Midweek: Step Four

So, here's where the rubber meets the road, as they say, Step Four of Walking the Twelve Steps with Jesus Christ:

I made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself, seeking to identify the wrongs of my past life.

Let's talk about "wrongs." Wrongs as we experience them are negative, hurtful events that happen in the process of living. We are wronged. We wrong others. They are identified by pain and discomfort in our spirit. Wrongs, I'm going to say, more narrowly, more biblically defined are any behavior toward another person which results in the breaking of the love relationship; any behavior contrary to God's command to love one another. I feel the first definition; I have felt it for years. The second, narrower, more biblically based definition calls me to move past what I have felt, to think about what I have inflicted (perhaps in response to what I have felt), and to point my life toward Jesus Christ. And that is the backbone of recovery and the backbone of the Gospel: here is your condition; here is something better. Saved from sin to more. Of course, there are some steps in between, some specifics, but in a nutshell, we cannot move toward who we were created to be without realizing we're not there yet, and there is no point in moving from where we are without realizing there is more we were meant to be.

Don't get me wrong, this is not a "best self" talk. This is not about looking yourself in the mirror each morning and doing affirmations about your great teeth or your business acumen. This is not about careful monitoring of your "path to happiness" or eliminating scads of people who impede your "mental wellness." Sidenote: if you've had to eliminate scads, it might not be them --just sayin'. This is not something quantitative or self-directed. This is giving your self into the care of your Creator, your Father (if you claim the blood of Jesus over your will and your life) that His Spirit might work to make you holy, more like the "you" He designed you to be, more like the "you" before you were wronged, more like the "you" before you wronged others, more like the "you" that would have been had you not been born into sin. It's a process, but it's His process. We can allow it; we can obey Him in corroboration with it; but we cannot do it through our own efforts.

Step Four tells us that part of this process is wading through the ugly and uncomfortable. Something of an irony, really, because it's usually the ugly and uncomfortable that cause us to seek out and adopt addictive behaviors in the first place. So now, here we are, face-to-face with them, staring them down by the power of the Holy Spirit, and saying, "God, will You please take these?" We ask forgiveness from Him where there is need. We ask Him for peace and healing where we are broken. And we ask Him, from this point forward, to guide us in life as we live it so that we do not find ourselves in the same place again. Here is where we are/were; here is where, by Your grace, I want to be. It may sound like, "I betrayed my spouse; I want to be a trustworthy partner." Or "I have allowed this pain to control me for so long; I want to obey only You, God." It's a tough step and, perhaps, the one that may take the longest; but it is a turning point, the place where past meets future in the present. This is the point at which we link the lessons of the past, God's forgiveness and healing of our past, with the Hope of our present and future, Jesus Christ, and the empowerment of His Holy Spirit.