AA Meetings were a Default -- Part IV

I walked out of the Celebrate Recovery meetings in 2010, but I was still unaware of my new identity in Christ, of my new standing before the Father. The rest of the year, I still struggled with guilt and shame, fear and anger. I took on two long-term teaching assignments in Centinela Valley Union High School District, one of the most corrupt school districts in Los Angeles County (and there are many).

I was still trying to live this life on my own. I was beat down and beat up and beat all around. A frustrating period of time which brought me to the end of myself, so frustrated and distraught did I become that I just cried out to God for release from the chronic fear and anger in my life.

In a word, I was focused all over on myself, trying to improve the thoughts and feelings of my fallen man, when God wanted me to live out His love and grace through the Spirit of God within me.

I found myself having some rest and peace for the first time when I simply called out for help. The upset, the unrest, the frustration, all gone. I spent a number of months trying to explore what happened. What did I do? What had I done?

I had still not yet learned that I am in a body, possessing a soul, yet I am a spirit before God.

One more time, I resorted to a AA meeting to get some answers, to find some hope or direction.

I went back to the AA meetings at the church near Arnold Elementary.

I saw the same cast of people whom I had seen years before, empty, broken people still going through the steps, still focusing on themselves, telling their own stories as if anyone else really cared. I found that the Christians in the program had struggled to remain sober. The leader of the meeting that morning (it was January First, 2011) had just gotten drunk again, and was about to lose his job.
AA is worse for Christians, who have a concept of the Savior Jesus Christ, yet they are also convinced that they have to work for what he "freely gives". If you are confused just reading that, then you can understand why the Twelve Step program is bad for everyone, especially members of the Body of Christ.

That was the last AA  meeting that I attended. I met the same Pharisee Spirit in those meetings which I had confronted in the Celebrate Recovery programs. I saw that individual members were stuffed up with pride because they had worked their steps and stayed sober (although the program claims that God makes us sober, not our own efforts).

The AA meetings were a default for me, and they were primarily at fault for keeping me in bondage from the Truth who sets me free. Jesus Christ is our default, not our programs, not our feelings, not our thoughts, not what we do, but everything that Jesus Christ has done. He comes to live in us that He may quicken us into the life and that more abundantly that He wants us to receive.