Serenity Saturday Identifying Peaceful Patterns
Saturday August 27, 2016
For many of us it was pain associated with our addiction that brought us to recovery. It might have been sickness and pain in our bodies or exhaustion from trying to think up one more scam to get enough money to do whatever we thought we needed to do. It might have been the heartache we heard in the voice of our kids or the pain and sadness we saw in the eyes of someone who was important to us. At some point we finally realized that this pattern of behaviour was only leading us to death and the longing for life and peace grew strong enough for us to take action.
So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. (Romans 8:6 NLT)
The invitation and challenge of life in recovery is to find a life that is truly satisfying. God applauds our turning from our destructive lifestyle, and invites us to a relationship with Him that will fill our hearts and minds with love, peace and faithfulness.
Run from anything that stimulates youthful lusts. Instead, pursue righteous living, faithfulness, love, and peace. Enjoy the companionship of those who call on the Lord with pure hearts. (2 Timothy 2:22 NLT)
A significant part of our journey is making a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. God doesn’t have us list this inventory so we can wallow in guilt and shame. God wants us to learn how to identify patterns that cause us to stumble and then find new ways that will produce good things in our lives. As our spirit is filled with, and controlled by the Holy Spirit, God knows we will exhibit character qualities such as kindness, patience, and self-control.
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! (Galatians 5:22-23 NLT)
Whether we are engaged in a formal Step Four inventory or simply bringing our daily thoughts and activities into the light of God’s truth, we have another chance today to fearlessly search our hearts and invite God to root out anything that robs us of peace.
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