Toledo Lighthouse Missions

Intro & Stats

Thank you for allowing us to be here. First and foremost I would like to introduce my Wife & Children (Gwyneth & Tori-Anne)

I would like to also introduce our advisory committee (Darren, Mike, & Dan)

Personal definition of addiction:

A self-serving activity that will cause one to manipulate anyone or anything to accommodate that particular behavior, including creating a specific schedule that surrounds that specific activity.

A secondary definition: Being enslaved to a habit, practice or substance such that withdrawal causes trauma.

Let me start out by asking a couple of simple questions:

How many of you know someone or have a family member that is struggling with some sort of addiction? (Alcohol, pills, opiates…)

How many of you know someone that has lost that battle?

How many of you are sick of it?

Some quick stats

In 2017, illegally produced fentanyl and related drugs like carfentanil, which are opioids, were involved in 71 percent of all unintentional overdose deaths. By comparison, fentanyl was involved in 58 percent of all overdose deaths in 2016, 38 percent in 2015, and 20 percent in 2014.

2017 - 4,854 unintentional OD’s

71% of all unintentional OD’s were fentanyl or carfentanil

2016 - 58%

2015 - 38%

2014 - 20%

(OH Dept. of Health; Sept. 27, 2018)

The state of OH is now investing over $1 Billion each year to help battle drug abuse & addiction at state & local levels.

Fact:

Nearly 80% of Americans using heroin (including those in treatment) reported misusing prescription opioids prior to using heroin.

About 20% of High Schoolers have admitted to using Marijuana, this number is growing. Fentanyl has also been noted as lacing marijuana lately.

Northwest OH Adult & Teen Challenge Community

Phase 1 (by June 2019)

Gain our accreditation & 501c3 status

Expand our Non-Residential Treatment

Get a store-front for more meetings

Continue our referral program to long-term residential care

Have a place for our graduates to come back to for continued mentorship

Phase 2 (by December 2020)

Acquire a house for a Pre-Induction Center

45-60 day Residential Discipleship program

Help candidates commit to a 1-year program

Help candidates create long-term sober memories

Help candidates get all of the testing & paperwork needed for long-term care

Phase 3

Add our own 3-4 month Residential Induction Center

Phase 4

Add our own 12 month Residential program

Dave’s Story

My Story

Childhood

Foster Care

Natural Family

Drug Usage

Teen Challenge & Meeting Darla

Bible School & Church Plants

Toledo

2 Peter 2:19 ESV

19 They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.

This passage comes in the midst of Peter discussing false teachers & how one of the first things that they allow for freedom is sexual sin. This is relevant to this discussion of addiction. Because, if there is anything that is true about our society, it is that we as a culture are addicted to sex. Let’s be honest, sex sells almost everything these days, to the point that it is rampant in our entertainment. Now drug abuse has become very entertaining; it is glamorized in the music industry, entertainment industry.

Mac Miller just died of a drug OD at 26 in September

Demi Lovato just released a song “Sober” in which she confesses that she had just relapsed this past June

We have learned to allow this sinful behavior to take over our community. I am here to tell you that God says “No More!” God loves Northwest OH, He loves Lucas County, God has a plan for Toledo. There is no reason for us to give any more room for the devil.

We have gotten too used to watching our loved ones lose the battle to addiction, over & over again. How many of you are tired of it?

Let me give you a brief illustration of what addiction really looks like. How many of you like to hunt? Here is a quick story that Paul Harvey told.

The Way an Eskimo Kills a Wolf

The way an Eskimo kills a wolf offers fresh insight into the self-destructive nature of yielding to temptation. First the Eskimo coats his knife blade with animal blood and allows it to freeze. Then he adds another layer of blood, and another until the blade is completely concealed by blood. Next the hunter fixes his knife in the ground with the blade up. When the wolf discovers the bait he licks it, tasting the fresh frozen blood. Then he begins to lick faster and more vigorously until the keen edge is bare. In his craving for the blood the wolf does not realize that his thirst is being satisfied by his own warm blood until the dawn finds him dead in the snow. (Paul Harvey, “Sin’s Peril,” Leadership magazine, Winter 1987).

2 Peter 2:19 ESV

19 They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.

I think that I can look at this verse at see sin in place of the false teachers. Sin offers a false sense of freedom, but it is tying me into bondage, deeper and deeper. The thing with sin, it lies and gives a false face, never letting you know what it really looks like.

Tuesday, MI has the opportunity to legalize recreational marijuana, the promise is that the taxes that the state will bring in to help the economy. The reality is that pot is a gateway drug, that will entice an entire generation into slavery, lower inhibitions and devastate the economy with unemployment traffic concerns. It will lower inhibitions that any right minded individual would dismiss out of hand. On a side note, fentanyl is now being laced into a lot of marijuana sales as well. Realize that you are being tempted with a bill of goods that will never deliver what it promises.

We had a saying back when I was in Teen Challenge: “Sin will always take places you never intended to go, will keep you longer than you want to stay, and will cost you more than you are willing to pay.”

Can I tell you a secret? Addiction is not the problem. Addiction is a symptom of the problem. Sin is the problem, and there is only one solution to that problem - a relationship with Jesus.

Jesus has already defeated sin, by dying on the cross and rising from the grave on the third day. That is the solution to addiction. We are called to come alongside people that struggle with addiction and point them to Jesus. It gets sticky, it gets frustrating, but it never changes. Adult and Teen Challenge is called to disciple, nothing more and nothing less.

I pray this verse over Toledo almost daily:

Isaiah 40:28–31 ESV

28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 29 He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. 30 Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; 31 but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

The good news is that God has not forgotten our community and is here wanting to make His Name famous.

Ephesians 2:10 ESV

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

This verse changed my world. When I found out that God knew me before He ever created the world, my world was rocked. This is the message that individuals that struggle with addiction need to hear. God sees them and has plans for them. Darla and I get to be the agents that breathe life into those that God created to look like Him, but don’t know it yet.

The Gospel is still the same: God knows that we could never

Let me leave you with this, a 3-fold principle that I have learned:

God is sovereign - always in control

God is good - every facet of His personality is awesome

God Loves me - and there is nothing that I can do to change this

Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers John Chrysostom (347–407)

Listen carefully to me, I entreat you.… [P]rocure books that will be medicines for the soul.… At least get a copy of the New Testament, the Apostle’s epistles, the Acts, the Gospels, for your constant teachers. If you encounter grief, dive into them as into a chest of medicines; take from them comfort for your trouble, whether it be loss, or death, or bereavement over the loss of relations. Don’t simply dive into them. Swim in them. Keep them constantly in your mind. The cause of all evils is the failure to know the Scriptures well.

This is the message that we bring to those that are struggling with addiction, God is aware and is welcoming of all those that are willing to accept His love. We cannot sin too much to drive Him away. Our job is to draw close to God, and bring as many people with us as we can.