The idea that individuals have to "hit bottom" is pure nonsense.
For many people, they never reach the bottom. They will struggle and fall, then when things start to even out, they will end up doing the very things that had brought them into bondage before.
What is the bottom for most people? Even in the "Twelve and Twelve" different members would share that for some people, it was losing their job. For others, they had to lost everything that they had. Still others kept on drinking, convinced that they could never break free.
Of course, what causes people to lose themselves in their addiction is the excessive effort which they put into doing what they are doing.
What does it mean to give up on living our lives "Self-will run riot"?
I have found that as often as I was willing to keep taking my inventory, to keep focusing on what I had done, then the bottom never really ended, did it?
The whole program is spiral of self, where men and women spend more time just looking at themselves and their feelings, never looking at Jesus Christ, seated at the right hand of the Father:
Jesus is the Truth, and He gives us Himself, He is our rest, and we can rest assured in Him that He will meet all of our needs, if we will only trust Him.
When I realized that I could never confess my sins enough in order to take away the sense of shame, then I felt a sense of peace. However, the sense of shame could come and go. Yet when I rest in the TRUTH that I am a new Creation in Him, when I accept that all things have changed for me, regardless of how I feel or what I may be going through, then I found peace. You will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.
It's not doing or saying or even thinking something over and over that sets us free -- it is the growing revelation of God's love for us that sets us free. The element of doing something over and over, as if the doing will change our lives, creates more problems, getting us lost and occupied in ourselves instead of resting in the Truth.
"Keep coming back, it works if you work it" -- the whole program turns into a cycle that no one escapes from.
The way out of the pit is not to hit a "bottom", but to hear the truth that in Christ, all your sins are forgiven. Then life goes from avoiding one pitfall after another to growing in revelation of all the wonderful things that are in you through Christ Jesus!
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