Victory in Jesus: Addiction and the Christian

Victory in Jesus: Addiction and the Christian

September 30, 2025

Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell

Guest: Jon Seidl

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 9/30/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Jamie Mitchell:

Good afternoon friends. Welcome again to Stand of the Gap Today. I’m Jamie Mitchell. I’ll be your host today. One of the great privileges and benefits of what I do for the American Pastors Network is to learn about and to meet some significant Christian leaders and hear their stories. A lot of the times, these individuals and their testimonies push us and make us grapple with uncomfortable topics. One of the aims of our program is always to challenge Christian thinking and to force it to be filtered through a biblical worldview. By doing this, we strengthen our walk, we build up the church, and I think today’s guest is going to help us do that in a unique way. Jon Seidel is an author of a new book, the Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic. In the book, he describes the incredible vulnerability, his battle with addiction and his victory to overcome it. And through this book, he raises some questions that the church must grapple with, and that is how can someone who knows Christ struggle so profoundly with a life dominating sin or habit? Our task today is to answer some of those questions and for you to meet Jon and to hear about his new book. Jon, welcome to Stand in the Gap Today, my brother,

Jon Seidl:

Jamie, thank you so much for having me on. I’m so honored because I think, like you said in the intro, I am really hoping that we wrestle with this. It’s one of those topics that I think is increasingly at that front of mind. So thank you for having me,

Jamie Mitchell:

Jon. We’ve got so much ground to cover today. So let’s start by getting a little overview on your story. Your book is coming out on October the seventh, and I want to encourage everyone to get it, but briefly, can you explain your background, your spiritual background, and most importantly for today, when did you realize you had a problem with alcohol?

Jon Seidl:

Yeah, so I grew up in the church, right? I mean, listen, there’s not a time that I can really remember where I wasn’t following Jesus, right? I was baptized around eight or nine years old. I’d say I was kind of baptized twice. I was technically first baptized in the Catholic church, and then my mom left that and went to an evangelical church, and that’s when I made my faith, my profession of faith. And so I always grew up in the church, in my small town in Wisconsin and went to a liberal arts evangelical college in New York City called the King’s College. And really for my entire life can honestly say I love Jesus and Father Jesus. But I think what I didn’t know is that you can still love and follow Jesus and then have these really hard sin struggles. And I think part of my story is maybe in thinking that, well, I can’t, I can be open and honest about some of those smaller sin struggles or the sin struggles that the church is okay talking about, even something like porn, for example.

But I can’t really talk about some of the other struggles. And so for me, I was on staff at a church. I had wrote a bestselling book on faith and mental health and yet bubbling below the surface, and I called this a slow fade, and that’s a chapter in the book. It was a slow fade for me until in 2023, I had this rock bottom moment where my wife and I were on an anniversary trip and my drinking had started to get heavier and heavier as I encountered the hardest moment of my life where I lost my own business. I lost a big client, my son was diagnosed with a tumor in his skin, and just all these things started cascading. And I just slowly started medicating with alcohol because it’s an easy thing to do. And I think even in the church, I know there’s people listening to this who, well, alcohol is, I would never touch the stuff, but I think more so and more recently in the church, it’s been accepted.

And so I just slowly started medicating. And that day on that anniversary trip, I found myself after promising my wife one night she was kind of staying in to read and she said, yeah, go do whatever you want. I said, I’m just going to go watch a basketball game down at the hotel bar having appetizer in a couple drinks. And she looks at me and she says, don’t get drunk. And I say, I’m not going to get drunk. And I can say, Jamie, if you hooked me up to a lie detector that day, I would’ve passed it, right? I was not lying. I was not going to get drunk. And by the end of the night, 1:00 AM in Miami of all places is where we were, and I find myself alone and drunk wading the ocean up to my neck, and I start going to the bathroom because I have to go to the bathroom and I can’t find one.

And it just starts coming out of both ends. And I find myself just wading in my own feces, and I just kind of have this moment where I look her and I say, what does my life become? I truly set out not to get drunk, and this is what happens. And that kind of started this long process over the course of a year where the next day I lied to my wife about it, finally came clean to her and she said, Jon, I don’t care if you never drink again. I want you to get to the root of why you drink. Because I think if there’s people who are listening to this might get this and those are not, but alcohol wasn’t my problem. Alcohol was the solution to my problem. It was a bad solution. And we can turn to all sorts of solutions, whether that’s pornography, whether that’s our spouses, whether that’s our phones, whether that’s work for some of us, especially as pastors, we turn to our ministry where we throw ourselves and we say, and we lose sight of our first love.

And so for me, it was alcohol and it was a cheap, easy fix. It was cheaper and easier than doing all the work that I had to do. And there was other stuff, traumas in my life growing up that I had never dealt with, and there just became a habit of escapism. I say that my ultimate addiction wasn’t to alcohol, it was to escapism. I just wanted to get away. And so that started that day on the beach when my wife said to get to the root, started this year long process, and that’s when I really went crawling back to Jesus and really gave all of my parts and all of myself to him in that year.

Jamie Mitchell:

Jon, I know probably some of our listeners as they hear this, especially the title of your book, the Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic, they hear that and it’s almost like an oxymoron. Well, how can that be? How can someone who knows Christ is spirit and dwelled how they can be an alcoholic and be overcome by a sin or a habit or a vice or as you call it, looking for the solution for the deeper problem? But this morning, even in my devotion time, I’m reading through the book of Romans and I come to Romans seven, and it just hit me as we was reading it, preparing for this program today where Paul himself says, there are things that I want to do and I don’t do them, and there are things that I don’t want to do and I do them. And this struggle, this grip, this power, this tug of war in our soul is so real.

And until we open that up and allow the spirit of God and Christ to flood that issue and to do its work in our hearts, things like this are going to happen and they are a reality. And as statistics says, the church is filled with people gripped in this way. Friends, when we come back, we’re going to talk more about how to be a conqueror over these things. I want to discuss with Jon more about his book and the insights he’s learned through his own life and testimony. Today we’re talking about the Christian and addiction, how to find victory in Christ. Don’t go anywhere. Stay with us. We’re so glad to have Jon Seidel author of a couple of books, his first being finding Rest in his most recent book that will be out October 7th, confessions of a Christian Alcoholic. Jon, in your book, you have this great quote, I hope I get it right. The church likes to focus on conversion, but it’s not really big on sanctification, especially when it’s messy sanctification. What did you mean by that and how does that relate this issue of Christians and addiction?

Jon Seidl:

Yeah, I was so glad you brought up Roman seven right before the break there, Jamie, because I think we know that we hear Roman seven, but I think there’s a disconnect in so many of our lives and maybe some of our churches and pastorship is we treat that as that’s for the person who maybe used to curse a lot and doesn’t curse anymore or some road rages, and now they’re more of a sink down the road. But when it comes to those big sins, especially those sins that cause a pastor to fall those sins that cause leaders to fall, we say, whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait. I don’t know about that. And so I’m reminded of the great song that Billy Graham used to always play during this stage, come just as you are, right? And we’re all about that. We all about come as you are.

But what about stay as you become? The reality is the gospel is just as much for people who follow Jesus as it is for people who don’t know Jesus. And I think we forget that. And I’m reminded of the church in Ephesus in Revelation where Jesus says, you have abandoned your first love. He’s praising the church. And Ephesus, you’ve done so many great things. You have all the right doctrines for all the right beliefs, but you’ve abandoned your first love. And so many of us abandoned our first love, no matter the right doctrines and the right beliefs that we have that we can spout. And that’s great. I’m in seminary right now. I’m getting my head filled with a lot of right docs and right beliefs, but I can never say that that’s enough, right? It’s not enough to know even the demons know and shudder, right?

I have to live it out. And so sanctification, I say salvation is a lifeline and sanctification is a lifetime, and we can’t forget that. We have to cultivate that abiding relationship in Jesus and the church. I say I’m the Christian that became an alcoholic, not the other way around. And the church is okay with the other way around. And so we have to be okay with saying, you know what? The gospel in our churches make room for the messy sanctification. And after all, did not Jesus come for the stick? And by the way, just because you make a decision to follow Jesus doesn’t mean you’re not sick anymore.

Jamie Mitchell:

Hey, Jon, I got a number of questions that I’ve been thinking about that I want to hit you with some quick answers just to give some clarification for people and maybe to use your personal experience to help them. Here’s the first one. When did you first encounter or use alcohol? When did the door open for alcohol use?

Jon Seidl:

It’s interesting. I write this in my book. It’s actually a quick little chapter, but it’s that story, and that is probably around 13. My late preteen years, early teenage years is the first time I got drunk. But unlike some people, it wasn’t like I got drunk the first time and then it was all downhill from there. And I think that’s crafty just like the devil. Some people, he hits them that way. For me, he just stored that in the back of my mind. Hey, remember when you got drunk that first time, how easy it was to escape what you were thinking. And then later on in life when things got really hard, I returned to that feeling.

Jamie Mitchell:

Jon, another thing. Did your upbringing or family background play a part at all in your struggle with alcohol?

Jon Seidl:

Yeah, and I think for a lot of people it does. Alcoholism, just addiction in general runs in my family, but I also grew up in Wisconsin, and Wisconsin has the unfortunate reputation of being the drunkest state in the country. And so I joke partially about this, but I grew up in a place where they were beer, beer trucks at the church picnic. I mean, that is how it was. And while maybe some people listening to this, that’s not the case, how many beer and bourbon, Bible beer and bourbon podcasts and stuff has popped up, and I think it’s kind of edged its way into Christian culture in the states.

Jamie Mitchell:

Well, that’s interesting because my next question was simply that, what was your church’s attitude towards drinking and alcohol use? Was it strict, more liberal? Did they say nothing? And what are you seeing when it comes to the Christian’s attitude towards alcohol use?

Jon Seidl:

Yeah, yeah. So it’s like I grew up in a very heavily Catholic area, so when I talk about the beer trucks at the church picnic, that’s kind of what I’m talking about there. But also just culturally too, it didn’t matter if you were Pentecostal Presbyterian or Catholic, it was just accepted where I was from. Right now, drunkenness wasn’t certainly right. Everyone would talk about that. But what I came to learn later in life, Jamie, is I got to say, well, what is drunk? What is drunkenness? What does that really mean in the Sure, certainly it’s not 0.08. We use anything we can to justify our sin right now, to your second point, I would say I interviewed several people for the book, and here’s what was fascinating to me, Jamie. I interviewed people on a very conservative side of the aisle and very liberal side of the aisle.

And what I found is that both sides of the aisle are looking at the other side saying, well, at least I’m not drinking like them. And yet what we see is that this idea of it’s okay to kind of push the limits is rampant from liberal to conservative side of the aisle. So I think everyone’s kind of pointing the finger, at least I’m not doing that, or I don’t look like them or I’m not drinking. And yet I think the devil’s just kind of sitting back there laughing, and I don’t care how you justify or what reason you’re using, I’m using this to trip up as many people as possible.

Jamie Mitchell:

Jon, I’m now in my mid sixties. I’ve grown up in the evangelical world. My parents knew the Lord. And when growing up in church, you just never talked about alcohol. It never was anywhere around, I think probably some of the people in our church did drink and use alcohol, but they just never talked about it. And part of it was the idea is, well, you don’t know who out there might have a struggle and you don’t want to trip them up. You don’t want to see your freedom and your liberty and open a door for somebody who may have a struggle. I’m now 40, 50 years past those years, and I’m seeing a different attitude, especially among younger Christians, that it is no big deal and there’s not even that concern about others who may have a struggle. Do you see that? Do you see that shift in how we use alcohol and how we maybe are not as concerned about the next person out there?

Jon Seidl:

So I’m going to answer that question honestly, but then I’m going to give a caveat. So the first thing I would say is yes, right? And I think I even detail a little bit, especially how this change happened in reformed theological circles. You have this movement, the young restless reformed, and especially in the early 2000 tens, there really was, I’ve seen a backlash against the quote fundamentalism and the T totaling ideas of maybe the parents and the grandparents that we had. I’m almost 40, so I’m in this category that saw that attitude and mentality in the church growing up. And so I think there’s definitely been a reaction against that, and I think culture has helped push that as well. I mean, what are we seeing in culture right now? We have the sexual revolution and now we just have a lot of revolution in general, whereas we’re not going be bound by ideas, thoughts, anything.

That’s the postmodern idea that is so ingrained in culture now, and I think the church and Christians are susceptible to that. That said, I want to be clear, Jamie, I have friends who can drink and they can do it responsibly and they can do it unto the glory of God, if you will, right? Publishers Weekly did a review of my book and they said, they’re publishers. We can use a secular publication. They said, the only thing we love this book, what we can’t understand is Jon says in the book, are you drinking to the glory of God? And that seems weird to us. And I’m like, yeah, as a Christian, as a non-Christian, that’s going to seem weird, but as Christians, everything we do has to be done to the glory of God. And so are you watching TV in a way that honors God?

Are you drinking in a way that honors God? And there are people in good people that can do that. And I personally don’t even mind if I’m out with friends, if I’m out with whoever, if they can responsibly have a drink or two, that is great and glory to God that they can do that. But to your point, I would say we have swung the pendulum in general, I think a little too far, and you would not believe the amount of people that I encounter in my day-to-day life who once I started talking about this have said, oh my gosh, Jon, thank you, me too. And it’s been really hard for me to talk about this because whenever I talk about me having a struggle with it, I kind of get labeled as legalistic or whatnot. And I would say, listen, if you have someone who is struggling with a food disorder, you would be careful and cautious and say, Hey, how can I serve the Lord in how I’m eating around this person? And we should do the same thing with dreams.

Jamie Mitchell:

Friends, I can tell you that there is a good chance that there is a person in your church struggling with alcoholism or another addiction and we can condemn it, but the fact is they are probably condemning themselves in their own hearts, but not sure how to find victory when we return. Is victory possible and how can we help people find victory in Jesus? Don’t go anywhere. Stay with us here and stand in the gap today. Thank you for staying with us. I believe our discussion is an important subject for the church today. We’re so appreciative to have Jon Seidel being our guest today and sharing his testimony in regards to his struggle with alcoholism as a believer in Christ and his new book that’s coming out, the Confession of a Christian Alcoholic. Jon, I want to touch on an aspect in your book that I believe would be a great help. First, would you share briefly the four layers that you discovered about why or how it is that you get overwhelmed with addiction?

Jon Seidl:

Yeah, this is really important and I go into great detail about this and I think hopefully people will see maybe some of their own story in my story. And that first layer is the physical layer. And I think this is the easiest, if you will, for people to understand. We talked about this a little bit, but addiction runs in my, and I want to be clear about this as well, is that when I talk about addiction, it is both a physical issue and a spiritual issue. Now we’re going to get to that spiritual issue in just a second. But that physical issue, there are cravings, there’s bodily activity that goes on where you want a substance. So there’s that physical layer. Then there’s some cultural layer, and again, we talked about this a little bit with how this has happened in the church recently, but listen, there is so much at stake when it comes to if you want to call big alcohol, if you will, that they mean 84 million in ads were spent on alcohol in the 2023 Super Bowl alone.

And so we are being constantly accosted, and I ask people to ask themselves this question, when is the last time that you heard someone who had a bad day or something go wrong? Say even just, man, I could really use a drink. That’s the kind of idea that has been ingrained in us. That third layer though is the mental layer, and there’s kind of two aspects of this for me. There’s also a mental health layer. I wrote my first book on that. I have clinical anxiety and OCD. And so when your brain is running and running, running alcohol is a depressant. It’s physically a depressant, and so it can slow things down for you. That’s the first aspect of the mental layer. But then the second aspect is what I call cognitive dissonance. And again, there’s a chapter in the book says, how does this happen?

Well, one of those is cognitive dissonance. It is exactly what you said, Jamie. It is Romans seven. It is that we are made, and because of the result and the fall of sin and brokenness coming into the world, we can know what to do. We can want to do it, and yet we just fail in doing it. Right? And I was talking to a PhD doctor about this and she gave the example. I mean, it’s the celebrity who’s talking about climate change and then goes off and jets off the Canes Film Festival in their $800 million jet, right? I mean, there’s cognitive dissonance in our lives. We know I’m not supposed to get drunk. The Bible says that, and I just want one more, right? And then the final aspect would be that spiritual layer. And there is so much here, and like I said, I’m practicing the book, but one of those aspects that I think we cannot ignore is that spiritual warfare is real and the devil is looking for ways to trip us up.

And the devil is looking for ways to exploit our weaknesses. He’s looking to speak lies to us. He’s looking to make us anxious. And I can say that the easy way to deal with those lies, the easy way to deal with those feelings, the easy way to deal with things. One of them is alcohol. Again, there are other forms of escape. Maybe for some people it’s over exercising. Maybe for others it’s overeating. Maybe for others it’s over scrolling. My point though is that there’s spiritual warfare that is involved where the devil wants you to do anything and everything, but turn to Jesus. It is hard to turn to Jesus. We have to fight against some of those thin natures, right? It’s why I love the book, A long obedience in the same direction. It’s practicing that long obedience in the same direction. So those are the four layers.

Jamie Mitchell:

Jon, in your book, you also develop extensively the four steps for finding and sustaining victory. Would you do the same, explain those steps and give our people a little taste of what they are and why they’re so essential?

Jon Seidl:

Yeah. I tell you, when I sat down and said, okay, I’m going to really get to the root of what’s going on, one of the things that I did was not to say, okay, so what am I actually going to do? I just started practicing the little steps that the Lord brought me to. And then nine months into this journey, he kind of said, Hey, I want you to just kind of write down some stuff that you’ve learned over the last nine months, and that’s where these steps started to form. And so I did not do a 12 step program. There are plenty of people who do, and I’m not against 12 step programs. I just didn’t do one, not what the word brought me through. And so I don’t say that these four steps are meant to replace any sort of program. I say, if those programs are foundational, this is bedrock and this is where I get Jamie, I get excited because I can say, I can guarantee you that if you follow these four steps, your life will get better.

And I’m not talking about some prosperity gospel, live your best life kind of stuff. What I’m saying though is if you practice these steps, the Lord will use them because they’re all rooted in scripture. And so here are the four steps. It’s abiding in Christ. It’s finding your true identity, it’s practicing radical vulnerability and it’s being obedient. And so let me take those in stride here. The first one, abiding in Christ. I tell you what I joke in the book. I say, I’m not the guy that should be writing a chapter on abiding in Christ because I have struggled with it my whole life. I kind of grew up in a home where it was like my stepdad was like, all right, everyone pray for five minutes right now. And you’re like, I’m watching Barney, what are you talking about? And so I always really resisted it.

But then what I found is that you cannot do anything in life worth anything if you are not abiding in Christ. And when I first really started making a practice of this in my sobriety, it was hard. It might’ve only lasted five minutes to start. Now, man, sometimes it goes five minutes, sure, but many times it’s 30 minutes. It can be an hour, it can be even longer. I spend time with the Lord, and for me, that looks like prayer, that looks like journaling, and it looks like Ruby and I just do it until I’m released. And there’s this quote that I have up in my office. My wife got it from me for Christmas last year. It’s from Martin Luther. And it says, I have so much to do today that I must spend the first three hours in prayer. And I think there are so many of us who are like, man, I’ve got the laundry list of things.

Starts the moment, the alarm goes off. And I would say, yes, it absolutely does. And because the list is so long, you have to spend that time with the Lord. Now, for some people, maybe that’s the first thing in the morning for other people. Maybe it’s a walk at night. I’m not saying what your abiding time has to look like. I’m just saying you have to have one. The second thing, finding your true identity. I’m not talking about just your general identity as a child of God, but there is something that the Lord has uniquely gifted you to do. And some of you may be listening. It’s like, well, yeah, I’m supposed to be a pastor. And I would say, well, is there something even more specific? What type of pastor? What type of intimacy have you been given? I think the devil loves when we’re operating in just our pseudo identity.

And I use this example in the book. It’s like a Navy captain who’s supposed to be leading a mighty destroyer. If that captain is out there on a tugboat chasing blips on the radar, the devil’s like, great. And meanwhile, you think I’m a captain. I’m captain in a boat. This is great. And the devil’s like, yeah, you’re supposed to be doing that aircraft carrier, but you’re on the tugboat, and I’m really happy with that. The third thing is radical vulnerability. And this is a big one because I think you and I, and so many men out there for example, have sat in small groups where we’ve gone around the circle and someone has said, I’m struggling with lust today. And we say, oh, yes, okay. Bob has said he’s struggling with lust. And then we just leave it there and Bob leaves it there, right?

Bob says, oh no, I’m being honest. But really, if Bob was practicing radical vulnerability, which is really true confession, Bob would be saying, you know what guys? Here’s how I’m doing it. Here’s how I’m looking at porn. Here’s the ways I found to cheat the system. Here’s where I’m playing that here’s when I’m at most susceptible to the devil’s attacks. And then we would make a plan with Bob about how to radically drag that into the light and make war against it. But I think we, it’s like antibiotics. You have to keep taking. The more antibiotics you take, the stronger they have to get. And I think a lot of us have gotten used to regular vulnerability and we can fake it. And what the Lord is calling us to is now we need to do radical vulnerability. And so I tell people, go one step further than you’re comfortable going and see where that takes me.

And then finally, it’s obedience. And this is not a popular word in culture today, but I can tell you that my life, since I have gotten sobriety and really gotten Jesus, I should say, has been marked by the small steps of obedience. And I just cannot tell you what that’s done for my life. Not in that the Lord has said, do this, and there was a million dollars waiting when I opened that door. What I can say is there’s actually been a lot still of heartache and learning and growing that’s been on the other side of those doors. But in practicing obedience, I have got more of Jesus. And obedience just naturally creates this trust the way that I trust the Lord now and go to him for everything. And I mean, everything has given me that peace and that joy that I just did not ask before. It’s all those things that alcohol promised me and never delivered, and now I have them. And I can say that it’s been truly the best life possible, not the easiest, but the best

Jamie Mitchell:

Friends, Jon has given you a taste of his new book. I want you to go out there and get a copy of it. The likelihood is that a friend, a fellow believer, a spouse, a child, could be facing addiction. When we come back, I want to talk to Jon about how the church can help those who are struggling with alcohol and addiction stay with us. Well, the hour has once again flowed by and we come to our last segment, Jon Sidal, an author and podcaster. Jon, before you leave the air, can you tell the people about your podcast how to find you and where they can find out more about your book, give us a little information that would be helpful to them?

Jon Seidl:

Yeah, so the podcast is really, it’s an extension of the book. Originally I was going to include a lot of stories of other people like me, but ran out of room just like you run out of time in the segment. And so I said, what can I do? I know the Lotus called me to tell my story, but also the stories of other people. And so I started a podcast and I’ve had pastors on there. I’ve had just regular Joes and James Mob teachers, people who have struggled with alcoholism, especially as Christians, Christians who have fallen into addiction telling their stories. And so it’s called Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic, just like the book. And I also interview as well as people who have struggled. I interview faith leaders, people who can help us make sense of the theology of suffering, of the theology of addiction, if you will, as well as Christian counselors and C Christian doctors, people who can speak to that aspect of addiction as well. And so if people go to christian alcoholic.com, christian alcoholic.com, that’s kind of the landing page that’ll take you to a place where you can find more on the book, where you can find the podcast as well. There’s even a section if you purchased a book and there’s bonuses that you can get for purchasing, including never before Seen chapter as well. So if people go to christian alcoholic.com, that’ll be the landing page. It takes them to everything.

Jamie Mitchell:

Great. Jon, as we finish up here, I want to talk about the church and our attitude, our relationships, and our openness. From your perspective, what can the church do to help those fellow believers struggling with alcoholism and maybe not even revealed it? They’re sitting in the pew yesterday and they’re there, and what attitudes do we need to have and maybe some practical help for our Christian brothers and sisters who are struggling with alcoholism and addiction?

Jon Seidl:

I think the first thing, and this is really the most important, is we have to be preaching sermons about sanctification. We have to be preaching sermons on Roman seven. And I think Jamie, what is so interesting is that in our churches today, we are so worried about, and I get the worry, and I’m not saying it’s a bad word, but we’re so worried about being swept in with culture that we are so quick to talk about when you do something wrong, there are consequences for your actions and you don’t want to s sin so that grace can abound more. And I know there’s a lot of talk with that, especially when it comes to stuff like transgenderism and the L-G-B-T-Q debate. And yet I think we are so quick and so heavy handed on that stuff, right, that we don’t preach the counter and not counter arguments, but the other sermons that we’re being called to preach, which is on God’s grace and his messy sanctification that I think he talks about and makes room for in the gospel, right?

I’m not saying don’t talk about those other things, but what I am saying is let’s also be preaching messages on grace in sanctification in Romans seven, right? And know and understand that listen, the Holy Spirit, I was told by someone, Jon, I don’t doubt that you’re a Christian. Now, I don’t think that maybe you are a Christian when you were struggling with your ongoing sin. And they point to verses in one Jon, and this is part of why I wanted to go to seminary, is to really have a grasp on this stuff. And what they say is you can’t go on thinning, and if you are, your child is the devil, right? And what you do though when you look at those verses is you realize, well wait a second. There is also these verses in that same section where it says, yeah, you can’t go on sin.

What I would tell people is, listen, was I gripped by an addiction? Was I gripped by an ongoing sin? Yes, I was. And I can say wholeheartedly that as a Christian, I couldn’t stay there. The Holy Spirit did get ahold of me. For some people, he gets ahold of him in a week. For some people it takes a decade. But man, the Holy Spirit was working on me during that whole time of what I call my severe slide. And so I think we need to be preaching about that the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is there working on it, and the gospel is there for us as Christians and followers of Jesus just as much as it is for people who don’t know Jesus. So that would be the first thing we’ve got to be preaching. And the second thing is, and some people might hear this and say, well, interesting is this, we can’t be preaching.

And this is not what I’m advocating that we preach that sobriety is the goal. Listen, I’ll tell you what Jamie, I knew growing up, and then in my young adult years, I always had what I call a misordered relationship with alcohol. And I explained this in the book, but Misordered is disordered. And so many people get caught up in, well, how much am I drinking? And I go through a whole chapter defining what alcoholism really is. And newsflash, it’s not about the quantity. Literally, the medical community has changed how they diagnose it. And it’s not about quantity. You’ll want to pick up the book just for that. But the goal then is not just not drinking. And I think that’s what the world has. That’s what the world offers. The world offers people, Hey, come do our program and you won’t drink. And what I say, and I say this when I speak, and I get a lot of AA groups and people do our programs come, I say, tell many of a miserable sober person.

And I can’t tell you how many people raise their hand. And I say, listen, a miserable sober person gets a standing ovation right in the world because they’re not drinking. And what I say is, that’s not what I want for you. I want you to have the most flourishing, fulfilled life in Jesus. And here’s what I found. When I stopped trying to stop drinking, that’s when I was able to actually find sobriety. When I shot for Jesus, I got sobriety thrown in. When I shot for Jesus, for what he was offering and the healing that he could offer to all those hurt and wounded and traumatized parts of me, all those parts of me that were running towards escapism, then I got sobriety, right? I’m a huge, huge CS Lewis fan named my son after CS Lewis. And he has this quote in me Christianity where he says, stoop for heaven and you’ll get the earth thrown in.

And he repeats this concept several times, and I had to write a paper on this in seminary, and it was my favorite paper that I ever had to write. He repeats this mantra, this idea in several places in your Christianity, and it’s basically like if you try to shoot for comfort, you won’t get comfort. If you shoot for truth, you will get comfort. If you shoot for Jesus, you will get sobriety thrown in. Too many people shoot for sobriety and they can white knuckle it. I met a guy who white knuckled it for 22 years, and then he wasn’t shooting for Jesus, and he went back to the bottle for 17 years. My point is, we have to tell people Jesus. Jesus is the goal, right? I don’t want you to drink, right? I don’t want you to be caught up in addiction, but I also want something more and better for you than just running away from something. You have to run to something. And so that’s what I’m hoping that the church really starts preaching to our people. Preach sanctification, preach the doctrine of grace, preach the gospel that is available to everyone and tell people, Hey, I don’t want just sobriety for you. I want Jesus for you. And then let’s talk about what that looks like.

Jamie Mitchell:

Jon, as I finished up reading Romans seven today, I’m reminded that right after Romans sevens and Paul states about this struggle, he then makes his statement, there is no condemnation in those who are in Christ Jesus. There is no condemnation for the person who faces the struggle. Jon, what a joy to have you on. Stand in the Gap, folks. Get Jon’s book. You’ve gotten the information. We pray that it would be great success. Friends, if we place our flaws, our failures, our strongholds, we’re going to need courage. Courage is the virtue that empowers all other virtues, as they always, my ending words are simply this, live and lead with courage. God bless you. We’ll see you tomorrow here at Stand In the Gap Today.