Resentment, Fear, Guilt, Self-Seeking: Answered in Christ

The answer is so simple, too simple for some, I suppose!

The goal of this life is not to drink, nor is the goal of life to stay sober.

Life is not a goal, but a person, and that person is Jesus Christ.

The problem for the world, and even many believers in the Body of Christ, is that they do not see Jesus as more than the Way to Heaven.

 But he is also the Way on Earth, for why else would he declare

"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John 14: 6)

He is the Life that we need to get through this world. He is our Mercy Seat, the propitiation now and forever for all of our sins. In Christ, we have an eternal credit card of grace, one which transforms us from dead in our trespasses to alive and led by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Life is not Twelve Steps, not a set of steps and traditions, nor attendance in abortive meetings where people smoke and drink caffeine to their hearts' detriment, where men and women listen to the same sob stories of men and women who no longer drink but still hope that there is more to life than being sober and sitting around to tell people the daily drag troubles that they still must overcome in their own flustered efforts.

The last meeting that I went to -- the first day of 2011 -- 01--01--2011 -- I saw the same faces with the same traces of "barely getting by", the same social club with men and women jumping up to claim a birthday or two, still holding on to the notion that "we are not a glum lot." Two people whom I had met years earlier, a Christian couple, were going through more trouble. The husband had relapsed a number of times. He has shared how upsetting he made other members of the AA meetings when he share his faith in Jesus Christ. He stopped going to meetings, then he started drinking again. I believe that the reason he started drinking was that he did not know that in Christ he is a new creation, and therefore he does not identify with his fallen body or the physical desire to drink. When we are established in righteousness, then no weapon formed against us can prosper, including addictions and bad habits which war against our peace.

Resentment, fear, and guilt are all answered in the Cross. Jesus provided an eternal source for our pain, our misery, our shame, for the hardships of this life, where we can now revel in His grace, which abounds even when we sin, and especially when others sin against us. This is the release and the relief which men relish yet cannot find, and AA not only does not bring them any closer to finding this Life, but actually takes people away from the truth with distractions and distortions. Churches which insist on incorporating the Twelve Step program in its services invite a sickened hybrid form of Galatianism, where men and women start in faith but end up in bondage once again to the law.

The answer to our problems, all of them, is in Christ, for He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and He is close as believing in your heart and confessing out your mouth that He is Lord!