Meet the Team & Principle 6

Hello, my name is Christi. I am a grateful believer in Jesus Christ. I am a survivor of childhood abuse and I struggle with codependency. I serve as one of the training coaches for Celebrate Recovery at Memorial Road Church of Christ. My role is to provide training for new leaders as well as ongoing training for current leaders.

Hello, my name is Sheldon. I am a grateful believer in Jesus Christ. I struggle with alcoholism. I serve in assisting the training coaches in providing ongoing leadership training.

We have been asked to discuss Principle 6 which states:

E-valuate all my relationships. Offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me and make amends for harm I’ve done to others, except when to do so would harm them or others.

The first thing we want to say as you read this blog post, is that it is important to remember that for us completing principle 6 is only possible if we have thoroughly worked the previous 5 principles. Notice we didn’t say completely because our whole life is a process and there will be numerous times that we need to forgive others and make amends.

The first part of principle 6 says to evaluate all of our relationships. By examining our lives, writing and confessing our inventories, and after asking God to remove our defects of character, we had a fairly good list of people we both needed to forgive and make amends to. In further evaluating all of our relationships we also realized there were people that might not have made our inventory list but still people we either needed to forgive or make amends to. With our sponsors help, we were able to make a thorough evaluation.

The second part of principle 6 says to offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me. Forgiveness is not always an easy thing to do. In fact it can be quite challenging. But in order to move forward in our recovery this is a necessary step. Offering forgiveness does not mean that we ignore the harm that was done to us and it does not mean that the person who harmed us is no longer responsible. Furthermore, offering forgiveness is not an “opportunity” to take the other person’s inventory. When we offer forgiveness our expectation should be to simply forgive them and expect nothing else in return. Practicing principle 6 begins a change in our hearts and it is a conscious choice that we make to forgive those persons who harmed us just as God has forgiven us.

The third part of principle 6 says to make amends for harm I have done to others.  Again, with the help of our sponsors we, either in person or on our own, forgave the people who had hurt us and asked for forgiveness from the people we had hurt.  Now notice we didn’t say that we would always offer forgiveness directly to the person, nor were we always able to make amends directly to the person. There are certain situations where it might have been harmful to us or to the other person to speak directly to them. Our intent should be never to be to place someone in a circumstance where they may be harmed emotionally in an attempt to grow in our own recovery. That's clearing our conscience at the expense of someone else who may be harmed. This would be selfish on our part. In this type of situation, a living amends was necessary for us to move forward in our recoveries. A living amends is an indirect amends where we bring our heart, our energy, and our focus back to God and do our best to follow His will in all areas of our lives. This simply means that we live differently. Amends are about a genuine change in our behavior and not just an apology.

Offering forgiveness or asking for forgiveness is not always an easy step to make, but it is the most rewarding and freeing. You no longer have to carry those burdens around. Give them all to God and you will be amazed at how much better you will feel and how much closer to God you will become. We must forgive others as he continually forgives us.

Thankful and Grateful Believers,

Sheldon & Christi