While driving the other day, I heard a song on the radio. I didn’t know the song, but the lyric that screamed at me was this line:
“I couldn’t make the change, so You became the change in me.”
Wow, that requires surrender.
My controls on my life and behaviors (my drinking) were not working—however hard I worked on convincing myself that they were.
Surrender to gain power.
Once I let go and let God in to do the work in me, the power to do the work that I needed to do now, was accessible to me. It became easier to walk in that direction of change. It was not necessarily logical. In fact, it was rather miraculous.
I didn’t have to do this life on my own power. Well, that’s a relief.
In the literature of our program of recovery there is a line that says, God did for me what I could not do for myself. My upbringing was all about being responsible and making sure you followed the rules and did everything “right”—ok, what is “right”? Isn’t that relative to what the rules are and the rule-maker?
When I figured out God wanted me to succeed and that He was rooting for me—not here to “trip me up” and punish me for bad behavior, I realized that the guidelines/rules were there for me to succeed, not to fail.
Grace.
It’s not about right or wrong, success or failure—it is about figuring out that we have a choice each moment to do the NEXT right thing for that moment based on the information we have before us and trusting that if I surrender my will, God’s Will, can—and will be done.
Collaboration. The pressure is off. I don’t have to perform. I have a power source to lean on and depend upon. My weakness doesn’t have to define me. It can be an example for others that they can do this life sober too—
With God’s help.
And, I will be here for you too.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
2 Corinthians 12:9
Click on my books below to buy.
