For those of you who have visited my website or have followed my postings, you are aware that my journey of transformation began in the rooms of a 12 Step Recovery program. After a thirty-eight year spree of alcoholism, the compulsion to drink was lifted from me in the blink of an eye on April 21, 2000. At my very first recovery meeting the seeds of “what if” were planted, and the willingness to pursue “the answer” took on a life of its own. My life has never been the same since that awakening.
I have thought on numerous occasions about “how” such an unbelievable chain of events – and with such impeccable timing – came “to be”, and I can only credit the hand of God for what I now believe was nothing-less-than a miracle. Me…a self-absorbed, know-it-all whose life had been committed to getting what I wanted; as much as I wanted; when I wanted it; and without any concern for the collateral damage, “miraculously” became willing to change. In my mind I KNOW there is only one answer, because nothing – absolutely nothing – about that scenario bears any resemblance to my former self!
But I’ve discovered that’s how God works. His faithfulness is exemplified in James, 4:10: “When you bow down before the Lord and admit your dependence on him, he will lift you up and give you honor.” Wow! That’s exactly what happens. When we come face to face with our own insufficiency, our hearts soften and a sense of “willingness” sets in. That’s when most of us surrender to the famous “prayer of brokenness”: God help me! But this time it’s different! This time it’s not about getting the monkey off our back. This time we have come face to face with this truth: I am not god, but what I want and need more than anything else right now is to feel His presence…to know that He’s real; to know that he hasn’t written me off because of who I am or what I have done.
Get ready my Friends, because when we reach this point of surrender, it’s time for a Prodigal Son moment. What I – and millions of others – have discovered at this moment of truth is this: the Father who has been waiting and hoping for the return of his lost son meets us – not with a wagging finger ready to point out our loathsome failures – but with open arms and with the beautiful message we were hoping beyond hope to hear: “Welcome Home, my beloved son. What took you so long? Have I got a feast planned for you!” There it is! The miracle has been unwrapped, and will continue to unfold as long as we participate in the process of transformation.
But with anything new, we have to keep the fire burning and the embers glowing. In other words, we have to keep adding new wood and fanning the flames or those embers will eventually die out. You see…miracles are opportunities: opportunities to experience something new; opportunities to change. The miracle we experience as the result of our “prayer of brokenness” gives us an opportunity to experience a second chance at life. How that plays out depends on whether we decide to participate in the process of transformation. Willingness is the answer. Without willingness, you’re toast!
What got us to this point is the reality of Step 1 in the Twelve Step process. We admitted we were powerless over “____” (alcohol, drugs, money, work, power, prestige, cars, boats, women, anger, jealousy…) and as a result our lives have become unmanageable. In other words, we realize we are slaves to our “addiction”. The actual truth is…we no longer have the “addiction” but the addiction has us! We have no other place to go. We have come face to face with our own insufficiency; our own brokenness.
As hopeless as that reality is, the solution is in Steps 2 and 3. We came to believe that a power greater than our self can restore us to sanity. The Big Book of AA states, “the reason we need a higher power is to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.” As Christ-followers, we know that there is only one higher power: Jesus Christ. (I will elaborate on this in later paragraphs.)
Step 3 states: We made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God…as we understand him. That last part is crucial. You had better come to know your God: what defines his nature; what does he say; what does he says about us; what are his standards; are there promises; if so, how we can achieve those promises? Let me be clear…the God I am writing about is the God Jehovah, the God of the Holy Bible.
When we come to the realization that our quagmire is a result of our own will (our own making), there is something “welcoming” about turning our will over to His will, especially if we grasp the reality of the word “care.” That was a stumbling block for me. Even though I saw and read “care”, what I heard in my own mind was “control.” Please don’t make that same mistake. It could not be more untrue. In fact, God gave us free-will and has always honored that…for better or worse.
But “care” is only shrouded in goodness. If someone has a caregiver, what does the caregiver do? Well, he looks out for their best interest; he sees their needs are met; he keeps them safe…just like God’s relationship with Adam and Eve in the Garden. They wanted for nothing. God wants to be our caregiver too, but in order for that to come to fruition, we have to participate in the process of relationship building and change. Let me state one Biblical truth here. God is defined in by one word in the Bible. Love. God is love. So if that defines his nature, the only thing he can beget is goodness. Think about it. If you truly love someone, do you generate evil toward them? Of course not. This is reinforced by the Biblical fact found in Romans 8:28: “God works for the good in all things for those who love him and are called to his purpose.”
Now let’s talk about the reality of Step 2 and how it is the pivotal point of our successful experience with both sobriety or our walk with God. In successfully carrying out either endeavor (or hopefully both at the same time), we have to overcome three obstacles. 1. We live in these fleshly bodies and are subject to lustful desires. 2. We live in this fallen world and temptation abounds at every turn. 3. And we have an evil enemy (satan) who is hell-bent of shipwrecking our best efforts. He is not called the accuser of the brethren for nothing, so he will fill our head, if we let him, with such lies and deceptions that we won’t know up from down or black from white. If we doubt or underestimate the power of these three nemeses, we are almost certainly doomed to failure. But…….
Step 2 IS the key to success in both our walk in sobriety and our walk with God if our higher power is Jesus Christ. As Christ-followers, we know that when we accepted Him as our Lord and Savior, something supernatural takes place at rebirth. It is explained in 2Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come.” What that means is our “old self” (our sin-nature…or human-nature, as our culture calls it) is taken away supernaturally, and in its place comes the “new creation” – the new self. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit (the essence of Jesus Christ) replaces our sin-nature and we are no longer slaves to our old self.
Jesus told his Disciples it was better that he was going away because he would ask the Father to send to them the Holy Spirit. He explained it in John 14:16-18: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor (Teacher, Guide, Comforter, Encourager, and Advocate) who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world at large cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you do, because he lives with you now (IT’S ME) and later will be in you. (the Holy Spirit) No, I will not abandon your as orphans. I will come to you.” This, my Friends, is God’s gift to all Christ-followers so we can successfully rise above this fallen world and our circumstances to become the “masterpiece” we are destined to become. Ephesians 2:10 tells us: “…he has created us anew in Jesus Christ so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”
The Holy Spirit is part of God’s salvation plan for us. He wants us to successfully rise above this world and its temptations to be his light in the darkness. The Holy Spirit does not do the work for us, but empowers us pick up that shovel and start casting our mountain into the sea. Whatever challenge we are facing, if we call on the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom, patience, courage, strength, perseverance – whatever it is we need to overcome the challenge we are facing, if our motivation is to be the person God created us to be and bring honor and glory to Him, the Bible’s promise to us is he will hear our plea.
1John 4:4 reinforces that promise: “The Spirit that is in me (Holy Spirit) is greater than the Spirit of this World. (satan) Wow! I’m already promised victory. Then Jesus made it perfectly clear John 16:32: “But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” And because we are in Christ, we too have overcome the world. We are proclaimed victors here too when we call on the Holy Spirit to empower us to do more than we could ever do of our own volition. This is God’s gift to us. Now that we know we have it, let’s change the world!
Do you use your supernatural power? Do you realize you can be your own Superman when the motivation is to honor God?
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May God bless ya…
Dan Presgrave (a.k.a. Pastor Dan)
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