A Life of AA is No Life at All

I was born in AA, it seems.

I was raised in it, too.

The Twelve Steps seemed like a normal way of life, just a little help so that people who had living problems, not just drinking problems, would be able to manage those issues.

After so many years of frustration and pain, I now realize that much of the frustration in my life was because of this "normal program".

The Twelve Steps takes you nowhere.

The Steps end up stepping all over you.

What kind of life can anyone expect to live if one must run everything by twelve ideas, a sponsor, and attend meetings where the very people who are supposed to be working the program demonstrate how the steps do not work at all.

I have since learned this life has nothing to do with me, or any set of steps which I have to work.

This life is a gift, one given to me by God the Father through His Son Jesus Christ.

I am not afraid to write His Name, for in His name anyone can receive all things!

Still, many Christians believe that they have to add Twelve Steps in order to be good Christians.

They forget that no one can live "the Chrsitian life".

This life is Christ in us, and we are nothing:

Christian = Christ + I Am Nothing

Does this mean that I disappear?

No way! On the contrary, He gives us life and that more abundantly (John 10: 10)

I have never felt so alive knowing that He is the Life that aI craved, that I wanted, but was never able to get.

This life is not something that we strive to acquire, or something that we work up.

Paul offers us something better:

"12Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. 13For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." (Philippians 2: 12-13)

This "God" is not of my understanding, by the way, but is revealed to us in the goodness of Nature and the godliness of Scripture.

No one can understand a God so good that He gives everything.

Such is the nature of sin -- "something is deeply wrong with me, yet at the same time I can and must do something about this lack in my life and the world around me. . ."

The answer is faith, hope, and love -- all met in Christ.

A Life of AA is no life at all.