It may be a stretch, but I think the best scripture passage I have heard that is probably most helpful for the addict is the story of Jesus with the Samaritan Woman, found in John 4:1-26.

I became aware of this when I heard my cousin Jeremy Pummel preach a sermon from this passage last summer at his church, NorthRock Church, in Thornton, Colorado.

I am not a huge consumer of recovery literature, but I have been around enough of it, and I have attended a enough recovery-type groups to sense where this passage really speaks to the person dealing with recovery.

In truth, this passage is not really just for someone recovering from drug abuse or alcoholism or the like, but rather, it really is meant to speak to each of us. We are each in recovery from something (or, some things) which may not disrupt our lives and relationships as graphically as defined addictions do, but that keep us from living with God, living the full life He intended for us, and keep us living for lesser things. Our lives were meant to be lived in a fullness of love, but many of us yet live under a steady stream of lusts. For those who accept the Gospel message, we are all in recovery from our sin nature. We are all in recovery from believing lies about God, the purpose of life, human nature, and from believing lies about ourselves. And we are all in recovery from living only from and for ourselves. We are in recovery from hiding from love- or in the believer’s case, hiding from God, who is Love himself (I John 4:16).

I’ve been around Celebrate Recovery enough to know that, like AA participants, the first step to recovery is recognizing that there is something massively wrong in the way I live- in the choices I make, and in the escapes I use- that keeps me from dealing with real life adequately. Sanctification, like the recovery process, comes when I recognize that I have a problem with how I live, and that I am powerless on my own to really make a dent in the habit of poor choosing I regularly make. The beginning for change comes when I realize I have to take all of the weight to change off of myself- surrender- and give it to God. Change is a fruit of recognizing my own nature is broken, and that I cannot remedy it on my own, and that I need God’s interdiction to reform my heart and my habits, as the Gospel message says He will. I have to constantly acknowledge my problems and weakness and bring them back to Him. I have to surrender them to Him- my specifically horrendous habits, and my generally broken nature- and let Him move in and heal them as He shepherds my head and my heart.

The crux of the Woman at the Well story lies in verses 10-14:

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Jesus’ invitation for the woman and for us to come and drink the living water he speaks of was intended to be effectual. Jesus uses this illustration because he is pointing out that everywhere else we go for esteem, for pleasure, for significance, or for affection is a brackish pool. “You will be thirsty again”, he says. You, like the refugee adrift in the salty ocean and tortured by dehydration, will only find temporary relief if you revisit your favorite escape and “drink the water.” In time, you will be thirsty again- and even thirstier- and if you keep drinking the salty slosh, you will kill yourself. Seeking comfort and solace in illegitimate sources may feel good for a time, but in the end, they will tighten their grip on us so that we are enslaved to them- and they will kill us.

Jesus’ living water, though- “the spring of water welling up to eternal life”- is the grace God pours over us when we give our lives to Him. That grace is God’s gift to us that never quits meeting our needs, that never leaves us dry, that never leaves us wanting. And that grace is God’s gift to us when we truly submit ourselves to Him. And we do that by putting the weight of our personal wants and needs and faults on Jesus, and taking the mercy and righteousness and guidance of Jesus on ourselves in exchange.

This is what recovery is about: quitting drinking from brackish wells of bitter water (alcohol, pot, sex, possessions, power, privacy- insert your favorite fault here) because we think they might sustain us, and committing ourselves to the well of living water, because He is the only one that will really give us life.

This commitment is a commitment to live in grace and from grace through and through. It is only God’s grace- God’s freely-given favor, bestowed on us through Jesus’ death on the cross and fulfilled through our daily relationship with Him, freeing us from living only for ourselves if we accept it- that fills us up and satisfies us, lifting us above our pasts, our problems, and our pretenses (recovery), and setting us free for a future of purpose in Him (sanctification).

In love.

In life.