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 whose greatest desire is to do what God requires.” (Matthew 5:6)
Step 7: We humbly asked Him to remove all our shortcomings. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
1. step 1 is understanding that I cannot deal with my hurt or habit on my own
2. step 2 is understanding that God cares about me and He has the power and desire to help me deal with them
3. step 3 is choosing to commit all of my life and will to Christ’s care and control
Tonight we continue to build upon and use the information the Lord revealed to us though our personal/spiritual inventory. God has revealed many things in the inventory, including things that needs be confessed, addictive and compulsive behaviors that need to stop, as well as healthy and productive things that need to start. So the question is, are you READY to have some VICTORY?
VICTORY
There is a short video that I’ve
seen a few times that illustrates how we tend to keep ourselves from the
victory available through Jesus Christ.
The fictional video begins with the guy playing Jesus walking up to a
woman carrying a bag of garbage. He
gives her a friendly greeting but she is obviously embarrassed by having the
trash with Jesus around. She tries to
hide it, but he asks her what is in the bag.
She stumbles around, trying to find the words; then signs and admits it
is her garbage. The guy playing Jesus
smiles and offers to take the trash from her, but she resists. At first she makes it sound really nice, as
in she wouldn’t want Jesus to have to deal with her garbage, she made it,
she’ll take care of it. But Jesus
assures her that he would be happy to get rid of it for her, after all that’s
what he does. She continues to resist
but reluctantly gives way. Except that
she pulls one nasty container out of the garbage bag and insists that she will
take care of that piece. Jesus,
concerned for her, assures her that it is best if he takes it and he even
reaches for it. She pulls away and hangs
on tight, she sort of pleads for him to let her keep this nasty piece of
garbage. Then he asks why she wants to
keep it. She has no good reason. The video ends with her being faced with the
choice of giving her garbage over to Jesus or continuing to cling to that
garbage.It’s is a good illustration of what we do with our addictive, compulsive, and dysfunctional behaviors, with the hurts and habits that we know need to go, but yet we keep going back to them. Jesus truly wants to free us from all of those things. In fact, He has already done everything necessary to free us; that freedom became available by His sacrificial death, burial and resurrection to life. The only thing left is for us to accept the truth that Jesus is the Son of God who takes away the sin of the world so that His victory over sin and the grave can be applied to us. That is what steps 1-3 are all about after all. I cannot free myself, God not only can, but did through Jesus, and I must accept that and turn my life and will over to Him.
That’s the start. That is when we are set free from the power of our hurts, habits, addictions, compulsions, and sin. Then over the rest of our lives, the Holy Spirit of God leads us to live according to that power. He strengthens us, heals us, gives us a way of escape when temptation comes, teaches us, leads, us, picks us up when we fall, and comforts us. He doesn’t force us into anything, but he lovingly disciplines us if we start to go astray. But it is a cooperative effort between God and us. He’ll do all that and more, above anything we expect, but it starts with the first point in our acronym for tonight…
Voluntarily submit
We need to submit to every
change God wants to make in us. Look, we
can’t have different results if we keep doing the same things over and over,
right? If you’ve been playing in the
mud, you don’t come clean unless you stop being around things that are
muddy. Now, He might stary in areas of
our life that you don’t think have much to do with your issue, but God knows
the root of what is happening and He begins to work at the root problems. Romans 12:1-2 says, “I beseech you
therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of
your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will
of God.” In order to have victory over
your hurts and habits, you can’t just deal with surface issues and problems,
you have to change the way you think; you have to use Godly wisdom, not human
wisdom.
Identify
This is where you seek wisdom
from the Holy Spirit, particularly through reading the Bible, prayer, time with
people who are led by the Spirit, and the personal inventory. God will reveal what He wants to work on
first. You cannot identify where to
start unless you are listening to the Holy Spirit and you end up simply trying
to recover on your own again. Proverbs
16:9 says, “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.” You want recovery, God gives each and every
step.
Change your mind
Again, how you think needs to be
converted from human wisdom, to God’s Wisdom (see 1 Corinthians 1-3). The only way to get the old junk out, is to
replace it with God’s Word. We tend to
just replace one bad habit with another, one bad relationship with another, one
hurt with another. Stop the cycle! The only thing that works for lasting victory
is to let God teach you think and act according to His wisdom. 2 Corinthians
Turning your character
defects over to Christ
I’m going to take a wild guess
and say that we’ve all tried to change on our own. We’ve tried to stop, tried to forgive, tried
to tried to replace a hurt or habit with something we thought was better only
to end up going back or just adding more hurts and habits to the original
one. We all know the cycle. Look, that’s no way to live; it’s too
hard. The freeing truth is that you
don’t have to fix yourself. In fact you
can’t, because like it or not, you are not God. Stop relying those old, worn out methods that
don’t work. James
One day at a time
Hurts and habits not developed overnight, neither is positive change. It takes a daily decision to give your life and will to Christ’s care and control. Those can’t just be words that we say, we need to actually invest time with the Lord, again though reading the Bible, prayer, and time with others who are Spirit-led. Each day, everyday, focusing on Him and not worrying about tomorrow. James 4:14-15 says, “you do not know what will happen tomorrow…you ought to say ‘if the Lord will’s, we shall live and do this or that.’”
Recovery is a process
It is not an immediate fix. Along the way your decision to turn your life
and will over to Christ will be tested.
I often say the step 4 (the personal inventory) is test #1. How many people come to a 12 step recovery
program for months or years, saying they’ve made that decision in step 3, but
they’ve never done the inventory. The
truth is, not doing the inventory is evidence that you just want a quick fix
and you haven’t turned anything over. God
will lead you to recovery, but you’ve got to learn to trust Him. He doesn’t ask you to do some great feat of devotion
to earn your forgiveness! He just wants
you to take the steps He gives you; like the inventory. Just baby steps of trust and over time you
will see that He is faithful no matter what He leads you to do. Romans 8:30 says, “Moreover, whom He
predestined, these He also called, whom He called, these He also justified, and
whom He justified, these He also glorified.”
What He starts He will finish.
You must choose to change
It’s up to you, God won’t force
you. Just remember Romans 6:16 which
says, “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you
are that one’s slave whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of
obedience leading to righteousness.” You
can either let God change you and free you from your hurts and habits, or you
can go back to those old hurts and habits.
Tonight’s questions:
1. As you voluntarily submit to
every change God wants to make, how does Romans 12:1-2 help you know that real
change is possible?2. What are some specific ways you have stopped relying on your willpower and started relying on God’s will for you?
3. What is humility and what does it have to do with the changes you need to make?
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