AA Frustrated the New Covenant in My Life

I have struggled with upsets, tumults, difficulties of all kinds in my life.

I had no idea that Jesus is my high priest forever, that He ministers on my behalf with the power of an endless life.

No one had ever told me that Jesus comes to live in me and through me.

No one had ever explained to me that men need more than a program for living better -- they need life, and that more abundantly.

Most importantly, no one had ever told me about the New Covenant, which Jesus cut for everyone who is willing to believe on Him:

"10For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:

11And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.

 

12For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." (Hebrews 8: 10-12)

 

The New Covenant is based on, or rather enforced by the twelfth verse, in which God promises that He will remember our sins no more.

 

He remembers them no more, because the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1: 7)

 

When we receive this full forgiveness for all our sins, God can then place His Spirit within us, and by peace and grace He guides in the paths which He wants us to follow.

 

In contrast to the gift of righteousness and abundance of grace offered to us through Christ Jesus, Alcoholics Anonymous labels people alcoholics, teaches them that they can never be like normal people, and that they must continuously take their inventory, reviewing their sins from day to day, or else they will start to drink again.

 

We do not need a program for living -- we need life, and that more abundantly.

 

Jesus grants us this life through His Holy Spirit, shed abroad to the world on Pentecost (read Acts 2)

 

Now, I had shared that the New Covenant is based on the awareness that all our sins are forgiven, and He remembers them no more. Why? Because God remembered every sin in the body of His Son Jesus Christ.

 

If we do not rest on this truth, then we are condemned to fixing the condemnation in our flesh through our efforts, or worse submitting ourselves to a fearful looking after of judgment.

 

As long as I believed that all my sins were not forgiven, as long as I was convinced that I had to tell someone my sins, that I had to make up for wrongdoing or wrong thinking, then I was condemned to a life of failure and frustration.

 

So many people in AA meetings and Celebrate Recovery meetings walk around in frustration and guilt, still dealing with the sin in their flesh.

 

Jesus did not just die on the Cross to pay for our sins, and He died for all of them, but God condemned sin in the flesh as well (Romans 8: 3), so that instead of a life in which we are constantly trying to fix our feelings, we can live His life, allowing His power to minister to us and through us in all situations that we face in our lives.

 

Jesus is beyond anyone that we can conceive of, yet AA seduces people into choosing a "Higher Power" of their choice, yet this god has to play by the rules established by the AA Founders, none of which are scriptural.

 

As long as we believe that there is still a debt which must be paid to God, even if the program seems as simple as taking our inventory and confessing our sins, the whole program creates a sin conscience, a false identity based on sin, guilt, and shame which keeps us looked in bondage.

 

There is no freedom in waking up every day to some god you came up with, only to face the day looking at yourself, your thoughts and feelings, all the time.

 

Everyone of us needs life, not more of self.

 

And a life in which we look at ourselves instead of seeing all that Jesus did at the Cross, that's not a life worth living!

 

The New Covenant is all about God the Father and what He promises to do. The only that that we bring to the covenant, so to speak, is our belief.

 

Yet if we do not believe that He has paid for our sins, if we continue to take our inventories, convinced that God is still mindful of our sins in some way, then we frustrate the New Covenant in our lives. We walk the earth, frustrated and confused, unsure of who we are or what we should (should!) be doing with our lives.

 

God wants to lead us in an intimate relationship, one based on the knowledge that all our sins are forgiven. If we have to continue keeping short accounts, then are knowledge of the Lord suffers, and frustrates our lives.