Last night I taught the lesson SANITY for our Celebrate Recovery group. There is an element of this lesson I’d not caught for all of the 16 years I’ve been part of this ministry. The lesson prior to Sanity is Hope. We have Hope when we come out of denial (lesson one) and realize we are powerless (lesson 2) to use our own power to overcome whatever hurt, hang-up, and habit we’re dealing with. The lesson component I’ve been missing is that Hope must have with it the Sanity of God’s Word or it is simply hope from the flesh of man. Let me explain.

From the time I had begun attending college and was no longer bound to living at home, I had hope that God would keep all of my abuse a secret so I could be “successful in living for Him free of the abuse from home. I would be serving Him and have a career in education where I’d committed to serving kids with Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord. The insanity of my own hope was “secret”. I look at this now and wonder why I’d ever think God needed to keep a secret? It was my flesh that thought He would do that to protect me. There was a true absence of Belief, Trust and Faith in my hope. My hope was built on fear.

All of these years later I’ve found that Hope in this lesson must accompany the Sanity of God’s promises in His Word. God is using every aspect of my past for His own purposes today and He does this with everyone who gives their burdening past to Him. Hope from the flesh is saturated with the deception of Satan’s lies (I must keep my past a secret). Well, the truth is that Satan is a real liar and I know that. As the old hymn says, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteous….” It ends with, “On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.” My commitment is to live this out one day at a time/one moment at a time.