12 steps series step 3: turning it over by ken wilson
There are three components to Jesus-Brand™ Spirituality: activist (healed sick, set captives free); contemplative (silence, solitude, rich inner life) transformative (produces change for the better in real lives; we become what we cannot be thru merely human effort.)
The Twelve Steps are the best practical summary of the transformative
power of Christ.
When you walk in the Twelve Steps, the result is a life-saving, life-enhancing
transformation.
The first 2 steps are like a cleansing breath: breathing out (admitting our powerlessness); breathing in (came to believe God could restore us to sanity) Step 3, is active: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
“Made a decision” The capacity to decide is part of the mystery of what it means to be human. Like God, in whose image we’re made, we decide.
The most sacred, most terrifying thing about being human is our capacity to decide:
“I set before you this day, life and death…Now choose life!” (Dt. 30:19)
“Multitudes! Multitudes in the valley of decision!” (Joel 3:14)
“Whenever Aaron enters the Holy Place, he will bear the names of the sons of Israel on the breastpiece of decision” (Ex. 28: 29) (Notice how decision is placed over the heart, in the most sacred and terrifying place on earth at the time: the Holy of Holies.)
“Follow me,” Jesus said to one “and he left his nets
and followed”
“Follow me,” Jesus said to another, “his face fell,
he went away sad”
The most frightening thing about growing up might well be making decisions. In our earliest years, the whole range of options lies open before us. But with every choice, we narrow our options.
When it comes to ultimate decisions (questions of God) the safest bet is not to decide. Or so says Conventional Wisdom.
On the question of God, we live in the age of procrastination. “Let's wait ‘till we have better information…I’m not comfortable seeing through a glass darkly and deciding on a question like this!"
But this assumes no sense of urgency. Do we really have the luxury of waiting? In fact, we’re like a starving man driving thru a fog to his next meal. We can’t just park and wait for the fog to lift. It’s socked in; and because we’re running on limited resources, time is not on our side. We have to proceed (steer-decide) as best we can, with the light that we’re given.
Agnosticism (“I don’t know, I won’t decide”) isn’t as safe an option as it appears. “To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation” (from The Life of Pi, by Yann Mantel)
Life compels decision. Not to decide is itself a decision. Actions have consequences, but so do inactions.
Ultimately, only you can decide. One thing God won’t do for us: exert our will for us. Not even to save us since that would destroy us.
“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” Why is this necessary?
Cost of addiction (sin): You get your way but you lose your life. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?”
Cost of recovery (salvation): You relinquish your way but gain your life. “Whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for me and the gospel, will save it.”
The human heart is motivated by two things: avoidance of pain, pursuit of pleasure. It’s theoretically possible to turn your will over because you realize it’s the path to ultimate pleasure. More likely, pain is the primary mover & shaker. The pain of addiction must often be greater than the anticipated pain of turning over your will. In AA they call it being “sick & tired of being sick & tired”
The pain of turning over your will is obvious: my will is what I want! It’s the ring of power: “my precious!” I want my will! I want my will! I want my will! I want my will! Alcoholism, like the sinful condition, is “self-will ruin riot!”
Jesus in the garden, models the way forward. His will is clean, good, yet he turns it over: “Not my will but yours be done.” It was for him a wrenching, painful experience, one to sweat blood over. It may not be any easier for us.
Before you can turn over your alcohol, you must turn over your will, because your will is holding on to your alcohol. Alcohol, like sin itself, is pickling your will, weakening it, making it diseased. Turn over your will (your life,) then you can turn over what’s killing you.
“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”
Some Christians bristle at “as we understood Him”. As if it were a cop out, or where the Twelve Steps deleted Jesus. Like taking “in God we trust” from pledge, or is that from our money? I get my controversies mixed up. But here’s a little known fact: this language “as we understood him” comes from the Oxford group, the explicitly Christian soil out of which Twelve Steps grew.
“God as we understood Him” Not God as we create him, or want him to be. But God as we understand Him.
Understanding. It takes time & trouble to listen to someone, come to grips with who they are, what they’re thinking, feeling, saying, so that we can truly say, “I understand.”
To understand is to stand under, not over.
There is no turning our will and our lives over to the care of God, unless we understand that God cares. That he knows us better than we know ourselves; loves us better than we love ourselves.
That we are a factor in God’s life.
That our existence, our actions, affect God.
“Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and filled with violence….. [1979-1991: 50,000 children killed gun violence] And the Lord saw the wickedness of man…and his heart was filled with pain!” We are a factor in the life of God!
There is no pain like parent pain. I’ve known precious little, but the little I’ve known convinces me there’s no pain like parent pain. Because one’s children are a factor in one’s life.
Which brings us to Jesus. God is not understandable in all his infinite God-ness. In Jesus, God comes to us in a way that we humans can understand. Jesus is the graspable God.
Jesus is the message that God cares! That you’re a factor in God’s life! Your existence, actions, joys & sorrows, affect God!
That’s the whole point of Jesus’ pain! When Lazarus died, “Jesus wept.” When he carried our sins, he also carried God’s pain. His suffering is the ultimate sign that we are a factor in God’s life. We affect God.
But it takes a decision, to turn your will & your life over to his care.
“Engagement to God comes about in acts of the soul”
-- Abraham Heschel
I want to invite you, in God’s Name, to make a decision (act of the soul): to turn over the keys of your life to the care of God as you Understand Him.
Not talking about turning your will and your life over to some group, to an ideology, but to the care of God!
It’s not like turning your keys over to your 16 year old, for
heaven’s sake! We’re talking about God here!
We’re all dependent on God anyway! To turn our will & our
lives over, is simply to end the hypocrisy, illusion, insanity of self-will
run riot! To return to the heart’s true home!
The invitation is for now, for today! Why today? Because it is possible
now-today; because tomorrow is the day that never comes.
“Today is the day of salvation…”
“Lord Jesus, I turn over my will and my life to your care. I hand over the keys to my life and I ask you to become the driving influence. I renounce the insanity of my self-will run riot. And I embrace the peace, and the goodness and the power of your will. Amen.”