If your recovery journey is anything like mine, when you first showed up a lot of things probably felt like they were out of control. My drinking was out of control, I could not stop no matter how hard I tried. My personal life was out of control, I was on the verge of losing my family. That’s where today’s lesson fits in. One of the paradoxes I heard was that I had to give up control in order to gain control. I had to learn to turn control of my life and problems over to God in order for them to be resolved and to feel like my life was back in control.
I find that Step 3 is also important when it comes to my continued spiritual growth. I’ve learned that Step 1 is the only step I have to do perfectly, which means that for the rest my goal is progress rather than perfection. For me Step 3 is probably the best example of this. When I first went through the steps I didn’t give this step much thought. But as I began to read more and understand what this really meant I realized that throughout the course of my life I had never been willing to turn control over to God and that I had a lot to learn. I still find myself learning more on this subject and I doubt I will ever stop.
Our acrostic for tonight is TURN:
T – Trust
U – Understand
R – Repent
N – New Life
Let’s look at each one in more detail:
Trust
For me learning to trust God is the willingness stage to turning my life over to Him. After all, it is highly unlikely that I’m ever going to be willing to turn something completely over to somebody unless I completely trust them. This is where I have learned I have to put faith into action. I can’t just say I believe God is all-powerful, I have to trust He can find a way even when I can’t see an Earthly solution to a problem. I can’t just say that God is all-knowing, I have to actually put my trust in Him and turn over my problems to Him and know that the solution He has is better than one I could have come up with. Once I am willing to trust I can become willing to turn.
Understand
This part of turning things over to God has definitely been a hindrance for me. I’m the kind of person that wants to know every detail from God before I turn something over to Him. I want to know how he is going to accomplish something, what each step along the way is, exactly what the outcome will be, and how long it’s going to take. Then if I agree with every part of this I will finally be willing to turn something over to God. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that, God doesn’t usually explain things to us in such detail. I have had to humble myself and realize that God is not my employee, He does not have to offer me an explanation for everything He has done or is about to do. I have also had to acknowledge that God has quite a different perspective on the universe than I do. He was there at the beginning of creation and knows the furthest boundaries of His creation. I on the other hand have been here for a short sliver of time and have barely seen a speck of the universe. God sees a much bigger picture than I do which is why His plans turn out better than the selfish ones I come up with.
What really drove this home for me was looking back at “bad” events that happened in my life and realizing that these were really blessings in disguise. Take for example my sobriety date. This was by far the worst day of my life, in fact it was so bad it was the only day in my life I actually thought seriously about taking my own life. But today my perspective on that day is quite different. In fact I am thankful to God every day for that terrible day. It took that experience to make me willing to do whatever it was going to take to get sober, and that has made all the difference in my life. Whenever I talk about something “bad” that happens to me today, I have to put the word “bad” in air quotes. After all, who knows how my perspective on this “bad” event will be 6 months or 6 years from now. It may just be another blessing in disguise, something I would have never come up with on my own but God did because He sees a much bigger picture than me.
Repent
The leader’s guide lists two steps to repenting: turning away from our sins and turning towards God. My experience getting sober definitely taught me a lot about turning away from my sins. Most of my life I’ve never really wanted to turn away from my sins, I just wanted the consequences of those sins to go away. I know this was certainly true when it came to my drinking. I wanted my family to get off my back, I wanted the health problems my drinking was causing to go away, and I wanted the work problems my drinking was causing to go away. Wanting my consequences to go away and turning away from my sin was quite different, something I learned on my sobriety date. On this day it was no longer about getting rid of consequences, I truly wanted to change, I truly wanted to be a different person. This was something I had never felt before about my drinking. It’s not enough though to just want a new life, we also have to accept the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. We have to take our sins and put them at His feet and accept His gift to us and have those sins washed away, the second step in repenting.
One thing to note is that there is a difference between self-loathing and repenting. There are times when I actually enjoy beating myself up mentally, reminding myself of all the bad things I have done and ridiculing myself for all of my perceived short-comings. Although it may seem like I am acknowledging my mistakes and moving towards repentance, the reality is that I am not. Rather than truly wanting to turn away from my sin and lead a different life, my self-loathing is borne from a perverse desire to wallow in misery and self-contempt. When I am in this mode I am not seeking forgiveness from God, in fact I usually am wrapped up in my own little world.
New Life
Here is a quick summary pointed out in the leader’s guide on our Old Life versus our New Life:
| Old You | New You | Scripture |
| Get, get, get | Give, and it will be given to you | Luke 6:38 |
| Lead, at all costs | Serve | John 13:12 |
| Lie, the truth only complicates things | Speak the truth in love | Ephesians 4:15 |
| Hate your enemy | Love your enemy | Matthew 5:44 |
Other Thoughts
One of the things I’ve heard repeatedly said about the 12 Steps is that it is a simple program. One of the things I’ve learned not to do though is to mix simple with easy. None of the concepts we have discussed are particularly complicated. Powerlessness is not a complicated subject, and it doesn’t take four years of seminary to understand the concept of turning one’s life over to the care of God. Unfortunately it can take a lifetime to truly learn how to do these things. I know for me turning things over to God can be particularly difficult. First of all my pride gets in the way. After all, I’m a smart and capable person, why do I need God – I’ll just run my own life. If it’s not my pride it’s my fear. How can I turn the outcome of life’s major situations over to God, what if His outcome is different than the one I want? Sometimes it can literally seem impossible for me to turn things over to God. When I get in this mode of thinking I have to remind myself, is there something physically preventing me from turning this over to God or is it all in my mind? Invariably every time I have asked myself this question the answer has always been the same, it is always mental. The fact is that I’m the one that makes this simple program difficult to follow.
Lessons In Recovery 