10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
I took a personal inventory late last night and it was very revealing. Marti made me get up out of bed to write it down lest I forget it by morning which is my standard practice. I have a complicated system of forgetfulness, and no, it’s not Alzheimers. It’s a coping mechanism. I’ve been doing this most of my life. I conveniently forget whatever is too painful to remember. And change is painful.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Today we’re going to take this right/wrong discussion to a whole new level. We’re going to give up the whole need to be right and conclude that the only “right” version of what we’re looking at together is what the other person actually sees. In other words, I’m going to give up my need to be right for the more noble cause of taking up the other person’s perspective.
Being right is way overrated.
My wife, Marti, and I have an imaginary sign we pass back and forth to each other to hold up as needed. The sign simply says, “YOU’RE RIGHT; I’M WRONG.” That we frequently make use of this sign says that we argue a lot and that holding up this sign is the last resort of a wounded warrior. In other words, we’re competitive and we hate to be wrong. We will fight until the bitter end, and only hold up the sign when we get proven wrong or give up.
Did you ever think that Jesus might have utilized the Twelve Steps of AA? It’s true. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested, He was well into Step Eleven. It’s just that the rest of His group was asleep, so He had to go it alone. But everything He was experiencing that night in the garden is expressed in the eleventh step which reads: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, what we remember and celebrate this weekend, is the only reason there can be steps that lead us anywhere. Without Christ going through the cross there can be no forgiveness of sins. Without Christ going through the cross there can be no resurrection from the dead. Without Christ going through the cross there can be no hope for a future. Without Christ going through the cross there can be no power to carry out God’s will for our lives.
Step 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
I had a Catholic friend tell me recently that I was sounding more Catholic these days, especially in a recent Catch where I talked about dealing with sin as a progression in our lives (see “Meeting sin head-on”). I love it when I hear that. I love it when Lutherans tell me I’m sounding more Lutheran, Baptists tell me I’m sounding more Baptist, Anglicans tell me I’m sounding more Anglican — you see where I’m going with this. (I’ve even had Mormons tell me I’m sounding more Mormon.) That’s because we all have the truth, the only difference being that each discipline emphasizes a certain part of the truth. So that if you are speaking the whole truth, you will be touching on all of them while sounding more like each one by the minute. Comments like that tell me I’m on the right track.
Prophets and priests alike,
all practice deceit.
They dress the deep wounds of my people
as though they were not serious.
Jeremiah 6:13-14
Remember the movie, “What About Bob?” Where Richard Dreyfuss plays the psychiatrist whose private life is hounded by the neurosis of one of his patients (Bill Murray)? In his attempts to bring Bob out of his multiple personality disorders, he gives him a copy of his newly released book, Baby Steps, which he promises will help Bob make his way towards normalcy.
Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near. Revelation 1:3
I think Revelation should be required reading for all believers at least once a year. It’s a little like setting your watch. We can get so entrenched in everyday life that we lose sight of the bigger picture. The bigger picture — the forest we lose sight of for all the trees in front of us — is the fact that this world, and time itself, is passing away. There is an end in sight. Life does not go on indefinitely even if it feels like it.
Michael McCausland
I’ve been to a week of boot camp in Colorado Springs. Now before you have me crawling through mud, scaling fences and running miles with a 50-pound pack on my back, it wasn’t military boot camp I attended, it was an Entrepreneurship Boot Camp led by Michael McCausland, one of four people authorized to use the MIT Disciplined Entrepreneurship model upon which this training is based. I chose to take this experience because it was going to be a crash course in an area where I have consistently been weak and disobedient when it comes to my own personal addictions. I figured this course would jump start my own development in the right direction. It did. It also did more than that.
I hope you are taking advantage of our recent BlogTalkRadio podcasts related to the Twelve Steps that are listed and linked below. Our recent one with Robbie Goldman of Dry Bones Denver was particularly enlightening. Robbie works with homeless kids in downtown Denver and he talked about how when he first started thinking about going through the Twelve Steps he was thinking how good this would be for the kids they work with, many of whom are addicted to drugs and alcohol. But one of the first things he and his staff had to shed was that very kind of thinking that says the steps are for someone else. No, they’re for us. And so he and his staff went through the Twelve Steps before they ever went over them with their kids. And when they take the kids with them, they all go through the steps together. And Robbie says the number of times he’s been through the steps doesn’t matter. He learns something new about himself every time. Robbie is convinced that the Twelve Steps use a language of spirituality that the western church needs to wake up to — real words, not the lingo we talk.
John Fischer The Catch 