Hand-in-Hand Ministries of Connecticut
Some folks think church and recovery are incompatible. Folks in church say you don't need recovery. Folks in recovery say you don't need church. Well, I'm here to tell you, I need both, y'all. Folks just don't know. What I really don't need is folks telling me what they think I need and don't need. The One whose eye is on the sparrow is watching over me and it ain't anybody down here. Genesis does not start, "In the beginning, folks who think they know ...."
I met God through recovery before I went to church. No plan of mine. It was His Seeking Grace. As the songwriter said, "He sought me and he bought me with His redeeming blood." He went out of His way to find me when I wasn't even looking for Him. It was the Holy Ghost that I learned to listen to in recovery that told me,"Go to church - and stay in recovery!"
I need church to help replenish my spirit because I surely don't want to go to hell. And I need recovery to help me stay out of hell. As a friend heard a preacher from Mississippi say, "My flesh ain't saved." I have the spirit of God inside of me, but my flesh ain't saved. I've got a war going on inside of me between the flesh and the spirit - the one Paul talks about in Romans 7:17-19. In warfare, you had better know your enemy or he will blind side you. There isn't any referee to drop the flag on the devil and call a clipping penalty. You just be lying on the ground and got to pick your own self up.
But don't you know that the Word of God tells me to put on the whole armor -
• Not just a couple of pieces
• Not just the bits folks say I should wear
• But the whole armor
I need to take up every weapon and every shield that the one true God, in His Amazing Grace, has made available to me.
I am not turning my back on any help that God chooses to give me. I have done some sinful, hurtful, stupid stuff since I came into recovery and since I've been saved - stuff that I deeply regret - stuff that hurt people I care about, some of whom I do not have the opportunity to make amends to. I lost a couple of skirmishes in that spiritual warfare and found myself lying on the ground wondering how I got there.
But the God of All Grace, speaking through not one, but three of His appointed and anointed shepherds, told me, "Get up." The same God that told Isaiah to comfort His people in the midst of the searing fire of judgment (Is. 40:1) has given me to know that He can, will and does use my brokenness for His purpose. He had shown me how my awareness of my brokenness has made me more tolerant, more patient, more caring.
When I speak today, be it from the pulpit or a one-to-one, the spark is stronger, the urgency is greater. I recognize those Jabez appointments that Bruce Wilkinson wrote about sooner. And I don't turn my back on them. The LORD has taught me to better see and understand myself, that I may better see and understands the burdens of His people, that I may be a better servant.
Now, you know it wasn't in church that I learned to look at myself - are you kidding? I love church and I love church folks, but some church folks are blind-stuck. Pray for them, but don't listen to them. No it wasn't in church. It was in recovery. It was in working the steps. The Holy Spirit gave me the desire to look, my determined faith in a loving God gave me the strength to look, even when I didn't like what I saw. I was told when I came into the rooms of recovery that if I wanted to get better, to get up off my bottom and be what God purposed for me to be. It as suggested to me that I work the steps - kinda like the ripcord on the parachute, it is only suggested that you pull it. With God's Grace, I learned to look at myself in recovery. There is no 4th step in church.
These are hard times in a dry and thirsty land.
There are flowers out there waiting to bloom, waiting for a drink of living water.
I want to carry the bucket.
To do that, I need everything that God gives me.
I need church.
I need recovery.
I need both, y'all.
- Clay on the Wheel