At the end of many recovery meetings we say the words, “Keep coming back. It works if you work it.” While it is important to do our part, I am grateful that our recovery actually has hope because God works on behalf of you and me.... can we imagine that? The God who put all the stars in place thinks about us and our circumstances in a very personal and caring way. Based on what God knows, God makes perfect arrangements and gets things set in place that will be good and satisfying for us. We can hardly imagine love and commitment like that to us and to our new life in recovery.
No one has ever seen or heard anything like this, never so much as imagined anything quite like it—what God has arranged for those who love him. But you've seen and heard it because God by his Spirit has brought it all out into the open before you. (1 Corinthians 2:9-10 MSG)
God meets us where we are and promises to take us forward into a bright future. One of our greatest hindrances to experiencing that great future is this: we think we know what the good life is. We go through the 12 steps and attend meetings. Some of us enter treatment centers. We sort out some of the wreckage of our past and begin to form an idea of what we think the next phase of a good life should look like. The truth is, our vision is way too narrow if we are forming it on our own. Our own ideas can’t even begin to match the reality that God has in store for us and those things He is actively working together to bring success to our lives.
Trust in the Lord and do good. Then you will live safely in the land and prosper. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires. Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him, and he will help you. (Psalm 37:3-5a NLT)
Are we willing today, like never before, to begin to trust the fact that God really is good; that he really is pouring out His grace in our lives; that he really is bringing about a future with hope for us; that he really has bigger and better and more wonderful plans for us than we have for ourselves?
©2016 Partners in Hope
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