.
S3 (02:31):
This is not over. Hi friends.
S1 (02:47):
Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall. Thank you
so much for joining me this hour. And you know what?
First of all, I have to tell you in advance,
I'm so looking forward to this conversation. Second of all,
I think it's going to stun some of the people
that are listening right now. And there's a boatload of
people listening from Guam all the way to the Cayman Islands,
because we're going to talk about, well, addiction, and we're
(03:08):
going to talk about, well, telling the story when you're
a Christian alcoholic. Oh, wait, don't don't hit the car
in front of you when you drive home. I know,
I know, but, you know, let's just put it all
out there. I think we should, by the way, because
in doing so, we recognize the power of the gospel,
and the gospel changes everything. We are broken, fractured, earthen vessels.
(03:31):
And in the midst of all of that, God pours
his message into us, this imperishable message. I don't get it.
It's the antithesis of how me, as a mere mortal,
thinks it should be done. You'd only pour this into
Waterford Crystal or Royal Doulton, wouldn't you? Not fractured clay pots.
But he does. And I love talking to other fractured
clay pots because I am one. And I'm so glad
that Jonathan Settle is back on the program. Boy, can
(03:52):
this guy tell a story? He's been doing it for
a long time. He's written over 10,000 stories. Talk about creativity. First,
after helping start a successful news website and then as
the editor in chief of the popular nonprofit I Am Second,
which I love. If you don't know anything about that ministry.
He writes and speaks all across the country on the
power of storytelling, radical vulnerability, faith, mental health and addiction. Now,
(04:18):
as much as Jonathan loves to tell a story, I'm
wondering if this was a story he thought maybe he'd
never have to tell, but soon discovered it was a
story he needed to tell. So he wrote it all
in a book. He asked sports fans with a beer
can on the cover that says confessions of a Christian Alcoholic,
a candid conversation on drinking addiction and how to break Free.
(04:39):
Pull up a chair. Jonathan. We've got a lot to
talk about. First high five. Kudos. Way to go. Thanks
for your courage and your transparency.
S6 (04:46):
Well, Janet, that means a lot coming from you because
I'll be honest, this is one of the interviews when
my PR team said that you wanted to talk. I
was nervous about because I've talked to you before, right.
I came on the program when I was talking about
faith and mental health, and not that I didn't trust
that you would handle the story well, but I think
it's just what you said is, is not something that
(05:10):
is as prominent. Right? This idea that we're all on
this journey of sanctification and that we're all these clay pots,
you know, and I think the church has to do
a little bit better with that. And so I was like,
all right, well, Janet, I love her. I'm going to
give it to her. So here we go.
S1 (05:28):
Well, thank you for that because I'll tell you what,
more of us are messes than most people know. And
I think when we say, and this is just bad theology, Jonathan,
you know this. I'm a Christian, therefore I'm a fill
in the blank. I will never fill in the blank.
Are you kidding? I mean, there's no time temptation, right,
that any of us haven't experienced. Our Savior knows that
full well. And so why would we think that addiction
(05:50):
only happens to people outside the family of faith, but
never happens to people inside the family of faith? And
the problem is, and that's one of the reasons why
I love your work, is this radical vulnerability, is that
when you got your mid-week prayer meeting, are they still
happening cricket out there? That's how I grew up, by
the way. You'd have those mid-week prayer meetings, and after
you study the word, you'd have that prayer time and
someone says, I'm struggling with alcohol. What would we do
(06:11):
that today? No, because we still have this idea that
you come to faith in Christ and then everything is perfect.
What a delusional gospel message it is. Anything but Christianity
is not for cowards, and it's filled with broken people.
Broken people who can only put one foot in front
of the other because of what Christ has done in,
for and through us. That's why, Jonathan, your story is
so important, and that's why I made that little reference
(06:33):
to don't hit the car in front of you, because
I bet right now you're talking to a boatload of
Christians who struggle with addiction. Whether it's alcohol, sex, porn, drugs.
I don't know what it is, I don't care. It's addiction.
And we're going to talk about that. And not a 12,
but a four step program as we go in into
this conversation with Jonathan. But I want to start first
with your story. So deep breath. It all started at
deer camp. Tell me about this.
S6 (06:55):
Yeah. You know, I always had an up and down
relationship with alcohol. Janet. You know, I think the first
time I got drunk, I was 13. I grew up
in Wisconsin, which I know you have listeners there, and
it's it's it's, you know, this is not an exaggeration.
It is literally ground zero for alcoholism and drunkenness. It is.
S1 (07:11):
Can we name all the beers out of Wisconsin? Yeah,
I'm a former Wisconsinite. Right.
S6 (07:15):
Exactly, exactly.
S1 (07:16):
You go to Milwaukee. It was brewery. It's Schlitz, all
of those beers.
S7 (07:20):
Schlitz. Yeah, exactly. So I have to pause right now. Yes.
The playoffs is the Brewers.
S1 (07:26):
Yes. Okay. Now. So yay Brewers. That's absolutely fascinating. And
by the way, you can take the man out of
Wisconsin and the woman for that matter. But you can't
take the Packers out of the man or the woman.
Are you still a Packers fan because you live in
Texas or are you now Cowboys?
S6 (07:40):
Oh, no, I'm a Packers owner.
S7 (07:41):
Yes, sir. You know, this is why I love Jonathan. Okay. So,
you know, I grew up.
S6 (07:47):
Where it was just it is not just culturally accepted
but culturally expected, you know. And so I got drunk
at deer camp, you know, hunting in the north woods
of Wisconsin for the first time. And I will say, though,
what's interesting is it's not that I got drunk for
the first time, and then it was just all downhill
(08:07):
from there. But what I remembered from what that time
and what my body remembered and what my mind remembered,
is the feeling that that gave me. And as someone
and we talked about this last time I was in
the show, I had undiagnosed anxiety and OCD for so long. Right.
And so it was instant relief. Now it scared me.
It scared me enough to keep me from getting drunk
(08:30):
until I was 21. But I still remembered, right? And
so what happened in my life, especially in my adult life,
is as I would hit hard times in my life,
I would I would drink more, right? And I was
able to cut back and I was able to pull back.
But it was always kind of that thing that when
things got really bad, a little more drinking was helpful.
(08:52):
And here's the thing that's true, right? It is true.
I say like, alcohol wasn't my problem. It was the
solution to my problems, right? It gave me relief. And
so my ultimate addiction, though, was to escapism. Okay. I
wanted to escape. And so, you know, as life continued,
(09:15):
you know, I say like there were healed and whole and,
and great parts of myself and those parts of myself
that I had given to Jesus were parts that wrote
that best selling book on faith and mental health. And
all the stuff I wrote in there was true. In fact, Janet,
I even wrote in that book, I need to be
careful how much I know that I need to be
careful how much I drink. Right? That was true. Now,
(09:38):
what I didn't realize is the hardest part of my
life was coming up, and I was going to go
headlong into the easy and quick escape.
S1 (09:48):
Wow, what a perfect setup to our conversation. I am
so happy that Jonathan is here and I just know
I believe this to the marrow of my bones. We
are talking to somebody today who struggles in this area.
Hasn't told a soul. This is your closeted problem, your pain.
You're dealing with this and you think you can't tell
a soul really well. Jonathan's telling a national audience right now.
(10:09):
If he can say it out loud, you can say
it out loud because you can find healing, just like
Jonathan did. Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic back after this.
Zephaniah 317 tells us, God loves us so much that
he breaks out in song over his children. That's why
I have chosen the steadfast love of the Lord as
(10:29):
this month's truth tool. Learn to know the everlasting, unchanging,
soul saving love of God. Ask for your copy of
the steadfast Love of the Lord. When you give a
gift of any amount to in the end the market.
Call eight 7758. That's 877 Janet 58 or go to
in the market with Janet Parshall. Jonathan Seidel is with us,
(10:50):
by the way. He referenced his best selling book. I'm
going to say it again because you need to read
this one as well. So many people struggle in the
area of anxiety. It's called finding rest. It's skyrocketed to
a bestseller, and he currently runs the popular daily devotional
website The Veritas Daily. And that's easy to find. The
Veritas Daily.com, he writes on faith, culture and addiction. And
(11:11):
in the meantime, when he's not doing all of this,
you're working on your masters, which you hope to get
by the end of the year. Tell me what you're
getting your masters in, Jonathan.
S6 (11:19):
Masters in Theological Studies. And so I'll be graduating seminary, uh,
December 5th. So I'm in my last classes.
S1 (11:28):
I can hear the smile on your face.
S7 (11:30):
Yeah, it's it's definitely there for sure.
S1 (11:32):
I'm so glad. All right, let me go back to this.
And by the way, Jonathan's here today because of his
second book, which I think is going to be a bestseller,
although a lot of people might not want other people
to know they bought the book. But let's just get
real here. Radical vulnerability. One of the things Jonathan is
passionate about. Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic. This is part memoir.
He breaks the book up into different sections, but it
(11:53):
starts with his story. So I want to go back
to something you said before talking about Deer Camp 13,
drinking in an environment. There is nobody who, when they
get their high school yearbook, says, I want to become
an addict in four years. Everybody who deals with addiction
does it because there's some kind of pain. Why? Because
whether it's porn or drugs or alcohol or shopping or
(12:14):
whatever it is, it numbs the senses. And when your
arm wrestling with anxiety every day you have a little alcohol,
you're thinking it'll dial me down. This is exactly what
I'm looking at. And so you you gravitate toward it
because of the effect that it gives. But nobody thinks
I'm going to get to a point where it runs
my life, right?
S6 (12:31):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's interesting because someone once
asked me, you know, um, well, they said they said so. John,
are you just kind of like, drinking away the bad
things that happen to you as a child? Because I
did have, um, dealt with trauma undealt with things that, um, frankly,
I just didn't want to talk about. And I said, well,
you know, in some ways, yes, but in other ways
(12:54):
you learn habits of escapism. Right? And so at six, it's,
you know, Tonka toys and Barney at 36 it's tequila
and bourbon, right. You learn I just I just don't
want to sit with this, whatever this is. And even
though after I wrote that first book, life was Good,
(13:15):
you know, that's kind of what I was referencing going
into break. It's like then life got really tough, tougher
than I ever thought it could be. And in that moment,
if you will, or in that season, it was so
much easier to just drink and and what's interesting to
back to your point, Janet, it's not like I sat
down one night and said, okay, I'm gonna get hammered
(13:37):
every night. You know, it's it's that it's that one
glass of bourbon led to two, and then two led
to three, and then three led to five. And then
you start putting and you're just like, you know what?
It is so much easier to just check out now
that has consequences. And that's what started to take over.
So from 2021, you know, last time we talked 2021,
(14:00):
I wrote that book. And unfortunately, even though it did well,
I realized I had unrealized or unmet expectations. I had
a friend call me up and he said, you know,
be careful. You're going to write the book. And a
little bit after that, you're just going to feel a
little lost because you've been working on this for two years,
(14:21):
you know? And once you get done, it's just kind
of like you're like, what do I do with myself?
You know, you hear this with athletes that retire all
the time, they retire. And and even though they complained
about training camp now, now training camp comes along and
they just like I don't know what to do. Right.
And that was the first domino for me is I
started feeling that. And then the second domino, I was
(14:43):
running my own consulting company in digital media, and I
lost my biggest client two weeks before Christmas. And, you know,
people listening to this, it's like you do. You're in
any type of client work. You can't find new clients
two weeks before Christmas, you know, and then you fast
forward to the spring. And my son started limping around
and he was four at the time. And we're looking
at him and we take him to the pediatrician and
(15:05):
they say, oh, he's fine. But my wife, being the
being the good mama bear that she is, says, no, no, no, no, no,
something's wrong. And we take him to a pediatric specialist. And,
you know, it's kind of those one of those out
of the movie. By the end of the day, we're
set up with a with an appointment with an oncologist,
and my son's got a tumor in his shin. And
(15:27):
even though, by God's grace, it ended up being benign.
That process was still hard. And so those type of things,
those little things that just kept chipping away at my
resolve and it was so much easier. And it is
so much easier. It's so much easier to take whatever
(15:48):
the pull, the ripcord, the food, the alcohol, the porn,
the work.
S7 (15:53):
Right.
S6 (15:54):
Or how about this the ministry, you know, how many
times do ministers throw themselves into all the problems at
church because they don't want to deal with the problems
at home, right? And it's so much easier to do that.
And that's what I did. And so May 2023 Janet.
It really comes to a head. My wife and I
are on a trip in Miami. Uh, we our anniversary
(16:17):
is right around Memorial Day, so we always kind of
have a built in, you know, three day weekend. And
so we we always try to pick a new place.
And so we had picked Miami. We've been planning this
for about a year. and we go down there and
we're a couple days in and my wife says, hey,
I'd love to have just a night in. She's an introvert,
I'm an extrovert. And, uh, and I said, okay, that's fine.
(16:39):
And by this time she had started, even though I
was quote unquote hiding it, I wasn't hiding it as well.
Which newsflash to those people listening who think they're hiding it.
Even if even if your spouse or your significant other,
someone doesn't know exactly what's going on, they know something
is going on, right? That's what sin does. Sin is
not a private matter, right? And so I, um, I
(17:03):
look at her or she looks at me and she says, um,
all right, why don't you go do something? And I'm like,
I'm just going to go down to the hotel bar.
I'll have a couple appetizers, I'll have a couple drinks,
and she says, okay, but don't get drunk. And I said,
I will not get drunk. And I can tell you, Janet,
that I had every intention of not getting drunk. And
(17:24):
so I go down to the hotel bar. I have
my first drink and I can't tell you how many
I have after that, because at that point it became
the only drink I can say no to is the
first one. And? And by the end of the night, I.
Down at the beach. It's one in the morning. I'm
waiting in the ocean because I have to go to
(17:44):
the bathroom. There's nothing around. I start going to the bathroom.
It starts coming out of all ends. And I look
up and I'm like, what has my life become?
S1 (17:55):
What a place to take a break. But it doesn't
end there. That's why I'm so glad we're talking to Jonathan.
It doesn't end there. The book is divided into three parts.
First is Jonathan's story. The second part is making sense
of it. The third part of it is how you
break free. And oh, I could spend hours talking to
Jonathan about this topic, but I want to give you
a sense. So if this is you, you need this book,
(18:16):
confessions of a Christian Alcoholic back after this. We are
spending the hour with Jonathan Seidel, who is a wonderful
storyteller and author. He understands the power of digital platforms.
I understands the power of a testimony. I am second,
(18:38):
and he's just written a couple of excellent books. The
first one talks about his struggle with anxiety called Finding Rest,
and the other is even more bold and transparent, and
it really puts into practice his belief in radical vulnerability.
It's called confessions of a Christian Alcoholic, a candid conversation
on drinking addiction and how to Break Free. I want
to linger here a little bit with your story, because
(19:00):
it really puts into the court record the ethos as
well as the pathos, and I think that's paramount that
you know exactly what you're talking about. Been there, done that,
standing in the water in Miami. Don't lecture me. I
was there. And it raises a panoply of questions like
people who think, well, the Bible says, don't get drunk
with wine so I can drink it as long as
I'm not getting drunk. I bet you said that to
yourself a time or two as well. And then you're
(19:22):
sitting there realizing, and you said something important in the
last segment. You had to say no to the first drink.
You didn't. And then it was just a cascade after that.
What happened? That was that moment. And, you know, the
wonderful thing sometimes about going as low as you can
go is that you have no choice but to look up.
And that's exactly what you did. Take me from your
journey that night in the water in Miami for what happened?
S6 (19:43):
Yeah. You know, I say you don't realize how much
you need Jesus until he's all you have to hold
on to you. And when.
S7 (19:49):
You're.
S6 (19:50):
You know, drunk and waiting in your own feces, you
realize this. Doing it on my own thing, even as
a Christian. Right? Even as a Christian, you said something
really important in the introduction, Janet. The gospel is not
just for unbelievers. It is for believers. Be transformed by
the renewing of your mind. Right. We have to. That
transformation continues, right? It's called sanctification. It's that ongoing process
(20:14):
of becoming more like Jesus. Salvation is a lifeline. Sanctification
is a is a lifetime. So I'm sitting there and
you might think as I'm looking up and saying, what
does my life become that that is in a sense
the rock bottom moment. And in some ways it is.
But then I sober up. I guess you could say.
I go back to the hotel room, I wake up
(20:35):
the next day and my wife is already down by
the beach, and I come down there and she looks
at me and she says, John, did you get drunk
last night? And just so quickly and so easily I
lie and I say, nope. And I even surprised me, right?
You know, just just how how quickly and easily that
(20:56):
came out of my mouth. And I call this my
Peter moment because two other times throughout the day, she
asked me, John, did you get drunk last night? No, no,
I did not get maybe, maybe a little tipsy, you know.
But that whole time, Janet, the Holy Spirit is just
cranking on me on the inside. And there's some people
listening to this that I hope the Holy Spirit is
(21:16):
just cranking on you with this. And, um, I go
to that to dinner that night, and I'm just like, okay,
I gotta come clean. And so over dinner, I say, babe,
I need to tell you something. I did get drunk
last night, and she breaks down pretty easily. And she says,
you know, I know you did. I just needed you
(21:37):
to say it. She says, I don't think you know
what that does to a woman, though, you know, what
else are you lying about? And I start making all
the promises, and, you know, we pay for dinner, barely
eat anything. We actually end up walking back down to
the beach to almost exactly where I was the night before.
And we're sitting there and she looks at me after
(21:58):
I make all the promises, I'm never going to drink again.
I know I need help, you know something's wrong. And
she says, John, I don't care if you never drink again.
Like that's not what I want from you. I don't
want you to promise me that you'll never drink again,
she said. You have to get to the root of
why you're drinking the way that you are. Because if
(22:19):
you don't, it's just going to be something else. And
I kind of think in my head, I didn't say
this out loud, but I'm thinking there. I'm like, can
we just go back to the not drinking part? You know.
S7 (22:29):
Like, yeah.
S6 (22:30):
That would be.
S7 (22:30):
Easier. Yes. Right.
S6 (22:32):
Um, but she said, you know, you have root issues,
you have trauma that you've never dealt with. You have,
you know, abuse in your past. You got to get
to the root to get to the root. And so
the commitment that I made to her that day was
not to never drink again. The commitment I made to
(22:53):
her was, okay, I'm I'm going to start doing surgery
on the soul, and I'm going to invite Jesus into
all of the parts of myself. See, Janet, I think,
you know, you invite a guest over, right? And you
clean up the living room. You clean up the kitchen.
In fact, maybe there are even a family member and
they're going to help you clean up the living room.
They're going to help you clean up the kitchen. But
(23:13):
you know what you do. You close that bedroom door.
Especially if it's your kids, right? You close that. You
close that kid's bedroom door because that thing is messy.
You don't want anyone seeing it in there. And I
think what so many of us do is we invite
Jesus in and we're okay with him helping us clean
up the living room and the kitchen. But we close
that bedroom door and we say, you, you two shall
(23:34):
not pass. Right. You are not going to go in there.
And what ends up happening is the is the junk,
and the food that is rotting in there ends up
spilling over into those clean parts that that smell, you know,
takes over the living room and and soon it just
destroys the whole house. And Jesus says, no, I want
it all. I'm coming for it all. Right. And so
(23:57):
those those healthy parts of us can do great things,
but those wounded, those traumatized, those parts that we've we've
walled off from Jesus, you know, those start to spill over.
And that's what happened in my life. And that's what
I committed Added to rooting out in my what I
call my year of intensive therapy. Started seeing a Christian
(24:17):
therapist and I got here's what I tell people I.
The light slowly started coming on. You know, I started
stopped drinking. It was like I took a limitless pill.
That old movie from Bradley Cooper. Start using 100% of
your brain, you know. Didn't realize how much. How much
I was fighting with one hand tied behind my back.
And so, so so I start, I start, I say,
(24:39):
I started smelling colors, I started seeing sounds, right. The
world just became alive to me. And Jesus started healing
those parts of my soul. And I say this I
got and I have the best life now. Not the easiest,
not the easiest, but I have the best life possible now.
S3 (25:01):
Wow.
S1 (25:02):
So when we come back, Jonathan's going to tell you
how this happens and how you can really and truly
break free. This is about addiction. It might not be
alcohol for you, but is there a propensity for you
to be addicted to something because there's pain that you
haven't dealt with? Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic, newest book
by Jonathan Seidel. Back after this. We live in complicated
(25:36):
times and in the market. We're helping you interpret complex
cultural issues through the lens of Scripture. Our team of
partial partners is growing. And to say thank you, they
receive exclusive information from me. In fact, I talked to
you directly from my personal computer to yours by email.
Become a partial partner today and you'll receive these exclusive benefits.
Call 877 Janet 58 or go online to In the
(25:57):
market with Janet Parshall. I'm loving this conversation with Jonathan Seidel.
His new book is called confessions of a Christian Alcoholic
A Candid conversation on drinking addiction and how to break
free in our conversation has been utterly candid up to
this point, and I'm so glad, because I really think
that reaches out into those dark nights of the soul
(26:19):
that so many of you might be dealing with, with addiction.
Maybe it isn't alcohol for you. Alcoholic is simply identifying
that addiction as being tied to alcohol, but there are
a myriad of other addictions out there, and sometimes in
the church, we don't talk about it because we think
it doesn't happen inside the church, which is absolutely, positively ludicrous.
It does. And I think God raises up men like
(26:39):
Jonathan to be able to be bold and say, listen,
this was me. I'm going to tell you how low
I went, and I'm going to tell you what Christ
has done in for and through me. And I want
to go to the second part of the book. I
could linger for a lot longer on your story about
what you went through, but I think people get the
sense of what it was like to just fall so
far down and praise God for a loving wife who
really challenged you and gave you the impetus to go
(27:01):
and start dealing with the cancer, which, by the way,
in and of itself is like, oh, good. So you
drink to numb the pain. Now somebody is asking you
to tear the bandage off so the wound is completely exposed.
Won't this be fun? And yet you know that unless
you get to that trauma, the propensity is going to
be to grab for that which numbs you all over again.
And I want to drop this into a theological context.
So you have a whole section in part two where
(27:22):
you talk about messy sanctification. I wrote this down, Jonathan,
because it's so good. Justification is a lifeline. Sanctification is
a life time. You know, the father of lies, I'm
quite sure, because he does it for all of us.
Might have jumped on your shoulder and said, you think
you were ever saved. You think you'd be forgiven for this?
I mean, really and truly give it a break. How
do we deal with our sanctification, which is every day
(27:45):
being conformed and transformed to the image of Christ moment
by moment? Is it easy? Absolutely not. Is it required?
If you love Jesus and you want to be like
him and you understand how holy he is, absolutely. It
is a part of the Christian life and it's utterly countercultural.
Talk to me about how you work this idea of
Sanctification in the midst of your addiction, particularly tied back
(28:07):
to trauma, because there had to be a part of
you saying, wait, it wasn't my fault that stuff was
happening to me. I didn't choose it to happen to me.
S6 (28:14):
You know, you brought up seminary earlier, and this is
one of the big reasons why I wanted to go
to seminary, right? I knew that it wasn't true, that
when some people and they said this to me, when
some people said, you know what, John, now that you're sober, um,
we don't doubt that you're a Christian, but we're not
sure about your salvation. Leading up to this, because the
(28:37):
Bible says, you know, ongoing sin. You know, if you
if you keep engaging in that, you're a child of
the devil, right? And and I knew I said, you
know what? I know that's wrong. Right. And and there was,
you know, scriptures I could point to, but I really
wanted to understand it. Right. And so this last year
in seminary has been exploring this question. And here's what
(29:01):
I can say with 100% certainty. Right? And you said this, Janet,
but it's so beautiful, is that as Christians, we will sin.
If you look at the Bible, God only works through sinners.
There was only one person that he worked through that
wasn't a sinner. That was Jesus Christ. Everyone else is sinners.
(29:23):
Everyone else who loves Jesus and follows Jesus, who loves
God and follows God. They are sinners. That doesn't stop
the moment they start following Jesus, right? Look at the disciples, right?
You look at Paul and this is the one that
really stands out to me. There's two people that I
point to, Paul and Matthew. Paul, if you if you
(29:45):
read Paul's epistles, he is constantly reminding people about what
a wretched man he is.
S7 (29:51):
That's a quote, right?
S6 (29:52):
He says, wretched man that I am. Not that I was.
What a wretch! Oh, wretched man, that I am.
S7 (30:01):
Right.
S1 (30:01):
How about that body of death? Exactly.
S7 (30:03):
Exactly.
S6 (30:05):
And so Paul in Romans seven spends so many verses explaining,
I do that which I don't want to do, and
that which I don't want to do, I do right.
So that's the first example, Paul. Now I'm going to jump.
I'm going to save Matthew for a second. I'm going
to jump to first John because first John, that's where
you have these verses that talk about, you know, you
(30:26):
can't be a follower of Jesus. You can't be a Christian.
That is that is still engaging in ongoing sin. And
here's what I do. And I do this way more
in depth in the book. But I look at this
and I say, you know what? That's true. That's 100% true.
But here's the thing. You got to realize about the Bible,
there's this thing called context. And if you look in
(30:48):
in first John, first John opens with this statement early
on where John says, my children, I wish that none
of you would sin, but if you do so, let's
stop there. He's. He's already making room. Like, man, I
don't want you guys to sin. But I know, I
know there's there's going to be people who sin. Right.
(31:08):
So then you have to look at and say, okay, well,
what is he talking about? Here's the thing, Janet. Is
it true that if you are caught or if you
are engaging in unrepentant sin for all of your life,
that your salvation is in question? I think so, but
when I look at my own life, I say, you
know what? The Holy Spirit didn't let me write that
(31:31):
it was true. Now, maybe my sin lasted a year
and a half, right? Maybe for someone it's a week,
maybe for someone it's a decade. But the truth is,
we don't get to decide how long they engage in
unrepentant sin before they're not a Christian or never were
a Christian, right? The Holy Spirit, God gets to decide that.
(31:53):
And what was made clear to me is I Absolutely.
Those verses are absolutely true. And they were true in
my life. They were true in my life. The Holy
Spirit would not let me continue. It took a year
and a half, but he would not let me continue.
The final person I point to is Matthew. Uh, Brennan Manning,
(32:14):
very famous, uh, Christian author, Christian alcoholic, actually wrote the
ragamuffin gospel. And in there he points something out that
it was so fascinating to me. He says, you know,
if you look at Mark, Luke and John, how they
talk about Matthew, they always they call him Levi or Matthew.
But if you look at how Matthew talks about Matthew,
(32:36):
Matthew always says, Matthew the tax collector. Now, tax collector,
in those days, you know, this, it was like it
was traitor. It was the it was trash. You were
you were the bottom of the bottom. And here's Matthew
writing this after encountering Jesus. Right. He's writing this years
(32:56):
after after the Risen Christ, and he's saying, Matthew the
tax collector. He's reminding people that's how far Jesus had
to stoop for me. Right. And so I think I
look at Paul, I look at Matthew, I look at
these verses in first John, and I say, sanctification is
messy and we don't make enough room for that in
(33:17):
the church. We want to talk so much about sin.
And I'm not saying we talk less about sin. What
I'm saying, though, is we gotta also talk about grace.
And we get so worried. Janet, we're so scared that
if we talk about grace, people are going to take
this as, hey, you can do whatever you want. And
what I tell.
S7 (33:35):
People is.
S6 (33:36):
Just tell them they can't do whatever they want, you know, like,
it doesn't it doesn't have to be this big, nuanced thing.
You can talk about grace. You can talk about grace
being available for the for the quote unquote non-Christian and
the Christian alike. And you can do that without saying
I condone everything you ever do. No, no, that's not true.
(33:56):
But we need to talk about God's grace. It is
disruptive and it is radical.
S7 (34:00):
Yeah.
S1 (34:01):
Well, let me go back to Brother Paul because again,
he's such an example here. He is the author of
two thirds of the New Testament. And he makes this
declaration that the things I should do, I don't, the
things I don't do, I do. So if Brother Paul
is struggling in this particular area, and this isn't a
license to sin, which takes me to the second point
about Brother Paul, which is you don't have a Mastercard
to sin. All right? Right. You might have the liberty.
(34:22):
You had the liberty to have six Bourbons sitting at
a bar if you wanted to. But the next part
says it all. Was it profitable as your standing defecating
in the ocean in Miami? So the point is what
I think the part of the heft of that verse
to me is that make stupid choices and see what
the consequences are. God is not the author of confusion.
They're going to be consequences for what you do. But
(34:44):
it breaks my heart, actually, Jonathan, that there would be
anyone who would call into question your salvation because it
says to every single person who has a struggle and
I get emails all the time from people who say,
I can't get rid of my addiction to porn or
fill in the blank. And my my fervent prayer is
there is a kind of conviction there, or you wouldn't
have written an email to a radio host.
S7 (35:04):
To say.
S1 (35:04):
I'm struggling in this particular area. That's my first sense
that you're not spiritually dead because you wouldn't be saying,
how do I break this chain, right? So and I
love what you said about I don't see a timetable
in any Bible concordance that says unrepentant sin for a moment,
a week, a year, whatever it is. The point is,
if you know that you're struggling, there's still a quickening
of the Holy Spirit inside of you. And if you
(35:26):
have any question, you know, you can say, Lord, if
there's any questions about my salvation, I ask right now
for you to come into my life and get that
taken care of. But father, I also need to be redeemed. Help!
You need to throw out a lifeline. I cannot do
this by myself. And that's why I like the way
you couple the words messy sanctification. Is anybody sanctification? Clean?
(35:46):
It's a mess. I take one step forward, two steps back,
one step forward, two steps back. Today I'm going to
have a short lecture. You bet. In 27 seconds after
I've said that, bam! I've got an issue that I
need to keep short. You know, short file in front
of the Lord. So, um, I think we get the
problem is, if I can be perfectly honest, is that
we get a little sloppy with the idea of grace, but. Yeah.
(36:08):
And the problem is, we think that it's a license
to sin, you know, like a James Bond movie, right?
This is your license to sin. No it's not. You've
been forgiven. But that grace gives you the liberty to
go back to him, fall on your face and say,
I've messed up. Grace actually gives me the liberty to
recognize my sin, to fall on my face and to confess.
S6 (36:29):
You know, Romans six talks about that, right? Shall you sin?
So grace abounds more? No, which is kind of interesting, right?
Romans six sets that up. And then in Romans seven
he says, but I keep doing the things I don't
want to do. So which I think is interesting. Paul
himself is saying, I don't think I have a license
to do this stuff, and yet I still Struggle, right?
And I just want us to embrace that concept more.
(36:52):
If there's one thing that people grab from this book,
it is that process of messy sanctification is on going
and there is still hope for you, whatever your addiction is,
because we're all addicted to something.
S1 (37:04):
Exactly. And it isn't about being cavalier and sloppy with grace.
It's about understanding that that lifeline has been thrown out
to you because of what Christ can and does do
in for and through you. So when we come back,
exactly how does this process of breaking free work? We're
going to talk about that brand new book, confessions of
a Christian Alcoholic. Fill in whatever your addiction is, it
(37:25):
still applies to you and to me. Back after this.
Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic. It is the brand new
book by Jonathan Seidel. The subtitle says it all A
Candid Conversation on Drinking addiction and How to Break Free.
So again, let me underscore the book is beautifully broken
(37:46):
up into three parts. My story, that's Jonathan's and you're
just part of it here, making sense of it. How
does this happen? Etc. and that's where the messy sanctification
part is discussed. The third part is breaking free. Now, Jonathan,
I didn't miss the fact that this is not a
12 step program. This is a four step program. Do
you have aught against the 12 step and if so, why?
(38:06):
And if not, how did you reduce it down to four?
S6 (38:09):
Yeah, right. So this is what I tell people. I
am not against 12 step recovery programs. I didn't do
one because the way just the way that it worked
out for me. Um, you know, I joke that I
didn't have a sponsor. I paid my sponsor $150 a
week to listen to me. Um, in the form of
my counselor. Um, but what I tell people is, if
(38:30):
12 step recovery is something that you need and that
you resonate with, then please do it right now. I
think don't get caught in the trap of the quote unquote,
higher power, right? So I tell people, if you need it,
do it. But you gotta you gotta plug in and
know who your higher power is. Now I've, you know,
(38:51):
I've heard and I've seen people not really be welcomed
when they start talking about their higher power being Jesus.
And so there are Christian alternatives like celebrate Recovery. But
what I tell people is my four steps are not
meant to replace the 12 steps. If the 12 steps
are foundational for you, these four steps are bedrock. They
(39:11):
are what the 12 steps are built off of. They
are what any program are built into. And that's why
I get I get pretty bold here. Janet, I say,
that's why I can guarantee you that if you implement
these steps and implement them correctly, you will find freedom. Now, again,
(39:32):
it doesn't mean your life will get just, you know,
roses and butterflies, right? But you will find more of Jesus.
And that's what this is, you know, really hinging on.
I tried for years, many times to stop drinking, but
I wrote this article. I said, how was I able
to finally stop drinking? I stopped trying to stop drinking.
(39:54):
I shot for Jesus and I got sobriety thrown in.
It's like what C.S. Lewis says, aim for heaven and
get the earth thrown in. And that's what these four
steps are about.
S1 (40:05):
Yeah, exactly. So the four steps are abiding in Christ,
finding your true identity, practicing radical vulnerability, and obeying what
God tells you to do. Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ. All
four steps. Talk to me first about abiding in Christ because,
you know, waking up one day and saying, that's it,
I'm going to go cold turkey. Good luck with that one. Right.
(40:25):
So we talk about how often, um, going back into
addiction happens. It's I talked about a step forward and
two steps back. Very common in the addiction journey. Talk
to me about abiding in Christ and how really and truly,
if you want to be able to break the shackles
of this, it is only through Christ.
S6 (40:44):
This is really the foundational step. It really is you.
You cannot truly break free. And I say this are
there people who can get sober without Jesus? Absolutely right.
But are there people who can live the most flourishing,
fulfilled life without Jesus? Absolutely not. I met a guy
a few weeks ago. He'd been sober for 22 years,
(41:06):
22 years. He white knuckled it. He did it for
22 years. And then something happened. The hardest part of
his life happened, and he went on a 17 year bender.
17 years. He went back to the bottle. My point is,
you can you can white knuckle anything for as long
as you no longer than you think you can. My
seven year old can do that, right. But abiding in
(41:29):
Christ is the foundational step because that's where it all starts.
You know, I kind of chuckled at this one. I'm like,
I'm not the guy that needs to be writing about
abiding in Christ. I never was a quiet time guy,
you know? And that's why I go through pains in
the book to say, I don't know what yours is
going to look like. Mine looks like getting up at five,
(41:49):
but yours might look like going on a walk with
the dog for an hour. And you just you just
abide with Jesus. But it has to start there. That
is step number one.
S7 (42:01):
Yeah, absolutely.
S1 (42:02):
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, you know that the
whole the myriad of verses here coming to mind, the
idea that when I'm weak, I'm strong, I can do
all things through Christ who strengthens me, this moment by
moment by moment. You know, addiction might come in waves,
but it's a moment by moment. Surrender, is it not?
S6 (42:18):
Oh my goodness. Yes. Right. I mean, there is a
lot of truth and wisdom, right? To one of the
concepts of the 12 steps, which is this I'm just
committing to not drink today. Right? And for a long time,
that was my mantra. I'm just committing to it today.
And there's a, there's a, there's a sign that I
(42:38):
have in my office. My wife got it for me
for Christmas last year. And it's a quote from Martin Luther.
And he's been just transformational to me. It says, I
have so much to do today that I must spend
the first three hours in prayer. Oh my goodness.
S7 (42:51):
Think about that, right?
S6 (42:53):
Like, how many times do we say, you know, hey,
I don't there's so much I gotta get done and okay,
I'll get I'll get to that when I get to that.
And I think what Martin Luther reminds us is, no,
it's because you have so much to do that you
have to you have to spend time with Jesus. And
what I have found over and over and over again
is that when I choose Jesus every day, it gets
(43:15):
so much easier. It does. And I know that for
a lot of people, that can't make sense. If you
are sitting there and listening to this and maybe you're
buzzed right now, right? Or maybe you did something stupid
and it's just you can't imagine this. You just got
to start somewhere. And I talk about that in the
book and show you how to do that. So abiding
in Christ is really the foundation for all of the
other steps. The absolutely finding your true identity, the radical
(43:37):
vulnerability and the obedience.
S1 (43:39):
So let me go to the finding your true identity
because you write, I think, beautifully on this identity is
who you are, including your characteristics, your purpose, and your
calling as defined and given by God. Boy, you take
that as part off. And that's just a lot of
secular pulp. But if you say as defined by God,
you know, it's isn't it, Paul in acts 17, in
(44:02):
him we live and move and have our being or
the other verse that says, I've been crucified with Christ
and I no longer live. How do I find my identity?
How did you do this? How did you make sure
that you found your true identity in Christ?
S6 (44:14):
Yeah. And I think it's really important to point out
it's not the general identity. We all have a general identity, right?
Children of God. Man. I went through a book, uh,
author Jamie Winship. Right. And he tells you, and I
detail this in the book, how you can find that.
And it involves asking and and guess what? No shocker
(44:34):
involves spending time with Jesus. So what you're learning in
first step abiding right is what leads to finding your
true identity. And here's what I found. My true identity
is a bold, courageous, decisive, vulnerable storyteller. And man, am
I finally living that out, right? And when I'm living
that out, I feel so fulfilled. And the life that
(44:55):
I have now again is the best. Not the easiest,
but the best.
S1 (44:58):
Wow. And again, the last two points are practicing. Practicing
radical vulnerability. God sees it all. We should live like
we know that God sees it all. And last, obeying
what God tells you to do, find that in the
power of His Word. I hate to have flown over
the last two points. You now need to read the book.
It's called confessions of a Christian Alcoholic. If you are
struggling with addiction in any area at all, read this book.
(45:22):
Thank you, Jonathan, for your courage, your radical vulnerability, and
the gift of your time. The Lord opened many doors
for you. See you next time, friends.
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