“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.” Galatians 5:22-26
Step 11: We sough through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and power to carry that out.
I don’t know about you, but early on in recovery, I had a hard time understanding what God’s will for me was. I knew I had stopped drinking and drugging and for sure God wanted that for me. But what about the other stuff that make up our hurts, habits, and hang-ups? Or more accurately, was I willing to give up my character flaws to God as well?
Celebrate Recovery clarified for me the coexistence of flesh and spirit. My confusion was based on focusing on earthly things to measure my success. The tug and pull of flesh (sin) and spirit is an ongoing dilemma. But what I have learned is progress, not perfection, spiritual maturation is a process, not a one-step phenomenon.
What I have learned about God’s will for me is based on my changing character, rooted deeply in spiritual values. The fruit of the spirit is a reflection of God’s character ingrained in us as we learn to live from the inside out, not from the outside world surrounding us. As we mature in spirit, we see our will surrender to God’s will as we start living in a new way expressed in the fruit of the spirit. We see more clearly how the Holy Spirit is leading us to become more spirit-filled as we experience the true freedom found in Christ Jesus. “Praying only for God’s will for us and the power to carry it out.”
Do you see God working in our life today? Don’t forget to thank God for the work he is doing in you.
Dana Cramer
Celebrate Recovery // Crossroads Church
CELEBRATE RECOVERY/CROSSROADS CHURCH UPDATES/REMINDERS:
- If you are in need of prayer, please send your prayer requests to [email protected] and we will forward those to our Celebrate Recovery Prayer Team. The Crossroads Church Prayer Team would also love to pray for you, so when you send your email, please note if you are okay with us forwarding your prayer request to the church.
- Fridays at 6:30pm, we are hosting “CR Friday Night Live.” To subscribe to our YouTube channel, please click on the following link and select the subscribe button. CR YouTube Channel Link. There will be a song or two of worship and then a short recovery based dialogue between a couple of CR members. This will be streamed on YouTube.
- On Fridays we will be hosting on-line open share group meetings at 7:30pm. There will be one mixed issues group for men and one mixed issues group for women. Men’s Open Share Group Sign-Up / Women’s Open Share Group Sign-Up. These meetings will take place using the Zoom App. In order to participate you will need a tablet, smart-phone or computer with camera. In order to ensure confidentiality of these meetings everyone who participates will need to find a private room to set up, have their camera on, so others can see that there is no one else in the room and they will also need to wear a pair of headphones so that they are the only ones that can hear. This is a free app and you can download it on google play, apple app store or through your web-browser on your computer. For help on how to join a Zoom meeting please click on the the following link, which will take you to their support web-site Zoom Set-Up Help
