Hope For Today Videos

God has a purpose for each of our lives but we need to have conscious contact with Him to find out what it is.  If we make it our objective to seek God’s will, His favour and honor will rest on us and we will be successful in His plan for our life.

Despite what we hear on the evening news or what might be happening in our personal lives that seems to be spinning out of our control, there’s good news for us today from our Loving Heavenly Father. Just like the hub on a wheel brings together all the spokes and the tire that surrounds them so they work in unity, so God brings all things in our lives together.

So what isthe spiritual awakening we speak about in Step Twelve?  We come to know deeply and personally that God loves us.  God has always loved us.  God has a  beautiful life plan for us and He is willing to show us that plan one step, one day at a time. We need God at work in us today to give us a spiritual awakening so we can begin to know the unfailing love of our Heavenly Father for us.  When we truly awaken to this reality everything changes.

I hope we bring our needs, our hopes, our frustrations, our “anything” to God. But we’ll do well when we prioritize praying for God’s will for us and the power to carry it out. What is that?  We have to ask God to show it to us.

We know that to be physically well we have to eat well, drink water, exercise, get proper rest, and practice good hygiene every day. What we put into practice last week or last year won’t be enough to keep us strong and safe today. Same principle is true for our spiritual growth.  God wants us to be those who grow every day.

Confessing our wrong to someone means they no longer have to carry around the lingering excess baggage of the event.  Resentments begin to disappear, and we both experience more freedom. Serenity grows as we take these steps to right wrongs and make restitution where necessary.

To truly become willing to make amends we have to see God in the middle of each painful and fearful circumstance or memory, receive His comfort and care, and then choose with God’s help to face whatever needs facing, trusting that the God who knows, who cares, and who heals, can and will make something good out of even the most traumatic events.

Coming to the place where we are ready to humble ourselves before God and hand over our defects of character to Him, giving Him control over the way and the timing of their removal isn’t easy - but it is necessary

We were entirely ready to have God remove all our defects of character. What does it mean to get ready for God to do this work? 

After we work hard and make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, as if that weren’t hard enough, then  Step Five requires that “We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” I mean, if we are being honest, in who of us doesn’t that set our heart quaking a bit? Where can we find courage and comfort to do this?

Step 4 rather abruptly, it seems to most of us, turns a fierce searchlight on all that has gone on in our lives.  It’s no wonder some folks flee at this point.  I mean, if we are being honest, even those who’ve not gone down the trail of active addiction, who of us are anxious to expose all the ways we’ve gone wrong?  But that’s both the challenge and the invitation of Step 4 as we make this journey from brokenness to healing.

From feeling hopeless and then moving to a place of being hopeful in Steps 1 and 2, we now come to a moment of significant change. It’s never enough to know certain information, there always has to be a moment when we act on what we know. That’s when real change begins to anchor itself in our lives.  And that’s what the core of Step 3 is all about.