Grace is not only about our forgiveness. It’s also what allows us to get back up, to heal, and to move forward and serve our Holy God despite our imperfect selves. This week, we’re talking about recovery, the third step of Shea’s “3 R’s”: Recognize, Repent, and Recover.
Visit Pastor James Bryon’s YouTube channel!
QUESTIONS WE TOUCH ON IN THIS EPISODE:
- Why is it crucial to recover?
- What does recovery do?
VERSES FROM RE-COVERING
2 Corinthians 10:45, 1 Peter 1:14-16, Psalm 147:3, Luke 9:62, Psalm 1:19.
QUOTES FROM RE-COVERING
“The roots are growing. And then when the time comes, we just push back up through and bloom. says, therefore, as you received Christ Jesus, the Lord. So walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith. They all manifest in different ways. Established me.”
Michelle Watson, The Pantry Podcast, S02E12, Re-Covering.
“There is a recovery to this cause people don’t always understand the depravity. They don’t think they need to recover. There’s some people out there too that are like, I’m good. I’m okay. I don’t do all those things, you know, we have to come to that understanding, you know, to recognize these things and then turn to God.”
Shea Watson, The Pantry Podcast, S02E12, Re-Covering.
“I actually have an acronym as well. I know you have, you know, it’s actually car. It’s confess, like I confess my sin before God. Then affirm, okay. So I actually affirm what God says about me by his word. I’m reminded again about my identity. I’m complete in Christ. There’s no condemnation. Like I rehearsed these things in my mind because now I’m in a recovery base.”
James Bryson, The Pantry Podcast, S02E12, Re-Covering.
Transcript
Shea: Now, now I’m in war, for the supernatural is beautiful vessel, man. It’s good to be here. It’s good to be here.
Michelle: Today’s a special day.
Shea: Yeah, really special. It’s really cool. You know, we we’ve, we’ve talked about the recognition, you know, recognizing what’s going on inside of us. It’s not always perfect. And sometimes we want to just grab a hold of that capture that thought, right. 2 Corinthians 10:45 says for the weapons of warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity, to the obedience of Christ. And that’s kind of that recognition phase where you’re like, hold on, this doesn’t match up. My worldly thought is not complete, is not adding up to the Bible. So we want to be able to recognize these things and then look, turn them around to God. And we just want to look at it in the sense of changing your mind. So I recognize I’m doing something and now I’m changing my mind because I don’t want to live that way. I really don’t a 1 Peter 1:14-16. He says, so you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then, but now you must be Holy in everything you do just as God chose you is Holy for the scripture says, you must be Holy because I am Holy. We want to walk with God. We want things to be better. And we have someone with us today,
Michelle: Pastor James from greater grace world outreach up in Baltimore, Maryland where our home church is kind of off shot from. How did you guys meet? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. We’ve met in class. I seen a guy who was about six, five, 350 pounds, a great man of God. I was actually assisting teaching and I was there to take notes and to teach and I see Shea and we clicked ever since.
Shea: So how did you get the greater grace?
James Bryson: It was a man named Andy Stevens who was pastor Steven’s grandson. He worked at the same job at the time I was working at HH, Greg and I really wanted to go to Bible college and I was talking to him and he just said, have you checked out greater grace? And I said, I’d never even heard of this church before. And he said, they have a Bible college, you should check into it. And I went to the church and they had a decent Bible college. It was relatively cost efficient. And so I said before I actually go to Bible college, let me check out a service. And they were speaking about grace and the finished work and about eternal security. And it resonated with me because I realized that if salvation isn’t free, then I’m not getting in. Right. And I kinda stuck with me. And so I started going to that church ever since and registered for Bible college. And the rest is history.
Shea: There is a recovery to this cause people don’t always understand the depravity. They don’t think they need to recover. There’s some people out there too that are like, I’m good. I’m okay. I don’t do all those things, you know we have to come to that understanding, you know, to recognize these things and then turn to God, right. Change our minds. And then we come into that recovery that the only way we will ever move forward in life is through this recovery, through Jesus Christ.
James Bryson: Yeah. I am pretty familiar with recovery, actually the nonprofit organization where I am a program director, we deal with ex-convicts and recovery and drug addicts. So recovering is something that resonates with me on a personal way, as well as something that I invest in other men and women and help them along in their recovery as well. I grew up in the inner city, in West Baltimore, a broken family, which most families actually broken is not as taboo as it seems. And just grew up seeing a lot of drugs in the household, seeing different men come in and out selling drugs to our relatives. And I just grew up around these things and I started to actually adopt those lifestyles as well, which led me to do those things thought, started getting in a lot of trouble growing up, starting at the age of 15, 16, my first crime was stealing a car.
Shea: That’s a horrible way to start. No, but that’s okay.
James Bryson: It was kind of wild because I’m like, you know, four foot nothing. And I was the driver. I was the driver and I mean, you know, we were bad at it too. We were horrible criminals. And and during will was like, you know, three inches above my head. And so, you know, we just drive it around us like little kids and we ended up getting locked up. And from there it was kind of been, it was just a downward spiral from there. And my recovery really started in the sense of humility. You know, I was really broken, exhausted all my resources. A lot of my friends, they left when I was in prison. Those who were closest to me, they were no longer around. And it was really just me and God. It was me in a word. And at the time at that age, it was really difficult for me to read.
James Bryson: Like I dropped out at ninth grade, the first book I picked up was actually the Bible. And it was certain promises in the Bible that stuck with me that encouraged me while I was in prison. And one of the precious promises was God would never leave me nor forsake me. I like that because in the Greek is actually a double negative. It’s like, no, never, no, never. There’s no possibility. God will leave me. I was like, wow. So my friends left me. Some of my relatives left me, God would never leave me. You know? And another promise was in Philippians 1:6. And it said being confident of this, one thing that he, who has begun a good work will complete it and have resonated with me because I said, okay, like if God has done the work over 2000 years ago on the cross, and that he’s currently doing the work in, as he’s going to complete the work, where does that leave me, leave me the rest in his faithfulness and God’s ability. And that was my first exposure to the thought of like this finished work, like God has finished the work. And that’s what actually got me in a mindset to want to leave that lifestyle alone, you know, and really walk with God and explore the things of God. And that was the beginning of my transition. So it started with brokenness and it started with understanding my depravity, like we heard earlier, right? And then me receiving the love of God. And then from there, God has really carried me in this life. From, from there.
Michelle:You grow up thinking there’s this finishing line, okay. You’ve made it. You’re an adult. Now you have things figured out. You’ve got answers. You’ve got understanding. And God shows you that day. Doesn’t come in this lifetime. It’s this continuous growing sanctification process where every day when you allow him to he’s chipping away, do you recognize there’s something he wants to chip away, stop protecting it. Change your mind. It says in Psalm 147:3, that he heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. So when we change our mind, we’re actually breaking our heart in the same way. God’s is broken about what we have done and he will bind up those wounds. He’ll never leave us. He’ll never forsake us. So our recovery in the world is get up, pick yourself up, go find your help. Go get yours, go grow up. With God, it’s allow him to recover you. He has covered us with the blood. And sometimes when we’re living in shame or in a sin that we don’t want to necessarily leave or sin that we steal is kind of binding us up. It feels like we’re uncovered. I’m exposing myself to all this pain of sin. Let him, you
James Bryson: With his grace. He has a beautiful thing about our growth. We realized that this guy’s responsibility, it’s difficult for us to really measure our own personal growth. Am I growing? And usually when you’re super introspective, you like, you know yourself, you know, your own depravity, your downfall is you’re like, man, I’m not growing at all.
James Bryson: Yeah. Super critical. Super critical. Yeah, you’re right. Salvation and sanctification is progressive. Right. And one of my favorite verses is in Proverbs. And it says for the justice, like the shining sun, that shines of a brighter to the perfect day. It’s like, in other words, like we are justified, like Christ saved us. Right? Right. And like, as time progresses, we shine and brighter and brighter and being more so conformed into the image of Christ, which is a beautiful image.
Shea: I mean, when, when, when I think about it, you know, people like to destroy that word of God. Sometimes they don’t necessarily believe in it. When I read it, I really want to imitate Christ because with that imitation comes the love that we need to have for people, the respect. I mean, that list could carry forever. The hope that joy it’s like, it’s the building. It’s what lifts us up. It’s what keeps us going forward. Luke 9:62 says, Jesus said to him, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. I remember growing up on the farm and let me tell you something, you would have to drive where you would look back, you didn’t want to look back too much because the more you look back, you’d take out a row of beans.
Shea: So basically you’re driving these big clouds and you got these rows that you got to drive between because you’re taking out weeds. It’s kind of like a weeding process. That’s kind of, that’s kind of that thought in the middle of a thought, right? It’s like, you’re, you’re weeding out the beans, you want to make sure you’re keeping that tractor straight. Cause if you’re not keeping that tractor straight, you end up taking out a whole row and then your uncle beat you. No, that’s that, that’s that idea of, of, and you know, Paul said it a lot. He always said, keep your eyes on the prize, keep your eyes looking forward. I think the more we look back, the more we trip up. And so, as I know, I’m hypercritical. That’s why I think I brought that up because when I look at myself, overly, look at myself, I started drifting away from who God says I am. And I start living in who? I’m no longer you sit there. And you’re like, I gotta stop doing that because that’s not who I am.
James Bryson: I actually have a acronym as well. I know you have, you know, it’s actually car. Its confess like I confess my sin before God. Then this affirm, okay. So I actually affirm what God says about me by his word. I’m reminded again about my identity. I’m complete in Christ. There’s no condemnation. Like I rehearsed these things in my mind because now I’m in a recovery base. Then our requests like Lord do, according to your word, you know, like, Lord, you gave us these promises fulfill these promises, like actually challenge God and be brutally honest in your walk with God. I like it. David is an interesting guy because he said like my soul melts with heaviness in Psalm 1:19. Then he said quick and me, or strengthen me according to your word. He said my soul cleaves to the dust, Quicken me according to your word.
James Bryson: David said like my soul longs to be enlarged from the spiritual prison. You know, like David was just brutally honest about his depravity, his weaknesses downfalls. And really, if we ever want to grow, we have to be transparent with God because that actually called to face the intimacy without we need with God. It’s the same thing with any relationships. If you’re not transparent and not open, you’re not going to be able to grow in that relationship. You know? And that’s the part of the recovery phase is transparency is another huge one. Right? Right. I like that.
Michelle: Yeah. A few weeks ago we were talking about the mini sides of pride and we kind of defined pride as having your self image be based on what you think about yourself, whether it’s high or low, it’s incorrect and humility. Isn’t thinking you’re nothing believing that you are what God says you are, that that fits in perfect. His recovery is coming back to that moment. Affirming the words that God has said about you and affirming who he is to you. And then when you were talking about how sometimes you don’t see your own growth, when you’re in this recovery, you feel like you’re always having to do the three RS or car you’re always doing, Oh, how many more times, when will I grow past this? Which first spoiler, you don’t grow past it in this life cycle. We’re always going to do right.
Michelle: Caterpillar, Chrysalis, butterfly on repeat all the time. It reminds me of, we planted these lilies, these Calla lilies. And it got me thinking, cause I think God loves to reveal in plant life. A lot about his relationship with us. It says they may or may not survive in our zone, we plan them anyway. We’re like, they’ll at least look pretty this year. We’ll see how they do. They were in full bloom and then Shea hired some guys to come trim the trees. All of a sudden I watched this a tree limb just slams in to the Calla, Lily and I just sit there and I’m like, grace, grace, grace, grace. Right. That’s a whole other thing. Anyway, so winter comes this year. They come back twice as big with no warning went from absolutely nothing to one day. Just huge, huge, big sprout.
Michelle: They’ve got so many strong stems for these beautiful flowers. And it makes me think of us in the sense of we can sit there and everyone else might say, you know, we don’t know if they’re going to make it in this walk. You know, we don’t know if they’re really for this or if they’re just, you know, in the Rocky soil, yet in the season that looks like we have nothing underground. The roots are growing. And then when the time comes, we just push back up through and bloom. says, therefore, as you received Christ Jesus, the Lord. So walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith. They all manifest in different ways. Established me. That’s been there. Awhile. Rooted means roots. How’s the root system built up is okay, how’s the visual. There’s all these different ways you can be growing, they’re not always visual. And they’re not always immediate on the surface as they are below. I mean, Jesus was in the, was in the grave for three days and some people thought it was over and then what happened? So,
Shea: And one day is a thousand. So , so that’s three days might be some time for some people. It might be shorter for others. It all depends. I like that though. I like that brutally, you know, like, like just honest, that brutally honest. And then when you look at it for what Michelle said, it’s like brutally honest, who do we have? You know, it’s like the tree falls, brutally honest. They wrecked it. Yo watch this husband always has to hear it. I can’t believe that. Did you see him do something? And I’m like, what am I kidding? These dudes are like 90 feet up in the air cutting the tree. I’m like, it’s okay. It’s okay. Trusting though. In that being brutally honest, even with yourself, right. Especially with yourself, know that there’s hope like don’t just be brutally honest and think like you have nothing.
Shea: No. That’s where that beautiful trust in the Lord comes from. We’re in that constant motion of growth sanctification. That’s like my favorite word. I mean, it’s honestly, y’all, that’s a greater grace word because we love sanctification. I think we talk about that a lot, it’s because it’s important to understand we’ve been sanctified, then, you know, that’s, that’s the positional. And then you get into that experiential where he’s just constantly peeling the onions back, why is he pulling the onions back in? Why are you just, you cry sometimes onions, you know, everybody knows onions, right. Like you cry sometimes, then, then you get through it and it’s like, you’re better because he’s taking things away from you. It’s cool. And it’s a cool, it’s a cool, it’s a cool feeling. Being able to learn that experiential sanctification, cause you know, one day we’ll be glorified, until then we got to do it.
James Bryson: That’s it? That’s it. You know, I like what you said better, like as crisis better. Actually, if you look in the book of Hebrews, you see that word over and over again, like he’s better than the angels, better than a prophetess of better Testament. Just better, better, better, better, better.
Shea: Amen. Yeah. Better and better and better like grace. I was how’s that go? Grace of bounds. Yeah. Grace abounds and a bounce and a bounce. Which, which tells me one thing he’s on my side. I’m telling you these three RS are the hardest thing for people to take on car is probably just as hard. Do you ever hear people just quote car? they got the three RS because they understand this, this process of healing. I tell the three RS of some people and they’re like, okay, because you have to recognize it first. If you don’t think you have a problem, then you’ll never see the problem. If you sit there and say, I have a problem now it’s like, okay, what do I do with this problem? And you know, you could run to anything. I did. I ran to all kinds of things in my rolly life, in, in my, in my Christ centric life and I run to Jesus. I’m like, okay, I don’t, I don’t want to be like this. And he brings me into this recovery. And then, and that’s where he wants us to be. He wants us to be in hope. He wants us to be enjoy. He doesn’t want us to always be moping around. Like I I’m sorry. Maybe I’m going to be a little BrewDog exam. Moping Christians, stop. I’m being very point blank right now. And if you mulch around as a Christian, just stop. Find the joy that Christ gives you.
Michelle: Depending on how long you were in the world, you have different foundations. You have root systems in who you are that are very influential, they need to be uprooted. They are things that want you to be perpetually the victim. They want you in that victim mentality. They want you to think, no, it’s not just your right to feel this way. It’s your right to stay this way. This idea of getting up and moving on can almost be seen as callous. Like no matter how long it’s been, it’s still too soon to say recover physically, not necessarily, but in the mental ways, in the emotional ways, in the spiritual ways saying recover and work to get better, it always falls on somebody else or some system or some, a physical thing. And so what does that do? Well, the reason that that is antichrist is because it’s the opposite of what God has us doing.
Michelle: God doesn’t want us to rely on the world to fix us. And he doesn’t want us to cling to our pain. He wants us to rely on him and cling to him because he’s the answer to all of it. He’ll show you what’s wrong. Help you deal with it. He’s not the God that points out. What’s wrong. He says, now it’s your job to fix it. And then I’ll talk to you. He says, no, come to me, I’ll fix you. I’m your Potter. I forget the term. And I don’t have time to Google it. But the pots, the Japanese pottery with the cracks, they fill out with gold. There’s a reason that keeps getting used in the Christian circles. When it talks about healing, because he’s not just filling in the cracks with something less than, or whatever he has lying around. He’s filling it with something better than what you were made out of because he’s putting in you something eternal.
Michelle: He’s putting in a terminal fix in a mortal body. The fix is going to outlast the body he’s fixing. And that’s what he wants us to focus on with every fix. With every recovery, we’re getting more and more like Christ. That’s the encouragement. It’s not, why do I have to keep coming back to recovery? Which means I failed at something or something hurt me. Yes, one step closer, one more broken thing fixed because sometimes it’s not the immediate thing that we think needs recovery. It’s something much deeper. And the thing we think needs fixing, it’s just a symptom. And then when you end up going to God, you realize God, please, you know, here’s, here’s the things that I know are wrong with me based on all the things I found out in the world. And he’s like, I’m sorry, that’s not. What’s wrong with you. It’s deeper than that. We’re going to have to go much deeper before you’re going to see a solution to any of these things you want these snatched up right now. You’re going to have to live with those until you surrender this deeper thing to me,
Shea: It’s like people, you sit there and you say, they, I say what’s wrong. He’s like, I’m angry. There has to be a deeper feeling like, you know, pain leads to hurt leads to sadness, leads to betrayal, leads to. And so what you’re saying is he’s getting to the deeper roots. He’s like, no, no, no, no. Stop looking at the anger. Let’s look at the heart. Let’s let’s what, what, what is in here? That’s that’s going that we need to work on.
James Bryson: Yeah. Anger is, it’s the secondary emotion, right? Usually rooted in bitterness could be a measure of, of anxiety and you’re right in the world and psychology. They just take care of the symptoms, there’s really no real remedy. You speak about your issues. You, you vent all your troubles. And really, I mean, that helps out to an extent, really is just like you’re being reminded once again, about the hurt about the pain. Like it was one, it was one gentlemen who I work with. He went to his, his psychologist and she kind of opened up Pandora’s box, like, and he vented all his issues and he came home, isolated himself in his room and didn’t leave for a day or two. We had Bible study and I kind of touched on psychology a bit and just spoke about the same issue, how they just touched the surface, they don’t hit the root of the issue. And he came to me late on that day. He said, thank you so much for that encouragement. That was going through a lot of those psychological things that you were referring to. And I was molested from the age of eight, all the way to the age of 12. He was real broken about those things. Right. It’s like only the gospel can touch the root of the issue.
James Bryson: Our receptivity to the things of God. I don’t look at it necessarily as just do, do, do, do, do. I gotta do, do a bunch of things, I look at it as it being done, you know, Christ has done it. And because I don’t have to fight from victory, I actually lead from a place of victory. Like I’m already victorious. I don’t have to fight to be victorious. Right. Just staying connected to his word, staying connected to prayer, staying connected to the people of God. And just a part of the simplicity of God’s channel organization really. And what he ordained, because this is easy just to say, work out your own recovery. And we get that a lot in these AA and a rooms, you have to stand up and say, my name is James. I’m a alcoholic. Like this is what you have to reference yourself as, Christ as a different identity for you. He says, no, you’re not an alcoholic. You’re born again. You’re a child. You’ve been redeemed. You’ve been bought with a price. It’s just a completely different frame of reference. I believe.
Shea: Yeah. I would agree. Cause I mean, Paul even says, he says, stop looking at what’s behind you and start looking ahead a psychology you’re right. They sit you down and all they ask they, they, they dig up. What’s wrong with you. They dig up. What’s wrong with you. They dig up. What’s wrong with you. They dig up. What’s wrong with you. They dig up. What’s wrong with you. And then they’re like, so how do you want to go about fixing it? And I know from my own experience, I would look at them and I got fired. By the way my psychiatrist fired me just FYI, because I didn’t buy into it. I sat there in that chair, wondering how am I going to fix myself? And I’m sitting in front of you needing answers. And until I found Christ to be the answer, I never found an answer.
Shea:And once I found Christ to be the answer victory, I’m talking victory. I could say, I saw victory hitting Jesus, my savior. Right? I’m telling you life got better. I liked that better life guy. Cause you know, we want to say, Oh, life is dope best. And then you over pump it. And then you’re like, well it’s better. No life got better because I felt so much. And I know, you know, we we’ve talked. I mean, we’ve felt so much in our past life. It was like, how would I ever recover? Man, the minute Jesus came in, it was like, wow, light bulb shines. Even like Michelle was saying the other day, if her path is kind of squiggly, right? It just brings you back to a tighter squiggle. That’s all.
James Bryson:That was a man named David. And he had the biggest breakdown in his personal life. Actually some of the closest men in his life wanted to kill him and wanted to stone him. It was something called a battle of Ziklag and in his battle, the Amlakikes, raided and kidnapped all of the mighty men’s children as well as their wives. And so David came back to visit lag and found that everybody was gone. He was completely broken. And it said that they cried too. They couldn’t cry no more. One of the worst times in David’s life. And he actually said that he went and he encouraged himself in the Lord. And that’s interesting because in the Hebrew it actually means that he went and held on to God and wouldn’t let God go. Regardless of the situation, he didn’t try to explain himself. He didn’t try to react and just go ahead and do something and just go to the Amlakikes.
James Bryson: No, he went to God and he was just brutally honest before God. And you know what God told him. He said, you will surely recover all you will surely recover. And David said, what should I do? God told him exactly what to do. And David recovered all, they defeated the amla kites as well as they retrieved back their families. And the promise of God was made. Sure. And so when it comes to recovery, it’s really us going to God and holding onto God and don’t let them go. And by virtue of you doing that, you’ll recover.
Michelle: Amen. That’s awesome. And we want to thank you for being here and helping encourage people today. So for everybody out there listening, thank you for joining us. Once again, we want to pray with you as always send us a prayer request. Send us your questions, your comments on the pantrypodcast.com or at the pantry podcast on Facebook or Instagram. And do you want to quickly shout out your YouTube channel? Yeah.
James Bryson: Yes. My YouTube channel is James Bryson and you can go and check, check it out. I usually try to trap two or three videos a month.
Michelle: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll go ahead and add that link in the show notes for this episode as well so that you can check out more from pastor James. Awesome. Till next time. Bye. Bye.
