Word Servant

     Principal 1 in Celebrate Recovery is all about stepping out of denial and admitting that left to our own devices we are powerless to change. Living out Principal 1 is akin to realizing that we have been on a train headed the wrong way in life and now that we realize it, we have to get off the train!      So, we step out of denial and admit that whatever we think that we had control over in our life was simply our attempt to stranglehold the situation and we lay it down before God.      This brings us to Principle 2: Hope! In other 12 step recovery programs they may say to place your hope in a higher power. However, in CR, we believe in God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit. Our Higher Power is the Great I AM. And for us this is the ultimate Hope! A hope for change, a hope for a new heart, a hope for leaving all the brokenness behind, and a hope of being restored to God in spite of all our blunders. “For it is God who works in you to will and to act

     Powerlessness is not something that a lot of us want to ever admit to being. Even though, many of us have gone through moments in our lives where we were absolutely powerless over a situation. Be it facing a loved one laying in an ICU room and not knowing whether they’ll ever wake up. Or, that diagnosis the doctor gave that we just have no control over and no way to make better. Sometimes, it’s not even that heavy or severe; maybe it’s a different pang of powerlessness. For example, maybe it is seeing your child contend with bullies and being helpless to fix it for them. Or, maybe it is seeing people you love make the biggest mistake of their life.        At some point in our lives, we’ll all experience feeling powerlessness in some way. For some of us it’ll be when we realize how others talk about us behind our backs. Add social media into the mix and the next thing you know anyone with an axe to grind can just put you on blast for your entire world to break out the Michael

     The first step in recovering from our hurts, habits, and hang-ups is to recognize we have a problem. This can be difficult because most of us have a hard time seeing our own flaws, or where we may have issues. It’s easier for us to see the flaws in other people; and we aren’t alone in this. This is not something that’s new. This has actually been true for thousands of years. Jesus Himself told us to remove the log from our own eye before trying to take the speck out of our friends eye (Matt.7:5). We can see how this goes down in the workplace, in our marriages, and even in politics. However, that is still looking outward, Jesus told us to take care of our eye first. So, looking into the mirror, I know that there have been many times in my life where it was easier and more comfortable to focus on someone else’s issues rather than my own. But, that didn’t rid me of my problems, it only prolonged them.      Unfortunately, some of us just don’t ignore our problems in the hope tha

Welcome to the Second Year of Word Servant      In the first year of Word Servant I focused on being obedient to God with doing a quasi-preaching/online Bible Journal. This year, God has been laying so much on my heart, especially with respect to being People of the Second Chance and Celebrate Recovery. My wife and I are both avid lovers of the Celebrate Recovery ministry! We have been a part of one Celebrate Recovery ministry for seven years, with a hiatus in there a few years ago that we call my “out there time,” (meaning: I was not attending church; I was not attending CR; and when I did it was usually when my heart was convicted of not being right with God and I had done the whole ‘God, help me get right, I am sorry’ thing; but then I allowed my guilt, shame and sense of having already screwed up to be an excuse for me not to not do what God required. But, more on that when God brings me to it).          Recently, God brought my wife and I to a church that believes in being