When Wrong, Promptly Admit It.

Taking a look at step # 10 of the twelve steps.

We continue to take personal inventory, and when we are wrong, promptly admit it.

We continue. We don't stop. We move through the discipline that is laid out before us. We engage.

Recovery is an on going process. Not just recovery from drugs or alcohol, but recovery from the fall of man and from the power of sin. We don't get to take vacations from working a program.

As you move down the steps, you find that change has taken place.

You have changed.

The way you think.

The way you view life.

The way, as Delbert Boone says, you do business with the world.

You have changed.

Not from your own efforts but by your cooperation with the Holy Spirit as you continue to surrender your will daily.

Remember (as in Step # 3) you surrender you life to God  once.

You surrender your will to God daily.

We seek to give control and the care of our life over to God and to look to Him to guide us.

In other words, we develop a trust in God.

Just as our currency has written on it........."In God We Trust"....so should my heart have the same words engraved by the Holy Spirit on it. IN GOD I TRUST.No matter what life may throw at me...no matter what my situation is....In God I will Trust!!!

Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.

In step #1 -  We admitted that we had a problem which was controlling our lives and admitted that this problem was making our lives unmanageable.

In step #2 - We recognized the existence and power of God - A power greater than, and outside of, ourselves. We acknowledge that He alone could restore us to sanity.

In step #3 - We became willing to let Him change us by accepting His Lordship. Submitting every part of our very being into His hands, totally believing that He has my best interest at heart. Even when it doesn't appear that way to me. He knows better than me, so I will follow His leading.

In step #4- We "cleaned house" and uncovered self-defeating patterns that had governed our lives.

In step #5 - We agreed with God about what we  had learned about ourselves in step # 4. We then confessed these things to another individual.

In step #6-  We submitted our inventory of character defects and asked Him to remove the patterns of sin from our lives.

In step #7-  We asked God to replace our false belief system--which governed our thought patterns and resulting actions and behaviors--with the truth of His word.

In step #8 -  We listed those people to whom we needed to make amends .

In step #9 - We carried that further by not only addressing those whom we had offended by forgiving those who had offended us. In this step we began to learn to change the way we typically relate to others.

Now in step #10, as stewards of the life God has given back to us, we continue to take responsibility for our attitudes and actions.

Galatians 2:20

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life I now life in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and delivered Himself up for me.

Step #10 is a means of daily confirming that my old way of life is dead. I now live to affirm the life which Jesus Christ is living in me. In the past, when I was wrong, I would have simply lied about it....hidden it away inside myself, telling no one. Doing so only gave my addiction ammunition to keep me trapped. No more....I will have no secrets. When I am wrong, I will PROMPTLY admit it to God, myself, and another human being. This is where real freedom and life is cultivated and harvested. I think I may drive my tent pegs down here and get my mail delivered to this address.

God on you..

mbb