1 John 2:15-17 (NRSV)

¹⁵ Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; ¹⁶ for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. ¹⁷ And the world and its desire^[a] are passing away, but those who do the will of God live for ever.

Footnotes:

1. 1 John 2:17 Or the desire for it

Truth in recovery centres round refocussing our love from meeting our needs our own way (the love of the world) to loving God and meeting our needs His way.  Life controlling issues are fed by the love of the ‘secondary means’ that are utilised to inappropriately meet human need. For example, Joan tells her story; ‘We all need to feel safe and secure. However I feel a dread that something terrible is going to happen. I don’t know what is going to happen but I feel it and it’s terrible. In fact, my fear is making me short tempered with people, miss days at work and sometimes I can’t get out of bed in the morning. I’m exhausted. The only time the feeling seems to pass is when I have a bottle of beer (or two!). I do love a beer. I can’t seem to miss a day without it and to be fully honest I am drinking several times a day now. It’s not that I’m drunk; I am dependant, reliant but it’s the only way to control these fearful feelings’. Here we see the life controlling issue of fear being controlled by the use of alcohol. The need for safety and security is a perfectly ordinary and healthy need. It’s how God made us. But in Joan’s example it’s not the human need for safety and security that is being met it’s the ‘cycle of fear’ leading to dependence behaviours and a spiral of addiction. We all know where this leads. We all have this tendency to ‘love the world’ in a useless attempt to meet our needs but instead it fuels our fears and cycle of destructive dependency. We all have our own ways of expressing:  ‘the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches’. These solutions are only temporary they soon fade away and turn into yet another issue that swamps us leading to more anxiety and guilt. Why does God allow it? He doesn’t! God wants us to meet our needs the way He designed us to meet them. God’s will for us has been put together in a step by step programme called Celebrate Recovery (Road to Recovery By Rick Warren, Celebrate Recovery Bible, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 2007.).  The promise is that by meeting our needs God’s way our addictive cycle will be replaced by the Celebration of the recovered identity of who God created us to be. The eight principles of recovery come from Matthew Chapter 5: 1-12.

1. Realise I’m not God. I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is unmanageable.

“Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor.” (Matthew 5:3)

2. Earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to Him, and that He has the power to help me recover.

“Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4)

3. Consciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ’s care and control. “Happy are the meek.” (Matthew 5:5)

4. Openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust. “Happy are the pure in heart.” (Matthew 5:8)

5. Voluntarily submit to every change God wants to make in my life and humbly ask Him to remove my character defects.

“Happy are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires.” (Matthew 5:6)

         

6.      Evaluate all my relationships. Offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me and make amends for harm I’ve done to others, except when to do so would harm them or others.

“Happy are the merciful.” (Matthew 5:7), “Happy are the peacemakers.” (Matthew 5:9)

        

7. Reserve a daily time with God for self-examination, Bible reading, and prayer in order to know God and His will for my life and to gain the power to follow His will.

        

8.      Yield myself to God to be used to bring this Good News to others, both by my example and by my words.  

“Happy are those who are persecuted because they do what God requires.” (Matthew 5:10)

(Road to Recovery by Rick Warren, Celebrate Recovery Bible, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 2007, page xiii).

Last word on the Truth in recovery goes to John…

   ‘the world and its desire^[a]are passing away, but those who do the will of God live for ever.’