Introduction
The descent into addiction begins as idolatry which is simply, worshipping something, anything, other than God. An idol is anything we love more than Him or think about more than Him. It’s anything we spend our time and resources on more than Him. We eventually feel the pain of those addictions. The alcohol, drugs, lust, codependency, resentment, endless business, pleasure… We know, or will find out, that these things actually hurt us and hate us. We also know pursing them is wrong. So we try to eliminate those things from our lives only to find we cannot. That’s because we are battling a spiritual war against an idol (Eph 6:10-12). Celebrate Recovery is for anyone who wants out…who wants to break the chains of hurt, addiction, and idolatry.
Crossroads
Principle 7: Reserve a daily time with God for self-examination, Bible reading, and prayer in order to know God and His will for my life and to gain the power to follow His will.
Step 10: We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
If you’ve been following the steps to this point, you’ve gotten off to a great start. Here’s what you’ve done so far, you have: faced your denial and admitted that you cannot fight this spiritual battle alone, submitted to God and surrendered your life to Jesus Christ, sought the Holy Spirit in taking an honest look at your life in the Inventory. You listed, confessed, and admitted your wrongdoings, and offered your forgiveness to those that have hurt you. You made amends for the harm that you have caused to others. Overall: you’ve submitted to all the changes God wanted to make in you so far.
WOW! That’s quite a journey! At the start most of us would have said that it was an impossible journey. We could never have changed or grown so much, and we could never have done the work that the first 9 steps ask of us on our own, nd we would be right.
Yet perhaps some of you have not made that entire journey. Maybe it loomed so large at the start, you never really started. Maybe you did start, but you really only wanted one thing fixed so you payed no attention to anything else God was trying to do in you. Maybe you started but then relapsed, feeling as defeated as ever. If you didn’t really follow the steps you didn’t turn ALL your life and will over to Christ. You did not do or finish the spiritual inventory, and didn’t admit your wrongs to God, yourself, or anyone you trust. You didn’t forgive or make amends and thus didn’t submit to the changes God wants to make in you. That means you are still in the cycle. It’s not because the Steps don’t work, but because you didn’t submit to God through the Steps.
Step 10 is not a place to stop great progress and rest on recent victories. The verse is right on: “let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor 10:12). Relapse is looming as soon as I start to drop my guard…as soon is I decide to “take a rest for a couple minutes.”
Nor can you expect to move through Steps 10-12 if you haven’t done 1-9! You cannot skip Steps, doing so means you think you’re above it, or that you know better than God…(by the way, that’s called idolatry – making a god of your own design). Most recovery material refers to Steps 10 through 12 as the “maintenance steps.” That doesn’t mean auto-pilot! God is just beginning to make the necessary changes…it’s a life-long process. remember Step 3? (We made a decision to turn our life and will over to Christ).
Now starts the rest of your life, making choices over what god you will worship. The gods of your fathers and mothers, gods of your past, gods of our culture, or God Himself. We’ll talk more about these in the weeks ahead.
You will follow and worship something. What will it be? A god that leads you to addiction because deep down, it hates you, or the God that leads you to life because He loves you? He loves you enough to send His Son, Jesus Christ to die in your place for the sins you’ve committed. "Who will you follow" is the question God was asking the nation of Judah through the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 1:18-20, “‘Come now, and let us reason together,’ says the LORD, ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land, but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword’; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
That is the Crossroad where you stand, faced with the question of which way to go.
