At Hillcrest we're finding biblical guidance for working the 12 Steps of recovery groups. I've had several goals for the series: (1) encouragement for those in recovery--or who need to be; (2) greater sensitivity for believers to addictions and compulsions within our mission field; (3) a challenge to us all, because even if we're not struggling with addiction we are all broken in some way.
Last Sunday we examined Step Seven (you can listen to the sermon here). I promised to provide the congregation a little 9-point plan for putting Step 7 into daily practice, so here it is. It's adapted from a book called The Path to Serenity:
(1) Continue to name your basic character defects. You need to re-state these to yourself as a way of pushing back the veil of denial that has kept you from seeing these defects in the first place. Return to the moral inventory you took in Step 4, and review the patterns of thought that led you to say in Step 6,"Yes, I'm ready."
(2) Hand the defects back over to God's care. And the reason the word "back" is in that sentence is because we can safely assume that you and I will have to get into practice at turning our shortcomings over to God. Sometimes in my prayers I picture myself kneeling before God's throne, and visibly handing my sin to God, saying, “God, I cannot get rid of this under my own power. Please remove it from me, please remove from my nature anything that causes me to return to it.”
(3) Specify very carefully what needs to be changed for just this one day. What this means is that, if I wake up in the morning and say, for example, 'I should never ever be compulsive again and I promise I never will,' I am doomed to disappointment. It just isn't going to work. First, we must specify what needs to be changed. Instead of asking, 'Make me a better person,’ we focus tightly on the specific personality defects that need correcting. Second, instead of making a blanket request that covers an indefinite amount of time, we break our requests down into small digestible bits of personal effort--today, this morning, the next thirty minutes, or even, 'the next sixty seconds.'
(4) Ask God to touch the parts of you that need to be changed. Again, it's praying not only that God would remove the sin, but that God would change that part of your soul that keeps drawing you back to that sin. For example, ask God to remove not only a lustful heart, but that God would touch that part of your soul that doesn't know how to relate to the opposite sex in any other way but the physical.
(5) Act your way into a new way of thinking and feeling. An informal slogan used in many Twelve-Step recovery groups is, 'Fake it until you make it.' You may not be able to control your thoughts or your feelings, but you can control your muscles. I remember that account of Jesus healing the 10 lepers in Luke 17. “As they went, they were healed.” Upon the request of the lepers for healing, Jesus had told them, “Go, show yourselves to the priest.” A leper was to return to the priest who had pronounced him unclean only when the symptoms of leprosy had disappeared. The local Jewish priest would examine the man and then allow him back into the community or return him to the lonely outskirts of the city depended on whether or not the leper had been cured. When Jesus commanded them to show themselves to the nearest priest, he was in effect saying, "Consider your request fulfilled."
Verse 14 says, “As they went, they were healed.” Ultimately their confidence in Jesus as a healer is not seen in the fact that they asked him to heal them but that they acted on his words. They must have wondered at his confusing command: Jesus told them to go show themselves to the priests and there had not yet been any word of healing or any symptom that the leprosy had been cured. Their confidence in the Master transcended any demand for concrete evidence: they knew that their need would be met because Jesus had spoken. They had a simple confidence that Jesus's words could be counted on: "As they went, they were healed." It’s as we go about life in obedience to Christ that we slowly find healing taking place.
(6) Be willing to bear discomfort. Any time you're trying to change something as ingrained as a personality defect, it will feel awkward and even bad for a certain period of time.
(7) Think secure thoughts. That is, remind yourself that this time of change and pain will bring something far better.
(8) Develop new habits with repetition. You may need to fake it until you make it day after day, week after week, and, in some cases, month after month, until you can really see results.
(9) At the end of the day, stop and thank God for any and all of the smallest changes. It’s important to take time at the end of the day to acknowledge to yourself even the tiniest sense of progress.
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