I have already written how such an empty mandate does not work, because unless you know and believe in the perfect love of God, in Christ, no one can ever trust God, especially when bad things happen, and there is no source of certainty which testifies to God's eternal love for us: The Cross.
I have learned so much about God's love for me and His grace in my life.
I had lived for so long assuming that everything depended on me, that I had to work my program, and make sure that I was taking the steps to remain right with God every day.
Now I know and believe in His love and care, because of His Son Jesus Christ, and that He has done everything through the power of the Cross.
For years - years! - I believed that everything was riding on my shoulders.
AA forces this false understanding on people, giving them the impression that any slip-up, any resentment, any emotional setback will set God back from us.
"It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die." (AA, pg 66)
Lie! LIE! BIG LIE!
Nothing can separate us from the Love of God -- nothing, not even ourselves (Romans 8: 38-39) because of God's love for us in Christ.
No one had ever taught me this. I lived in a household where God's love was seen as a partial element, but you had to do your part.
Excuse me? I now say to such thinking. Or to quote Comedian Steve "Arrow in the Head" Martin: "Excuuuuuuuuuuuuse Me!"
The Bible could not be clearer:
"And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; 2Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: 3Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. 4But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) 6And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: " (Ephesians 2": 1-6)
I was dead in sins -- dead, not just bad. There is nothing that a dead man can do but allow Life to come in.
If I needed life, and that is the greatest thing, than who am I to assume that God cannot deliver all the rest?
Paul even speaks to any such skepticism:
"What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? 32He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? 33Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. 34Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." (Romans 8: 31-34)
I am under a waterfall of grace in Christ, and so is every person who believes on Him.
Forget the Twelve Steps, and Step into Him who has been from the Beginning (1 John 2: 12-14)
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