Recovery

GIVEN ENOUGH TIME, secrets and lies will not remain hidden but will be brought into the light. My big lie, of which I was unaware, was the Lord’s good pleasure to reveal to me.

It is the lie I spoke so freely when I said I trusted him.

As is true with most lessons taught by God, mine began first with a test, in the form of a question. Thankfully, the question was not, “Damn you, child, why do you not trust me after all this time?”

No, the compassionate and ever-patient Lord simply said to me, “I know you love me, but do you trust me?”

When I said I trusted the Lord, I based my answer on prior experience and honestly thought the question rhetorical. I have since learned there is a vast chasm between belief and trust.

Failing the test, a lesson followed that included losing something I cherished, followed by the surprising fact that I would not die without the loss.

And was a better person for having lost it.

Finally, it was the glaring reality that I had not trusted God through the experience.

Failing that test, I got to rinse and repeat.

This went on for about seven years—and two million rounds—with each lesson leading me closer to that place of dreaded powerlessness. That’s when I found myself in a state of utter nothingness—where I was dead to the ability to save myself—and I got it.

I trust myself more than I trust God.

Recovery is a painful journey because it is a walk to certain death, the death of hope, and because it is so personal, it is one in which we must carry our own cross.

It is a journey that requires God because in and of ourselves, or with the help of those who love us, or even within the fear of punishment from the laws under which we live, we are powerless to face the reality of death.

We would rather have that which we cherish kill us than to kill that which we cherish.

This is why abstinence, born out of a selfish need to regain control, won’t work, and so many people rinse and repeat, or exchange one idol for another.

Abstinence is a matter of self-will or self-denial, that occurs in our own strength; with a faulty belief that we have more power than God actually gave us to fight demons.

Sure, we can abstain from alcohol, or drugs, or gambling, or pornography, or adultery, when these things wreck our lives, especially when we turn into respectable church ladies, but a clean house will not stay clean by itself.

No amount of self-will or wishful thinking, or praying, or reading the Bible, or busyness, or righteous behavior—things often found in the lives of those abstaining—work.Luke 11:24-26

I fought against recovery from “The Gospel According to Me”, where so many faulty beliefs and counterfeit strategies live because they seemed right to me.

My idols of Independence and Self-Sufficiency had to be revealed. Not as honorable characteristics that save me, but as demons that entered my house many years ago when they showed up to deliver relief I desperately needed. Proverbs 11:28

It was only when I took an inventory of the accusations I made against God during each nightmarish lesson and compared them to his written Word, and to my life with Jesus, that I began to see the truth.

I was transferring onto God the opinions I had made and believed as the truth about people who had failed me in my youth, predominately my parents.

It was in the relationship with my parents, who could not save me, and were oftentimes the source of my problems, that I found my greatest relief in myself, and what I could achieve.

It was in my youth that I made the first promises to myself;

that I would never lose control,

never be so vulnerable,

and never be so stupid or naïve again.

Above all else, by the time I left my parent’s home, I promised myself I would never trust anyone more than myself, including a so-called loving God who would allow bad things to happen to innocent people.

Now that I am in recovery from “The Gospel According to Me”, with all my rules, faulty beliefs, and counterfeit strategies, that wait like the seductress of any drug that leads to death, I have a place to turn.

It’s not the well-known Twelve Steps to Recovery, but the original program, first taught by Jesus and found in two steps.

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.This is the great and first commandment.And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:36-40 (ESV)

Jeremiah 7:8,Proverbs 3:5-6,Isaiah 43:1,Matthew 17:14-21,Psalm 20:7,2 Corinthians 5:17, Luke 6:20-21

As always, it is my intent and hope that my words may encourage you wherever you are in your journey.

Please share your thoughts in the comments below or go to the group tab above to share your own experience. It only takes a minute of your time to register (and you can be anonymous), and your words may help others. 

If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.–Jesus (Mark 4:23)

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