This Week’s Recovery Application Challenge
Be sure to complete this week’s TWIRL 018 before continuing with TWRAC 018.
Relationship NOT Religion
Step 3 of the twelve steps says: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.” The secular skewing of this step is intended help the recovering person to be comfortable while marginalizing God in the person of Jesus Christ. Many have understood the phrase, “as we understood Him”, to mean God is powerful no matter what I determine is representative of God.
If I believe nature is God, then I will commune with nature: trees, a waterfall, the sun or moon, a hillside, or a bird’s eye view something in nature that is beautiful. If I believe the powerful force of a group of healing people is God, then I will pray to the healing force. Maybe my higher power, my God, is the universe, or gravity, or an ocean current. These are examples of a number of things that people might find are representative of God since they are more powerful than any person is. So people will pray to these various representatives of those things in the universe that are manifestations of some God somewhere.
While God is in nature, and He is in the universe, and He planted the seeds for those trees to grow, and the powerful ocean currents were His idea, they are not of themselves God. While God is behind the healing force that helps people to get well, the healing force or the people are not God. Actually, seeking God out through the development of prayer rituals and routines around the things that you might deem are representative of God could become a religion devoted to a kind of false god or idol. As you discovered in the Admit section of this teaching, ultimately that false god or idol is you, and the worship of self, in your MEdom condition.
To pray to the God that one comes to understand and believe according to myth, legend, fantasy, fate, karma, romanticism, and so on, is no more than the God of one’s perceptions borne out of his or her imagination. If ultimately God is a figment of one’s imagination, where is the power to recover? If the higher power to recover is originated in the imagination of the recovering person, how can the person’s higher power be greater than the willpower of the addict in need of recovery? If one’s perception and belief of God is anything less than the truth found in the person of Jesus Christ, there can be no relationship with God. Without relationship with God is the absence of authentic power to recover. Therefore, it is necessary that you decide to have a relationship with Jesus Christ and tell Him that in a relationship with Him is where you want to be.
- How have hang ups with religion adversely affected your relationship with God?
- What does it mean to you to have a relationship with God?
- How would you describe your relationship with God?
- How has your perceptions of God affected your ability and willingness to engage in the process of recovery?
- How do you see your relationship with God improving?
- If your relationship with God was everything you want it to be, what would the relationship look like?
- If your relationship with God was everything you imagine God wanted it to be, what would the relationship look like?
- If your relationship with God was everything you want it to be, and you imagine God wants it to be, what would your life look like?
- What would you say it means to have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ?
- What can you do today and this week to improve your relationship with God?
- What WILL you do to improve your relationship with God?
- How would you say what you will do in your personal relationship with Christ will better enable you and empower you to live a disciplined lifestyle of recovery?
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