See Him Who has Been From the Beginning

"12I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake. 13I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father. 14I have written unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one." (1 John 2: 12-14)

Fatherhood in Jesus is not about how much you do, but how much of Him that you see.

The more that you see Jesus, all that He is, all that He has, all that He is doing and wants to do, the more that you grow, specifically grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus (2 Peter 3: 18)

If we are looking at ourselves, trying to work a program to make ourselves better, we will find ourselves never ending in our struggles, trying to perfect something which we cannot perfect, yet at the same time missing out on the truth that He has perfected us forever in Himself, specifically His Son (Hebrews 10: 14)

As long as men and women are still trying to earn God's anything, they are still operating in dead-in-trespasses Adam.

No wonder so many people, whether in AA or other religious groups, find themselves struggling in their bodies and minds, and even when they abstain from one perversion, alcohol, they invest themselves in other shameful behaviors, never resting in His grace to break free from such empty pursuits.

Man needs life, and if you are dead in your flesh, then there is no life which one can create in one's own efforts.

As long as we treat God as so small that He cannot help, no, lead in our every day lives, then there is no point in resting in Him for all things.

Every man made system which makes something of us makes something less of God, and to the degree that we make ourselves large, to that degree we struggle and suffer:

"The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing." (Psalm 34: 10)

Young lions speak of people who trust in their flesh, in their pride, in their own strength. We have no strength apart from Jesus, and He has been from the beginning (John 1:1), so that for anyone to assume that He does not have what we need, or that he cannot overcome whatever lack we have, is operating in blinded arrogance.

That includes those people who insist on working the Twelve Steps, or relying on the "advice" of their parents, or who trust their own thinking, their own understanding, instead of seeing Him who  has been from the beginning and allowing His Holy Spirit to transform them from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3: 18)

Bill W. was a cursed man who wanted to play God, and in the end, he drove many people to despair. But there is a growing movement to reveal the fullness of Christ and Him Crucified, and more people will walk out of the rewmz, never to return.

That's the way it was meant to be, from the beginning, that we would receive all things from Him who has been from the beginning: Jesus!