Faith without God

We can have faith yet keep God out of our lives. Therefore our problem now becomes just how and by what specific means shall we be able to let Him in? Step Three represents our first attempt to do this. (AA's Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 34.) 

 

What an intriguing statement: We can have faith yet keep God out of our lives. It's not intriguing because it rings false but because it is so obviously true! Yet it feels like almost heresy. (My editor friends want to turn that around. I have considered it and will leave it this way.) That's what's so neat about recovery, though, is that heresy is not only permitted but ENCOURAGED! If we don't like the God we grew up with, if we don't like the preacher's God or the commonly understood one, then we pick a God of our choosing. We invent God. No, we define God. He's already invented, but we have to discover him and find him for ourselves. And at that point, when the God we're talking to/about/with is comfortable and right, we start looking at destroying the wall we've built up between us and the God of our culture, family, church, history. At that point the wall becomes superfluous, and at some point it actually becomes a nuisance. God, get me to the point that every time I throw up another wall, every time I resurrect the old ones, they're a nuisance and I actively WANT to tear them down!

 

...anyone, anyone at all, can begin to do it. We can further add that a beginning, even the smallest, is all that is needed. (ibid., p. 35)

 

When I first was pregnant, I was 30 years old pursuing an advanced degree, already having two degrees. The stories about pregnancy and birth bothered me some -- more than the concept of being a parent and having that awesome responsibility. But I dealt with the fears by figuring anything all those other women had done for all those years, I was fully capable of doing, so the fears went away. Somehow the idea that "anyone can do it" has always been meaningful to me. The wording here, though, is interesting: anyone, anyone at all, can begin to do it. I find helpful the theory that you should spend fifteen seconds every day on that big, intimidating project you want done. The time can even be spent thinking about doing something about it, but most days an action should be taken--and of course it's that first opening the file, picking up the notepad, whatever the first step is that's the hardest part, and once you actually open the file on the computer or whatever, you're going to spend more time, but to know that you only have to spend fifteen seconds to accomplish the commitment works. This idea, anyone at all can begin to do it. Just asking God to make you willing to be willing is a beginning to it, and that takes less than fifteen seconds. And the results are awesome.

 

Though self-will may slam it shut again, as it frequently does, it will always respond the moment we again pick up the key of willingness. (ibid.)

 

The first time you take the lid off the pickle jar, it may take banging on the counter top upside down, it may take running hot water -- or is it cold -- over the lid and heating the other part, it may take one of those gripping devices, but normally the second and subsequent times opening the jar is a breeze. I've re-opened this door today. Yesterday I didn't do what I should have done, could have sung along with Paul in Romans 7:14-25:

For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

But I know that after that is the glorious chapter Romans 8. I lived Romans 7 yesterday. Today I'm in Romans 8. And I started this entry yesterday and quit, but today I picked it up and I've done it.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.... Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.