Wake Up, Look Up

Foreign. Hello, everyone. Thanks for listening to Wake up look up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weirck, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, is it time for an intervention? This is prompted by a heartbreaking article I read in the Washington Post about a sober house for sports betters. Uh, let me give you a little context. Of course, we're all familiar with kind of the halfway house approach to helping people get sobriety. After they go through a treatment program, they're placed in housing that is conducive to them not going back towards their addiction. They're around other recovery, other people in recovery, counselors usually who. Who provide some expertise. It's just a good environment for them to kind of re acclimate to regular life without the daily temptation of their addiction. And when we think of halfway houses, we probably think of alcohol usage, illegal drug usage, those kinds of things. But now, the first ever halfway house sober house simply for sports gambling exists in New Jersey. And this article focuses on, uh, one guy, a guy named Adam, who at the time of the beginning of this article, had been 195 days clean from sports gambling. And I want you to hear that language, because sports gambling can become, and for many is becoming an addiction. So the language of addiction, sobriety, how many days you've been clean, all fits here. Tragically, as you read the article, Adam relapses and goes back down the road towards the sports gambling. Now, we talked a lot about sports gambling on Wooloo, and I think for good reason, because it is a devastating disease in our culture that is simply on the rise. 36 states here in America and the District of Columbia have legalized sports betting, fueling a $13.7 billion industry. And with gambling ads appearing as frequently as every 13 seconds. Now, what neuroscientists will tell us is that gambling has the same addictive dopamine pathways that drugs and other things like that have. Uh, it is causing personal devastation in families as people lose tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions, depending on where they are economically. And I can assure you, a husband who has to tell his wife, we don't have any money and we're in crippling debt because of drugs or alcohol or gambling is having the same conversation just using different words. Listen, gambling is awful for our society. It promises the ability to get rich quick without much effort. But think about all the people you know. Who's the person you know who has built their personal empire through Gambling, they don't exist. Do you know who builds empires through gambling? Las Vegas, FanDuel, other companies like that. They get rich on the back of people who don't have the money to lose. And you might think, well, Zach, that's their own problem. I mean, that is their lack of willpower, their lack of discipline. And it's not my problem. Why do I care? Well, first of all, my guess is statistically, someone you know and love and care about is going down a devastating road to sports gambling. Might even be you, it might be someone in your family. But even if not, listen to what the Bible says in the book of Proverbs when it tells us to rescue those being led away to death, hold back those staggering toward slaughter. See, as Christians, we're called to love God and love our neighbor, which sometimes means intervening for them. It means saying, this isn't good for you. It means doing that. And in, uh, legislation, it means doing that in conversation, it means doing that in accountability. Christians cannot watch their fellow citizens participating in behavior that leads to destruction and not care. Even if caring simply looks like prayer. God, please make sports betting illegal in our country again. Please keep those I love away from it. Please keep people from the devastating consequences of a gambling addiction. We have to care. It has to matter, because it's ruining people's lives. And speaking of, time for an intervention. If you're listening to this and you're participating in sports gambling, I know you might think of it as a hobby. The problem is, is what you're saying is that multi billion dollar companies designed to saturate your mind and emotions with opportunities to gamble all the time, who want all of your money, not some of it, they want all of it. That you are so much smarter than them, so much more sophisticated than them, that they could never possibly convince you to go beyond your limits. But you're wrong. They've built empires doing it. And so this is your intervention. Stop sports gambling. Do the hard work of building wealth through self discipline, through expertise, and through effort. And if you have a gambling problem, get help. It's not too late. The problem will only get worse. You're not one bet away from fixing it. And if you know someone in your life who's participating, to sit them down and say to them, I love you too much not to tell you where this is headed. If they're going to build empires on the backs of people who cannot afford it, at least make sure that it isn't on the backs of those you care about, of those who are counting on you to tell them the truth. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up. Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app, where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.