Hope For Today

Within each personal story of the journey from bondage to freedom is the power of our amazing God to save those who are lost. When we tell our story, our lives are simply giving witness to God’s amazing grace and mercy for us and through our own experiences, we get to point others to the pathway of their own healing journey with Jesus.  This is the “carrying the message” part of Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Today we want to think about what it means to awakened spiritually.  That’s the purpose of all the steps that have come before this one, but it is still important, at this stage to recognize what is awake and alive in us now that was not before.  This is what is referred to in Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

We know that some friendships grow in closeness as two individuals come to a place where they realize they know some things about the other person but now desire to have a more intimate relationship so they move down one path together going forward. This is what we seek as we put Step 11 into practice in our lives. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry it out.

The God who knew us before we were even formed in our mother’s womb watches over us and draws us to Himself.  The choice of coming close to God rests with us. In Step 11 we purpose to improve our conscious contact with God so we can understand more about God and how He interacts with us. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

It’s a useful practice to take regular inventory of our lives and to continue to make any needed adjustments to our thoughts, motives, or actions.  This helps us maintain spiritual, emotional, and relational health.  That’s the purpose of Step 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

Our life with God should be one of continual learning and growing.  We need to be diligent as we reflect on our motives and behaviour in situations that arise. We are reminded of this in Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

Nothing takes more sensitivity and care than dealing with people with whom we have had painful experiences.  It doesn’t matter if it’s close family members or acquaintances, whether the injury happened a decade ago or ten minutes ago, we need to take great care and walk with humility as we work towards reconciliation. That’s the wisdom we are given in Step 9.

Each day is a new opportunity to respond to God’s call to live in humility, desire reconciliation in relationships, walk in forgiveness and focus on cleaning our side of the street. Honesty, balance, and realism are essential tools to keep at hand when we seek the way of peace in all our relationships.  At some point we will all need to make amends to someone and we need to do so with grace and kindness.  This is the invitation of Step 9. We made direct amends to such people, wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

God’s heart is for us to enjoy loving and caring relationships with others.  We have much to learn in this area.  For a long time we’ve blamed others for the way they treated us.  However, we have not been mindful of how our behaviour harmed others.  Transformation in our lives only comes when our words and actions conform to the principles contained in God's word. Step Eight: We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

Little by little as we walk with God and work at applying new spiritual principles to our journey, we gain new information about ourselves and how we relate to other people. As we prayerfully review our lives with God, He will reveal where we have caused harm, where we might owe someone some form of amends, and teach us how we can live in new ways in relationship with others. This is the principle behind Step 8: We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

God is willing, and more than able, to remove all our defects of character if we humbly ask Him.  However, we cannot expect to experience God’s transforming power in our lives if we remain proud and unwilling to admit that we are helpless apart from him.  If we decide what we think needs to go and tell God how we expect Him to act, God will simply allow us to go forward and find out what happens when we base our life on our own limited understanding. This is not the attitude we are invited to in Step 7 when we say:  We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

We know we cannot fix ourselves.  Our confidence in the ability to change is based on the truth that, when we humbly come to God and ask Him to remove our character defects, He will do so.  That’s what we learn in Step 7. Humbly asked him to remove all our shortcomings.