Principle 5 / Step 6

Introduction
Principle 5: Voluntarily submit to every change God wants to make in my life and humbly ask Him to remove my character defects.  “Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” (Matthew 5:6)
Step 6: We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.  “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” (James 4:10)
 
Before we can do these critical steps, we must first understand & embrace steps 1-3
step 1 is understanding that I cannot deal with my hurt or habit on my own
step 2 is understanding that God cares about me and He has the power and desire to help me deal with them.
step 3 is choosing to commit all of my life and will to Christ’s care and control

I want to start tonight by telling you a true story about some guys in addiction.  It wasn’t drugs, alcohol, or lust, but an addiction none-the-less.  In fact, one of the most addictive, and difficult to overcome issues because it’s thought by many to be good thing.  It was an addiction to self and pride.  The Scripture tells us, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5)  Traveling through Galilee on way to Capernaum Jesus says, “The Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him. An,d after He is killed, He will rise the third day” (Mark 9:30-35).  The most unselfish act in history – God taking on human form to die for us, but the disciples don’t understand and just go on with their conversation.  In Capernaum, Jesus said, “what were you arguing about on the way here?” (Mk 9:35-36)  “But they kept silent, for on the road they had disputed among themselves who would be the greatest.  And He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.’”  Addictions are not scabs that can be scraped off with just a little scar left behind.  Addictions are rooted deep down in hurts, habits, and ultimately in pride.  Pride says, “I can handle this myself.  It’s not my fault.  It’s not a big deal.”  But what we learn the hard way is that we can’t handle it on our own.  Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goes before destruction, And a proud spirit before a fall.”   Prov 13:10, “by pride comes nothing but strife.”  And Prov 29:23, “a man’s pride will bring him low, but the humble in spirit will retain honor.”  Pride leads us into selfishness, escape, resentments, loneliness, emptiness…and leads us away from God our only source of help.  And again, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5).  Jesus’ disciples were still struggling with pride, arguing over who would be greatest in His Kingdom.  Meanwhile, Jesus was the perfect example of humility and being self-less .

That’s His example to us…

READY

Release Control
Sounds a lot like step 3 / principle 3 right?  Principle 3 was, “Consciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ’s care and control,” while Step 3 was, “We made a decision to turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God.”  It requires making a decision to release control to Christ.  Then in Step 4 we did inventory so the Spirit could show us what needed to change.  Now we need to follow thru on that decision to commit my life and will to Christ’s care and control and deal with the things He brought out in the inventory.  If you didn’t do inventory yet, it’s never too late to start.  Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.”

Easy Does It

We want quick fixes and immediate results, right?  God doesn’t usually fix everything over night.  He does make radical changes and many are right away, especially when we get saved and get the Holy Spirit; life is greatly different!  But this is a life-long co-operative process with the Holy Spirit.  So if you only want rid of some hurt or habit…if you’re not committed to giving your entire life & will over to Christ…you’re far from done with step 3 (choosing to commit) and 4 (the inventory).  Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.”

Accept the Change

There is a big gap between seeing the need for change, and allowing change to occur.  That gap is filled with fear, doubt, old desires, etc.  That’s why those first 4 steps are so important.  Did you really decide to give all your life and will to Christ?  Do you really want to make the changes the Spirit identified in the inventory?  Consider 1 Peter 1:13-16, “Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.”

Do Replace Your Character Defects
This is only done through the Holy Spirit and your involvement with the Word and the Church, and you desperately need both.  Christ is your only hope for salvation and righteousness.  Can you be in Christ (the Word Made Flesh) and not reading the Word?  Can you be in Christ and snub His Bride who is one flesh with Him?  No.  You need the Word and the Church – that’s the way God declares it to be.  If you don’t have the Spirit or you ignore Him, replacing your character defects is impossible; you’ll replace one vice with another, one habit for another, one hurt or another and the end will be worse than the beginning as the old hurt/habit will return.  Like it says in             Matthew 12:43-45, “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none.  Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order.  Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first.”

Yield to the Growth

As the Spirit begins to make changes and you begin seeing the evidence, embrace it, let it continue, cooperate fully!  Don’t pat yourself on the back and “reward” your good progress with a relapse!  Psalm 32:8-9, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye.  Do not be like the horse or like the mule, which have no understanding, which must be harnessed with bit and bridle else they will not come near you.”  Are you READY to end the frustration, the exhaustion, the failure, and yield to Christ?

Principle 4 / Step 5 Confess

Introduction
If you’re like me, there have been some addictions in your life, some idols you’ve worshipped.  I’m not talking about idols of wood, stone, or marble; an idol is anything we love or worship more than God.  Some common idols today are money, pleasure, pride, physical appearance, relationships, entertainment, etc…  We become addicted to the worship of these idols through gambling, lust, self-indulgence, materialism, co-dependency, and certainly drug and alcohol use.  My desire is to tear the idols down, forsake them, and worship God instead.  Now, I can totally beat myself up trying to do that on my own.  In fact, I’ve tried the “normal” recommendations…physically removing the object of my addiction from me, restricting my access to it.  That works for about 45 minutes, but it doesn’t get to the real problem…me – my desires, my thoughts, my misguided worship. 

I have found that Celebrate Recovery is critical to our success at overcoming our addictions, tearing down our idols, and getting to the worship of the One True God.  I’m constantly reminded that I desperately need God, His Son Jesus Christ, and His Holy Spirit, to give me the wisdom, strength and stamina to make the changes I need to make and stay on the right path.  Through CR I’ve learned much about how sin and addiction work – no matter what the sin or addiction is.  I’ve seen the reality of God’s Word played out because it is truth.

Tonight we continue with CR’s Principle 4: Openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust.  “Happy are the pure in heart” Matthew 5:8.  But we move onto Step 5: We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5:16).

Before we can do principle 4, step 5 or any that follow, we must first understand & embrace principles and steps 1-3:
Step 1 is understanding that I cannot deal with my hurt or habit on my own.
Step 2 is understanding that God cares about me and He has the power and desire to help me deal with them.
Step 3 is choosing to commit all of my life and will to Christ’s care and control.

We must understand and embrace these first 3 steps and make the choice of step 3…to commit my life and will to Christ.  We simply cannot move on successfully without them.  Many have tried, some even seem to be successful, but the reality is that you don’t want a recovery where everyday feels like it could be the day it starts all over again and like any moment the addiction could step in and retake control.  You don’t want to feel like that hurt or habit has just been buried and covered over as it waits to explode back into your life.  I’m guessing that you would rather know and experience true freedom from the hurts and habits.  I want that for you too, but the simple truth is this: you won’t have that freedom unless you understand and embrace steps 1-3 and make the commitment to Christ of step 3.  That is the start.  The process then moves forward with the spiritual inventory of step 4 and continues through the remaining steps. 

Confess
I want to start tonight by telling you a true story about a guy with an addiction.  Even as a young man he had it all – wealth, power, influence.  He had a godly father and he had a good upbringing from what we know.  But along the way he got tangled up in pride, lust, and rebelliousness.  His name was Manasseh and you can read about him in 2 Chronicles 33 of the Bible which says he was one of the most evil kings in Judah (the two southern tribes of divided Israel).  He was warned that his actions, words, and leading were an offence to God, but he did not listen.  He continued down the path of pursuing his addictions.  No doubt God warned him many times, but he only went deeper into rebellion.  Finally God moved against him using the armies of Assyria.  Manasseh was taken prisoner, had a hook placed through his nose, and was dragged off to captivity.  There in his prison, Manasseh cried out to God and humbled himself.  Because he humbled himself and confessed, God restored him to his throne in Jerusalem, and Manasseh “knew that the Lord is God.”  Then Manasseh tore down the idols and began to worship the Lord.  His remaining years were full of peace, contentment, strength, and he was a godly influence among the people of Judah. 

I love this account of Manasseh.  It is an amazing story of God’s mercy and grace.  Manasseh knew the truth, but rebelled and fell into addictions to all kids of idols.  Those addictions brought him to ruin and despair.  Then he humbled himself and cried out to God.  Did God tell him, “You got what you deserved?”  No.  Did God say, “Tough for you, I warned you?”  No.  God heard the humble cry of Manasseh’s heart and answered him, restoring him and giving him peace and joy as Manasseh gave himself to worshiping God. 

That’s what God does.  The Bible is loaded with such stories, and He is still running the same kind of rehab today.  Now the account of Manasseh may or may not strike a cord with you.  Maybe you had good parents and a good upbringing…maybe not.  Maybe your parents taught you to love the Lord…maybe not.  Maybe you remember developing habits that drove you further away from God, or maybe you remember deep hurts that drove you away.  Maybe you can remember times when the Lord used the words of people around you to warn you that you were choosing a difficult and harmful path…and you ignored them.  Maybe, like Manasseh, you came to, or have come to, the place where all your efforts have landed you in some kind of prison.  Perhaps an actual prison, or a prison of memories, of hurt, of unstoppable behavior, of guilt; there are many prisons.

The One True Higher Power, the Lord God, is a God of compassion, mercy, forgiveness, strength, love.  Your desire to put away the addictions, the idols, the misplaced love is the place to start…to start trusting God.  He opens His recovery house to you when you commit to trust, commit, worship, and love Him.

One of the first tests of your commitment to give your life and will to Christ’s care and control is the spiritual inventory, the second major test is to confess.  Below is Celebrate Recovery’s acronym for c.o.n.f.e.s.s.

Come Clean
Come clean with our failures and resentments, take responsibility for sins discovered in our inventory.  Proverbs 28:13 says, “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy.”

Obey God’s Command
It’s not just a helpful suggestion.  One of the first commands is to humble yourself and confess…to myself, to Him, and to someone I trust.  READ Psalm 32:3-5.  James 5:16 says, “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for each other, that you may be healed.”

No more guilt

Talk about freedom!  The reality is that openness, truth, and honesty bring freedom.  Romans 3:23-24 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified (declared not guilty) freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

These last 4 are four areas of your life that will improve by doing Principle 4/Step 5…
Face the truth
Face the reality of your sin, the reality of forgiveness, the reality of restoring relationships…with God and people.  Today people try to tell us that we determine our own truth; it is a huge lie.  God’s Word is truth, and we need continual interaction with it.  John 8:32 says, “And you shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free.”

Ease the pain

Our addictions, hurts and habits keep us sick and in pain.  Confessing them removes the burden of guilt and gets things into the light so we can deal with them instead of hiding them.  Psalm 32:1-2 says, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.  Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.”

Stop the blame
We blame others for what we’ve done and blame ourselves for what others have done.  Blaming solves nothing, it’s nothing more than a form of escape which solves nothing.  Instead we need to know and deal with our additions in truth.  Matthew 7:3 says, “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?

Start accepting God
Accept His forgiveness, His taking away the guilt and burden, His love for us, and His compassion or others.  1 John 4:11 says, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

Seven Reasons Our Recovery Fails

Before we jump back into Step 4 and the Personal Inventory, I want to share with you some very helpful insights from the Celebrate Recovery manual.  This is certainly something to think about all the time.  Below are 7 common reasons people relapse and some ways to aviod it...

You have not completely done or even bought into the previous step.  We want instant success, immediate results, and recovery yesterday, but it doesn’t work that way.  We have built our addictions and idols over years but recovery takes time, effort, and most of all, cooperation with God.  What we can do right now is choose to do what it takes, and daily make that same choice.  You can’t skip or rush ahead on the steps and think you’ll just the bare minimum to get you through.  You especially cannot skip steps 1-4!  Galatians 5:25 says, “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.”

You have not truly surrendered your life and will to Christ’s care and control (step 3).  You want God to fix your problem, but then you want Him to leave you alone.  You are not willing to give yourself to Him, to love and to serve.  That means you are choosing to be on your own.  In Joshua 23-24, there is a review of all God had done for Israel when He led them out of Egypt through Moses (and by the way, 1 Cor 10 says these things happened as an example to us).  God won their battles, drove out their enemies who were given over to idolatry, false gods, and all kinds of evil according to God.  Then Joshua 23:11 says, “Therefore take careful heed to yourselves, that you love the Lord your God.”  In verse 12 and beyond it says that if you don’t love and serve God, but go back to the idols and false gods, God will not fight for you anymore.  The reality is that God will fight your battles, but only if you love and give yourself to Him.  

You have not accepted God’s forgiveness, possible only through Jesus.  You think your sin is too big to be forgiven; that lie keeps you defeated and keeps you from trusting God.  1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

You have not truly forgiven others who have harmed you.  Until you decide to forgive them, you will be a prisoner to anger, resentment, frustration, and hate.  Proverbs 10:18 says, “He who conceals his hatred has lying lips, and whoever spreads slander is a fool.”  1 John 2:9 says, “anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.”  1 John 3:15 says, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.”  Galatians 5:5 says, “If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out! Or you will be destroyed by one another.

You are afraid of the risk in making necessary changes.  You are paralyzed by fear of failure – which guarantees it.  Resisting God and the changes He wants to make for fear of the unknown.  So you choose the hurt and habit which is what you do know.  Maybe you stopped for fear of rejection or being hurt again. Deuteronomy 31:6 says, “Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you.” Psalm 118:6 says, “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?”

You are not willing to own your responsibility.  You shift blame instead of taking responsibility which means you’ll never deal with truth.  Psalm 139:23-24 says, “Search me , O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

You have not developed an effective support team.  You have no accountability partners, no sponsor, maybe a church family but that’s only an hour or so a week, maybe CR a couple hours a week.  Yet you have lots of time with those old places, people who lead you into temptation, and time alone.  That is a sure recipe for relapse and failure.  Galatians 6:2-3 says, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.  For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.”