Sid's Recovery

"Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord;" (Acts 3:19)

"My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stand in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me the strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen." (Alcoholics Anonymous p. 76)

As we repent and become converted, we do need strength to do God's bidding, but just how does that work? In my 25 years of practicing my addictive behavior, I continually asked God for more strength of will to resist those temptations that so easily beset me, but to no avail. Yet, in recovery, as I surrender my will to His, during those temptations, He always gives me the victory.

So... what changed? Using my will to surrender myself to God, more than for fighting the temptation was key. But recently, I received some additional insight from a study of these words of Jesus: "Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you." (Luke 10:19).

Let's look at just a piece of this verse: "Behold, I give unto you power... over all the power of the enemy...". The word "power" is used twice in this verse, right? Well, when looking at the original language (Greek), we see that two different words were used. The first word is "exousia", which could have been translated as "authority". The second word is "dunamis", which could have been translated as "ability".

If we use this alternate translation, we have this: "Behold, I give you authority over all the ability of the enemy". That makes a BIG difference to me! You see, in my addictive behavior, I was asking God for the ability to resist the ability of the enemy. I realize now that just isn't going to happen, and it never did. But what does happen is that, as I surrender my will to God's, He gives me the authority to say "NO" to the enemy, as I say "YES" to God. Now that's the power I need :-)

"Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you..." (James 4:7-8)

"Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings." (Step 7)