More Victory in the Truth

The sense of shame and despondency that I felt -- how can anyone talk about it.

I did not even want to think about it, for fear of triggering all those terrible emotions once again in my life.

I never realized until now - all those feelings of frustration and shame and fear: those feelings were never me to begin with.

From the moment that I called on Chris Jesus as Savior (and thus, Lord of Lords), I was a new creation.

I just never knew that.

So, for me to sit in AA or Celebrate Recovery, identifying with an illness was not in concert with the truth.

I am alive in Christ, not dead in Adam.

I am not my thoughts or my feelings.

I am not my past. I am not a product of my parents thoughts or feelings, or bad parents, or even their good parenting.

Who I am has nothing to do with me at all.

What a wonderful lesson we can learn. Jesus becomes all things for us, because through Him we receive all things.

All things, and we bring nothing to the party, because we have nothing in and of ourselves.

Of course, as long as we insist on mixing what Jesus did with what we can or must do, we are negating the grace of God in our lives:

"Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace." (Galatians 5: 4)

Grace is all about free gift, unmerited, unearned, undeserved favor.

Where does anyone get the idea that we can do anything to earn anything from God?

As long as I still had the awful traditions of men like Bill W. and his cult-like coterie in the back of my mind, I could never rest in the peace of all that Jesus did for me at the Cross.

We have to rest in the truth that He paid for everything, that His blood cleanses us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1: 7), or we will forever fall back into our own efforts to justify ourselves:

"A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." (Galatians 5: 9)

You add just one hint of anything to what Jesus did, you will find yourself in a tailspin of fear and shame.

I know -- because I suffered this fear and shame.

I could not believe it until I finally realized it: AA kept me in shameful bondage, so that I could never rest in Jesus' Finished work at the Cross.

Get rid of AA, and receive the grace of God unfeigned and untrammeled!