Hello again,
I have recently been asked to do a fill sermon for the Celebrate Recovery program at WOGCC. Here is part of my sermon notes.
V Yes the acrostic for today is victory and the v stands for: Voluntarily Submit.
We will voluntarily submit to every change God wants to make in my life and humbly ask Him to remove my character defects. Our Bible verse for this is Romans 12:1-2,”Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to His service and pleasing to Him….Let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind”
The first part of this statement is huge in theological understanding in becoming a Christian. A single word, voluntary is at the core of who we are. What this is saying is that we have a choice to make. For most of you out there the choice was made in step 3 to choose God as your salvation. But that is just the beginning. In John Bakers Book “Life’s Healing Choices”, John takes the 8 principles (based on the beatitudes) that form the core of our twelve steps and tells each is a choice what we have to make. The choice that we are making in principle 5 is; choosing to make changes. John by the way is the founder of Celebrate Recovery. In this step we are moving from salvation to sanctification. Salvation, is knowing in your heart that God really exists, has the power, and the authority, and that you really need to follow Him, indeed make Him King of your life.
Sanctification on the other hand is having accepted God as your King, realizing that he has a set of standards in his kingdom, a set of laws that he demands of his subjects and expects them to follow. This is the submit part. WE are making the choice to follow God, or just say that we do for those who claim to be Christian. In the end God knows if you were a believer or not.
I The I in today’s acrostic stands for: Identify character defects
All the work that Pastor Mike tried to get us to do under the previous principle comes into play here. All the work on the inventory was done to help us know what in Gods eyes we need to fix. For most of us here, we came because of one major defect that had become unbearable. But for those who truly worked on the inventory, we found out that we all have many different issues to work on. As we learned under V it’s about us making a choice, but once we choose we do not do the work, God does. We ask God to work on the defects we want removed.
The fact is we are all destined for Hell. God does not send us there. That is already our destination. What God does is throw us a hand to grab on to. Choosing God as king is grabbing the hand. And working out sanctification is holding on till your out. God went to a lot of work to give us that hand and He does not want us to fail. He will do the work if we keep choosing him and asking for His help. We start by asking for help with what we know is wrong.
Our Bible verse for I is Proverbs 16:9 “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps”. Whether we chose God or not he is Lord of all and in control. Once we have chosen to be his even though he gives our free will He has promised to finish the work he started in us if we just keep following, choosing Him, and His way.
C The C in our acrostic stands for: Change your mind
In Romans 12:2 we are told, ”Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what “God’s will is----His good, pleasing and perfect will.” This is telling us we can no longer stay the same. In fact our very way of thinking will change. But there is also another important clue in this verse we must listen too. It says we are to test. This is saying that things that come to us will not always be from God. AS part of helping us we will have the ability to know the right way to go. Can it be that easy? No, satan is the great liar. He will not make it easy for us but we are given another clue, good and pleasing. God’s will is good and pleasing so if we can determine if an action is both good and pleasing we will know the correct path to choose. To learn what is good we read our Bibles daily, go to church when we can, do Bible studies, and generally seek after the Lord with all our heart. Once we have learned what is good we change what we do. The more we know God. The more we know how good God is. The more we experience the pleasure of doing things His way, the more we want to do it His way. God puts a desire in our hearts. We change out of want to instead of have to.
T We are half way through and T is next. It stands for: Turn over character defects
Turning over these defects means we are no longer in control. We are giving that authority to God. Yes I know he always has the authority but God being the master of humility never takes away the free will he gave us. Not until the day of wrath anyway. The best definition of humility I have read is that it is confidence properly placed. We have tried and failed. Now we become humble and properly place our confidence in God and His ability to help us.
That means that when we become aware of things we are doing wrong we listen to what God says. We become humble and try as best we can to do it His way. When we do this James 4:10 says”humble yourselves before the Lord,….He will lift you up.” We do not stand alone even if it looks at times like we are alone.
O We have now come to O which stands for: One day at a Time
You can get fast food. You can get high speed internet. You can do instant messaging. We live in a world of fast paste gotta have it now mentality, but it is simply impossible to get a quick fix on or character defects. It took us time to get to where we are at and it will take us time to heal. And we heal one day at a time. We live in the Now. We can not live in the past with satan constantly reminding us of what we did. What’s done is done and we have the scars and consequences of those actions. Nor should we live in the future, because we are not there yet. Living in the future brings worry or takes our focus off of recovery and opens a door for satan to jump back in. No, we again choose to take the advice of our loving God as he tells in Matthew 6:34 “So don,t be anxious about tomorrow, God will tale care of your tomorrow too. Live one day at a time.”
R The letter R in our acrostic stands for: Recovery is a Process
Our verse for this letter is Philippians dss1:6 which states “and I am sure that God who began a good work within you will keep right on helping you grow in his grace until His task within you Is finally finished on that day when Jesus Christ returns”. This is a process which will not be complete until He comes again. We do not get to rest. But neither do we have to do it all at once. Do not try to complete the whole list of defects all at once. Rather taking one day at a time, we ask God to work in correcting one defect at a time. Ask His help in picking the most important and work your way down.
Personally I have a different set of verses I feel address this subject:
2Pe 1:3 God's divine power has given us everything we need for life and for godliness. This power was given to us through knowledge of the one who called us by his own glory and integrity.
2Pe 1:4 Through his glory and integrity he has given us his promises that are of the highest value. Through these promises you will share in the divine nature because you have escaped the corruption that sinful desires cause in the world.
2Pe 1:5 Because of this, make every effort to add integrity to your faith; and to integrity add knowledge;
2Pe 1:6 to knowledge add self-control; to self-control add endurance; to endurance add godliness;
2Pe 1:7 to godliness add Christian affection; and to Christian affection add love.
2Pe 1:8 If you have these qualities and they are increasing, it demonstrates that your knowledge about our Lord Jesus Christ is living and productive.
2Pe 1:9 If these qualities aren't present in your life, you're shortsighted and have forgotten that you were cleansed from your past sins.
2Pe 1:10 Therefore, brothers and sisters, use more effort to make God's calling and choosing of you secure. If you keep doing this, you will never fall away.
I will Let these verses speak for themselves.
Y Last we come to the letter Y which stands for: You must choose to change
We will open up with the verse for this James 4:6-8 “Gos gives strength to the humble,….so give yourselves humbly to God. Resist the Devil and he will flee from you. And when you draw close to God, God will draw close to you”. Notice that it says we must resist. There will be a period of time In which we are struggling. It reminds of the war movies where against unbearable odds the hero is to hold until relieved.
Well, we are the reluctant hero’s and we are being told to hold until relieved. God promises that he will not give us more than we can bear. Sometimes it seems different, but those are satans lies bombarding us from all directions telling us we can not do what God has said we can. So in the end it is about you. God gave you free will and its up to you to choose to hold, believe god instead of satan. The reward is the fruit of the spirit, joy peace etc. you know.
I have recently been asked to do a fill sermon for the Celebrate Recovery program at WOGCC. Here is part of my sermon notes.
V Yes the acrostic for today is victory and the v stands for: Voluntarily Submit.
We will voluntarily submit to every change God wants to make in my life and humbly ask Him to remove my character defects. Our Bible verse for this is Romans 12:1-2,”Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to His service and pleasing to Him….Let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind”
The first part of this statement is huge in theological understanding in becoming a Christian. A single word, voluntary is at the core of who we are. What this is saying is that we have a choice to make. For most of you out there the choice was made in step 3 to choose God as your salvation. But that is just the beginning. In John Bakers Book “Life’s Healing Choices”, John takes the 8 principles (based on the beatitudes) that form the core of our twelve steps and tells each is a choice what we have to make. The choice that we are making in principle 5 is; choosing to make changes. John by the way is the founder of Celebrate Recovery. In this step we are moving from salvation to sanctification. Salvation, is knowing in your heart that God really exists, has the power, and the authority, and that you really need to follow Him, indeed make Him King of your life.
Sanctification on the other hand is having accepted God as your King, realizing that he has a set of standards in his kingdom, a set of laws that he demands of his subjects and expects them to follow. This is the submit part. WE are making the choice to follow God, or just say that we do for those who claim to be Christian. In the end God knows if you were a believer or not.
I The I in today’s acrostic stands for: Identify character defects
All the work that Pastor Mike tried to get us to do under the previous principle comes into play here. All the work on the inventory was done to help us know what in Gods eyes we need to fix. For most of us here, we came because of one major defect that had become unbearable. But for those who truly worked on the inventory, we found out that we all have many different issues to work on. As we learned under V it’s about us making a choice, but once we choose we do not do the work, God does. We ask God to work on the defects we want removed.
The fact is we are all destined for Hell. God does not send us there. That is already our destination. What God does is throw us a hand to grab on to. Choosing God as king is grabbing the hand. And working out sanctification is holding on till your out. God went to a lot of work to give us that hand and He does not want us to fail. He will do the work if we keep choosing him and asking for His help. We start by asking for help with what we know is wrong.
Our Bible verse for I is Proverbs 16:9 “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps”. Whether we chose God or not he is Lord of all and in control. Once we have chosen to be his even though he gives our free will He has promised to finish the work he started in us if we just keep following, choosing Him, and His way.
C The C in our acrostic stands for: Change your mind
In Romans 12:2 we are told, ”Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what “God’s will is----His good, pleasing and perfect will.” This is telling us we can no longer stay the same. In fact our very way of thinking will change. But there is also another important clue in this verse we must listen too. It says we are to test. This is saying that things that come to us will not always be from God. AS part of helping us we will have the ability to know the right way to go. Can it be that easy? No, satan is the great liar. He will not make it easy for us but we are given another clue, good and pleasing. God’s will is good and pleasing so if we can determine if an action is both good and pleasing we will know the correct path to choose. To learn what is good we read our Bibles daily, go to church when we can, do Bible studies, and generally seek after the Lord with all our heart. Once we have learned what is good we change what we do. The more we know God. The more we know how good God is. The more we experience the pleasure of doing things His way, the more we want to do it His way. God puts a desire in our hearts. We change out of want to instead of have to.
T We are half way through and T is next. It stands for: Turn over character defects
Turning over these defects means we are no longer in control. We are giving that authority to God. Yes I know he always has the authority but God being the master of humility never takes away the free will he gave us. Not until the day of wrath anyway. The best definition of humility I have read is that it is confidence properly placed. We have tried and failed. Now we become humble and properly place our confidence in God and His ability to help us.
That means that when we become aware of things we are doing wrong we listen to what God says. We become humble and try as best we can to do it His way. When we do this James 4:10 says”humble yourselves before the Lord,….He will lift you up.” We do not stand alone even if it looks at times like we are alone.
O We have now come to O which stands for: One day at a Time
You can get fast food. You can get high speed internet. You can do instant messaging. We live in a world of fast paste gotta have it now mentality, but it is simply impossible to get a quick fix on or character defects. It took us time to get to where we are at and it will take us time to heal. And we heal one day at a time. We live in the Now. We can not live in the past with satan constantly reminding us of what we did. What’s done is done and we have the scars and consequences of those actions. Nor should we live in the future, because we are not there yet. Living in the future brings worry or takes our focus off of recovery and opens a door for satan to jump back in. No, we again choose to take the advice of our loving God as he tells in Matthew 6:34 “So don,t be anxious about tomorrow, God will tale care of your tomorrow too. Live one day at a time.”
R The letter R in our acrostic stands for: Recovery is a Process
Our verse for this letter is Philippians dss1:6 which states “and I am sure that God who began a good work within you will keep right on helping you grow in his grace until His task within you Is finally finished on that day when Jesus Christ returns”. This is a process which will not be complete until He comes again. We do not get to rest. But neither do we have to do it all at once. Do not try to complete the whole list of defects all at once. Rather taking one day at a time, we ask God to work in correcting one defect at a time. Ask His help in picking the most important and work your way down.
Personally I have a different set of verses I feel address this subject:
2Pe 1:3 God's divine power has given us everything we need for life and for godliness. This power was given to us through knowledge of the one who called us by his own glory and integrity.
2Pe 1:4 Through his glory and integrity he has given us his promises that are of the highest value. Through these promises you will share in the divine nature because you have escaped the corruption that sinful desires cause in the world.
2Pe 1:5 Because of this, make every effort to add integrity to your faith; and to integrity add knowledge;
2Pe 1:6 to knowledge add self-control; to self-control add endurance; to endurance add godliness;
2Pe 1:7 to godliness add Christian affection; and to Christian affection add love.
2Pe 1:8 If you have these qualities and they are increasing, it demonstrates that your knowledge about our Lord Jesus Christ is living and productive.
2Pe 1:9 If these qualities aren't present in your life, you're shortsighted and have forgotten that you were cleansed from your past sins.
2Pe 1:10 Therefore, brothers and sisters, use more effort to make God's calling and choosing of you secure. If you keep doing this, you will never fall away.
I will Let these verses speak for themselves.
Y Last we come to the letter Y which stands for: You must choose to change
We will open up with the verse for this James 4:6-8 “Gos gives strength to the humble,….so give yourselves humbly to God. Resist the Devil and he will flee from you. And when you draw close to God, God will draw close to you”. Notice that it says we must resist. There will be a period of time In which we are struggling. It reminds of the war movies where against unbearable odds the hero is to hold until relieved.
Well, we are the reluctant hero’s and we are being told to hold until relieved. God promises that he will not give us more than we can bear. Sometimes it seems different, but those are satans lies bombarding us from all directions telling us we can not do what God has said we can. So in the end it is about you. God gave you free will and its up to you to choose to hold, believe god instead of satan. The reward is the fruit of the spirit, joy peace etc. you know.
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