25 Aug Facing the Fight for Freedom

“He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” – 1 Kings 19:14

Elijah was facing what felt like an impossible task.

He felt attacked on every side, and maybe even a little forgotten by God as his own people turned on him and Ahab and Jezebel sought to kill him.

Elijah also felt alone in his struggle.

That tends to be the case when pain comes our way though, doesn’t it? It feels so…lonely and isolated, like you’re the only one going through it and there is no way anyone else could ever understand. The temptation is to hide in a cave somewhere, to give up and give in.

Yet, the Lord would tell Elijah, just a few verses later, that He had preserved 7,000 other Israelites who had not succumbed to the worship of false idols. The reality is that our God always has others who are fighting that same fight of faith, pressing on, hoping, trusting, waiting for some kind of deliverance.

God, in His grace, is sustaining them. By that same grace, He will sustain you. And so, fighting that fight on your own is not what your Heavenly Father wants for you; He has a community of others to come alongside you and fight this good fight together.

All of this is the heart behind our Celebrate Recovery ministry. Celebrate Recovery is a highly effective program for finding freedom from the chains that shackle our lives and hold us in bondage to sin, shame or a painful past. We refer to these as “hurts, habits and hang-ups.” We all have them. They are the carnage left from previous traumatic experiences, painful lies we have subtly believed, or maybe our own poor choices and the consequences that have resulted. In our attempts to escape the pain, we tend to reach for other created things in hopes that rescue is just around the corner. And yet, that rescue never seems to come.

My friend, Mary, grew up in a broken home with a mom who was addicted to drugs. To escape the pain, Mary began using at the age of 13. She also experienced abuse at the hands of multiple men. Eventually, she found herself incarcerated because of her drug habit, and it was there that Christ rescued her. She was eventually able to forgive those who had hurt her, and for the first time in her life, she felt truly free. Once out of jail, she connected with a church community where she got involved in Celebrate Recovery and has been walking out her sobriety and her discipleship with her CR community for 17 years now. In Christ, and in community with His people, Mary’s hope and identity in Christ were recovered.

Created things were never meant to carry the weight of our salvation like only our Creator can. Celebrate Recovery is a community, a place, where you can find the strength, the faith, and the friends to help you let go of those false saviors and take hold of Jesus by the grace of God. If that resonates with you today, then I want to invite you to courageously take that step of faith, get connected with Celebrate Recovery, and find the freedom you’ve been looking for.

We now have two meetings at two different locations. Our Mosaic North campus Celebrate Recovery meets on Tuesday nights from 7 – 9 pm, and our Mosaic South Campus Celebrate Recovery meets on Wednesday nights from 7 – 9 pm. To find out more, please visit our CR webpage.

“So Elijah went from there and found Elisha son of Shaphat.” – 1 Kings 19:19

On the other side of that healing lies a future generation of world changers who are waiting for us to show them what true freedom looks like.

In Jesus’ Name!

Brett Millican
Pastor of Discipleship