Growing in Christ While Helping Others
By John BakerZondervan
Copyright © 2012 John Baker
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-0-310-68964-5Contents
Foreword by Rick Warren............................................................7Introduction.......................................................................8The Road to Recovery: Eight Principles Based on the Beatitudes.....................10Twelve Steps and Their Biblical Comparisons........................................11Serenity Prayer....................................................................13Celebrate Recovery's Small Group Guidelines........................................14Lesson 19: Crossroads..............................................................15Lesson 20: Daily Inventory.........................................................27Lesson 21: Relapse.................................................................34Lesson 22: Gratitude...............................................................41Lesson 23: Give....................................................................48Lesson 24: Yes.....................................................................53Lesson 25: Seven Reasons We Get Stuck..............................................60Afterword..........................................................................63
Chapter One
The Road to Recovery
Eight Principles Based on the Beatitudes
By Pastor Rick Warren
1. Realize I'm not God. I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is unmanageable.
"Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor." (Matthew 5:3)
2. Earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to Him, and that He has the power to help me recover.
"Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." (Matthew 5:4)
3. BLDBLDonsciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ's care and control.
"Happy are the meek." (Matthew 5:5)
4. Openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust.
"Happy are the pure in heart." (Matthew 5:8)
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)
6. Evaluate all my relationships. Offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me and make amends for harm I've done to others, except when to do so would harm them or others.
"Happy are the merciful." (Matthew 5:7) "Happy are the peacemakers." (Matthew 5:9)
7. Reserve a daily time with God for self-examination, Bible reading, and prayer in order to know God and His will for my life and to gain the power to follow His will.
8. Yield myself to God to be used to bring this Good News to others, both by my example and by my words.
"Happy are those who are persecuted because they do what God requires." (Matthew 5:10)
Twelve Steps and Their Biblical Comparisons
1. We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.
"For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out." (Romans 7:18)
2. We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
"For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose." (Philippians 2:13)
3. We made a decision to turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God.
"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship." (Romans 12:1)
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
"Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord." (Lamentations 3:40)
5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed." (James 5:16)
6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
"Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up." (James 4:10)
7. We humbly asked Him to remove all our shortcomings.
"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9)
8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
"Do to others as you would have them do to you." (Luke 6:31)
9. We made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
"Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift." (Matthew 5:23 - 24)
10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
"So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!" (1 Corinthians 10:12)
11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and power to carry that out.
"Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly." (Colossians 3:16)
12. Having had a spiritual experience as the result of these steps, we try to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
"Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted." (Galatians 6:1)
Serenity Prayer
If you have attended secular recovery programs, you have seen the first four lines of the "Prayer for Serenity." The following is the complete prayer. I encourage you to pray it daily as you work through the principles!
Prayer for Serenity
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time ;
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace ;
taking, as Jesus did,
this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it ;
trusting that You will make all things right
if I surrender to Your will ;
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Celebrate Recovery's Small Group Guidelines
The following five guidelines will ensure that your small group is a safe place. They need to be read at the beginning of every meeting.
1. Keep your sharing focused on your own thoughts and feelings. Limit your sharing to three to five minutes.
2. There is NO cross talk. Cross talk is when two individuals engage in conversation excluding all others. Each person is free to express his or her feelings without interruptions.
3. We are here to support one another, not "fix" another.
4. Anonymity and confidentiality are basic requirements. What is shared in the group stays in the group. The only exception is when someone threatens to injure themselves or others.
5. Offensive language has no place in a Christ-centered recovery group.
Lesson 19
Crossroads
Principle 7: Reserve a daily time with God for self-examination, Bible reading, and prayer in order to know God and His will for my life and to gain the power to follow His will.
Step 10: We continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
"So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!" (1 Corinthians 10:12)
Think About It
Jesus says, "If you live as I tell you to, ... you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32, TLB). By working the principles and following Christ's directions, the foundation of your life has been rebuilt. You will undoubtedly see major changes in your life, if you haven't already! But now you are at the CROSSROADS of your recovery.
First Corinthians 10:12 warns us, "So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!" Steps 10 through 12 (Principles 7 and 8) are where we will live out our recoveries for the rest of our time here on earth. They are much more than maintenance steps, as some have referred to them. These are the "how I want to live the rest of my life steps and principles."
As we begin to work Step 10, we will see that it is made up of three key parts, each one corresponding to the acrostic for this lesson, TEN.
Take time to do a daily inventory
1. The what: "We continued to take personal inventory ..."
"Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord." (Lamentations 3:40)
Evaluate the good and the bad parts of our day
2. The why: "... and when we were wrong ..."
"If we say that we have no sins, we are only fooling ourselves, and refusing to accept the truth ... we are lying and calling God a liar, for he says we have sinned." (1 John 1:8 10, TLB)
Need to admit our wrongs promptly
3. The then what: "... promptly admitted it."
"This is how I want you to conduct yourself in these matters. If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your offering, leave immediately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God." (Matthew 5:23 24, MSG)
Practice keeping a daily journal for one week. Write out your daily inventory — the good and the bad. Look for negative patterns, issues that you are repeatedly writing down and having to promptly make amends for! Share them with your sponsor or accountability partner, and set up an action plan for you — with God's help and power — to overcome them.
Write About It
1. Before you start working on Step 10, take a moment to reflect and list some of the changes in your life that have come from working the steps and principles with Jesus as your Higher Power.
• How has your behavior changed?
• What specific relationships have been restored or improved?
• How has your relationship with Jesus grown since you began your
• List the new relationships that you have made along your journey.
2. In your own words, what does Step 10 mean to you?
• The what: "We continued to take a personal inventory ..."
• The why: "... and when we were wrong ..."
• The then what: "... promptly admitted it."
3. Keep a daily journal over the next seven days. Record the good along with the bad. Write down victories and areas of needed growth. Look for patterns. Share them with your sponsor or accountability partner at the end of the week.
Your Step 10 Journal
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five
Day Six
Day Seven
4. What did you learn by keeping your journal?
5. What areas did you identify as strengths?
6. What areas do you need to work on?
Suggestion: It's a Healthy Habit!
Keeping a daily journal is a key tool to help you stay on track on your road to recovery. You've done it for seven days, why stop now?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Growing in Christ While Helping Othersby John Baker Copyright © 2012 by John Baker. Excerpted by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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