This Week In Recovery Lesson
What Do You Want from God?
One of the key issues in living a life of effective and productive recovery is that we tend not to believe in the promises of God. Sure, we might believe that we are forgiven by merciful God, but what about gracious God who desires to bless us and provide for our needs and, dare I say it, our wants?
In reading William P. Young’s book, The Shack, recently, there was one point (among many) that really rang true for me: Papa (the book’s name for God) would often say to Mack, “You don’t believe that I love you.” The problem with not receiving from God in our recovery walk is that we do not have complete confidence in God because we really do not fully believe in a tangible way that God loves us. We cannot fully believe in the love of God when we do not know Him. We cannot know God until we invest the time and energy into getting to know Him in relationship with Jesus Christ who knows and understands us (Hebrews 4:14-16).
As we to know and understand God to the point that we truly believe with our whole heart that He loves us with His whole heart, it changes our perspective completely. We come to understand that God not only wants to remove our sin and our shame and relieve our pain, but He wants to replace it with His joy. He wants to bless us with His provision daily. What this requires is for our desires to conform with His desires, but as we grow deeper in relationship with God, meaning that we commit to the process of repentance, rebirth, and restoration of our souls, our desires begin to conform with His, and we get what we want because we want what He wants; and that is all good all of the time.
The following questions can help you to recognize where you are in terms of what you want, and hopefully help you to see that you have tremendous opportunity to experience God’s grace if you are willing to do what it takes in your commitment to receive bountifully from Him.
- If your life is everything you want it to be in ten years was does it look like?
- If your life was everything you want it be right now was does it look like?
- What does your life actually look like today?
- What needs to take place in your life for it to be what you wrote in question #2?
- What needs to take place in your life for it to be what you wrote in question #1?
- How is what you want your life to look like is realistic or not? Explain.
- What expectations do you have for your life today that you would say is not being met?
- Honestly, on a scale of 1-10 (10 being most), according to what you wrote in questions 1 and 2, how satisfied are you today? Explain.
- On a scale of 1-10, how hopeful are you that you can achieve satisfaction? Explain.
- On a scale of 1-10, how confident are you in your ability to achieve satisfaction? Explain.
Please proceed to this week’s application challenge by clicking on TWRAC 007.
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