“Let His presence refine us.”
—Pastor Chrissy Cole of Project Church Sacramento, 11/15/2020.
In the martial arts world, after you’ve achieved your 1st black belt you have now achieved basic understanding of the techniques. Going forward it’s about refining and mastering the art and yourself. It’s the same with spiritual practice and the same with our recovery. We never stop refining the work and effort involved in maintaining our sobriety.
Step 11 is about going deeper into our relationship with God and allowing Him to work through us in thought, word, and deed. It takes a lot of practice to achieve a basic level of understanding and even more practice to achieve a level of proficiency. It’s so easy to fall back into our old habits, to fall back into our old ways of thinking and doing things. Step 11 calls us to go beyond our old ways and into new ways of thinking and behaving.
How do we do this? We have to intentionally connect with God and His followers. We can read the Bible, do a daily devotional, regularly attend Christ-centered recovery groups, attend a Bible based church, join a Bible study group, watch videos and read articles on spirituality and what it means to follow God. There is so much we can do to intentionally connect with the God of Love, who is the source of all good things and who is the source of our sobriety.
I recently shared in a recovery group that as addicts we become masters of at least three things:
Selfishness
Manipulation
Self-lies
In our recovery, we need to start working to master the opposite:
Selflessness
Compassion
Self-mastery (truthfulness)
And we never stop working on these things, because each of them can grow deeper and deeper in our hearts and minds if we let them. Mastery is about intention. It’s a daily work that requires time and effort.
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