I have gone around in circles putting out so many fires in my life.
For years, I would feel bad, or fearful, and then spend much of time trying to undo that feeling, to put out the fire that I was feeling.
Resentments especially would surge up in my life, and I would get so tangled up with my feelings, fearful that those feelings within me would prevent God's power in my life.
I so identified with my flesh because I did not know that Christ's life flowed in me, and I had been taught for so long that I could fix my thoughts and feelings in order to be holy.
Such practices are impossible. There is no perfecting our flesh. To be carnally minded is death (Romans 8: 6), which speaks not just of sinning, but of living through our senses rather than resting in the Finished Work of Christ Jesus and walking in the Spirit (Galatians 5: 16).
There is no life in living through our limited senses, trying to make sense of unlimited troubles or possibilities.
A life driven by the Twelve Steps, a life based on the notion that I have to be free from anger, and kill every resentment before it boils into a worse condition.
Every time I felt anger, fearful, or frustrated, I would take an inventory, run through the steps, and hope for the problem to go away.
I cannot recall the number of times when I would go through the steps, and whatever frustrations and upsets which I was feeling would not go away.
Worse, from time to time those same upsets would surge up and unsettle me once again.
I recall other members who religiously attended AA meetings, and how they lived in the past, trying to rewrite or right the wrongs which they had committed, living out the shame and anger from years past against parents, friends, enemies, bullies.
What is this madness? This is not recovery, and this is certainly not life!
When I looked over my life, when I took into account all the hardships which I had faced, when I remembered the most painful moments in my life, I realized that Alcoholics Anonymous and the Twelve Step program was right in the center.
I was convinced that I had to live this life in my own strength, figuring everything out on my own, looking over my shoulder to make sure that I did not make a mistake, yet at the same time I had no way of knowing whether I had done something right or wrong to begin with.
One time in my life, I was afflicted with a paranoid sense of fear and shame, so great that I could not function in any kind of strength. I lived every day in fear, not knowing what to do or how to move on in my life.
Recently, those fearful thoughts and feelings resurfaced in my life. I kept fighting with the fears and upsets, then I would read the Scriptures which have set me free, for the truth will release us from all bondage every time (John 8: 32)
We are called to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10: 5)
I was bitter for a long time, though, because there are so many wonderful things which I am learning about Christ and Him Crucified, which if I had known in the past, then I would not have stumbled as often as I did.
Now I have learned that God takes our past and makes it a blast. We can come to Him in our present and show us how He makes all things work together for good (Romans 8: 28)
I so struggled with the fear in my life. When I asked God for wisdom, I then realized what had prompted the intense fears in my life. "I have to get rid of this fear, in order to move on with my life."
As long as I felt bad, I was convinced that I had to fix my feelings before I could come to God, or receive direction from Him.
I was going around in frustration and chronic struggles. I had thought things which were so shameful, I was afraid to tell anyone, and yet I needed to confess my sins in order to be forgiven.
What was the basis for these false notions? The Twelve Steps. As long as I was convinced that my sins were not put away forever, as long as I was unaware that I had the life of Christ living and moving in me, then I was forever frustrated.
The issue for all of us is righteousness, the perfect knowledge that before God we are forever justified.
We receive this justification through Jesus and all that He did at the Cross. Why did I not believe that I was fully righteous? Because I was still taking my inventory, I was still trying to make myself right in thought and deed, when the flesh is totally bankrupt, cannot be fixed, must be crucified.
Jesus provides us this death to our flesh:
"20I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. 21I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." (Galatians 2: 20-21)
When Jesus died on the Cross, He died for us and as us, freeing us from ourselves, that we may receive His life in full.
Yet as long as I believed that this flesh could be made better with the program of AA, then I was frustrating the grace of God in life. As long as I believed that my sins were not fully and forever forgiven, as long as I was convinced that I had to live in my own strength, and that God was not my God through the New Covenant, then all I would have to look forward to would be -- a fearful looking after for judgment (Hebrews 10: 26).
Many of the former thoughts of frustration and fear were borne of the false notion that I was on my own in this world. I believed this lie because I was steeped in the Twelve Steps and Alcoholics Anonymous. I did not receive the full revelation of all that Christ Jesus is and has done for me.
When I realized that God was always loving me, even when I did not know or believe that He was on my side, that even in the most frustration and painful moments of my life He was still good and making the most of the bad times I was struggling through, I began to submit my frustrations about everything which I had endured.
I stopped justifying myself, and stopped fearing the recriminations of the past. I accepted that He is my life, and that He is in the business of championing me in all things (2 Corinthians 2: 14) and that He is making all things work for my good (Romans 8: 28)
Bring every thought, even about your past and future to the obedience of Christ, and trust that He will make the most of the hard times which you have endured.
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