RECRUM: Recovery Ruminations: "Abandon Yourself to God"

Saturday, January 22, 2005

"Abandon Yourself to God"

"Abandon Yourself to God."

I've been going to a noon meeting every day, a new meeting for me. Each day the meeting closes with the concluding passage of the Big Book, before the personal stories (not a typical tradition in my town).

These words struck me. I know I have to "let go and let God," get myself out of the way, surrender, "turn my will and my life over to God." I have to turn my fear over to God, "do the next indicated thing" and let God handle the outcomes. Faith=Belief+Trust+Action.

"Some of us tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely."

"We asked His protection and care with complete abandon."

Why is it so hard for me to do this? Why can't I let go absolutely, abandon myself to God's care, God's will, God's purpose? I want, more than anything, to let go. I want to live, I want to live in the light of God, to be an instrument of His peace.

Yet I am still tangled up in the hell I have designed and built for myself.

Please, God, show me your way!

2 Comments:

At 1/25/2005 09:31:00 AM, Anonymous said...: Hi Phil! I just discovered your blog today and read all the posts from the beginning. Sounds like you're having a rough time of it. I will keep you and your recovery in my thoughts and prayers. I wish I could do more to help you.

Trinker
At 1/25/2005 09:46:00 AM, Abecedarian said...: This little book is dedicated to all of us who have journeyed into the heart of the jungle to find the source of "denial".

http://phielawesoflee.blogspot.com/

If the stories in the big book touched your heart, perhaps another might as well.

This is my story.

Doug L.

Name: Phil

Sobriety Date:
January 16, 2005

"Abandon Yourself to God"

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcoholâthat our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

© A.A. World Services, Inc.

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"...If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.

1. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness

2. We will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it

3. We will comprehend the word serenity

4. We will know peace

5. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others

6. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear

7. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain insight into our fellows

8. Self-seeking will slip away

9. Our whole attitude and outlook will change

10. Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us

11. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us

12. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us -- sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them..."
© A.A. World Services, Inc.

If God is for us, who can be against us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8

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