Recovery In Christ Ministries

07/12/2025

Step Seven
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Now it is time to swing into action again. The key word in this step is humility. Humility is something most of us had very little of before entering into recovery. Self-centered fear is what fueled our addiction and shortcomings.

Self-sufficiency and self-reliance are at the foundation of the things that are out of order in our lives. This concept of humility chops right at the roots of our problems and moves us toward reliance on the Lord instead of self.

Our shortcomings are those character defects that keep us from being in a right relationship with God and a right relationship with our fellow human beings. They have served to give us some short-term pleasure here and there in exchange for long-term problems.

Now is the time to take the step of faith required to get rid of them with a sense of expectancy that the Lord will take them away. Doing this step is moving out in faith to receive our healing. Many people don't believe in faith healing. Here we must be willing to believe. God's Word promises healing in response to our humility:

"If my people who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive them their sin and will heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7:14)

We also must admit that we are without the power or ability to change our own lives and become willing to let God do for us what we could not do for ourselves. This means actually letting go of control in these specific areas that we have identified.

Even though giving this stuff up is like giving up poison that has hurt us, it still requires an amount of courage to take this step. It will help if we remember that God is all-loving and His plan for our lives is for our highest and best good. He won't take anything away without putting something better in its place.

It would be good to plan a quiet place where we can be alone to take this step. We might want to even pray before we start that the Lord will guide and direct us as we walk through this. Then, it might be a good idea to review the list of shortcomings.

Now is a good time to get down on our knees and pray with all the earnestness and faith that we can muster. We can say whatever words we want as long as they don't water down the intent of this step. We can pray something like:

"Dear Lord, I come to you in the name of Jesus, and I admit that I have all these faults. I know that I can't remove them myself or change my own life, but you are able to heal any problem and forgive every sin. Please forgive all these sins and take away anything from my life that is displeasing to you. Take away anything and everything that keeps me from being in a right relationship with you and others. Take away everything that acts as an obstacle of my being used as an instrument of your peace and righteousness. Deal with my life as is pleasing in your sight and I believe by faith that you will. In Jesus name. Amen."

Many of us were amazed at how our lives began to change for the better. Praise the Lord!

05/16/2025

TRUST - Those of us who came from a background of abuse will have a hard time trusting other people. We tend to see our present circumstances through the hurts of our past. And, we have a difficult time being intimate with people.

The intimacy we are talking about in this context means a transparent, vulnerable, close and personal relationship. It does not necessarily mean sexual or physical contact of any kind. However, those of us who have difficulty trusting, will often reflect that in our body language by keeping our physical distance as well as emotional distance.

It almost goes without saying that if we don't trust people that we do see, it will be difficult to trust God who we don't physically see. Also, we tend to view God and form our opinion about Him based on how we were treated by our parents and other authority figures.

If we were abused, abandoned or rejected by our parents, God may be seen as punishing, rejecting or unreliable. Now we are seemingly in an impossible situation. We don't trust God because we don't trust people and we can't change and trust people because we don't trust God.

It takes a special measure of unconditional love to get untrusting people to take the risk and trust again. We have to consistently be there for them without violating their territory and scaring them off. We need to be helpful at their point of need without crowding them.

It takes time to earn the trust of others. It's going to take some time for us to learn how to trust. However, we must start. The alternative is to live our lives in isolation and loneliness as we continue to put up walls between ourselves and others. That perpetuates a rather empty life.

First we need to trust that people will be human and not place unreal expectations on them. To put people up on a pedestal is to set ourselves up for disappointment when reality prevails.

We also need to quit playing the victim and inviting others to betray us. Then, we feel mortally wounded when they do and get some vicarious satisfaction out of dwelling in that betrayal. We no longer need to walk around with VICTIM written across our foreheads in large bold letters.

This means setting up reasonable boundaries in our lives. Bounds that say that you can go so far but I do not give you permission to abuse me. We need to set and enforce those boundaries with love.

It is difficult to trust the unknown. We can learn to trust the Lord by reading His word more to dispel the myths we learned through distorted teaching.

Mostly, we need to let the Lord reveal Himself to us directly and have the Holy Spirit teach us the truth and allow Jesus to embrace us with His love. God goes to extraordinary lengths to prove His unconditional love to people who have been abused or otherwise betrayed. We only need to be willing to understand what the Lord is eager to explain and prove.

Many of us were involved in exploiting relationships with friend and family before entering recovery. Therefore, it's somewhat normal for us to not trust others.

Being involved in a loving support group can go a long way toward learning how to trust other people and beginning to trust God. We get from the group what our family or friends were unable or unwilling to provide. When we experience the reality of others who are truly committed to our welfare and not what they can get from us, healing takes place. Through listening and observing, we begin to believe that God will do the good for us that He did for other people. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." (Proverbs 3:5)

03/08/2025

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12/29/2024

What a miracle feels like:
Acts 12:

10/03/2024

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.”
- Jesus

09/15/2024

https://www.recoveryinchrist.org

Introduction to Christ Centered Recovery  “Reaching out to a Hurting World” is the main theme of Recovery In Christ Ministries.  There is abundance of people hurting and in need of recovery from a multitude of addictions and life controlling problems.  … Continue reading →

06/22/2024

Step Six (June)

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

This step separates those who are serious about recovery from those who are playing games. At first glance, it appears to be the easiest step and maybe it can be dispensed within just a few moments. Not so! This stage doesn't require us to take any action as such. We don't even have to make the actual decision as outlined in the next step. We "just" have to become ready.

We have already surrendered our lives generally in step three. Perhaps the major problems like
drunkenness have already been lifted from us as a result of the work we have done so far. However,
we now have a list of specific things in our lives that are out of order and we need to decide what to do about them.

This list of character defects (or sins if you prefer) is those areas in our lives of which we are still in
control. We are our own gods in these areas and we need to become willing to turn them over to the care of the Lord. The list could include pride, lust, laziness, greed, envy, gluttony, anger and self
righteousness.

Our specific defects could include over-working, over-eating, gambling, lying, grandiosity, manipu-
lating and other obsessions. The Lord requires our ongoing cooperation by us being willing to let
these things go.

This step requires a degree of faith. Why go through the effort of being willing to have our lives completely overhauled if nothing is really going to happen? The answer is that God has proved Him-
self by making things happen for others. We are not so unique or bad that we are beyond the Lord's ability to transform.

Another concern that we might have is that if we let these things go what will be left? Some of us
wallowed in our character defects so much that they became a big part of who we were or who we
thought we were. Some of us "reveled" in our badness. If we let this stuff go what will there be left? The answer is the beautiful creation that the Lord intended us to be.

The thought of taking a step to put these things behind us could easily invoke the grieving process. Even though these things caused pain and suffering in our lives, they were very familiar to us and it hurts a little to let them go. It is still a loss even if it is a loss of who we thought we were.

That's the bad news. The good news is that this is an important step in obtaining in actuality who we
really are. How many of us have pondered the question, "Who am I and what am I doing here?"
This is an important step in giving God permission to reveal the real us.

King David was a man after God's own heart, but he was steeped in defects of character including
murder and adultery. None of us have committed an offense greater than this Old Testament king. If
there is hope for him there is hope for us. King David went on to pen:

"Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me." (Psalm 51:10) God loved King David and restored him. He Loves us and will heal our lives if we do our part!

Our part is to yield and cooperate. His part is to do the "transforming." (Romans 12:2)

05/03/2024

Step Five (MAY)

Admitted to God, to ourselves, and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

A part of doing step five is taking a good look at what we wrote in step four. We have been hiding
some of this stuff from ourselves all of our lives. Now, we must muster up the courage and face the
truth as we look at our past. We must be as objective as possible.

We look at everything we wrote and we begin to see patterns and things that we never knew were a part of our lives. This may cause some pain as we get an overview of our lives from an angle that we
never saw before. We have to be careful here not to beat ourselves up.

Seeing what we wrote down in this new light can act as an obstacle to continuing on in our program ofrecovery. We may be tempted to say to ourselves, "This is some ugly stuff here, I can't share it with another person because they will think terrible things about me."

Sometimes the only thing that keeps us from completing step four is our fear of doing the fifth step. It's tempting to piddle around in trying to get our writing step four "perfect" before doing step five. We use it as an excuse to not get on with our program. We must muster up all the courage that we can and press on because it is the only way we can get better.

Another trap that we can fall into is the familiar attitude that, "I don't have to share these things with another person - I only need to confess to God to be forgiven." We don't have to debate that point. What we are talking about here is that special healing that takes place when we confess our sins to another human being. “Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other and be healed." (James 5:16)

It's next to impossible to feel accepted, forgiven and loved by God when we have never experiencedthat with another human being. Other people can't love us if they don't know us. They can only love who they think we are or who we are pretending to be like. Get Real!

As is clearly documented by the above Bible verse, this principle was not devised by people it was
ordained by God Himself. When we are ready to take this step, the Lord will provide the exact right
person to hear our stories. We need to be prayerful about this matter and the Lord will lead us to the
right person to share our inventories.

We want to be courageous, but we do want to exercise caution to share our information with a responsible individual. This person might be a priest, minister, pastor, professional counselor, trusted friend or a "recovery sponsor." A sponsor is somebody that has more experience in recovery than we do and has agreed to help us work the steps.

To our surprise the person who hears our story, does not judge us. They may have done similar
things. We were able to get out those secrets that we thought we would be saddled with to the grave. We do this step prayerfully with another person in the presence of God. This is a holy time and a
healing time. It is a time that we need to be willing to receive God's forgiveness and rest in that assurance.

We are only as sick as our secrets. After taking this step we have fewer secrets and less sickness. We are different and we feel different. Some of us have felt such overwhelming love, forgiveness and freedom that we didn't know how to handle it. This is also a vulnerable time. We may want to schedule a quiet place to go and have communion and meditation with the Lord.

02/13/2024

Please talk to someone...

Did you know that substance use is the biggest risk factor for teen dating violence?

01/14/2024

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01/13/2024

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Meetings / Live and Zoom - We are better together!

11/21/2023

A CLASSIC PRAYER

Lord, make me a channel for thy peace—that where there is hatred, I may bring love—that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness—that where there is discord, I may bring harmony—that where there is error, I may bring truth—that where there is doubt, I may bring faith—that where there is despair, I may bring hope—that where there are shadows, I may bring light—that where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted—to understand, than to be understood—to love, than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life. Amen.
— TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 99

No matter where I am in my spiritual growth, the St. Francis prayer helps me improve my conscious contact with the God of my understanding. I think that one of the great advantages of my faith is that I do not fully understand Him. It may be that my relationship with Jesus is so fruitful that I do not have to understand. All that I am certain of is that if I work the Eleventh Step regularly, as best I can, I will continue to improve my conscious contact, I will know His will for me, and I will have the power to carry it out.