Last Step to Restoration
By Christopher Raley
Friday, November 2nd at 6:30 pm is this year’s Grace House Fundraiser Dinner here at Living Hope.
Living Hope Fellowship started the Grace House ministry four years ago as a sober living environment for Christian men who have graduated from a rehab program. With an emphasis on spiritual growth, life coaching, and volunteer service, Grace House is the last step to recovery.
It has been my privilege to oversee this ministry, and I have learned many things from men in recovery. Here are a few:
1. Courage
Addiction is resilient. We all know how easy it is to excuse our own bad behavior. When those excuses form your identity, it takes a tremendous amount of courage to turn your back on it, even if that is the only option you have left.
2. Perseverance
Many men in recovery have been through rehab multiple times. Each time through, it gets harder to come to grips with the choices they’ve made. As my friend Craig Kearney put it, “It takes a massive amount of perseverance” for men in recovery to confront and overcome guilt and self-recrimination. “It takes years, sometimes decades, to do this,” Craig told me.
3. Faith
Shattered and wrecked relationships lie in the wake of addiction. Men in recovery often face the difficult task of asking the person they’ve hurt multiple times for forgiveness. Sometimes broken relationships can be rebuilt. Sometimes they can’t. Either way it takes faith to believe that God forgives and that he restores broken people to himself and to each other.
As I’ve gotten to know several men in recovery over the years, I’ve learned that they can feel raw, exposed, and insecure. Their struggles are on display, and the rest of us look so perfect.
The sad reality is that the rest of us are acting perfect. A great benefit of having this ministry here at LHF is that those of us who haven’t gone through rehab can learn from men in recovery to be honest about the struggles we are going through.
As I look at the list above, I’m looking at fundamental practices of the Christian faith. Our Grace House men are leading the way.
Tickets for the Grace House Fundraiser Dinner are $10 each. Tickets are available in the LHF foyer on Sunday morning or at the church office during regular office hours.
