OPERATION INTEGRITY UPDATE - APRIL 2015

Operation Integrity Update – April 2015

 

 

I begin this update with deep appreciation for your prayerful and financial support in 2014. Year-end 2014 was our most productive year-end fundraising ever, a huge boost to our ministry efforts and me personally heading into 2015. Thank you!

 

2015 has already brought increased opportunities and challenges, but our fundamental commitment remains in the grass roots local efforts.

 

Our southern California fellowships continue helping men, women and families, escape the destructive behaviors and isolation of addiction.

 

Operation Integrity is currently mentoring Christ-centered addiction recovery efforts in Texas, Missouri, West Virginia, Colorado, Oregon, North Carolina and Nebraska, Georgia, Alabama and Kentucky and we continue mentoring private recovery meetings across the U.S. and beyond.

 

Operation Integrity has a new ministry partnership with Emmaus Ministries – Chicago. They offer services to street level sex workers and addicts. We will provide our literature (OUR JOURNEY HOME  & WHEN LOST MEN COME HOME, NOT FOR MEN ONLY) free of charge to support their efforts.

 

Operation Integrity is providing affordable recovery programs through our 45 Day Intensive & 90 Day Transformation programs; collaborating with counselors, therapists, churches, and treatment centers.

 

Already in 2015, I have been speaking locally and around the U.S. with stops in Omaha Nebraska, Fort Worth Texas and locally at churches and treatment programs in California. We are currently in talks about travel to Singapore and New Zealand for 2016 as well. Our message of information and inspiration, community, advocating for the inner journey through recovery groups and counseling have inspired cultural shifts in individuals and church communities, increasing transparency and openness.

 

We have expanded our clergy assistance program to help counselors and therapists continue their personal growth and recovery. We are helping various church leaders in Ohio, West Virginia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, California, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, Texas and Canada, The United Kingdom, Greece, Australia, Croatia and Uganda.

 

Approximately 3900 people read Operation Integrity Weekly.

 

 

 

Real People Results -

 

Six weeks ago, Fred (not his real name) came to Operation Integrity facing the humiliation and consequences associated with his addiction to pornography and sexual affairs. Now 53, Fred had followed his father into this addiction – being exposed to pornography growing up. He has always been hard working, a faithful church attender and he sincerely wanted to live with respect and dignity, but secrets and shame were an overpowering part of his life. He had brought great hurt to his wife and family and he knew it. He was out of control; he knew it, admitted it and was ready for a change. He just needed help.

 

Through working the OI Transformation Program and attending Operation Integrity meetings, Fred is finding a new life. His attitude has changed; even his wife and employer have remarked they see a difference in him. Fred has been successful in business and has reimbursed Operation integrity for costs associated with the help and care he is receiving. But many are not so fortune.

 

I am currently assisting four other men in a similar way as I am working with Fred. Each of these men face great challenges and are not able to pay for all the costs associated with the support they receive; their care is made possible by THE ROGER M. FUND, a scholarship fund dedicated to helping people who cannot afford the cost associated with their Operation Integrity program. Many lives have changed because someone like you donated to Operation Integrity.

 

 

 

Our needs at this time are as follows -

 

Funding The Roger M Scholarship Fund

Meet current employee obligations (payroll).

Print literature for Prison Chaplain support efforts (supply OI literature to inmates through chaplains) and for distribution to Emmaus and other ministries we support.

General overhead including shipping and postage costs, vehicle and travel expenses, communications, social networking and online costs, and non-reimbursable travel.

Client services which includes short-term care of individuals such as temporary housing (sober-living), and even sometimes help with food and clothing, as well as employer relations and family support and counseling. 

Print and ship literature in support of developing recovery groups overseas.

 

 

 

How You Can Be A Part

 

Operation Integrity needs immediate assistance to fund our ongoing operations as outlined above. I personally ask that you financially support our efforts. (All donations to Operation Integrity are tax deductible.)

There are two convenient ways you can financially support Operation Integrity.

1. Visit us at www.operationintegrity.org to make a donation.

2. Mail your check to Operation Integrity,

24040 Camino del Avion #A115

Monarch Beach CA 92629

 

I thank you personally in advance for your contributions. Most of all I thank you for your ongoing support through prayer.

 

Yours in Christ and recovery,

David Zailer

Executive Director

 

info@operationintegrity.org

1-800-762-0430

 

Follow Operation Integrity on Facebook, & Twitter @opintegrity

 

TURNING OVER OUR LIFE - from OUR JOURNEY HOME

Turning Over Our Life

"Those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty."  Psalm 91:1


"The world is not to be put in order, the world is in order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order."  -Henry Miller


We made a decision to turn our will and our lives
over to the care of God as we understood him.

Once we have made the decision to turn our will over to God’s care, we’ll quickly learn that it’s impossible to do so without turning our life over to God’s care as well. We simply can’t do one without the other. The way we live life is the truest indicator of our will. Until we give our life over to God, we have not surrendered our will, no matter what we think or say.


This has been our problem: we’ve considered our personal wants and wishes as entitlements and necessities, and because of this we’ve been making demands on God and others in ways that we do not realize. When we fail to get what we want, we become angry and resentful, which is proof that we have not turned over our will and life to God’s care. Anger and resentment expose us as the self-centered people that we are. Sometimes, even without realizing it, we punish others in one way or another, and in so doing, we can become so intolerable that those around us will leave us or send us packing. When we create these kind of situations for ourselves, our personal misery grows all the more, making our addictions attractive once again.

In one way or another we’ve fought the world and everyone in it. We have, at times, become like mercenaries. We’ve fought for what we 
thought was important. If pushing and shoving didn’t work, we kill ‘em with kindness in order to hide our selfishness. Sometimes we claimed victory and gloated in ever-so-subtle ways. Other times we politely admitted defeat, apologizing for our behavior just to regroup and try again. Attitudes like these are indisputable evidence that we have even become addicted to our own self-image, the image of what we think our life is supposed to be like. Without knowing it, we became addicted to what we thought our life was supposed to be.


With all this in mind, the next order of business for us is to give God our hopes, our dreams, our expectations, all of our agendas, even the way that we have thought about ourselves and our life. After all, whatever we thought our life was supposed to be like in the past hasn’t really been working, has it?


In true surrender to God, we quit fighting anyone or anything. We recognize that the only battle worth fighting is within ourselves. We turn our hope over to Him and make it His hope. We give Him our dreams. We give Him our problems and we allow them to become His problems. We make our expectations the expectation of God’s gracious working in our hearts and our minds with all other considerations as secondary. We determine ourselves to act, the best we can, according to what we know to be acts of love for God and love for others. We give up our agenda in order to live according to His agenda. Everything about us becomes His. Our life is no longer ours to run. We have given it over to God, and our life will be what He determines it to be. Not easy, but simple.

Because we are powerless over people, places, and things, we make it our only goal to live out a faith that longs for God and hopes for His care. With this "turning over" we fulfill our eternal calling. It’s the ultimate decision of faith, the most dignified thing we can do in this life. It’s not just another image we’ve made for our lives, because we no longer claim ownership of our lives. It’s bigger and more open-minded than that. It’s a decision that acknowledges all of our own efforts and
resources are insufficient. The turning over of our life is our personalized declaration, a God-given dignity, in which we state unequivocally that we are worth far more than we can ever give ourselves credit for. And yet, we have no need to claim any importance because with this decision—this dignity—we realize that we are made for bigger things than we could ever think or imagine on our own.


In the dignity of faith we are now consciously saying what we have been unconsciously saying to God in countless areas of our lives. We want Him and we know that we cannot live without Him. God has always known this and now we know it, too.

Serenity Prayer - attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it: trusting that You will ake all things right if I surrender to Your will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with you forever in the next. Amen

click on link to purchase OUR JOURNEY HOME

http://www.amazon.com/Our-Journey-Home-Inspirations-ebook/dp/B005KW93L0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318196236&sr=8-1

 

ALIGNED TO TRUTH - from WHEN LOST MEN COME HOME, NOT FOR MEN ONLY

Aligned to Truth

The purpose of admitting our wrongs to God isn’t to enlighten Him by filling in the gory details of our life, as if anything were a surprise to Him. After all, He knows the whole story better than we do. When we admit the exact nature of our wrongs to God, we consciously and purposefully bring ourselves into agreement with God, Who is our Hope for Life. We accept the facts of our lives just as they are without argument, aligning ourselves with God and His Truth. This our right place before God, our right place in His universe. Where before, we had aligned our lives with self-rule, deception and secrets, we now align ourselves with God’s truth, and this leads to the recovery of our heart, soul, mind and our true strength as men and women of freedom. Ultimately, no one escapes the truth, but by admitting the truth about ourselves we move toward the wholeness we have been searching for all of our lives. We are simply taking the “bull by the horns” and taking responsibility for our lives and our future. Which is better — to die with secrets and then face our Creator in arrogant deception, or to seek Him now and humbly reveal ourselves, which is a way we ask for mercy? God gives real mercy to real people. If we want life, mercy and life, we have got to get real.

 

The time is coming when everything will be revealed; all that is secret will be made public. Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops for all to hear!

Luke 12:2, 3 NLT

 

My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love – outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.

Thomas Merton in James Findley’s, Merton’s Place of Nowhere

 

            In the past, we used self-deceit and manipulation of facts much like Adam and Eve used fig leaves to avoid exposure. But to live, we step out from our hiding places and reveal our naked vulnerability. We make ourselves accountable for our lives, and trusting in God’s mercy and care, we become ready for God to reveal His loving and compassionate nature to us. Our movement toward God is in response to the call He’s been making to us all along. We respond to The One who continuously invites us to become fully alive in Him. Our identity of origin — made in the image of God — finds rebirth as we connect with God in this intimate way. In our honest admission to God and learning how to relate to Him as Father, we are becoming the most blessed of all people. 

 

Only now, however, is the evangelical church beginning to realize that without spiritual direction, without one-on-one or small group conversations where our lives are laid open in the presence of a person gifted to discern the workings of our inner life, the disease of deception will not be cured.  Without spiritual direction, millions of Christians will continue to walk the “OLD WAY,” thinking they’re on the path to knowing God well.

Larry Crabb, The Pressure’s Off pg 42

click this link to purchase

http://www.amazon.com/When-Lost-Men-Come-Home/dp/0615598234/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370464841&sr=1-2&keywords=When+Lost+Men+Come+Home