1. WHERE TO GET HELP WHEN YOU HURT
The Road To Recovery—Part 2
Rick Warren
R.E.C.O.V.E.R.Y
R ealize I’m not God; I admit I’m powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong
thing and my life is unmanageable.
Step 2:
E arnestly believe that God ____________, that I __________ to him, and that he has the
_________________to help me recover.
“Anyone who comes to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who
earnestly seek him.”
Heb. 11:6
Three Parts
1. ACKNOWLEDGE GOD’S ____________________________________.
“Since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine
nature—have been clearly seen.”
“The fool says “There is no God!” Ps. 14:1
2. UNDERSTAND GOD’S ___________________________
“Christ is the visible expression of the invisible God.” Col. 1:15 (Phillips)
· God ____________ all about my situation.
“You have seen the crisis in my soul” Ps. 31:7 (TLB)
“ You know how foolish I have been.” Ps. 69:5
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2. · God _______________ about my situation.
“He is like a father to us, tender and sympathetic … for he knows what we are made of—
dust.” Ps. 103:13–14 (TLB/GNB)
“God says “I have loved you with an everlasting love!” Jer. 31:3
“God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us.” Rom. 5:8 (TLB)
· God can ______________________ me and my situation.
“I pray you will begin to understand how incredibly great his power is to help those who
believe Him … the same power that raised Christ from the dead.” Eph. 1:20 (TLB)
“What is impossible for men is possible with God.” Luke 18:27 (GNB)
3. ACCEPT GOD’S ________________________
“For God is at work within you giving you the will and the power to achieve His
purpose.” Phil 2:13 (Phillips)
“The Spirit that God gives us … fills us with power, love and self-control.” 2 Tim. 1:7
(GNB)
How to Plug Into God’s Power
________________ and __________________
“When you go through deep waters and great troubles, I will be with you, … you won’t
drown! When you walk through the fires of oppression, you won’t be burned up.” Isa. 43:2–3
(TLB)
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3. WHERE TO GET HELP WHEN YOU HURT
The Road To Recovery—Part 2
Hebrews 11:6
Some of you are unaware that this last week, when it rained so hard on Monday there was
a portion of Lake Forest that flooded, and Glenn lives down in one of these kind of low areas.
The Orange County Register sent a reporter out there and he found Joann, Glenn’s wife, sitting
on the roof as things were floating by. He climbed up on the roof and the first thing he saw was a
chicken coop floating by and then he saw this horse and then he saw this VW bug floating by.
Then after a few minutes he saw this hat float by, but after it got about twenty feet past the house
the hat started floating back upstream. Then it got about twenty feet on the other side of the
house it started floating back down again. He watched this seven or eight times and finally he
said, “Mrs.—Do you have any idea what that hat is?” She said, “That’s just my crazy husband,
Glenn. He said he was going to mow the lawn come hell or high water.”
The problem we have today is that a lot of us are still focusing on the lawn, while the
home is floating downstream.
Last week we said, all of us need recovery because none of us is perfect. The world is
imperfect, we’ve all been hurt, we all have hang-ups, we all have habits we’d like to change.
Everybody needs recovery. The steps are the same regardless of what your problem is whether
it’s a hurt, a hang-up, or a habit. We talked about last week that the root cause of all this is my
desire is to control things. The more insecure you are, the more you want to control things: you
want to control your life, you want to control other people’s life, control your environment—You
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4. want to be God. You want to be at the center of your universe. When we try to control
everything it ends up with fatigue, frustration, and failure.
How do you break out of that? How do you break out of those things?
You have to get past denial. Denial is what keeps us from moving into recovery. We
excuse ourselves: “Really, it’s no problem … Really, I’m fine … It’s not a problem, I can handle
it.” We excuse ourselves and we accuse others: “If my wife would just get her act together then
our marriage would be just fine.” And we play the blame game. And we accuse and excuse and
we’re very shortsighted. We say, “How you doing?” “Well, I’m good, so far, under the
circumstances … So far, so good.” You just jumped off a building and are halfway down, you
haven’t hit bottom yet. So we have to learn how to deal with denial.
This week I saw a lost-and-found ad in the paper. It illustrated denial. It said, “Lost, a
three-legged dog. Blind in right eye. Left ear missing. Broken tail. Recently castrated. Answers
to the name ‘Lucky.’” Now that’s what I call denial.
Our T-shirt ministry made me this T-shirt that says, “Denial is not just a river in Egypt.”
What’s the antidote to denial? What makes me finally face up to my problems?
God’s antidote for denial is pain. We rarely change when we see the light. We change
when we feel the heat. We don’t change until our fear of change is exceeded by the pain. Most
people never really move into recovery until they’re forced to move into it, because there is no
other option.
God uses three denial busters, things to get your attention, to force you to move into
recovery from things that have messed up your life.
1. Crisis. Illness, stress, lose your job.
2. Confrontation. Somebody cares enough to say, “You’re blowing it.” Somebody loves
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5. you enough to confront you in truth and love and say, “You are missing out. You’re about to lose
your family. You’re about to lose your health. You’re about to lose your job.” Somebody
confronts you. An old saying in Texas: “If somebody calls you a horse’s rear, ignore it. If two
people call you a horse’s rear, look in the mirror. If three people call you a horse’s rear, buy a
saddle.” If three people call you a workaholic—buy a saddle. If three people call you an
alcoholic—buy a saddle. If three people say you need to get some help—buy a saddle. Pain is
like a fire alarm. It goes off, warning you something is wrong in your life. If you had a fire alarm
go off in your house, what would you do? “Oh, that stupid fire alarm! Somebody throw a rock at
it and make it stop.” No, you would do something about it. But often in our life when we hear the
pain come out, the fire alarm of pain, instead of just dealing with the source, we just try to cover
up the sound. We cover it up with food, alcohol, sex, many, many different things. But it doesn’t
deal with it. God will use these things to get our attention.
3. Catastrophe. I hope He doesn’t have to use that in your life. When the bottom falls out,
physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, relationally—when the bottom falls out and you
hit bottom, what happens is often that He just has to step back and let us feel the full impact of
our own stupid decisions. “You want to be God? O.K.” And He’ll just step back and let you be
God. And then you reap what you sow, and you feel the full impact that causes a catastrophe in
your life.
We said last week that the FIRST STEP IN RECOVERY IS TO FIRST REALIZE I’M
NOT GOD, ADMIT I’M POWERLESS TO CONTROL MY TENDENCY TO DO THE
WRONG THING AND MY LIFE IS UNMANAGEABLE. That is the first step, the reality step.
The second step is what I call the Hope step. Step 1 says, I admit it. I’m helpless. I’m
powerless. Step 2 says, There is a power. That’s the good news. There is a power you can plug
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6. into to handle things that you can’t handle on your own.
E ARNESTLY BELIEVE THAT GOD EXISTS, THAT I MATTER TO HIM, AND
THAT HE HAS THE POWER TO HELP ME RECOVER. This second step is based on
Hebrews 11:6—”Anyone who comes to God, must believe that he exists and that he rewards
those who earnestly seek him.”
There are three parts to taking Step 2 in this road to recovery.
I. ACKNOWLEDGE GOD’S EXISTENCE.
Most of you have no problem in this. There aren’t that many atheists left anymore.
George Gallup did a survey last year said 96% of the people in America say, “I believe in God”;
less than 2% of the people say, “I’m an atheist.” Far fewer atheists today than there were fifty
years ago. Why? Because we know more about the universe today than we did fifty years ago.
The more scientific discoveries we have, the more we find out about this universe, fewer people
are willing to stick their neck out and say, “I believe it all just happened by random accident.”
The more we know about this universe, and now we have computers that are able to compute the
odds of all these things just happening in place, very few people say, “I believe it happened by
random accident.” In fact, today it takes more faith not to believe in a Creator than it does to
believe in one. It takes more faith, the odds are greater that there is no Creator, no Designer, that
it all just happened. I could take a watch completely apart, put it in a paper bag and shake it up,
and if it all just came out exactly as a watch, the odds would be pretty incredible. But the world
is full of watches. And if you multiply that times zillion … and you get the odds of it all just
happening. Where there is a Creation there should be a Creator. Where there is an effect there
must be a cause. Where there is design there must be a designer.
Did you see the cover of Time magazine a couple months ago? Time magazine said this:
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7. “Science discovers God.” In this age where we know more and more about the universe, where
we have greater numerical ability through computers to compute random chance, very few
people are willing to believe that it’s just an accident. The more we know about the universe, the
more we are convinced that there is a Creator. Acknowledge His existence.
Romans 1:20 “Since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities, his eternal
power, and his divine nature have been clearly seen.”
Ps. 19 “The heavens declare the glory of God.”
In fact, the Bible says it’s foolish not to believe in God. Irrational. Illogical, not to believe
in God. If you have problems with that we have a ministry in our church called “Strong Basis to
Believe” which, from an intellectual viewpoint, studies the arguments for the existence of God.
The point is, God changes lives today. God exists.
The real issue for most is not, Is there a God? That’s a given for most people. The real
issue, What kind of God is He? What is He really like? Does it matter? The problem is, we have
some very strange ideas about what God is like.
I read this week about two delinquent boys in a Catholic school, and they had been
misbehaving and were sent to the principal’s office. The principal knew that what they really
needed was God in their lives, so she brought the first boy in and set him down. “I want to ask
you a question, son: Where is God?” The kid was frightened, scared to death, by the question. He
didn’t know how to answer. He just sat there. She asked him three or four times. “Where is God?
I want you to think about that question.” So she sent him on out. The second boy, who was about
to come in, asked the first boy, “What’s up?” The first kid said, “I don’t know, but evidently God
is missing and they’re trying to pin it on us.” We have some strange ideas about God.
Unfortunately most of you get your ideas about God by thinking He’s like a parent. Your
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8. father or your mother. Tragic. Because if your father was aloof and unloving then you tend to
think God the Father is aloof and unloving. If your parent was somebody to be feared, then you
tend to think, “I need to be afraid of God.” If your father was abusive, then you tend to think God
is abusive. If your parent was uncaring, then you transfer it over to God. Instead of God making
you in His image, you make God in your image.
Every once in a while you hear, “My idea about God is …” Who made you the authority?
Just because you have a certain idea about God, does that mean it’s right? No. “I’ve always
thought of God as …” Big deal. You’re probably wrong. Frankly, I don’t care what you conceive
to be, I don’t care what I conceive God to be. What I want to know is, What’s He really like?
II. UNDERSTAND GOD’S CHARACTER
The second step in this recovery is not just to acknowledge His existence, but to
understand His character. What is He really like? Until I know what God is really like, I can’t
trust Him. Does that make sense? I’m not going to trust something or someone that I don’t know
about. Fortunately God wants us to know about what He’s like. So He came to earth 1993 years
ago and came in the form of a human being. He came as Jesus Christ. And he said this is what
God is like. We can know what God is like. That’s why we celebrate Christmas and Easter.
Notice this verse. Colossians 1: “Christ is the visible expression of the invisible God.” If
you want to know what God is like just look at Jesus, because He’s the visible expression of the
invisible God.
If you’re reading about Jesus and studying His life we’ll learn a whole lot about God.
Specifically three things, what we learn about God from Jesus, that helps me get over my habits,
hurts, and hang-ups:
(1) God knows all about my situation.
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9. I learn that God knows all about my situation, because He knows my habits, hurts, and
hang-ups. He knows the good and bad. Some of you have had a tough week, or month, or life.
Look at what the Bible says, Psalm 56: “You know how troubled I am. You’ve kept a record of
my tears.” Isn’t that incredible? The Bible says that God knows you up-close and personal. He’s
kept a record of your tears. “Nobody knows the hell I’m going through in this marriage.” You’re
wrong, God does. “Nobody knows how I’m struggling to break this habit, but I can’t get it out of
my mind.” God does. “Nobody knows the depression and the fear that I’m going through.” God
does. And He’s kept a record of your tears. He knows it all. Nothing escapes His notice. Psalm
31: “You’ve seen the crisis in my soul.” God is aware of your needs and the Bible says He
knows what you need even before you ask for it. He sees the crisis in your soul right now. Psalm
69: “You know how foolish I’ve been.” Sometimes we want to forget this part. We don’t want
God to know all the dumb stuff we do. The fact is, there is nothing off the record with God. You
always have an audience twenty-four hours a day. He knows the good days, the bad days, the
dumb stunts pulled, the foolish decisions, and amazingly He still loves you. The fact is God is
not shocked by your sin. You do something wrong God doesn’t go, “Oh, no, how did I miss
that?” He knew it was coming, long before you did. He even knows why you did it, what
motivated you, even when you don’t even know your own motivation. He’s not shocked, He’s
not surprised, He’s not disappointed. He knows you.
(2) God cares about my situation.
Psalm 103: “He is like a Father to us, tender and sympathetic for he knows what we are
made of dust.” God knows what we’re made of—molecules—we’re frail, we’re not super
human. Tender and sympathetic. That’s the kind of God you serve, Who knows you. God wants
to be the Father many of you never had. Tender and sympathetic. God says, “I have loved you
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10. with an everlasting love.” How can that be? How can God love me and His love never quit? He
loves me on good days, bad days, when I serve Him and when I don’t, when I’m right, when I’m
wrong. How does He keep on loving? Because His love is unconditional. It’s not based on your
performance. Your parents ’love was. It’s based on God’s character. The Bible says God is love.
And He says I’ve loved you with an everlasting love. He not only knows about your situation,
He cares about it. “God showed His great love for us, by sending Christ to die for us” (Romans
5:8).
Many of you who’ve been working the Twelve Steps know that this Step 2 is the Higher
Power Step. I’d like to introduce you to your Higher Power today. His name is Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is that power you can plug into, because He knows about your situation, He cares.
The best news of all, He’s got the power to change it.
(3) God can change me and my situation.
That’s good news. God can change me and my situation. Sometimes He changes me,
sometimes He changes the situation. Sometimes He changes both. But He’s waiting on you to do
it. And He’s got the power.
Notice Paul says “I pray that you will begin to understand how incredibly great his power
is to help those who believe him”—the same power that raise Jesus Christ from the dead.
Do you ever find yourself paralyzed by procrastination? “I know I need to do this but I
just can’t get started!” Do you ever feel like “I just can’t get on top of things”? He says, “I’ve got
the power.” If God can raise Jesus Christ from the dead, He can raise a dead relationship. He can
raise a person back to health. He can set you free from an addiction. He can help you close the
door on the past so those memories stop haunting you, if you trust Him.
Luke 18: “What is impossible for me, is possible with God.” The Bible says nothing is
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11. too hard for God. You say, “You don’t understand my situation. I’ve tried to change but I can’t.”
Nothing is impossible with God. And that situation that seems hopeless, isn’t. In fact,
Saddleback Church family, all thousands of us, in the four services, I can give you hundred and
hundreds of examples of people in this church who were in impossible situations six months, a
year, a year and a half ago, and God turned them around. And I can give you examples of people
you thought never in a million years would they change, but they did. Because of the power of
God.
This week, I’ve asked a couple more of our church family Dana and Bret to come and
just share how God’s power helped in this second step.
Dana: I’m Dana and I’m a believer who struggles with addiction. I’m also a leader in the
women’s chemical dependency group in Celebrate Recovery. We meet on Friday night. I never
dreamed that I’d be doing God’s work in this way or that I’d be standing up here in front of all
you. But that is what happens when we step from behind the driver’s seat and let God manage
our lives.
I believe I’ve been an addict all my life. When I was younger my addiction only surfaced
under times of duress. I remember feeling like I had a good angel on one shoulder and a bad
angel on the other and guess who always won. I had lots of normal times in my life, too. I was a
good student, swimmer, runner, but I could be heavily influenced by my peers. I started smoking
in junior high, and then I had pot and alcohol in high school and still managed a 3.75 grade
average. My drinking increased toward the end of my high school year and after I graduated.
Then I had a seven-year dry period where I didn’t drink at all. When I say that I’m an
addict, I mean I can be addicted to all kinds of things. Anything would fix me or make me feel
better and take away the emptiness in my life. In that seven-year dry period I used sewing. For
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12. example, I would go out and buy one project and come home with ten. Another example,
exercise. I would go out and exercise five or six days a week, three hours a day. I thought it was
normal to be 5’8” and be a size 3. One day none of that seemed to help me any more. I turned to
alcohol again. Then I was introduced to cocaine. Cocaine helped numb the pain.
My marriage fell apart and I lost my children in a nasty custody battle. You would think
that after all that I would give it all up. I tried. I just couldn’t do it. I thought I was in control but
I was in a vicious circle. I used because I felt guilty about the loss of my children, and the pain
was really unbearable. And then I’d try to quit because I was feeling guilty about using. I guess,
you would say I had a problem with guilt. This went on for nine years. I finally realized I could
not do it on my own.
Those of you who were here last week met my husband. It was through a Twelve Step
meeting I went to with him that I instantly identified with a woman who was speaking and I
remember thinking, “That’s me up there. She’s talking about me.” I finally admitted that I was
an addict and I remember feeling this great weight being lifted off my shoulders. I didn’t have to
play God anymore. Now I expect God to help me manage my life when I humbly ask Him and I
know He will take away all the insanity and pain in my life if I just let Him. My recovery has led
me to be a member here at Saddleback. I’ve been baptized. I also attend class 201 on Spiritual
Maturity, 301 on Ministry, and I’m a small group leader in Celebrate Recovery, where every
Friday night we get together and celebrate the fact we don’t have to live under the power of our
addiction. We would love it if you’d join us, please.
Bret: My name is Bret and I’m an adult child of an alcoholic. After twenty-one years of
marriage I was conceived. Nine months later I was born and my parents gave me the title of
Miracle Child, something that was kind of tough to live up to as a kid. I had to find a way to
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13. make the title live with me. I had to accept that title. I knew that in sports I probably wouldn’t
have the opportunity to do it, so I went after it academically and professionally in my career. But
I had to encase my heart in this shell because it hurt so much inside. I knew these goals would be
impossible to meet but I had to try to do it. Like the little train “I think I can, I think I can …”
My train said, “You have to, you must, there’s no option.” I can remember in college I was so
hardhearted that we used to buy a bucket of chicken and bring it up to the room and when the
kids would come by and ask for a piece of chicken, I would tell them it was fifty cents extra for
white meat. I really was coldhearted back then.
I got great grades in high school, a high achiever in college. At the age of twenty-seven I
was the director of international marketing for a food manufacturer. At the age of thirty-one I
was the vice president of a hundred million dollar division of a multibillion dollar corporation.
But the thing that was wrong was that I was lonely on the inside. After the meetings and the
parties I would run to my room and order room service and hide. I didn’t want to have the
intimacy of the relationships. I wanted to keep at arm’s length. I didn’t want to get that close to
people. I decided to take a risk on intimacy.
I got married to my wonderful wife Cindy. And she had a daughter Elizabeth so I became
a step-parent and all these things came back from inside of me and I discovered them. Liz
brought home a report card one day and it was little below standard of what my father expected
and what I was used to seeing. So rather than being that compassionate, Christ-centered person, I
struck out and lashed out and was mean and pretty awful about it. My wife quickly pointed out
that my idea of normal was not necessarily what was normal. Being the perfectionist that I was, I
denied that and said, “We’ll go to a therapist because I’m sure that they will agree with my
perspective of this.” No problem.
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14. Needless to mention, it was quite a learning curve for me. I felt the feelings that I was
afraid to feel. It was very painful for me and I attended a number of the Twelve Step groups, read
the books, but something was missing. The pieces were there but they were fuzzy. It was the
generic reference to the Higher Power. I started coming to this church and developed a
relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and He opened up my heart and He softened that hard
heart. I have been lonely and didn’t know how to have fun, I didn’t know how to play. People
would say, “How do you feel about something?” I didn’t know what “feel” meant. I knew how to
handle it. I knew how to finish the project, but I didn’t know how to feel.
So if any of you out there have that hollow feeling in your heart where you can do a great
job at work, but really hard on yourself, it could have been better, it should have been better, and
you don’t ever really feel happy about it, we’ve got great news for you. We have Celebrate
Recovery, a group that’s really on a roll. I’m a group leader in what is known as Adult Children
of Addictions, so it covers everything from people whose parents were alcoholics, chemically
dependent, workaholics, perfectionists, people who had unreal expectations for life, that you had
to overcome because you had to be the parent and didn’t get to play and be the child.
Rick: Here’s the point. The longer you postpone your pain, the further recovery gets
away. The longer you deny it, postpone it, say, “It’s no problem, it’s not a big issue, I can deal
with it, I can handle it,” the fewer days you have on this earth being all God meant for you to be.
Some people, when they have pain that is intense because of some present problem, get stuck in
the past and instead of dealing with the current problem, focus all their life on the past. They get
into what I call the Paralysis of Analysis, always saying What was wrong with me back then.
That’s like driving a car looking in the rearview mirror all the time. A rearview mirror is helpful,
because it gives you perspective, and looking at your past does give you perspective, but if you
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15. only look at your past you don’t get into the present. Can you imagine driving a car where the
rearview mirror was bigger than the windshield? A lot of people are like that. They’re stuck in
the past and can’t get on with the present. Whatever you focus on tends to repeat. If you just
keep living in the past, you tend to repeat it.
This recovery series is on spiritual growth. Spiritual growth is the process of expanding
that windshield and shrinking the rearview mirror, so you can get on with the present. How do
you do that? You acknowledge that God exists. You realize what He’s like; that He cares,
understands, He loves you and wants to help you.
III. ACCEPT GOD’S OFFER TO HELP ME.
It’s not enough just to believe in God. Most of you believe in God. But that hasn’t wiped
away the hurt. You’ve got to plug in to the power and that’s more than just believing. Here’s
what God has to offer.
Phil. 2:13: “For God is at work within you, giving the will and the power to achieve his
purpose.” God says, “Willpower on your own is not enough. Good intentions are not enough.
What you need is My will and My power to help you change. I will give you the willpower.” So
you say, “I don’t even know if I want to change. I’m scared to death of change.” Then you say,
“God, I’m willing to be made willing. I don’t even know if I want to change.” You probably
don’t until the pain exceeds your fear of change. But you say, “God make me willing to be
willing to change” and then He will give you the will and the power to plug into Him.
What happens when I open up my life to God’s power? When I ask God to put the Spirit
of Jesus Christ in my life? What does it do? Does it turn me into some kind of religious nut?
The Bible tells us exactly what happens when we invite God’s Spirit into our lives. “The
Spirit that God gives us fills us with power, love and self-control.” That’s what I want in my life.
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16. First, I want power in my life. I want power to break habits I can’t break. I want power to do the
things that I know are right to do but I can’t seem to do them on my own. I want power to break
free from the past and let those memories go. I want power to get on with the kind of life God
wants me to live.
Then I want love. I want real love. I want to be able to love people and have them love
me and let go of hurts so I don’t build up all these walls and have fake intimacy, but have
genuine intimacy because I’m not afraid of really loving and I’m not afraid of really being loved.
That’s the kind of power and love that God gives. It says self-control. Obviously, I want
that. You want that. You’re not really in control until Christ is in control of your life and the
Master, masters the circumstances of your life. And then you understand what it means to get it
all together for the first time in your life because you’re not trying to pull yourself up by your
own bootstraps. Power, love and self-control.
There is a principle in the universe. This may sound real simple, but this is profound. I
have learned that things work best when plugged in. Toasters, blenders, televisions, radios,
things work best when they’re plugged in and God meant for you and me to be plugged in to
Him.
How do I plug into God’s power?
Real simple. Believe and receive. First, I believe that God exists and I believe that He
does know and care and have the power to help me and then I receive Him into my life—Jesus
Christ put Your Spirit in me. You do that by using a four-letter word. The second step of
recovery involves a four-letter word, and I want to challenge you to use this four-letter word
today. It takes courage to say this word: HELP. I need help. God I need Your help in my life.
The Road to Recovery is not easy. It means facing up to some real problems you haven’t wanted
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17. to deal with. It means taking some risks. It means being honest, trusting God. But when you take
this second step all of a sudden your recovery is no longer simply a matter of will power, God
says I will be with you.
Isaiah 43: “When you go through deep waters and great troubles I will be with you. You
won’t drown. When you walk through the fires of oppression, you won’t be burned up.” God
says, “I will be with you this next week, month, year as you face those issues you’ve been afraid
to face in your life.”
Where are you hurting today? Are you going through some deep waters? Do you feel like
you’re going under for the last time? Are you going through the fire right now and the heat’s on
in your life? You think I’m going to get burned up or burned out? Do you feel like you’re stuck
in a rut and say, “I just can’t get the power to change; I feel powerless”? There is a higher power
you can plug in to. His name is Jesus Christ. The name above all names. I invite you to open
your heart and life to Him today. Take this second step.
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