Control Acrostic
Day: 20 January 2018
#20-Time to reflect
Psalms 18:6 When I was in trouble, I called out to the Lord. I cried to my God for help. From his temple, he heard my voice. My cry for help reached his ears.
The night before you entered recovery; do you remember where you were? What you were doing?
It is good sometimes to remember where we came from and reflect on how we got to where we are now.
My journey into spiritual recovery involved leaving behind everything I knew and loved and moving to a place where I knew no-one and had no supports.
It was through that experience I learned the importance of a personal relationship with God and my need to rely on Him.
- Do you remember how you used to think and act?
- How have you changed?
God Is So Good
His Strength is Perfect!
Asking for Help
If you choose not to work on your recovery, you’re choosing to get high! The little foxes will creep in and erode your recovery foundation. When you don’t choose God’s truth, you’re inadvertently choosing the devil’s lie. It’s critical to understand that no choice is making a choice. It’s extremely dangerous when you choose to entertain doubt, fear, anger, low self-esteem, condemnation, worry, anxiety, and lies. God’s given you the authority to use his weapons to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments.
This is about progress, a day at a time, to let go and let God. You’re no longer a slave but God’s own child and everything he has belongs to you. The Father gives you the authority to move out of your mind and stop being critical of yourself for the times you fall short. You actually glorify God by asking for his help, submitting to his authority, and knowing Jesus’ blood already covers the circumstance you’re so worried about.
Just as you believed who the enemy said you were, it’s okay to now receive who God says you are—one of his kids.
Lord, I pray I will forget yesterday and receive what you’ve got for me today. I desire to throw a grateful party for you rather than a hissy-fit for me.
John 8:32; 2 Corinthians 10:3-4; Galatians 4:7
Step One ~ Week Two Podcast
Don’t worry about anything, but pray about everything. With thankful hearts offer your prayers and requests to God. Then, God will bless you with peace that no one can completely understand. This peace will control the way you think and feel.
If we confess our sins to God, He can always be trusted to forgive us and take our sins away.
We are tempted by our own desires that drag us off and trap us. Our desires make us sin, and when sin is finished with us, it leaves us dead.
If you obey every law except one, you are guilty of breaking them all. God paid a great price for you. So use your body to honor God.
Philippians 4:6-7 ~ 1 John 1:9 ~ James 1:14-15 ~ James 2:10 ~ 1 Corinthians 6:20
Coping is not control. Many of us believe that as long as we cope with our problems we are in control of them.
Our coping mechanisms will eventually become our controllers if we don’t change them.
Eventually, when our coping mechanisms stop working we realize we are out of control, need to take responsibility for our bad choices and turn to God for help in doing so.
Step Two: I believe God exists, that he cares about me
and He can help me to regain control of my life.
Our Limitations
Bible Reading: Galatians 3:19-26
We admitted that we were powerless over our dependencies and that our lives had become unmanageable.
Many of us begin our recovery by seeing that we’ve been powerless to measure up to God’s laws. Some of us, however, expect that once we’re well on the road to recovery we’ll start keeping the laws of God. And we hope that this will guarantee our standing with God on the basis of our good works. We start with a recognition of our powerlessness, but hope for the day when we will no longer be powerless. Surely our standing before God must be somewhat dependent upon our keeping of the law! Otherwise, why would he have given us his laws in the first place?
The apostle Paul answers by saying, “Why, then, was the law given? It was given alongside the promise [of salvation through faith] to show people their sins. . . . If the law could give us new life, we could be made right with God by obeying it. But the Scriptures declare that we are all prisoners of sin, so we receive God’s promise of freedom only by believing in Jesus Christ. . . . The law was our guardian until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith” (Galatians 3:19, 21-22, 24).
The law of God is an eternal reminder of our true powerlessness—our ongoing need for a Savior and for the power of God. Our failures should point us back to the only one able to help us recover.
God sets us free from our failures and places us on the path toward recovery.