Joshua 24:15
But if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, then choose today whom you will serve. Would you prefer to gods of your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates? Or will it be the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now live? But as for me and my family, we will serve the LORD.
Choices...
Life is all about choices.
Think how it would be if we never had to choose anything or make any decisions that involved choices.
To be able to choose is an incredible, scary thing. Why? Because we know ourselves all too well. We know that we possess the ability to choose wrongly.
For someone whose live has been defined by bad choices, the weight and destruction of those choices haunts them all day, every day. They move through life under a weight of toxic guilt and shame, never able to break free. It seems as though they are a self-fulfilling prophecy as one bad choice follows another which only seems to compound the misery and darkness they face. Make enough bad choices and at some point in time, a person will cease to care anymore. They will loose all hope. They sadly accept a false belief...."I am what I am, I cannot change...I am hopeless."
Here, in this place of great spiritual darkness, where everything seems lost and we are destined to make wrong choices for the rest of our lives, is where the POWER of God is brought to bear. I wish I could explain it better, or draw you a diagram of how it works, but I can't. What I can say is that an intervention takes places as the Spirit of God comes to the person who has decided they cannot change. It may be sparked by the words of someone else talking to this hopeless individual. It may be ignited by an arm around the shoulders and an encouraging word..."Don't give up." It is usually something very simple and seemingly insignificant that opens the door to fresh hope and a new life. A thought begins to form in the heart, not the mind.
The thought says...."You can change."
This stirs the heart to bring forth a desire.
A desire to stop.
The mind battles this desire with all manner of counter thoughts.
"You've tried this before....AND FAILED!"
"Don't kid yourself, you can't quit."
On and on the thoughts race like waves piling up on the shore, but still the desire is there.
The desire to quit.
From this incredibly small desire, God..........the real, deal God of Heaven and Earth, begins to draw this person toward a choice. A choice with no answers to the millions of questions that are created, but none the less...a choice.
As the desire grows, the resolve to see the choice through becomes more evident and more real.
At some point, this choice that was born in the heart, comes forth and is found in action.
The body follows the heart and carries through with the choice.
A meeting is attended.
Friends are met and new ones are made.
The battle rages on and the desire to be clean and sober over rides the desire to use.
More meetings are attended.
Church and Celebrate Recovery now become a staple in the daily life of this person who has made a choice.
Each meeting...
Each Big Book study...
Each time this person gives of themself to help another....
The choice to do the right things becomes more sure, more sound, more stable and less likely to crumble.
Step # 1
I recognize I am powerless against my addiction.
Step # 2
Come to believe that a POWER greater than me, my talents, my intellect, every thing I possess, could and will restore me to sanity. Sanity being the ability to make sound decisions.
Step # 3
We made a decision (a choice) to turn our will and our life over the care of God as we understood Him.
Oh, if they had only not eaten that fruit back in the Garden of Eden....
Wouldn't life be so much better?
Trouble is, if it had been me there in that garden...
I'd probably done the same thing.
God on you...
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