"Can't doer?"

Have you thanked Him?

Have you praised Him?

Have you made it your priority to agree and cooperate with Him today?

Have you taken that deep breath and listened for what He has for you today?

ARE YOU SEEKING?

1 Timothy 2:1 (The Message)

^1-3The first thing I want you to do is pray. Pray every way you know how, for everyone you know.

What is your motivation when it comes to recovery?

Have you decided to change because you know you “can’t” continue to live the way you have been living?

Or has GOD begun to influence and impact your life so that your recovery is more about being obedient and in alignment with what HE wants for your life and recovery?

To put it another way, have you embraced this walk of recovery out of fear of the consequences, or have you begun to experience the blessings of obedience and want that for your life?

The truth is that most recovery usually begins on the fear side of the coin.

“I can’t smoke because my husband/wife told me not too. I can’t use because I am being drug tested. I can’t drink because I will lose my job.”

So often we do our best, "get in line", and behave differently because we “don’t want the trouble.”

But as we begin to embrace a recovery founded on Jesus and inspired by truth, we begin to learn that trusting and OBEYING GOD offers so much more! In fact, when we recover with OBEDIENCE as our motivator, we discover that we are kept safe from the harsh repercussions we deeply fear. And by continuing in a GOD-focused recovery, our fear is replaced by recognition of God’s blessings, His love for us and His passion to see us through the challenge!

It is the reason STEP 3 tells us to SUBMIT to GOD’S WILL for our lives as the key to recovery. Because by following God’s will our focus shifts from disobedience’s consequences to obedience’s blessings!

This is made so clear in this little passage from ROMANS!

Romans 6:16-23

Since we're free in the freedom of God, can we do anything that comes to mind? Hardly. You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it's your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you've let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you've started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!

¹⁹I'm using this freedom language because it's easy to picture. You can readily recall, can't you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing—not caring about others, not caring about God—the worse your life became and the less freedom you had? And how much different is it now as you live in God's freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness?

^20-21As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn't have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you're proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end.

^{I LOVE THIS PART OF THIS PASSAGE!!!!!}

^22-23But now that you've found you don't have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God's gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.

You see friends, once we taste the best He has to offer, we want to keep good flowing into our lives. Obedience and God’s best are natural partners — good derives from following divine commands, while suffering results when we stubbornly choose our own way.

As we become more aware of how blessing follows obedience, we realize that complying with the Lord’s will is the only wise choice.

It is then we will move from “I can’t do that” “RECOVERERS” to “I choose NOT to do that RECOVERERS”.

And that is where we want to be blessed with a “real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.”

I love you all.

Freedom Church

Pastor GDelaney