Welcome to Celebrating Life and Recovery.
I'm Cheri your host.
Last season, we covered Every Man's Battle and all
the women, a lot of women, out there said,
what about me?
This program, we are going to look at every woman's
battle so come join us.
The book for this season is Exalting in His Word
by Shelley Quinn.
She says in that book that we are either
powerful or pitiful.
And I so relate to that.
I either walk in the power of God, in the Holy Spirit,
and we talk about the Holy Spirit on the whole last season,
or I limp around through the day struggling under the
weight of my own junk.
And I just I so believe that everything in me says
that I'm not smart enough.
I'm not together enough.
I don't even know where the damage is really
so that I can figure it out.
But if I turn to God and say, God,
You know through the Holy Spirit show me, because you know,
15 years, 15 years in the first part of my recovery.
I chased after everything.
I decided, you know, my problem is I'm a heroine addict.
That's all it is.
So I'm going to do every single thing, about drug recovery,
and I did.
I got all the books.
I went to all the classes.
I went to all the groups and all that kind of stuff.
Every time I was in church, I wanted to tell everybody,
"Hi, my name is Cheri, strung out on heroine, I'm a mess!
You know, normal people look at you like, What you know!
And my first suicide attempt was when I was an eight.
I wanted to so cover all that stuff, you know.
And so I'm following all that.
I'm struggling with all that.
I'm trying to learn all that.
I'm trying to do the right thing and do recovery.
Just be all that.
You know what, after like 20 years, God says to me,
you know Hon, the issue is, you don't know
how to trust anymore.
You never let anyone love you.
You don't know how to do that.
I'm thinking, I don't think that's it.
I still think you're wrong about that.
And it is so funny when we think God is wrong
about something, He can't be wrong.
I mean, you know, He literally can't be
anything but what He is, you know.
And so it took me a long time to finally say, He gave
me an image, and I know everybody's had this image
before, but I want to tell you He literally showed me
that I'm in a room, no windows, bricked up,
and three years old.
Sitting in the corner just crying, just sad.
He gives me this image, and I'm thinking you know,
man, that's kind of sad.
I don't think that's me.
And He says, you know what every time I even get
close to your little brick house and try to move
one little brick.
You get so scared I have to back off.
And I am just asking you, let me heal that part.
And I finally I sat there in worship and study and
thought okay God, how am I going to let
you heal that part?
cause if it's true, and I was starting to begin to feel
the whole weight of the truth of it, if it's true, I don't
know how to let You heal it.
I don't how to do this.
I don't know how to let someone trust me.
I don't know how to let people in.
I believe I have attachments disorders, bondage disorders,
and most of you know, my mom tried to abort me six times
while she carried me.
We had no bonding stuff.
So I have all that and I am so afraid, God.
I'm afraid, I don't know how to heal from here.
And He says, good, let me do it.
And I am thinking, really?
You'll do it and I just wanted to weep, because I don't
know how to do it.
You know you and I don't know how to do it.
John 15:5 says, "apart from me, you can do nothing".
Nothing, and He doesn't mean that in a way that He's
trying to just say that you are nothing.
You can't figure it out.
He's not just saying the damage is so intense,
it's so deep, it's so out of your range of even being
able to see the whole ramification of
what happened to you.
Generations may be, what happened to you.
You can't do anything, but I am God, and the Holy Spirit.
In Isaiah 57:18, was our text last season, that says,
I'm God, and I love you and I want you to heal you.
I know how damaged you are, but I want to heal you anyway.
For all that kind of stuff we have to so trust God in that.
I finally just wept and said, okay.
I can't do it, and God just likes to joke with me.
I don't know if He jokes with you guys,
but He likes to joke with me.
He says, now you're at step 1.
And I'm like, I've been in recovery for like 20 years.
Step 1 is not where I'm at.
He's like Hon, step 1.
Okay, step 1.
I think, how fun is God.
Our damage is so intense, it's so deep, for most of us,
that He says I will take as long as you need to take.
I will not force you into recovery.
I won't force you to look at anything that you are not
ready to look at.
I won't force you to do the right thing.
I will so love you, that you will be able to see it
as the right thing.
You'll long to do it.
Wow, stop it!
How cool is that, I just amazes me how cool that is.
The rest the text, in John 15:5 says that God is the vine,
the root, He is what goes into the ground.
If you look at a root or a plant, and literally takes all
the nutrients and just so brings up the water in the nutrients,
and all the stuff in the soil and feeds the branches, which
we are the branches, it says, so, we are the branches, and
then the fruit comes from all that happening, bringing
to the branches and we bear fruit.
And so He says remember, if you cut the root at the bottom.
And that's what it means apart from Me you can't do anything.
If you cut the very source that is going to be your best
counselor, your best Father, Physician, friend, lover, all
that kind of stuff, if you cut that at the root, then all of
that is robbed from you.
So remember in recovery, and I just beg you, in recovery,
and I don't care what you are recovering from because
I can list tons of stuff.
Whether sexual addictions, drug addictions, religious
addictions, work-alcoholism, eating disorders, cutting.
I've seen people, I mean people are
addicted to everything.
I think anger sometimes as an addiction.
I like adrenaline, and that happens, and I feel powerful,
when I'm just in-your-face, and I'm like this
puffer fish thing.
I mean we have all these addictions, whatever the
addiction is, it's apart from God, you are not
able to figure it out.
I'm going to talk to you about for the first 20 years of
my recovery, 15 years or whatever.
Every single step that I made, you know, I just like in going
to do this recovery thing.
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to step up, and I'm going do the right thing.
I'm going to eat the right thing and sleep and not get
too tired too hungry, like every 12 step program says.
I'm going to make sure I do all that.
And I do it, for as long as I can white knuckle it.
And then all the junk hits me, I fall like
2, 4, 8, 10 feet back.
Every step I make, I'm falling back 10 feet, you know.
So it's just like I'm so self-defeating.
As soon as I learn to turn over to God, as soon as I
decided God, I'm going to let You take this.
I'm going to let you do this.
If I think I'm even going to read a book, on recovery.
If I'm even going to open the page on recovery,
I'm going to ask you, is this the book?
Is this good, because I don't know.
I don't know.
And so I'm just going to trust God to that extent.
I want to, before I go on, to what I want, the first part
of this program, where we were talking a little bit about
how the show and stuff like that.
I want to introduce you to the guest here, and we have
some incredible folks.
Amanda, your joining us.
And I'm so glad Shannon Ethridge sharing Every Woman's Battle.
We are going to get in that a lot today, so if your
sensitive at all, if you do not like people to talk
about sex or sexual things RUN!
Run! don't watch the show.
But you know what, we are sexual beings, and we have the
privilege of healing in this area.
It's so cool.
So stay with us.
JoAnie from California, one of my best friends, I have a
few people that I put here because you know, I'm just
afraid to trust people.
But you are one of my best friends, and I'm so privilege
to have you here.
Heather, thank you, you've been on the show before,
I'm glad you're here.
Irma, how cool are you.
Thank you for joining us.
Nyse Collins, and Nyse, I'm hoping to see you tons.
You're going to be doing another show, doing a testimony
and I'm hoping to see you, ton's.
So now I want to tell you one thing before I introduce
you to the guest which is Shannon Ethridge.
Is I want to tell you, I got asked to go to Russia.
So I, I'm thrilled about going.
I'm a heroin addict in recovery, as flaky as can be.
I'm going to do a six-week outreach in Russia
with heroin addicts.
And I know God is going to bless us beyond
what we could even imagine.
And so I'm getting ready for the trip.
It was hilarious, because someone says, six weeks.
And they know I never take notes, and I never know
what I'm going to talk about.
I never know because I trust the Holy Spirit is just
going to say what the Holy Spirit needs to say.
This, what are you going to do for six weeks?
And I am thinking I don't know, they said,
you have to have a plan.
I'm thinking, really, because I don't do well with plans.
I don't know if anybody can tell that I'm ADD.
I'm flaky, so plans are not something that I do well.
No, no plan.
And I am thinking, really, well yeah have like a
whole kind of seminar on PowerPoint.
It would just be cool.
And I am like a really.
And I'm excited, I am thinking somebody even thinks I'm
capable of doing like a PowerPoint presentation.
How funny is that.
So, I'm like okay so I get one.
You can buy those with the pictures and the scriptural
references and everything, it's like the whole
six weeks is planned out.
And it's beautiful, it's perfect.
I never saw such a together program in my life.
I'm like, I am just going to be, this is going to
be so much fun.
Then someone says, what language is it in?
Oh shut up, what do you mean?
I said it's English, well, aren't you going to Russia?
Oh man, so I now have to find this same program in Russian.
That takes me forever.
So I finally found the program, and now I have the program,
and never opened it.
I get to Russia, and they asked me, what are you
going to talk about?
I have a PowerPoint program.
And they said, with tears in their eyes, was amazing to me
teared up, I was hoping you would talk to us about addiction
and freedom from that.
And I was just was so convicted I thought God, I'm so sorry,
because You did have a plan.
And it wasn't another Bible study.
Bible studies are absolutely amazing.
But we are dying because we are lost in our addictions,
it's huge, it absolutely is huge.
So I get there,
before I got there God tells me that the Mafia is going to
approach us.
And I was going to work with the Russian mafia.
I'm like Ahhhh! How fun is that!
So I call my pastor, pastor, you've got to pray for me
because I think I'm going to minister to the Mafia.
It is like you are so grandiose.
No! no, I think the Holy Spirit told me that.
I even got a book on Mafia and Russia.
So I could kind of, what they do when the whole
political system is falling, mafias taken over.
I mean is just this incredible thing.
So I got some information, and I get there in the
first couple days.
I get a call at the studio in Russia, and they say to me.
Somebody from the Mafia wants to meet with you.
I knew it, I knew it!
How fun is that, like how fun is that!
But I'm like okay, okay, you know, I'm ready.
So we meet, he's Russian.
So he can't understand anything and he is trying
to do small talk.
And I have an interpreter and he shows me a picture
of his three year old son, gorgeous kid.
The Mafia is not so much into drugs, just blowing people
up and doing protection stuff, taking money from
businesses, and stuff like that.
But this guy got strung out on heroine.
So the whole family says, you know, you got to deal
with your drugs.
You can blow up a whole train in Moscow,
but don't be a heroine addict.
Well that's just not okay with us.
Anyhow, so we're are meeting, and I trying to figure out
how to deal with this guy.
What do I tell him about who God is and why do you walk
away from your addictions.
And so then I'm tell in them all addictions.
He's like, you know what I'm telling you, I have no
other problems that I want to deal with it except this.
I'm okay in everything else.
I'm just saying he's in my face, I'm like okay.
Let's just say, do you play board games?
How about let's pretend monopoly,
we're going to play Monopoly.
And you know monopoly and the monopoly is.
You have all these different pieces.
You know you have liked a top hat, and you have,
whatever car, dog, and all that kind of stuff.
The little iron.
I mean, you have all these little pieces.
But I'm going to have you imagine that each piece
represents a horrible addiction, each piece.
The top hat is gambling, right?
Little dog is, kicking dogs, that's the anger.
You know what ever, eating disorders,
sexual addictions, drug addictions.
So we are going to play the game.
I want you to pick a piece, pick a piece.
And so he looked at it for a minute, so he picked drug
addiction, because you know he's dealing with drugs.
Okay, so we played for a little while,
I said, pick another piece.
Okay sexual addiction.
I'm playing, he's playing, we're playing,
for a little while.
Pick another piece, wait, no, no about how about you
not pick a piece?
Pick a piece for your son.
And he looked at me and said, I'm not picking
a piece for my son, yea you have no choice
you are going to be lost in this addiction, pick
a piece for your son, and he is like I am not.
I could see this anger.
I said, if you are going to be lost in addictions,
I don't care what they are, you are going to pass them
on to the next generation.
God is begging you, put the pieces down and step
away from the board.
Don't play, don't even think that you are going to play
with a lesser addiction.
Don't play, because every addiction keeps you in the game
and every addiction keeps you trashed, every addiction.
So, we're going to talk today about sexual addictions.
And we are going to talk about relationship addictions,
and those kind of things.
And I beg you to listen up.
Because God is begging us, don't play the game.
Don't play the game, turn it over to Him.
The Holy Spirit and choose recovery, and He will give you
a life that you wouldn't trade for anything.
So we will be right back.
Stay with us!