We can’t express enough that it is not uncommon for individuals who struggle with addiction to relapse at least once in their recovery process. Don’t be surprised, because it may happen a few times before they finally get it right. But, it’s very important to know what actually causes you to relapse, and whatever that may be is known as a trigger or your triggers. These things could be stress, it could be people, it could be places, it could be negativity, or any type of challenging emotion. It could be seeing or sensing an object. It could be any of these things, just to name a few. But, after identifying your triggers, a plan must be put in place to help you to stay on track.

Stress Triggers

If it’s stress, this is one of the main causes of relapse. Many people who struggle with addiction, turn to their drug of choice when they are faced with stressful situations, especially if the substance was the person’s main coping mechanism. Now, I highly recommend making a list of people, places, things, or situations that cause excessive stress. Let’s just be realistic, life itself can be stressful, and you can’t make everything just disappear out of your life because it causes you stress. But, for example, you may have been in a bad relationship or you may have financial issues. Those are two of the main causes of stress that will just cause your stress to reach the max. We want to help you to be able to handle these situations.

People Triggers

Now, your trigger could be people. It could be places. People who participated in your addictive behavior could be triggers for relapse. Just like specific places, whenever you are reminded of your addiction, have ways of handling your feelings. I have something to do. For example, go out to dinner with a sponsor, read a book, connect with others from your support groups. They are available to help you be successful in your recovery. Now, sometimes negative emotions or feelings can be a trigger. At some point or another, we all have negative or challenging emotions. But, the key is how we deal with those emotions. Learn how to face your emotions without relapsing. You could try journaling. You could take a walk. You could talk to your counselor, therapist, or even praying when you have these feelings of negativity. Seeing or sensing an object may be a trigger for you. Anything that reminds you of your addiction is a trigger.

Looking at Recovery

Let’s look at recovery, not as a quitting, but as building a new life. Let’s just look at it as you building a new life. Reflect if you need to. Remind yourself of the negative consequences you experienced when you were using. Remember all the people that you hurt, all the relationships that you destroyed because of your drug use. Don’t forget that life brought you to nothing but pain, and that light brought you to nothing about pain and hardship. We want you to be able to embrace a healthier version of your life. Second Corinthians 5:17 states, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away, and behold, all things have become new.” This could be your new testimony.

Triggers During Holidays

The last trigger that we’ll talk about today is times of celebration. We know holidays, birthdays, they can be times of relapse, and you may be feeling happier, thinking I’m in control and you may be confident of everything, but the question is, are you really able to keep it together? Here’s a little warning. People who struggle with addiction frequently lose their capacity to know when to stop. This is a great time to have someone hold you accountable for your actions. Find someone that you trust and respect to kindly, but firmly, encourage you to stop what you’re doing if you do start to relapse. Put together a plan with your sponsor, with your counselor, or your therapist on how to handle temptations and these triggers. If you go into a situation unprepared, you’re more likely to relapse, so avoid going into situations alone where you are at high risk of a relapse.
Do everything you can to protect yourself from relapsing, but don’t beat yourself up if you slip and fall.

Hope with Burning Love Outreach

At Burning Love Outreach we believe if you fall off the horse, dust yourself off and get back on. With persistence, determination, and the right counseling, you should be able to defeat your triggers.

You can leave a prayer request, give a testimony or a praise report, because we love celebrating with you.

Reignite a True Love Connection with special guests Pastor Darold and Co-Pastor Karen Montgomery from Life-Changing Experience Worship Center, Pensacola, FL. They will share the secret sauce that has added flavor to their marriage for over 30 years! Join my Co-Host, Sylvia Shipman, and myself, Searita Jones, for this conversation on “A Burning Love Moment!”

Interview Transcription

Below is a transcription fo part of the interview! Watch the video for the entire show.

Searita Jones:
Right into it. We are just going to start with our questions, and we want to know about that secret sauce because you two have been married over 30 years, and I am saying, “What has kept you in love?”

Pastor Darold:
Be true to our vows from a covenant standpoint. We never looked at the vows from a contract standpoint.

Searita Jones:
Yes.

Pastor Darold:
What we promised to do to each other and to God, we took that serious individually. I believe when we formed that threefold cord, then God blesses what we do. We take each other seriously. While at the same time, we don’t take each other seriously because the reason why we like each other is because we are best friends. We laugh. I think laughter is one of the things that if you don’t have in your marriage, to be able to laugh with your spouse and sometimes even laugh at your spouse, you are going to miss a friend moment that can bridge the gap between irregularities, and you’re going to have those states. You got to be able to have a friend. What that brings me to is the three types of love: Phileo, that’s friendship.

Pastor Darold:
You got Agape. That’s that God type of love. Then you have the Eros, that is the romantic or erotic, where we get erotic love. Sometimes when we’re having difficulties or irregularities, we have to shift from one love to the next to get us back to what we need to because sometimes she doesn’t like me, but she always loves me. She has to lean on Agape or even Phileo to get us back to Eros, you understand what I’m saying.

Searita Jones:
I understand what you’re saying.

Pastor Darold:
We’ve tried to do that over the years, and we sneak off every now and then, because you got to take time for yourself. I think biggest thing that has worked for us is we work as a team. We work as a team. We don’t do anything. One of the things that I teach when we do premarital stuff and we do our wedding stuff, we do our marriage couples and all of that, is you give up the ‘I’ for the ‘we’. You understand that principle to give up the ‘I’ for the ‘we’ and work as a team, there’s nothing you cannot accomplish. I thank God for this, I think I did.

Searita Jones:
I know that’s right. It’s so true and you have to work as a team. To be willing to take the good with the bad and to honor your vows. I think that’s why there’s a lot of divorces because people are not honoring the vow, the covenant they made not only themselves, but with God. They forget that they made a covenant with God, and ready to throw in the towel when things get rough and smooth as you want it to go. Sylvia.

Sylvia Shipman:
Yeah. I wholeheartedly agree. Even in this, and pastor, you can help us out, Pastor Karen in Montgomery. In this pandemic that we’re in, so many people that have lost that sauce. As you know, the divorce rate has gone up and even in the body of Christ. What can you share with our listeners about how to bring that sauce back in? Because you said a powerful thing that when you don’t honor the contract, you’re honoring that commitment that you made that vow and building upon that love. What can you help the listeners with that are finding it hard during this time and literally throwing in the towel and saying, it’s done? How can they bring that sauce back in? Get those juices back going again.

Pastor Karen Montgomery:
I think that’s a good question. One of the things pastor and I have found over the years that we have to do, Sister Sylvia, is we have to sometime reinvent the wheel. I know people think that you shouldn’t, but sometimes we go through different stages and ages in our lives, and we’re not the same people we were when we were 20. We got married when we were in our twenties. One thing we do is we keep doing something else to bring back the spice. Like you said, in our twenties, we didn’t have to go off to spice up things because the spice was still there. Now we’re in our fifties. We do have to go out. We make it a point to do things together. I think that’s one of the things that has kept the spice because we’ve always made it a point, even though our lives are super busy, to do things together. Just about everything we do, we still at this point do it together.

Pastor Karen Montgomery:
I believe that is one of the secret sauce that has kept our marriage strong, healthy and invigorating. Just with a lot of fun, we like to have fun together. That’s the main thing. You got to smile and you got to laugh. You got to just let your guard down sometimes and do things out the box that you wouldn’t normally do such as, one of the things I want to do for my birthday, which was super out the box before the pandemic came was I wanted to do that break out of jail thing. What is that called? The escape room. This is not him, but do you know he did it with me? Sometimes the times we have to compromise and do things with our spouses that we wouldn’t normally want to do. That did the world for me when he did that.

Pastor Karen Montgomery:
I know that’s not his thing, but we did the break out of jail while we had on orange jumpsuits, the pastors. We had on our little orange jumpsuits when we did it. We just have fun, you have to bring that. If you lost the fun, bring it back. Bring it back into your marriage. Of course pray about it. We are always very prayerful, and we continue to ask God to give us wisdom in the marriage because you need it. We need it. Especially in this time where we’re in a home together, 24/7, you kind of need to ask God to give you what you need during this marriage.

Searita Jones:
Yeah, love it. I love it. We’re all Christians, we’re all believers in Christ. A lot of people on the outside world believed that you can’t have fun when you’re following Christ. That is the furthest thing from the truth. Can you tell us some of the things that you do? I know you said the escape room, but what are some other things that you two do to have fun?

Pastor Darold:
Well, one of the things we try to do being that we’re not only married in ministry, even we try to bring this same mindset to the church. Not just America with the marriage ministry, but to the entire church to have balance. Balance is huge in our ministry. I don’t want anybody to think that because you’re a Christian, because you’re saved, that you cannot have fun. We do all kinds of things to have fun. At the church and here’s how: 2120 Jazz, our year-end celebrations are epic in the city. We don’t do watch night. We drop in balloons. We got music, we got the arts on display. We do all kinds of stuff. We got 80s nights that we’re doing. We’re going on marriage retreats. Everybody’s dressing up in 70s. All kinds of stuff because God does not get offended when his children have fun. Believers miss that because they think they’re going to offend God if they laugh. What happens is if they develop that mentality and you don’t know how to enjoy each other, that creates a wedge and the enemy can slip in through any crack you give him.

Pastor Darold:
Sometimes I tickle her. I know how to make her laugh. They clown on me left and right. I told him, I’m going to put some cameras up in the house. I’m going to make me some money. I’m going to call Oprah and say, “You want a reality show?” You need to see that. They let me have it. I wouldn’t have it any other way at all because this is my buddy, this is my best friend. This is my ride or die. Whatever colloquialism you want to use, she’s that. I just love it.

Pastor Darold:
As long as it doesn’t offend God, as long as it doesn’t offend heaven, as long as it doesn’t contradict with the scriptures, we’re rolling. We’re going to go out to eat. We’re going to have fun. We know we can’t necessarily do the club thing, so we try to create atmosphere that the church, so the saints can have, what was the thing we did the year before? They got to dance and do their thing. We do so much, I’m trying to remember which one it was. Our Twitter award show is a big hit at the church, and different things that we do so that the saints can have an outlet. They can enjoy each other. Leave the kids at home so we can come in and just have fun because saints need that. Marriages need that. All this stuff is going on, we need a reason to laugh. Do not lose that ability to have fun with each other because if you lose that, you create a crack and the enemy needs just a sliver to get in. You try to keep him out with whatever we got.

What do you think is the greatest need in the world today? If we had more, blank, the world would be a better place. Well, I believe that the greatest need that we have today is for more love. Now, one thing we all have in common is the need to be loved. And whenever I hear someone make a statement, “Oh, I don’t want to be loved.” I find that very hard to believe because we were created out of love.

So, we all have a natural desire to be loved because that is a part of our makeup and how we were designed. Have you ever been missing something in your life and you just didn’t know what it was? Well, I find that some individuals who suffer from drug abuse and addiction, that they’re looking for something, and sometimes that something is love. That’s a major component that’s missing from most of their lives.

When I think about Jesus, was there anyone that he did not love? I believe he loved the prostitute, that tax collector, the diseased people, he loved the children, he loved his disciples. That’s who Jesus was. He was about love. And what is absolutely wonderful about his love is that it’s the same today as it was over 2,000 years ago. His love for us never changes. And as children of God, how do we stand out from everybody else?

How are we different? How will anyone know that we are children of the most high God? They will know by our love. Let’s look at John 13:34 through 35. “A new commandment,” this is Jesus speaking, “a new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you that you also love one another. And by this all, and will know that you are my disciples.”

This was a commandment to you and me. Not a request, but a commandment, which means do it. A part of loving is forgiving. Many people are missing love because they have chosen not to forgive. We must start to forgive one another. I know people do things that hurt us. They betray us, they lied, they steal, they cheat, they talk bad about us, but we must learn to forgive. And the best example of forgiveness is displayed when Jesus was hung on the cross and he cried out on behalf of those who crucified him, those who nailed it to the cross, Jesus asked God to forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

My prayer is that we learn to let go and let God. Some of us may say, Oh, that was Jesus, I can’t do it. You don’t want your life to end and there is unforgiveness in your heart. It’s not worth it. And because none of us know when our life will be required of us, it’s better to forgive and live in the freedom that it brings. Forgiveness brings about a spiritual release from bondage.

Well, you might say what if the person you are trying to love doesn’t receive it? That’s okay. It doesn’t matter if they receive it or not. What is important is that we obey a command from Jesus. Loving others isn’t always easy, but we must do it. And sometimes we try to change people to be who we think that they should be. That’s not our job. Instead, just love them just the way they are.

The Bible says that love is patient and love is kind. You and I can only give love if our hearts are full of God’s love. So, if anyone come in contact with us, I pray that they will know we are followers of Christ by our love. Proverbs 3:3 says, “Let love and faithfulness never leave you. Bind them around your neck, write them on the tablets of your heart.”

What do you think? You may also comment below, leave a prayer request, give a testimony, or even a praise report. Remember, you don’t have to travel this journey alone. Don’t give in, don’t give out, and don’t give up.

Hello everyone, my name is Searita. This is Burning Love Outreach.

I want to thank you for listening to a Burning Love Moment.

Today’s topic is “What Should I Do if I’m in a Toxic Relationship?

Full Transcription

Hello everyone, my name is Searita. This is Burning Love Outreach.

I want to thank you for listening to a Burning Love Moment.

Today’s topic is “What Should I Do if I’m in a Toxic Relationship?

Well, it is well-known that in a marriage, if a partner suffers from substance abuse, cheating, or lying, that relationship is most likely heading downhill.

If someone in a relationship drinks too much, uses drugs, are lying, or cheating, the effects are going to be detrimental and will be felt by their children, their family, their friends, their co-workers, or anyone who has close contact with them. Aside from the abuser, the most hurt is often felt by the other person in the relationship. When one in a relationship suffers from any or all of these issues, you can bet there’s tension and both are often very unhappy. These problems usually create distance between the couple. Often, if an issue like this exists with one of the partners, there’s usually fighting, arguing that takes place, which could become violent.

There Is Hope!

If you or your partner is having a problem with alcohol, drugs, lying, or cheating, there is hope. There are several signs that your relationship is in trouble to the point that help from a pastor, a counselor or a treatment professional may be needed.

So you may ask, “Well, how will I know that my relationship may be toxic? What signs should I look out for?”

If arguments about money, staying out late, not taking care of responsibilities are taking place, your relationship may be toxic. If you’re having to cover for your partner by making excuses for him or her such as reporting to a boss or a co-worker that the individual is “sick” and won’t be into work, that may be a sign. If a partner state that they use drugs or cheat or lie because there is so much tension in the home and there’s so much stress, that’s a cop-out. An intervention is needed.

Clear Signs of a Toxic Relationship.

If domestic violence takes place in the home, intervention is needed. If the relationship or family as a whole becomes isolated from friends or relatives, intervention is needed. If only one of these signs is present in a marriage, it may be time for you to take stock in that relationship and do something to make it better. Whatever the problem is, it needs to be identified and addressed. It’s not unusual to hope that these things will take care of themselves over a period of time, but unfortunately, that rarely happens. The best thing to do is to get help for the issues as soon as possible. If you don’t, the problems are very likely to get worse.

What Can You Do?

Many different treatments are available that can be effective to individuals who have problems with alcohol, drugs, cheating, and lying. Some treatments involve individual counseling, some involve group counseling, and some involves self-help meeting and support groups. If you have a problem, it is worth it to enter treatment not only for you, but also for your partner, for your children, for your friends and family. This is one of the best things that you can do for your relationship. But what if your partner does not think they want to get help or don’t think that they have a problem? They may not want to be involved in counseling. Actually, some programs have help for family members and work with this very issue. They can give you some ideas and information on motivating your partner to get the help that they need. And these approaches are often very successful.

The important point is substance abuse, cheating, and lying causes damage to a marriage or a relationship, and these problems need to be treated. If the issues are not treated, there will always be conflict, there will always be arguing and fighting taking place. And we want to see our relationships work and recommend spiritual counseling and treatment for the issues.

We Are Here to Help.

If you need additional help, please do not hesitate to reach out to Burning Love Outreach.

You can leave a comment below, submit a prayer request, or even share a testimony or a praise report with us.

Also, we would love to have you partner with us by donating to this outreach with either a one-time donation or become one of our monthly donors.

Remember, you don’t have to travel this journey alone. At Burning Love Outreach, we speak out loud so others don’t have to suffer in silence. Please don’t give in, don’t give out, and don’t give up. Thank you for joining us for a burning love moment.

Hello, everyone. My name is Sarita and this is Burning Love Outreach.

I want to thank you for listening to A Burning Love Moment. Today’s topic is tips on how to handle relationship stress. I will discuss how to handle stress without losing your sense of peace or damaging your relationship.

Full Transcription

Whenever stress enters a relationship, it has the potential to create what I call the three D’s, which are, distance, disagreements, and disconnection between you and your spouse. When you support your spouse, when he or she is stressed, not only can you learn how to deal with stress and relationships, you’ll also create a new level of intimacy that actually brings you both closer. Relationship stress is never easy, but it’s a part of life.

If your spouse has been the one holding down your relationship, there will come a time when he or she will become tired, then you’ll be expected to hold things down. You need to be able to step in and do what needs to be done at that moment. You may find it hard to help your spouse when he or she is stressed out, but your assistance might help you both be the source that each other can count on. You should always be able to count on each other, to be there if you become tired. Stress can cause a wide range of problems. Usually, when people are under a lot of stress, they become distracted, withdrawn, and even less affectionate. When we’re under stress, our worst traits usually show their faces. And if relationship stress was already a problem, it will most likely increase and you will see it.

So how does your partner handle stress? You should know the answer to that question, even if you have to come right out and ask them. But please don’t ask this question at the time that they’re stressed out. Let this question be a topic of conversation over dinner, because you want to know how to help them when they need it most. That’s how much you care. You want to be their source of strength and never lose sight of your spouse’s stress level. If you do, that means you two aren’t communicating and you are not connecting as you should. It is so important to recognize when you’re dealing with a stressed out partner. How you connect is key when it comes to stress and relationships. It feels really good when you and your spouse are on the same page emotionally, right? Yes. So there is nothing like close emotional bond, when you know you can lean on each other through the good times and the bad times.

Even though stress appears in every relationship, you have a choice as to respond lovingly or to respond negatively. And I hope you choose to respond lovingly. Support your partner, show compassion, keep the lines of communication open. One of the best ways to deal with relationship stress is to talk things out. Don’t hold it in. Although our words have power, we must remember to listen as much as you speak. It may surprise you as to how quickly you can work towards a solution together. Make sure your environment is calm, care for your body, prioritize relaxation, and get proper sleep. Eliminate those electronics at night before you go to bed to create a peaceful atmosphere where you can rest without any interruptions. A key in handling stress is relaxation. Make sure you’re getting proper rest at night and proper sleep, and make sure you take time to take a deep breath from time to time, breathe and let it out.

If you need additional help, please do not hesitate to reach out to Burning Love Outreach.

You can submit a prayer request or a testimony, or you could even give a praise report.

Also, we would love to have you partner with us by donating to this outreach with a one-time donation or become one of our monthly donors.

Remember, you don’t have to travel this journey alone. At Burning Love Outreach, we speak out loud so others don’t have to suffer in silence.

Hold on, and remember, don’t give in, don’t give out, and don’t give up.

Thank you for listening to A Burning Love Moment.