RECOVERY-LIGHT-LIFE

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Spiritual Connection and Recovery...Why Church

"The opposite of addiction is connection" "An exalting (church) community isn't just a group with whom to believe, it's an intimate bond with those who help us to become...An exalting community thrives or fails depending on how people show up in two moments: weakness and disbelief." Joseph Grenny "For where two or more are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Jesus...Matthew 18:20 "As church attendance numbers fade across the nation and online services become very convenient, it's important to remember why church attendance for you and your family matters so much. You can't serve from your sofa. You can't have community of faith on your sofa. You can't experience the po...

A FRESH VIEW...

"Without the Redeemer, the inherent hope and joy evaporate, and repentance becomes simply miserable behavior modification." Elder Dale G. Renlund "The invitation to repent is an expression of God's love. Saying yes to that invitation is an expression of ours." Tamara W. Runia "I suspect that discovering what a Christian life looks like depends a lot on discovering the fact that repentance is a practice of joy, that this is something that you want to take up all day long, every day, as a way of engaging the world, rather than something that you want to avoid at all costs as a last resort, in light of your own imperfection." Adam Mil...

Weekend in Torrey..."The Mountain"

"Grace is shockingly personal. As Henri Nouwen points out, 'God rejoices not because the problems of the world have been solved, not because all human pain and suffering have come to an end, nor because thousands of people have been converted and are now praising Him for His goodness. No, God rejoices because one of His children who was lost has been found.'" Phillip Yancey "...I believe that when you are given a certain path in life, you have a spiritual responsibility, a spiritual opportunity to walk that path...to walk that path and bring some good into the world as a result of it. The only way you help people come out of the shadows is by coming out of the shadows yourself. The only way to find hope in your own life is by helping others find hope." ...

Spiritually Awakened...Sharing the Message. Step 12...

"What was given to you freely, you must give away freely." Matthew 10:8 "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." Mahatma Gandhi "As every man has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God." 1 Peter 4:10 Step 12: "Having had a spiritual awakening through the Atonement of Jesus Christ as a result of taking these steps, we share this message with others and practice these principles in all we do." The key principle of this step is Service. It's interesting what this step does NOT say. It does NOT say, "When you are completely sober..." It does NOT say, "When you feel better about yourself..." Step 12 says, "Having had a spiritual awakening..." What does that tell us? Recovery is a spiritual process and comes as the result of both our efforts to step into relat...

Continuing the Steps...Six through Eleven

"God does not love us if we change, God loves us so that we can change. Only love effects true inner transformation, not duress, guilt, shunning, or social pressure. Love is not love unless it is totally free. Grace is not grace unless it is totally free." Richard Rohr..."Breathing Under Water" "Working recovery helps us discover any self-centered or fear-based connections which may have replaced or smothered our connection with God. One of the most wonderful gifts that comes as a byproduct of working recovery is the divine connection we poignantly feel when these false connections are removed. We then gain confidence that we can turn to and rely upon the love and healing power of the God of our understanding..." SAL Book, pg. 108 When we complete the first five steps, we may think the hard work is over. It's really not. What we have accomplished thus far is HUGE...first admitting our weakness and our mes...

Taking the First Steps of Recovery...One through Five

"I did not come for the healthy, but for those who need a doctor." Jesus "How helpful it is to see sin, like addiction, as a disease, a very destructive disease , instead of merely something that was culpable, punishable, or 'made God unhappy.' If sin indeed made God unhappy, it was because God desires nothing more than our happiness, and wills the healing of our disease ." Richard Rohr Mortality works. It's designed to be difficult and to teach us lessons we could not otherwise learn. It's designed to provide us experiences that point to, push, and pull us toward growth. And because of that, it is hard. Of course, not all the time. We've been told that we "are" that we "might have joy." So joy is the very purpose of our life, both now and in the eternities. It always had been, and that's why we're here. But some of us are slow learners, and apparently I'm ...

CONNECTION...THE 12 STEPS OF THE ATONEMENT

"The opposite of addiction is connection." "You are not kept clean by your obedience, by doing everything you can as perfectly as you can. You are kept clean by your honesty about everything you can't do, about everything going wrong." Christina Judd...from the book "All We Can Do" As I've written before, we are all addicts in some way. We all...every one of us...have our "go to" in order to feel better about ourselves, to distract ourselves from the harsh realities of this world, or to numb whatever pain we might be feeling, whether it's physical, emotional, relational, or spiritual. As Lynn liked to say, "Pain is my traveling teacher." None of us will get out of this life without experiencing it, and some of us more so than others. It's just life, and it's designed to be this way. President Russell M. Nelson said..." Any addiction - be it gaming, debt, drugs, alcohol, anger, pornography, sex...