Are you sane? A question we ask ourselves almost all the time. In the Celebrate Recovery bible, todays devotional is on Sanity. It starts out by talking about how at first our coping techniques, when dealing with hardships, may affect our lives in only small ways. But, over time we can develop different hurts, habits and hang-ups that end up with a devastating consequences. In the devo, it goes on by telling different stories of people who have ended up with different consequences. One is about this woman who had just been divorced for the third time. Well, she felt lonely and started to meet men online, which lead to meeting them in person and it ended up in her almost being hurt and having to escape from a car in a deserted area. She realized that she could have been seriously hurt or even killed. Her level of insanity was a matter of life and death. Again, this is from the devo in the CR bible.
In Principle One, we finally faced our denial and admitted that we are powerless to control our tendency to do the wrong thing and that our lives have become unmanageable. It says that in order to gain the needed control we need to practice the second principle on our journey to recovery. And to refresh Principle Two is "Earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to Him and that He has the power to help me recover." We begin to change by allowing Jesus Christ to restore our sanity, order and meaning to life. He gives us strength to change and set realistic expectations that we expect from ourselves.
As we get back to the Christ-centered 12 steps to recovery, step 2 helps us restore sanity. Step Two says, "We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." We do need to know what the word Sanity means in this step. But, first the word Insanity in this context is "doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result each time. While Sanity can be defined as "wholeness of mind; making decisions based on the truth."
Jesus is the only Higher Power who offers the truth, the way, the life, and the power.
The result for admitting to being powerless in Principle One, we can move from chaos to hope in Principle Two. This devotional says that Hope enters the picture when we come to believe that a power greater than ourselves, our Higher Power, Jesus Christ, can and will restore us. Christ alone can provide the needed power over our addictions and compulsive behaviors. he alone can restore order and meaning to our lives. He alone can restore us to sanity.
"It is God who works in you to will and to act according to him good purpose."
Philippians 2:13
Hope you all had a great day!
Raeann