Road To Recovery - Maintaining Momentum

07/22/07
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Road To Recovery - Maintaining Momentum
Mark 5:1-20
A radical beginning!

Principle #7 – Avoiding Relapse

Caution
The Doorway to the Kingdom - Oswald Chambers “My Utmost For His Highest”

  • Matthew 5:3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit …”
  • Beware of thinking of our Lord as only a teacher.
  • He came to make me what He teaches I should be.
  • The Beatitudes produce a sense of despair in the natural man.
  • The knowledge of our own poverty is what brings us to the proper place where Jesus Christ accomplishes His work.

Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Mark 14:38

Maintain your R.E.C.O.V.E.R.Y
Relapses happen in a very predictable pattern.

  • 1st is complacency.
  • 2nd is confusion.
  • 3rd then you go to compromise.
  • 4th the catastrophe

Don't give up!

  • You need to understand that the collapse is not the relapse.
  • The catastrophe is simply the result of the pattern that happened.

What Can Cause a Relapse?

  • Reverting to willpower.
  • Galatians 3:3 “How can you be so foolish? You began by God’s spirit, do you now want to finish on your own power?”

Steps to R.E.C.O.V.E.R.Y

  • 1. Realize I'm NOT God! I admit I’m powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and my life is unmanageable.
  • 2. Earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to Him, and that He has the power to help me recover.
  • 3. Consciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ’s care and control.

Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit says the Lord.
Zechariah 4:6

  • Ignoring one of the steps.
    • We get in a hurry or we try to skip difficult steps:
  • 4. Openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust.
  • 5. Voluntarily submit to every change God wants to make in my life and humbly ask Him to remove my character defects.
  • 6. Evaluate all my relationships. Offer amends to those who’ve hurt me and make amends for harm I’ve done to others except when to do so would harm them or others.
  • Galatians 3:3 “You were doing so well. Who made you stop obeying the truth.”
  • Trying to recover without support.
    • “I’ll listen to these sermons, I’m not going to go to counseling, I’m not going to go to Celebrate Recovery, I’m not going to go to small group”
  • Ecclesiastes 4:7 “Two are better off than one because if one of them falls down, the other can help him up. But if someone is alone and falls it’s too bad because there’s nobody there to listen and lift him up or help him.”
    • You can’t lick this problem alone. If you could have you would have. But you can’t so you won’t.
  • Hebrews 10:25 “Let us not give up the habit of meeting together.”
    • You can see short-term gains in your life without involving other people if you’ll do these steps.
    • But you cannot do long-term recovery without relationships.
    • The root of your problem is relational.
  • We become prideful.
  • Proverbs 16:18 “Pride goes before destruction.”
    • You need to stay humble or you’ll stumble.
  • I Corinthians 10:12 “So if you think you’re standing watch out that you do not fall.”
    • The greatest weakness

How Do I Prevent a Relapse?

  • Maintenance

The Seventh Step to R.E.C.O.V.E.R.Y

  • Principle 7 – Reserve a daily time with God for a self-examination, bible reading, and prayer in order to know God and His will for my life and gain the power to do it.
  • Mark 14:38 “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation, for the Spirit is willing but the body is weak.”

Three Safeguards

  • Evaluation
  • Meditation
  • Prayer

Evaluation

  • II Corinthians 13:5 “Check up on yourselves”
  • Lamentations 3:40 “Let us examine ourselves and let us repent.

What To Evaluate?

Physical:

  • You ask the question, “What is my body telling me?”

Emotional:

  • What am I feeling right now?
  • You do a “heart check.”
    • H - Am I hurting?
    • E - Am I exhausted?
    • A - Am I angry?
    • R - Do I resent anybody?
    • T - Am I tense? anxious? fearful?

Relational:

  • Am I at peace with everyone?

Spiritual:

  • Am I relying on God?

Each one should test his own action. Then he can take pride in himself without comparing himself to somebody else.
Galatians 6:4

When do I do my Evaluation?

  • Spot check inventory.
  • Daily review.
  • Annual checkup.

Three Safeguards

  • Evaluation
  • Meditation
    • Slowing down long enough to hear God.
    • Psalm 1:1–3 “Happy are those who are always meditating on God’s laws and thinking about ways to follow Him closely. They are like trees on a river that do not dry up, they succeed in everything they do.”
  • Prayer
    • Prayer can do whatever God can do.
    • The Lord’s Prayer model - This is not what you should pray, this is how you should pray.
      • All of the recovery steps are covered in this prayer

I have seen how they acted but I will heal them, I will lead them and help them and I will comfort those who mourn. I offer peace to all near and far.
Isaiah 57:18