We did it!

After several years of praying, thinking, consulting, onsite visits to different programs coupled by months of strategic planning, significant financial investment, and an entire team’s dedication and hard work, we obtained CARF accreditation. CARF (Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities) is an international, independent, non-profit accreditor of health and human services. CARF’s mission is to promote quality and value of services toward the enhancing of human lives and optimal outcomes. To be CARF certified is the gold standard in the mental-health industry. With over two thousand compliance mandates (client care, staff training, financial excellence, leadership integrity, facilities management, etc.), we received the hallmark honor, the three-year certificate.

This is big.

We want to be the best drug and alcohol treatment program in the state. Our goal is to provide quality care in the most professional manner possible. People matter. Every human being—including and especially those suffering with SUD or AUD—deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. To that end, our aim has been to integrate the clinical with the spiritual to enhance our standard of care for those caught in the vicious web of addiction. CARF has given us a clear vision and path along with the necessary accountability to reach higher levels of excellence.

CARF also positions us to reach more people. Long gone are the days when all that was available for addicts was the Salvation Army, the local rescue mission, Teen Challenge (us), and a few Ma and Pa shops. The addiction-recovery space is a crowded world. There is a plethora of options available for those battling chemical addictions. To be considered as a legitimate provider—one that can, thereby, receive certain referrals (e.g., courts, hospitals, other agencies)—an organization must have proper credentials. CARF gives us that. Our goal all along has been to help more people more comprehensively. We thank God for his favor and are trusting him to increase our fruitfulness as we seek to achieve our mission—“restoring communities by bringing faith-based recovery to the addicted.”

Now for the BIG, BIG NEWS!

He did it!

Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ defeated sin, Satan, and death. His perfect life, death, and resurrection secured for us an inexhaustible storehouse of gospel riches. Sinners can now be forgiven of their sins, reconciled with God, made righteous in him, and have the hope of future glorification. Just as Adam’s sin and consequent punishment was charged to us because he was our legal representative, so Christ’s perfect obedience and sin-bearing death is credited to us because he is our legal representative through our union with him by faith. Our treason against a holy God was paid for in Christ’s cruel and shameful death on the cross. At the cross, God’s righteous justice was satisfied and his unsurpassable love demonstrated. As the prophet of old wrote, “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5; see also 1 Pet. 2:24).

We who were once far away have been brought near, seated at the table of fellowship, made sons and daughters of God. Through Christ, we have assurance that nothing can separate us from the love of God, that we are more than conquerors, that God works all things together for our good, and that he will withhold nothing good from us. We have been blessed in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ, made partakers of the divine nature, set free from the law of sin and death, empowered to fully meet the righteous requirements of the law. Author Jerry Bridges puts it aptly, “The gospel (that is, the message of what Christ has done for us and continues to do) provides both the foundation and motivation for our role in spiritual transformation,” or what we call, addiction-recovery.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the solution to our greatest problems—guilt, condemnation, separation, and bondage to sin. The gospel declares that Jesus’ performance—not our flawed, fluctuating behavior—is the basis of our day-to-day acceptance with God. Jesus’ broken body and shed blood are the unshakable foundation of our freedom from shame and fear and the eternal source of our joy and hope. Faith in Jesus joins us to him—making us righteous in him and joint heirs with him—giving us contentment, strength, hunger for godliness, and a zeal to be his witnesses. Author John Piper puts it this way: By receiving God’s justification in Christ “as your greatest treasure in life and trust in it, you will have a peace with God that passes all understanding. You will be a secure person. You will not need the approval of others. You will not need the ego-supports of wealth or power or revenge. You will be free. You will overflow with love. You will lay down your life in the cause of Christ for the joy that is set before you.”

We cannot appreciate this infinitely good news, however, until we come to grips with the bad news. Professor Richard Lovelace once said, “The shallowness of many who are saved is due to the fact that they never realized how lost they really were.” We are not merely weak and wounded, sick and diseased, chemically imbalanced, psychologically disordered, and neurologically impaired. It is much worse! We are all—whether classified as drug and/or alcohol dependent or not—sinners. Each of us has rebelled against our Creator, despising his authority and asserting our independence. We have in effect said to God through our actions, attitudes, and thoughts, “I don’t care who you are and what you say. I will do what I want.” Whether through the bottle or our personal accomplishments, the needle or material gain, sexual exploits or our self-acclaimed morality, we have traded the inestimable worth of God’s glory for things of no comparable value. In so doing, we have belittled God. Our sin, accordingly, makes us guilty before God, separating us from him, others, ourselves, and the created order, and subjects us to his wrath. This is unsettling news for us who are by nature self-justifying, blame-shifting people. Barring God’s gracious intervention, we will remain dumb to our true spiritual condition. Only through the conviction of the Spirit will we be brought to a place of humility and repentance—the only gateway to any true and lasting recovery.

Earlier in the year, we became a licensed residential program with the State of Michigan. CARF now enables us to offer more therapeutic services in our endeavor to help people work more effectively through past traumas and address psychological dysfunctions so as to remove or reduce barriers which hinder gospel penetration. While it is right to celebrate the various triumphs God in his kindness allows us to experience, there is a vast difference between what we consider important and what God deems important. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the ultimate source of any goodness we experience and every badness from which we have been spared. True healing from a troubled conscience and deliverance from anxiety, depression, loneliness, and emptiness is found only in Christ’s redemption. The gospel alone is the cure for sinners.

Nothing is more relevant and significant than Christ—crucified and risen again. The good news about Jesus will forever remain breaking, headline news to those whose eyes have graciously been opened. All of heaven is and will forever sing, “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” (Revelation 5:12) The Apostle Paul summed it this way, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.” (Romans 11:36).

“May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 6:14)

My hope is built on nothing less,

than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.

I dare not trust the sweetest frame,

but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.