There is No Rest in AA

"There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God." (Hebrews 4: 9)

In AA, there is no rest:

This thought brings us to Step Ten, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along. We vigorously commenced this way of living as we cleaned up the past. We have entered the world of the Spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code.

 

And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone - even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. (AA, pg84) 

 

Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear.

 

To continue to watch for anything in our lives means that we are not resting, but still at work, hypervigilant to the extreme.

 

There is no rest for anyone as long as man thinks that he can grow in "understanding and effectiveness".

 

All of this talk about self-improvement is just fleshly will-worship. There is no improving our flesh, there is no living this life in our own strength, either:

 

"Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6: 11)

 

and

 

"For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." (Colossians 3: 3-4)

 

and

 

"I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." (Philippians 4: 13)

 

While Jesus was on the earth, he typified the life that every believer would live with Christ living in us:

 

"Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." (John 14: 10)

 

We do nothing of ourselves (John 15: 5). The work is all of Christ, and none of us.

 

AA does not offer anything but a pretense of God dependence, yet the Twelve Steps and the consistent insistence of looking at ourselves, taking our inventory, confessing our sins, and working with others in order to maintain sobriety, creates a new hell for men and women in the Body of Christ.

 

Jesus offers us Himself, and He is our rest (Matthew 11:28-30). He wants to work within us, not just with us (Philippians 2:12-13).

 

There is no rest in AA. There is rest in Jesus.