Living Life Recovery is a safe place where people can come and investigate the reality of God’s promises for their life, at there own pace.
1John 1:8-9 If we claim that we’re free of sin, we’re only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins–make a clean breast of them–he won’t let us down; he’ll be true to himself. He’ll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing.
“I WILL INVESTIGATE MY SINFUL HABITS AND ATTITUDES”
In order to help me change, I will investigate and record with God’s help – my sinful habits and attitudes.
Let’s take a good look at the way we’re living and reorder our lives under God.
Lamentations 3:40
Take a good look at yourself
Luke 11:36 If you are filled with light, with no dark corners, then your whole life will be radiant, as though a floodlight were filling you with light.
The only way to work out what in your life is stopping you from following God is to take inventory, Step Four says “In order to help me change, I will investigate and record with God’s help – my sinful habits and attitudes.”
The first time I took an honest inventory of my life, my habits and attitudes were whilst staying in the William Both Men’s Hostel in Adelaide. I had decided before I ever got to recovery if I really wanted to change my life I needed to know and to understand me.
I still have a copy of that inventory. The language is colourful. Some of the things I wrote were untrue but I believed them at the time based on how I was feeling back then.
~ When was the last time you took a good look at yourself?
Psalms 26:2 Examine me, God, from head to foot, order your battery of tests. Make sure I’m fit inside and out.
Psalms 17:3 Go ahead, examine me from inside out, surprise me in the middle of the night– You’ll find I’m just what I say I am.
Within five days, the Chief Priest Ananias arrived with a contingent of leaders, along with Tertullus, a trial lawyer. They presented the governor with their case against Paul. When Paul was called before the court, Tertullus spoke for the prosecution:”Most Honorable Felix, we are most grateful in all times and places for your wise and gentle rule. We are much aware that it is because of you and you alone that we enjoy all this peace and gain daily profit from your reforms. I’m not going to tire you out with a long speech.I beg your kind indulgence in listening to me. I’ll be quite brief. “We’ve found this man time and again disturbing the peace, stirring up riots against Jews all over the world, the ringleader of a seditious sect called Nazarenes. He’s a real bad apple, I must say. We caught him trying to defile our holy Temple and arrested him. You’ll be able to verify all these accusations when you examine him yourself.” The Jews joined in: “Hear, hear! That’s right!” The governor motioned to Paul that it was now his turn. Paul said, “I count myself fortunate to be defending myself before you, Governor, knowing how fair-minded you’ve been in judging us all these years. I’ve been back in the country only twelve days –you can check out these dates easily enough. I came with the express purpose of worshiping in Jerusalem on Pentecost, and I’ve been minding my own business the whole time. Nobody can say they saw me arguing in the Temple or working up a crowd in the streets.
Not one of their charges can be backed up with evidence or witnesses. “But I do freely admit this: In regard to the Way, which they malign as a dead-end street, I serve and worship the very same God served and worshiped by all our ancestors and embrace everything written in all our Scriptures. And I admit to living in hopeful anticipation that God will raise the dead, both the good and the bad. If that’s my crime, my accusers are just as guilty as I am. “Believe me, I do my level best to keep a clear conscience before God and my neighbors in everything I do. Acts 24:1-16
Recovery always takes place in the context of relationships. So taking our personal inventory in the recovery process must lead us to make improvements in how we relate to others. We may not be in a position of leadership, but we are always an example to others.
When we are taking inventory on a regular basis, everyone wins: We do because we grow; others do because they are encouraged.
A successful recovery will lead to the healing of our broken relationships.
1 Corinthians 11:28 Examine your motives, test your heart, come to this meal in holy awe. (Talking About Communion)
1 John 4:1 My dear friends, don’t believe everything you hear. Carefully weigh and examine what people tell you. Not everyone who talks about God comes from God. There are a lot of lying preachers loose in the world.
Jeremiah 11:20 I said, “God-of-the-Angel-Armies, you’re a fair judge. You examine and cross-examine human actions and motives. I want to see these people shown up and put down! I’m an open book before you.”
Jeremiah 17:9-10 “The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can figure out. But I, God, search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human. I get to the root of things. I treat them as they really are, not as they pretend to be.”
I WILL TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT MY SINFUL HABITS AND ATTITUDES
and with God’s help, I will do what I need to do to change them.
BAD HABITS AND ATTITUDES DON’T BECOME BAD HABITS AND ATTITUDES OVERNIGHT
BAD HABITS AND ATTITUDES NEED TO BE REPLACED WITH GOOD HABITS AND ATTITUDES
BAD HABITS AND ATTITUDES CAN ONLY BE CHANGED WITH GOD’S HELP
THE HABITS AND ATTITUDES WE NEED TO IMITATE IN OUR CHARACTER ARE THE HABITS AND ATTITUDES OF JESUS
Luke 4:16-19 He came to Nazareth where he had been reared. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place.When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written,
God’s Spirit is on me; he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, To set the burdened and battered free, to announce, “This is God’s year to act!”
Matthew 6:5-6 “And when you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?
“Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God.
Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.”
Step Four: In order to help me change, I will investigate and record with god’s help – my sinful habits and attitudes.
Recovery is a process that begins with changes in our attitudes and changes in our behaviours.
We begin today with a question:
What Kind of attitudes does God want us to have?
Firstly, God wants us to have an attitude of LOVE
He sent His Son to die of a cross for our sins because HE LOVES US!
In the ‘Message’ it says in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 “Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.
Are we willing to lay aside selfish ambitions and goals?
Does Divine love dwell in our hearts?
God also wants us to have an attitude that DEPENDS ON HIM
Philippians 4:6 in the Living Bible says “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything; tell God your needs, and don’t forget to thank him for his answers.”
Imagine never worrying about anything! It seems like an impossibility; we all have worries and problems in our lives. But Paul’s advice is to turn our worries into prayers.
Do you want to worry less?
Then pray more! Whenever you start to worry, stop and pray.
RESENTMENT displeases God.
In Genesis 4:6-7 God asks Cain “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”
How do you react when you know have done something wrong?
Do you move accept and correct the mistake?
Or do you look for excuses and avoid correcting it?
Are you continuing live in DENIAL?
Step four is about doing a thorough investigation of our attitudes and defining what we need to do to bring them into God’s way of living our lives.
Next Step four talks about investigating our sinful habits.
As we grow and mature in life, we develop habits. Some good, some bad. As we work through the process of the ‘Twelve Steps’ our aim is to develop good habits and put an end to our old ones.
HOW CAN WE DEVELOP GOOD HABITS?
Through learning God’s will for our lives and putting it into practice in our daily living.
God has a specific plan for each of us. He wants us to follow Him to fulfill His purpose for us. He cares about what we do – when we do it and how we do it.
Philippians 1:6 says “I am sure that God who began the good work within you will keep right on helping you grow in his grace until his task within you is finally finished.”
His plan for us is good. Jeremiah 29:11 “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a HOPE.”
HOW DO WE DEAL WITH OUR OLD HABITS?
One of the best solutions for dealing with bad habits is to recognize them for what they are and confess them honestly. In Romans 7:15 Pau says “I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I can’t. I do what I don’t want to—what I hate.”
Remember ‘recovery is a process.’ in which one of the most important ingredients I ‘TIME.’ Breaking a bad habit, you have developed over a long period of time won’t happen overnight.
It is much easier to break bad habits if you replace them with good habits.
Colossians 3:2 encourages us to not “shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective.”
Step four is about changing our life perspective. Romans 8:28 in the Living Bible says “We know that all that happens to us is working for our good if we love God and are fitting into his plans.”
Taking time to ’Investigate and record with God’s help our sinful habits and attitudes.’ Is the beginning of learning what in our characters we need to change to live the lives God has prepared for us.
Spirituality involves things like peace, love, righteousness, forgiveness. Integrity, our relationships and our values and worship. And aligning these things in our lives with God’s Word.
For the next three years, Bill Wilson pursued his recovery through the Oxford Group, which emphasized the following:
1. Complete deflation (of false pride)
2. Dependence on and guidance from God
3. Moral inventory
4. Confession Restitution
5. Continued work with other suffering persons
This week at ‘Celebrate Recovery’ we looked at ‘Step Four’ and what it means to take a ‘MORAL INVENTORY’
John 2:9 says “Suppose someone claims to be in the light but hates his brother or sister. Then he is still in the darkness.”
Not everyone you meet on the journey of recovery is on the right path. In the Bible hatred and love as moral qualities are not primary emotions. They are attitudes expressed by our actions. In recovery knowing who’s on the right path is expressed in how they live, not what they say.
Recovery means more than just knowing the process. It means putting the process into daily living.
Proverbs 21:2 We justify our actions by appearances; God examines our motives.
None of us set out to do the wrong thing. Generally, we believe we are doing what is right for us. But God sees the motives of our hearts. Often we make choices in areas of life where the right actions are difficult to discern. In our lives, we would do well to learn to take inventory of our motives by asking the question “Would God be pleased with what I am thinking or about to do?” It doesn’t please God when we are living just for our own selfish ambitions.
Matthew 7:17-20 A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.
The Word of God often likens people to trees. People trying to constantly live under the guidance and instruction of ‘Gods Word’ are said to be Psalms 1:3 ‘like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do.’ A lovely picture for people walking daily in the recovery process, planted and sustained by God. Producing lives that reflect something of what Jesus spoke about in the ‘Sermon on the Mount.”
Many of us, if totally honest have to admit we have little to show for the years of our mere existence. “nothing but leaves” is one of the ways the Bible explains it. Our ability to produce fruit that benefits others just wishful thinking. Because we have no life-source within.
Before we can aspire to God’s expectations of us changes are required. Placing ourselves at the disposal of God a necessity. In John 15:4 Jesus says “Remain in Me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in Me.”
Step Four says “In order to help me change, I will investigate and record with God’s help – my sinful habits and attitudes.” When you take an honest look at your sinful habits and attitudes. What do you see? and what do you need to change?
Lamentations 3:40–41 Let’s take a good look at the way we’re living and reorder our lives under God. Let’s lift our hearts and hands at one and the same time, praying to God in heaven.
STEP FOUR: In order to help me change, I will investigate and record with God’s help – my sinful habits and attitudes.
STEP SIX: After discovering my sinful habits and attitudes and confessing them, I am now willing to let God change me.
