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

Meet the Team & Principle 5

I'm Nate, and I'm a greatful beliver in Jesus Christ.  I serve as a Trainer for the Celebrate Recovery Leadership T.E.A.M. at Memorial Road Church of Christ, and I celebrate recovery from pornography for more than 4 years.    

The great thing about recovery in Jesus Christ is that it is remarkably simple.  Not easy, but simple. I love Principle 5 for this very reason.

Principle 5: Voluntarily Submit to every change God wants to make in my life and humbly ask him to remove my character defects.

 

Most of us come into recovery with a pretty good idea of the junk in our lives that we’d like to get rid of, but after we go through the difficult task of writing and sharing our inventory (Principle 4)…there is usually little doubt. We’ve identified entire lists of things that we’d like to change in our lives; the hurts and resentments that we carry because of what’s been done to us, the guilt and shame for things we’ve done to others and all the different ways of acting out we tried in order to protect ourselves.

When we come to Principle 5 God says: “well, lets make the changes.”

And yet, we tend to overcomplicate things. We come to Principle 5 and we ask ourselves: “How do I submit to every change God wants to make in my life?” and “what do I submit?” The fear of change kicks in and we begin to rationalize. We overcomplicate the step or we turn it into something that is so hyper-spiritual that it becomes too monumental a task for us to even know where to begin. And so we get stuck over-thinking and end up doing nothing to actually work Principle 5 except answering the questions in our step-study books.

All the while God is simply saying: “You know that thing that got you into recovery? It’s time to give it up…and let me start working on your heart”

There’s a give and take associated with this step that we often times misunderstand.

God will not simply take away the habit. He asks us to give the habit up, voluntarily. It’s through the surrender of our habits that God promises us that he will work to remove the character defects that push us toward the habits in the first place.

A simple way that I’ve found to work Principle 5 is called a 90-day contract. This is in no-way associated with the CR curriculum and it is not a requirement of any Celebrate Recovery Program, but rather I was introduced to it through some Christian Counselors who are experts in the field of sexual addiction.

The idea is this: take the sin, the habit, the coping mechanism or the problem that you came to recovery for and promise to give it up for 90-days. Write up a simple contract that states how you will not engage in your particular behavior, how you will commit yourself to prayer, specifically that God will remove your character defects as you voluntarily submit your habit over to him for the next 90-days. Find accountability partners who will work this contract with you. Commit yourself to rigorous honesty with your accountability group. Sign it, date it, exchange phone numbers, and watch God work over the next 90-days!

You’ll be amazed the simplicity of Principle 5 and the Power of Your Almighty God to give you freedom from your Hurts, Hang-ups and Habits.

A grateful believer,

Nate 

Meet the Team & Principle 4

Hi, our names are Micah and Tara Hobbs, and we are grateful believers in Jesus Christ.

Since we were asked to write an article together, Micah’s comments will be in blue and Tara’s in red.

I am one of the “M’s” on our leadership TEAM (acrostic).  One of my co-M’s, Travis, wrote the article on principle two.  Together with the help of Angi – our great female “M” – we oversee the entire CR program.  It is a tremendous privilege for me to serve in this way and I give all the glory to my Savior Jesus Christ, who rescued me out of the dominion of darkness and into his marvelous light…to him be praises and glory forever!

Principle four is where the “cleaning out” process begins.  This principle (letter O) states: “Openly examine and confess my faults to God, to myself and to someone I trust.” Early on in my recovery journey, the personal challenge for me in this step was confession.  Actually, to narrow it down, I was completely freaked out about the idea of confessing all my past and present faults to someone I trusted.  I asked things like, “What if they judge me and nail me to the wall? What if after they hear my inventory, they look at me differently?” Satan was using all of these fears to cripple me in my recovery journey. 

After procrastinating as long as I could, I finally told my sponsor the truth.  When he asked me, “How’s your fourth step coming?” I told him, “I have not started yet.” The previous times he had asked me that question, I had lied to him and told him I was doing okay with it.  Well, after I made amends for that, we set a firm deadline for my written version to be complete.  Then, we set an appointment for me to share it.

Listen to these powerful words from James: “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed…” (James 5:16).  When I submitted myself to God and obeyed this commandment found in his Word by confessing my faults to my sponsor, this is when Jesus’ healing began in my life.  For me, the experience of being completely and vigorously honest with another human being was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done; however, it was easily the most POWERFUL and HEALING thing I’ve ever done as well.  CR recovery principle four was a great turning point in my recovery and it can be for you too.  

My name is Tara and I serve along side Karyn as part of the “A TEAM” at Celebrate Recovery.  J  Karyn and I are the assimilation coaches and we work together in this role to promote Celebrate Recovery to the church and community around us. 

Step 4 was probably the hardest step for me.  The thought of openly examining myself was scary.  It made me think of doing an autopsy…something that was tedious and could take a very long time.  Just like doing an autopsy, I was afraid of what I was going to find when I started digging through the hurts, habits, and hang-ups of my life.  Luckily I have an amazing sponsor who has become a dear friend to me!  I was extremely anxious to sit down with her and literally spill my guts to her.  I gave her every excuse in the book to put off writing out my 4th step and each time she lovingly smiled and encouraged me to continue working hard on my recovery.  I remember leaving our meeting feeling like a whole new person.  I remember feeling free from so many things that I had kept inside for so many years. 

Step 4 is just the beginning of the healing process.  At the time, it seems very overwhelming and maybe even depressing at times.  It is never fun to bring up all the hurts and pain from your past.  However, I want to encourage everyone to keep working your recovery.  Do not stop in the middle of Step 4 because you think it is too hard; keep it up!!  Through this process you will feel God breaking down walls of guilt and resentment in your heart.  And that only gets better as you continue to work the rest of the principles in your recovery.

Well, as daunting of a task as principle four may seem to you, it is doable and it is rewarding.  We want to leave you with a great quote from a 10^th Avenue North Song that we love: “This is where the healing begins. This is where the healing starts.  You come to where you’re broken within and the light meets the dark.”  That is exactly what happens in principle four.  We invite Jesus – who is the Light – to come into our dark places and clean out our filth and make us whole again.  Believe us, it is worth it!

Grateful Believers,

Micah and Tara