Meet the Team & Principle 3

Hello, my name is Stephen. I am a very grateful believer in Christ.

It has been a long, hard road on the way to Celebrate Recovery, and after being a part of CR for 5 years, I am privileged to give back to CR as part of the MRCC CR TEAM member because of what God --  through CR --  has done for me.

Today, I would like to talk about Principle 3: Letter C Consciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ’s care and control.

Based upon my life experience, this is one of the hardest things to do.  How do I do that when my relationship with God is strained and trust is almost non-existent? How does one develop a relationship with someone that they have never seen or heard? Why should I commit every aspect of my life to Christ and submit to His will when everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong in my life? (I was a walking example of Murphy’s Laws in action) Where was God when I needed him at various points in my life?

Looking back over my life, I see that God was there all along. He worked in ways that I could not see at the time; but, now when I look back beyond the emotions, the anger and the fears of the time, I can clearly see God working quietly behind the scenes.  He was gently guiding and nudging me along toward the future with an abundance of patience and love.

Every time I tried to fix something, I made an even bigger mess of my life. Every time I gave up and resigned myself to the inevitable, God made a way for me.  God’s plan and my plans for my life didn’t match up, but God’s plan for my life became so much better than mine.  God has an advantage that I do not when it comes to my life…He sees the big picture while I only see a small, tiny portion of it.  He knows what He is doing.

After I became a part of CR and joined a step study group, I came to see that I was NOT the only one whose life was messed up and out of sorts, and whose life plan didn’t turn out the way it should have turned out. I began to see how selfish and self-centered I was and how destructive that attitude could be for my life and my relationship with others.  I saw that my relationship with God was almost non-existent and that had to change.

Since I began to change and submit to God’s will and control through Christ, my life has been healthier in all aspects:  spiritually, emotionally, and physically.  When things don’t go my way, I take a deep breath and say “God will find a way for me, and He will take care of me.”  Sometimes immediately, I see how God has prevented unpleasant things from happening just by making sure that things don’t go the way I want it to go.  Often times, I see this much later in life.  I am at peace now compared to when I was in a constant state of turmoil, fear, anger and frustration.

It is not normal for humans to give up control over their lives to someone else.  Even followers of Father God and Jesus Christ that we read about in the Bible struggled from time to time with principle three.  However, Jesus gave up control to the Father. We read about Paul doing this – among many others.  It is interesting to note that in the Bible when someone tried to take back control of their life, they usually ended up in a pretty big mess that God had to clean up?

Turning over my life and my will over to Christ’s care and control was and is the best decision I have and will ever make in my life.

God has indeed been good to me!

Grateful Believer,
Stephen

Meet the TEAM & Principle 2

Hello, my name is Travis.  I am a grateful believer is Jesus Christ. 

I am serving on the MRCC CR TEAM as an “M” . The “M” stands for Ministry Leader.   My main role is Friday night - making sure everything is set up and goes smoothly. I assist in finding testimonies, song leaders, order of large group and newcomers.    I also am in charge of our Monthly TEAM meetings and the overall safety of the CR program at

Memorial Road

. I would have never imagined myself a ministry leader much less a church leader.  I always thought that title or position was for the holy of holies.  Not a sinner like me.    I am so happy to be giving back to CR in this way because of what God has done in my life. 

The recovery principle that I am going to talk about is principle 2, which says: Principle 2 E - Earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to Him, and that he has the power to help me recover.  What that means in my life is this:  I did not grow up in a home where church was a main priority.    I have always believed that God existed and I prayed to God and asked him to keep me safe, give me a good car, and let me do well in sports.  However, I did not have a true relationship with God. 

My prayer life was the ultimate give me, give me, give me, want, want, want.  I thought that if I asked God for something, He would surely give that to me.  However, that was not the case at all times in my life.  I really never thought God could use me in any way.  I thought that I was just going to go to church, (punch my time card) and go home.  I especially didn’t think God could help me with my addictions.  I thought I had to do that all by myself.  I thought I had to pull myself up by my own bootstraps and quit gambling and dipping on my own. 

However, when I first came to Celebrate Recovery I found out very quickly that God needs to be number one in my life.  My prayers went from give me this and give me that to - Thank you God for allowing me to talk to you anytime and anywhere.  I relied on God so much during my first two years of recovery.  I started to understand that His power can help me recover.  The main way I found this out was through His servants at CR.  Through the all testimonies that were given at CR I could actually see God working in other people’s lives. 

I am so happy to have a relationship with God and to know down in my heart that I matter to Him. 

Grateful Believer,

Travis

Meet the TEAM & Principle 1

Hi, I'm Karyn. I'm a grateful believer in Jesus.

I serve as an A on the CR TEAM at MRCC (wow, that's a lot of acronyms). A stands for Assimilation, which means I help with promotion of Celebrate Recovery to the members of our CR program, to the church, to the community and to the world. (The world? Yikes, that's a little overwhelming.)

Over the next few weeks you'll meet each TEAM member from MRCC. The word TEAM is an acrostic and each letter stands for a different role. I know, I know you're shocked - it's another acrostic. As you meet the team you'll also be introduced to each of the 8 CR principle's. You'll learn a little more about us, and how the principles impacted our recoveries.

The 8 principals are broken down through yet another acrostic spelling out the word RECOVERY.

The R of Recovery stands for Realize.

Principle 1  Realize I'm not God. I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is unmanageable.

When I came to CR I was broken, scared, weak, angry, confused and there was no way God was going to use this Friday night program "CR" to change my life. I didn't WANT to be there.  I had been very critical of the program in the past based on friends & family that had attended and when I heard people talk about CR I cringed and thought, "Here we go again, another story about Celebrate Recovery, blah, blah, blah!"

I went ahead and continued to come each week and my counselor told me I needed to join a step study.  Oh great, more CR...I was less than thrilled.  I joined the step study and felt like I would never connect with these strangers.  I didn't like it at all.  BUT, once again God's plan was so much greater, bigger and better than mine! God was using this step study to change me. 

It was like my life was a box of puzzle pieces that had been dumped out on the floor and I was picking up pieces and seeing how they needed to fit together.  Once I started to see pieces fitting together, it clicked.  For the first time I was seeing all the patterns of my childhood, adolescence, teen years, dating years, and my life as a grown women come together, why I had acted out like I had, and what I had to do to change so I could be the woman Christ intended me to be, not who I thought I was! 

Principal 1 guided me through most of my first step study and I would say it over and over: Realize I'm not God; I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and my life is unmanageable.   My life was unmanageable!  I was exhausted from trying to cover up all my lies and tired of trying to be someone I wasn't.   God had used my step study to show me that!  I loved the healing and understanding I received through my step study, and never missed one meeting!

I'm now co-leading my second step study.  Not only did God use this program to change my life He also lead me down a path of service to give back to the program in a way I never knew I would.  Funny how God's plans work, huh? Me, the sarcastic one - once annoyed with CR - now serving on the TEAM.  His plan is so much better.

God is good.

Grateful Believer,

Karyn

The Knitting Bag

After 20+ years of knitting, I’ve just completed my first real garment: a sweater.  And, I didn’t just knit this actual sweater once: I made it twice. I was almost finished with it when I realized that the size was all wrong. I could have worn my giant sweater and felt icky about how it looked; but I decided to try again. I undid every single stitch and rolled all of that yarn back into balls. All of those hours – all of that work – literally thousands of little stitches – that only took about 15 minutes to undo.

Recently, my friend Jen gave her testimony at CR. She was talking about a difficult time after having recovery success with her particular struggle. She shared about a  time of relapse and said that at first she had been focused on her disappointment to be back at square one in her recovery. But then she realized, “I was not back at square one. I was so different . . .I opened myself up to God’s grace and let Him work on me . . .”

This part of Jen’s story is such an encouragement to me.  I am currently in the peace of God’s control over binge-eating disorder.  However, I have yielded to God before in this, and have had many slips and relapses. My behavior has been rebellious, and I must face the consequences every time I choose not to walk in God’s will. But, when I do fall, I know that God will use my mistake to strengthen me.   

So, back to my poor sweater that went from almost-finished back to mere balls of yarn in my knitting bag. When I began following the sweater pattern the second time, it was familiar to me. I didn’t have to study stitch tutorials on YouTube or call an expert knitter for help. I had already gone through every stitch: I had knit a practice run! I made the modifications I needed to make this go-round the right size for me, and the next thing I knew, my sweater was complete, and just the right size.

For some of us, relapse is a painful part of recovery. But, what we do next is everything. Do we pick up and follow God again, or do we stay in the knitting bag, never becoming what God has designed us to be?

Grateful Believer,

Angi

This Friday Night...

we ARE meeting this Friday night, February 4th.

See you then!