Romans 8:12
The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as He raised Christ from the dead, He will give life to your mortal body by this same Spirit living within you.
One more great night at VRC last night.
I'm always living in a place, mentally, where I'm never quiet sure how things are going to turn out. Shouldn't be, but I do. Without fail, God shows up and things happen. Then after the meeting, as I'm making my way around the room greeting people, you get the stories.
Visiting couple makes the comment that they have never felt such peace in a place before. That it caught them totally off guard. Another shared her story with me of praying during worship to "See God". He showed Himself to her. Isn't that just like God to do that for His children.
We started off the evening with a song that contains a message from God to every person on planet earth, an old blues song by Bobby "Blue" Bland..."I Will Take Care Of You." That kind of set the tone for the evening.
Message was "living under the influence."
I asked if anyone could explain to me what "driving under the influence" means. That brought about much laughter as we are a recovery church, and such things as D.U.I are a part of the past history. I asked how you could know someone was driving under the influence. The response was "You could tell by their behavior". Then we moved into what it would look like for someone to be Living Under The Influence. If D.U.I.'s were evident by behavior because of ingestion of drugs and/or alcohol, then wouldn't it stand to reason that if someone had ingested, or taken in God's Holy Spirit, that there would be certain behaviors that marked them as "living under the influence, Or L.I.U? I think so.
Romans 8:12-13 reads: So dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation whatsoever to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. For if you keep on following it, you will perish. But if through the POWER of the Holy Spirit you turn from it and its evil deeds, you will live. Living under the influence means that you are relying totally on the POWER of the Holy Spirit to guide you, or influence your decision making daily. Such is the POWER that has been missing in our lives. We have relied on self and that has taken us over the edge into the abyss of spiritual darkness and destruction. Or, as the big book of A.A. states it, "Self will run riot" has brought us to this point to whether we either get better or we die.
Saturday nights meeting is a brief stop along the way. We've moved from Sunday to Saturday. We've had some good days, and maybe some bad along the way. But here we are together, sober and ready to get our spiritual batteries recharged so we can go back out into the world.
There are people out there who need to hear our stories. There are people out there who need to know that they matter to someone. That there are others who fully understand their plight and struggle with drugs and alcohol. Someone who can point them to the life and POWER that will take them to the next level out of the darkness. Someone who will love them in spite of the mess they have created. That is our goal at VRC. Equip to go out and rescue those in addiction.
Our call is to love them into the Kingdom of God, and help them to see the God they never knew. That He is totally different from the God they created in their minds.
Here is the video of our friend, Danny Daniels, singing "I Will Take Care Of You". Enjoy!
God on you.....
mb
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