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Join Date: Oct 2013
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re: Power of Prayer >No Matter Which Faith YouFollow=GOD is With You
CELEBRATE: PART 1
Why do we call our program “Celebrate Recovery”? Because we do truly “celebrate” what God has done for each of us along our road to recovery. We celebrate the victories and freedom he is giving us over our hurts, hang-ups and habits.
Celebrate Recovery works when our program contains each of the following nine positive actions:
Celebrate Everything
Embrace Change
Love God and Others
Encourage Others
Be Involved in Service
Read the Bible Daily
Attend Your Meetings Regularly
Take Time to Reflect
Enjoy Sharing the Good News
Celebrate Everything
In New England, there is a restaurant that daily celebrates the setting of the sun by playing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and ringing a bell. Now, most of us don’t usually celebrate the sunrise or sunset each day, but we do celebrate the milestones of our lives: anniversaries, birthdays, school graduations, promotions at work, etc. Just the fact that we are attempting to make changes in our lives is worthy of celebrating!
We need to celebrate our victories over our struggles. Philippians 4:4 tells us to “rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” We need to rejoice and thank God for the victories he has given us—no matter how small. And we need to also thank him for getting us through our tough times, knowing that he is with us each step of the way.
Embrace Change
Principle Five states: “Voluntarily submit to every change God wants to make in my life.” Sometimes change is hard. Sometimes it’s painful. But we know that on the other side of change is healing. We need to embrace it. As part of the Serenity Prayer we pray:
God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
We need to hold on to Philippians 4:7: “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Love God and Others
In Matthew 22:37–40 Jesus tells us, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
The most important relationship in our lives is a loving, personal relationship with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But, we also need to have loving relationships with the other people that God places along our road to recovery. As we grow in Christ and in our recovery, we will learn to love the unlovable.
Encourage Others
We need a genuine mentor or, in recovery terms, a sponsor and/or accountability partner to walk alongside us on our road to recovery. We need them to provide feedback to keep us on track. A sponsor and/or accountability partner can see our old, dysfunctional, self-defeating patterns beginning to surface, quickly point them out to us, and confront us with truth and love without placing shame or guilt.
In the same way, we need to encourage others by stepping up and being sponsors and accountability partners for them. We need to model 2 Corinthians 1:3–4: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”
We will continue with the last five actions—Be Involved in Service, Read the Bible Daily, Attend Your Meetings Regularly, Take Time to Reflect, and Enjoy Sharing the Good News—in the next devotion.
Take a Look:
• How do you celebrate your victories over your hurts, hang-ups and habits?
• How do the first four lines of the Serenity Prayer help you deal with change?
• What has been your experience in learning to love the unlovable?
• List some of the ways you encourage others.
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I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people -- for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 1 Timothy 2:1-4
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