Meditations on "Recovery"

In the Bible, sheep and shepherds are often used to teach us important spiritual lessons.

Today we are continuing to look at the excuses and faulty reasons we give for making poor choices and our tendency to justify our actions.

Rationalizing endorses the internal belief that we are victims of circumstances beyond our control.

One reason for rationalizing poor behaviour is that we want the pleasure or the power it offers.

Addicts are experts at creating excuses to rationalize their behavior and to minimize the complexity of their problems.

What kind of commitments do we make? How do we feel when we keep a commitment, even when it's challenging to do so?

Commitment is asked of us in a number of areas in our lives: marriage vows, appointments, recovery meetings, work, volunteer jobs, friendships, contracts, bill paying, promises made to parents or children, getting to work or school on time, etc.

Before we came into recovery, we admitted that our lives were unmanageable and we needed a power greater than ourselves to restore us to sanity.

The Jesus Culture band sings a song called “He Is Faithful”.

As we seek to establish something new in our lives, there is always a learning curve.

As we seek to restore a clear conscience before God we need to examine the truthfulness of our society’s values.

Many people are perfectionists who labor under condemnation even though the Bible says, “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1 NIV).