Tuesday, January 14, 2014 -- Half Measures Availed Us Nothing
Tuesday January 14, 2014
God created life and us for Himself. Sin and brokenness entered into our world and significantly impacted the way God intended us to live. The life of recovery that God invites us to is the original design for which He created us. God offers clear instruction and direction of what will work for us to have a good life and what will harm us. Through Jesus Christ God offers us relationship and power to live life to the full. As we surrender ourselves to God, God removes the forces of death and destruction that have been dominating our lives. He puts new authority and new structures in place that will nurture our lives and bring wholeness to us. The question is, are we surrendering our old ways for His new ones?
Dear brothers and sisters, we urge you in the name of the Lord Jesus to live in a way that pleases God, as we have taught you. ... For you remember what we taught you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. God’s will is for you to be holy, so stay away from all sexual sin. Then each of you will control his own body and live in holiness and honor—not in lustful passion like the pagans who do not know God and his ways. Never harm or cheat a Christian brother in this matter by violating his wife, for the Lord avenges all such sins, as we have solemnly warned you before. God has called us to live holy lives, not impure lives. Therefore, anyone who refuses to live by these rules is not disobeying human teaching but is rejecting God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. (1 Thessalonians 4:1-8 NLT)
There is no such thing as satisfaction in a self-directed life. Life does not allow us to pick and choose what we will have and what we will not have. The God-directed life in recovery is one in which clear guidelines are offered and clear consequences are described. To live life with God is to choose to live within the healthy limits God describes and to intentionally stay away from all behaviours that God describes as harmful. Anything less makes us vulnerable to ongoing attacks from Satan.
The founders of AA who wrote "The Big Book" understood this when they wrote: "Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His (God's) protection and care with complete abandon ….. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely." (Big Book p.58)
Let's make healthy choices and choose to live wholeheartedly in the way that pleases God.
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