Celebrate Recovery Connection – May 19, 2016

Men’s Step Study Starts This Sunday.

When- Sunday, May 22nd, at 9:15 -10:45 AM

Where- Davis Islands Campus upstairs in Room 212

Led By – Tommy & Jon; talk to them about it or just show up

Thank you, Derrick & Tommy, for the Lesson last week on “INVENTORY.”

Thursday, May 19th, will be a Testimony from Ken:

2 Corinthians 1:3-4  “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.”

“I had done the hokey-pokey version of AA in the past, but as I began my recovery journey through Celebrate Recovery, I learned that I was a very selfish person. Not selfish with “things”, but selfish with me. I would never give of my self emotionally to my wife, family or others.

I have always been very good at rationalizing and making things “about me”. I can still struggle in this area at times, but to paraphrase Philippians 1:6; “He’s still workin’ on me”.  

I had to learn to demonstrate the faithfulness and obedience that God wants from all of us. I had to learn to just be willing to accept hardship as a pathway to peace as the Serenity Prayer says.  I had to learn humility and understand that it is always all about God and His plan – and not about me. (it’s not what I have learned so much as what I have un-learned”)

I learned a great object lesson about how God never wastes a hurt when I led my first men’s step group.  Three of the men in that first group had been laid off of their jobs. I had never been laid-off from a job and if I had not been recently laid-off, I would never have been able to relate to them and what they were going through. God never wastes a hurt. We can choose to waste it, but God never does.

The Biblical principles that we use in Celebrate Recovery reveal God’s truth about who I am, and also show me who God wants me to be. It has taken some time but I have realized that God is more interested in who I am than what I am.

Those principles also help me to deal with situations in a constructive manner before reverting into the destructive behaviors that were commonplace in the past.”

Philippians 1:6  “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.”

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Thursday Night’s Dinner: 

Recovery Reminder                                                                                          

Principle 4: Openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust.

“Happy are the pure in heart.” Matthew 5:8

Step 4: We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

“Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the LORD.” Lamentations 3:40