A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.
Nicodemus asked, “What do you mean by this? How does this happen?”
The Master is going to give you a sign anyway. Watch for this: A girl who is presently a virgin will get pregnant. She’ll bear a son and name him Immanuel (God-With-Us).
John 10:10 ~ John 3:9 ~ Isaiah 7:14
He Lives! in your neighborhood “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.” John 1:14
Colossians 1:18-20 He [Jesus] was supreme in the beginning and–leading the resurrection parade–He is supreme in the end. From beginning to end He’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is He, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in Him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe–people and things, animals and atoms–get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of His death, His blood that poured down from the Cross.
Luke 12:57 “You don’t have to be a genius to understand these things. Just use your common sense.
John 13:12 After He [Jesus] had finished washing their feet, he took his robe, put it back on, and went back to his place at the table. Then He said, “Do you understand what I have done to you?”
John 13:17 If you understand what I’m telling you, act like it–and live a blessed life.
John 15:15 I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father.
Ecclesiastes 11:5 Just as you’ll never understand the mystery of life forming in a pregnant woman, So you’ll never understand the mystery at work in all that God does.
Romans 5:6-8 Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to Him.
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love–so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about–not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God. My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us–perfect love! 1 John 4:7-12
Some of us feel recovery would be easier and more understandible if we could just see God. But God for us is usually seen in the lives of fellow travellers on the ‘Recovery Road’
Step Nine says “Having identified the people, I have harmed, I will now go and make restitution to them. Unless to do is going to cause them or other pain or suffering.” Repairing relationships is an important part of the recovery process as is fellowship with others in recovery because they understand what we have been through are going through and will gow through.
Isaiah 8:11-15 God spoke strongly to me, grabbed me with both hands and warned me not to go along with this people. He said: “Don’t be like this people, always afraid somebody is plotting against them. Don’t fear what they fear. Don’t take on their worries. If you’re going to worry, worry about The Holy. Fear God-of-the-Angel-Armies. The Holy can be either a Hiding Place or a Boulder blocking your way, The Rock standing in the willful way of both houses of Israel, A barbed-wire Fence preventing trespass to the citizens of Jerusalem. Many of them are going to run into that Rock and get their bones broken, Get tangled up in that barbed wire and not get free of it.”
When others try to coerce us into their problems we should not fear their rejection because we don’t go along with them. The Bible says if we fear God we need not fear anything else. His way of living is the right way but not necessarily the easy way. He can be our hiding place or our road block.
Step Six of the ‘Living Life Recovery Twelve Steps’ says After discovering my sinful habits and attitudes and confessing them, I am now willing to let God change me.
Through the process of recovery God is warning us of our need for change and through reading the Bible prayer and meditation He highlights what each of us needs to do to become the people He created us and supports us to be.