A Parking Lot In Pennsylvania
Introduction
The Expectation
good and evil grow together, intertwine around each other, and grow out of each other in remarkable and complicated ways
Looking for Mom
The First Brick Through The Window
The Other Bricks
The Parking Lot:
a demon that rushes to fill vacuums
What drives addiction is longing—a longing not just of brain, belly, or loins but finally of the heart.
Because they are human beings, addicts long for wholeness, for fulfillment, and for the final good that believers call God. Like all idolatries, addiction taps this vital spiritual force and draws off its energies to objects and processes that drain the addict instead of filling him.
As Goethe, in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice said “
“Master, I am in great distress! The spirits that I conjured up I cannot now get rid of.”
Human sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as the grace of God and not half so persistent, not half so ready to suffer to win its way
14 Therefore, I am going to persuade her,
lead her to the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
15 There I will give her vineyards back to her
and make the Valley of Achor,
into a gateway of hope.
There she will respond as she did
in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came out of the land of Egypt.
16 In that day—
this is the LORD’s declaration—
you will call me, “My husband,”
and no longer call me, “My Baal.”
17 For I will remove the names of the Baals
from her mouth;
they will no longer be remembered by their names.
Therefore, so that I would not exalt myself, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to torment me so that I would not exalt myself. 8 Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it would leave me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.”
For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it. 19 For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one that does it, but it is the sin that lives in me. 21 So I discover this law:, When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me. 22 For in my inner self I delight in God’s law, 23 but I see a different law in the parts of my body,, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord
Philippians and Rehab
Biblical Theology
32 They said to each other, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us while he was talking with us on the road and explaining the Scriptures to us?”
The gospel is good news announcing that we have been rescued
