12 Steps Integration in Daily Christian Life

Integration of the 12 Steps into one’s life is the spiritual task and opportunity of this moment, of any moment.  

Ordinarily, in church and in AA tradition, the 12 Steps have been taken as a process, as a linear set of stages along a continuum of growth towards God and the purposes of God — which is always the purpose of our lives.  

But I submit to you, that these stages, these steps, are the will of God concurrently that it is possible to bear these steps, all 12 of them, simultaneously, to reflect on them, and to do an audit of oneself against these steps of wisdom — to bear them in mind and in our hearts each and every day.  

Imagine oneself going back to Step 1 (we admitted we were powerless over our deepest problems — that our lives had become unmanageable) even if one has been in the faith 50 years.  This demands humility, to engage in honest self-reflection, as we admit our common human weakness that, no matter how long we’ve loved God, our lives without Him and His help are fruitless — and more pertinently out of step with His will for us.  

To imagine ourselves leading a life that is unmanageable, a life that runs awry without God, a life that MUST recommit one’s will and life to this Lord who leads us to fresh experiences of our salvation.  

We who are saved for all eternity
still need to be saved from ourselves.  

Taking Step 1 in our stride on a daily basis, we acknowledge in Step 2 a Power greater than ourselves (Jesus) can restore us to sanity — the basis of our hope.  

With hope in regaling our desire to go where only God can take us, we decide to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.  This is a commitment that can only be made when we’ve properly laid the foundation of Steps 1 and 2 — to recognise just how much we NEED God.  

The problem with most Christians is too often we don’t recognise how much we NEED God — how poor in spirit we are without Him.  

The very next decision to be made in turning our will and our life over to the care of God is to get to work on identifying WHERE we’re out of step with His will.  

PSALM 139

Doing this on a daily basis is such a healthy task.  I often evoke God’s voice through reflection over Psalm 139:23-24 — “Search me, God, and know my heart… test me and know my anxious thoughts… See if there is any offensive way in me… and lead me in the way everlasting.”  

The psalmist has already said right at the top that, “You have searched me, LORD, and you know me.”  When I ask God to show me, knowing that He knows me, God never fails in showing me something for which I can repent.  

Let’s get this straight:
repentance, daily and momentarily,
is the will of God for your life and mine.  

There are many ways to conduct Step 4 — we made a searching and fearless moral inventory.  This involves daily analysing our resentments, the root causes of our bitterness, or to thoroughly identify our fears, or to acknowledge the role of the Seven Deadly Sins (pride, lust, gluttony, anger, envy, sloth, greed).  

JEREMIAH 17:9 — AN ESSENTIAL, HEALTHY TRUTH

To imagine the opportunity for us to take inventory, each day, being honest about the previous day or the past morning, to go deep into the fissures of our hearts where the sin lies deeply, as Jeremiah 17:9 mentions “the heart is deceitful above all things… and beyond cure.”  

What Jeremiah acknowledged is healthy to acknowledge for each of us: only when we give over our will and life to the care of God are we fitted with His Spirit in being honest about our biases, prejudices, and self-centredness.  

In taking inventory we take our time allowing God access to those deepest fissures of our hearts, we note them down, receiving from Him a portion of his pleasure for the fact we are undertaking an honest audit of our soul, through the simple prayer, “God, search me and show me where I’m not honouring and pleasing You.”  I think you’d agree, we need to be praying this constantly if we’re putting His Kingdom and His Righteousness first in our lives (Matthew 6:33).  

Then there is the Step 5 of trust to commit these deep truths to God and to another human being, to simply confess them in all honesty, and find ourselves liberated once again by the fact the enemy has nothing on us, no guilt, no shame, no fear when we are honest before Him, before our Lord.  

Having taken inventory, and having shared this inventory with another person before God, we are being equipped to ask ourselves a question, Will I undertake the opportunity to reconcile these matters?  Will I be prepared to right these wrongs, to make amends?  

I therefore make a list of all persons I have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all — this Step 8 is such a powerful commitment to arrive at.  Such a resolve is inherently healing for us to engage in — we have taken the step of entering godly sorrow of 2 Corinthians 7:10 — ​“Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”  

Worldly sorrow leads to resentment, fear, bitterness,
and everything that led us to sin comes from sin.  

Being now prepared, and even undertaking these matters of reconciliation, we make amends the same day that we took the first step, unless it would be that we would endanger the other person, or another person through indirect means of making these amends.  

We can do no harm in making amends —
to do so would betray our benevolent action.  

If we are called to holding our peace because our confession might harm another person, in restraining our will to make amends, we otherwise hold it within us in trust, reflecting deeply, asking God to come into us and school us in a fresh portion of humility.  

We ask Him to make us ready
to make amends at the right time.  

Having made amends, we continue with the resolve to make amends any time the Spirit leads us, committing to this way ever more.  This is the will of God for a Christian — to live within the tension of continually making amends in the power of God.  

It is therefore encumbered on us as true believers to live these steps during each of our days, ensuring that whatever the moment calls for, that the right step would move forward out of line, the Spirit would grab our attention making us aware, and convict our commitment.  

Living the steps in our day-to-day is the ultimate commitment to God to the Lord Jesus wherever he would lead us.  

If only we can have the humble insight to focus on those places of dishonesty, namely deception, accommodating, compromising, minimising, turning away.  

The task is simple.  I must take on this opportunity for God to show me all the little crevices of dishonesty in my otherwise honest life and I must be prepared for Him to show me little glimpses that might shock me in a moment, but will otherwise free me to live the life I ought to live bearing with others, as others bear with me.  

What does God require of me and you, other than to do justice to love mercy and to walk humbly with my Lord?  This is a daily charge.  To maintain our conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation (Step 11) and take these steps to others as opportunities avail themselves to us (Step 12).  

Broken Open by Teary Gratitude

I’m often befuddled by how impossible it is to write on the experience I’ve had countless times — joy in suffering.  It frustrates me that I cannot seem to communicate how it works.  

So I’m trying again.  

It seems that there is a place for deep gratitude amid great suffering, and when we contemplate that gratitude is possible in the worst pain, it then becomes possible.  I might even venture to say that with great suffering there is also the entry of deep gratitude.  But this I think is not a universal experience.  

Joined with the coalescence of gratitude and suffering — their being together in the same person and season — is this idea of being broken open by pain, rather than simply being broken by it.  

I recall those times 20-22 years ago when I felt very broken by what my life had become.  These times, many nights, and certainly some whole days, I was a sodden mess, but not always without hope.  

The reality of my being resurrected from the pain of my life seemed real — I had hope — but my life was still so full of pain.  I had hope, though there were times I simply gave up for an hour or a day.  

Somehow as I gave way to teary gratitude — recognising I wasn’t alone, that God was with me, that I knew God was for me and not against me — I felt a perfect and paradoxical 50/50 mix of being afflicted and being healed.  

And there have been so many single days in each month since when the black dog would return, inconsolable would I be on those days!  But, always have I been resurrected mostly the following day.  

This is why I sensed that God was with me, for me and not against me.  It was because there was the deepest meaning in my deepest suffering.  

I do feel inept and embarrassed to talk about such things when others simply for the life of them cannot attest to such an experience.  I wish everyone could feel that sense of God being absolutely present and real in the grips of the worst pain on this earth.  

All I can say is, when you’re trapped in the pain of an excruciating season, invite gratitude into your heart if it isn’t already forcing its way in.  

Allow that gratitude to soften your heart in thanks that seems bizarre.  

When you do this, you may find you’re not simply broken by your suffering, but you begin to be broken open by it in a way to be healed. 

~~~~ 

Acknowledgement: in part, the penny dropped when I watched this recent video from John Ortberg.

The Gratitude-Entitlement Continuum

Entitlement is a funny word.  In a concrete sense, it depicts what we deserve — what we’re entitled to.  But when we take the word from noun to verb — from “you’re entitled [to this]” to “I feel entitled [in an absolute sense]” — we run in a cross-grain direction against life and we become a nemesis, an avenger, to all.  

Against all this is gratitude — that sense of being that feels absolutely NOT entitled.  It operates at the other end of an imaginary continuum, where feeling unworthy and undeserving can be attributable to a joy that comes only from God — where we acknowledge that everything we receive is a gift.  

Paul puts it plainly like this in 1 Corinthians 4:7:

“What do you have that you did not receive?  And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?”  

Everything we have we received.  And only for a short time!  So why do we foolishly think what we have is ours?  And why do we covet more?  Well, of course, it’s natural to strive for “more for me.”  It’s evidence that there is something wrong inside us for which we need God.

Everything we receive comes from outside us.  It came from another person or situation, or in our life’s case or in the world’s case, these came from God.  

The only right response is to be thankful.  

If we can receive everything with thanks, we live gratefully.  

Turned upon itself, living thankfully is the result of a humble joy that attributes everything that one has as a gift; gifts received and gifts given from us as the overflow out of the abundance of joy that we enjoy.   

This is where entitlement is a very unwise way of living.  

When we feel entitled, we feel as if we’re deserving.  It comes across as selfish and is selfish.  It steals joy from others and ourselves.  It robs us and others of peace.  And if we genuinely feel entitled, we won’t be motivated by the joy and peace of others.  And we won’t be a gift to others but a burden.  

Entitlement and gratitude exist on a continuum and both are at the extremes.  

Let me leave you with a life-changing wisdom from M. Scott Peck:

“Life is difficult.  This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.  It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.  Once we truly know that life is difficult — once we truly understand and accept it — then life is no longer difficult.  Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

“Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult.  Instead they moan more less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy.”

— M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled, p. 13.

But, life is difficult.  And with an entitled mindset we only make life harder for ourselves and others — anger begets anger, and fear begets fear.  But with gratitude for the abundance we have, we make a difficult life just a little easier because we have not only accepted what we cannot change, we have embraced everything as a gift — even suffering, because in suffering well we find meaning.  

While anger begets anger,
and fear begets fear — in entitlement,
kindness begets kindness,
as peace begets peace — in gratitude.  

Being grateful comes from a humble certitude that abides by the reality that life is difficult, yet it is full of reasons to be thankful.  

Being grateful comes from accepting that everything we have we received — none of it is due to our doing alone.  

Being grateful will keep us from being entitled.  

The Humility of Facing Oneself

Encountering moments of truth is not always a pleasant experience.  One such recent moment I was acting out of self-righteous hurt in a relatively private (i.e., safe) setting.  Thankfully, the response of another person — or their lack of response — was enough for me to genuinely reflect and rethink my attitude and approach to a certain situation.  

What a gift it was.  But in turning or returning to God, in suffering the ‘shame’ of crucifying my flesh, there was the ugliness of not getting my own way.  It never feels good at the time, but it is the right thing to do.  

Here is a paradox — only as we face our self-righteous attitude and admit we’re wrong are we shown a better way, God’s wise way.  Humility is the requirement of seeing truth.  But when we choose to remain in the “I’m right, they’re wrong” attitude we remain self-justified and deluded — we have failed humility’s test.  And worse, not only do we suffer, our relationships (others) suffer.  

It takes humility to see where we are going wrong.  

It’s a human trait to go wrong.  To go wrong daily and even several times daily.  It’s a human trait to be ruled by biases, to be deceived into thinking others need correcting and we, ourselves, are of noble intent.  

A positive paradox occurs in the phenomenon of being humble enough to see where we’re wrong and where we can right our thinking and responding.  

By and large, this is the Christian walk — getting the log out of our own eye and ensuring wrongs are reconciled and we’re making amends where we need to.  

The humility of facing self reveals godly Christian character.  It shows the capacity for insight, and just enough insight to take responsibility for what we are responsible for without taking responsibility for what others are responsible for — with an accepting empathy that each person has their responsibility and that none of us can be protected from the consequences of our own actions.  

When two people have the capacity of humility to own their self-righteous wrong-going, there is such capacity for reconciling hurts and misunderstandings, even betrayals and more serious wrongs — if both have the humble ability to face and be honest with themselves.  

That is our straightest motive — to win oneself over to the truth.  Facing oneself is the simple work of humility.  

Living for the glory of God alone has its beginning and is fulfilled in honouring the truth, doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God (Micah 6:8). 

What Only Suffering Can Teach Us

Hebrews 12:2 says in part, “For the joy set before him he endured the cross.”  

The only time I knew my faith pleased God was when I responded the right way in suffering, and this was especially so when my heart attitude was humble, accepting with joy that I could bear the pain with God.  

Not that I can say that I’ve done this very often.  I’m sure God has blessed me with humility just enough to see His power that works for good for those who love Him and trust His goodness — who are called according to His good purpose.  

What I have seen and know to be true is worth stating.

It’s only when we suffer and respond well that we are blessed with the closest intimacy with God.  

It’s only we’ve chosen to be humbled by the suffering circumstances out of our control — and wisely so when we did it — that a deeper knowledge is afforded to us.  

We learn in these places of poverty of spirit that the lament of complaint and a calm acceptance can co-exist, or that we may vacillate between these, much as if we meander through the grief process.  

Suffering torches the prosperity gospel faith that if I do good and am good that all of life will be good for me.  It’s clear through the circumstances of life — grief will catch up with us eventually — that God desires to purge us of such an arrogant faith that we think we’re worthy only of blessing and every good thing we desire and that we’re saved from suffering.  

It appears to me that life is the other way around — that we are confirmed as the Lord’s anointed even as we wait on the Lord in our suffering.  I know as much, again, by the relatively few times I’ve looked up to God in the midst of pain and said, “Lord, You know best, I trust that You are good, and thank You that Your love rushes toward me even as this situation breaks me, and that I receive Your love most intimately when I run toward You when I would rather run away from my life.”  

There are relatively few Christians who attest to the depths of intimacy with God amid suffering, and that’s because such suffering is quite a raw phenomenon, and because when most people are there they resent it.  

The biblical witness is trustworthy and true.  When we’re suffering — whether it’s our fault or not — blessed indeed is the person who can roll with it, even to allow the suffering to crush them, for them to be broken open by the suffering rather than just be broken by it.  

Each life has a golden opportunity in suffering.  To accept the painful things about it that cannot be changed: the circumstance, how one got there, the unknown timeframe of the present and future suffering, and to learn to trust in what is perceived as an injustice that reactions of hurt, bitterness, and resentment are only to be expected, but to transcend these — even if regularly enough that we experience the intimacy with God and the power of His blessing.  

What is biblically true is this: the more we bear our crosses well, the more we participate in Christ’s suffering, the more we will glory in Christ’s resurrection.  

When James 1:2 says, “Consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds,” he backs it up with what God is able to reliably do in and through us when we suffer without always getting bitter and resentful.  

What Jesus was able to do perfectly — endure the cross — we can do much less perfectly, but we can do it, and when we do it we receive something only God in this world can give us.  

That is a joy for mourning, a beauty for ashes.  

Let us also not forget that what the world is silent about, the Bible majors on; the Bible has answers for us on HOW to suffer when we are afflicted.  Wise are we to heed its ancient counsel.