Steps 1 & 2: Coming to Grace Through Recovery!

Thomas Watson

Getting over an addiction and at the same time coming to learn Christian humility, the true power of prayer and a deep sense of God's grace…Wow!

Grace is God's gift of love to us. A gift of love that we do not earn, and in fact as we are all sinners, do not deserve, but God gives it to us anyways. We cannot seek grace, we can only accept grace, for it is what God gives freely to all who will take it.

And it’s a beautiful thing, and it's also a very hard thing. It sounds easy – to just accept a gift from God – but in practice, especially if we have been drinking or drugging, we often feel unworthy of this gift and we do not let God's grace shine in.

But God Loves the Broken!

We forget that God does not ask of us to decide if we are worthy of his gift. He has chosen us, we do not choose Him! God knows we are sinners all, and in fact at the Sermon on the Mount, He made it pretty clear who would be invited first into the Kingdom of Heaven. It is not the people, who lead seemingly perfect lives, do all the right things and say all the right things (but without grace) that God favors…it is the broken and downtrodden, who will say to God, "I am broken and I need your help to do better" that He wants!

The first step to accepting Gods grace, and not surprisingly, the first steps of Christian recovery, is admitting to yourself and to God that you cannot do it without Him. Admitting But by the Grace of God I am what I am! Corinthians 15:10. Knowing in your heart that without God's gift of grace, you cannot live as God wishes, and you cannot do the things, like recover from addiction, that you need to do to live a good Christian life!

Steps 1 and 2 of the Christian twelve steps are steps towards accepting God's gift of grace into our hearts, and knowing that without God's grace we can never get better.

Step one has us admit that we cannot beat addiction on our own. We've tried and we've failed, and we need to let go.

Step 2 has us accept that although we cannot do it on our own, that through a trust in the Lord, through an acceptance of his grace, that we can get better.

Once you can accept, truly accept in your heart that there are things in this life that you cannot do on your own, but that you can do through the grace of God, you are on the right path to recovery!

Grace Doesn’t Mean That You Can Just Sit There and Get Better!

God gives us the gift of grace, it's a gift and we don’t do anything to deserve it or not, actually, the point of grace is that it's something we get even though we don’t deserve it!

This doesn’t mean though that we can just say "OK, I accept God's grace…why do I still drink?"

Grace gives us the ability to do good things…to DO them! Through grace we gain the desire and the strength and ability to live as God wishes. We're not perfect, and we never will be, but through God's grace we do the best we can. If we feel God's grace we feel a desire to do right, and if we feel God's grace, we have the strength of Christ to help us!

When we start to accept and live by God's grace, we gain the ability to do things we can’t do on our own. We can’t stop drinking on our own, but once we can feel God's grace, He will give us the strength and desire to do what needs to be done to get better!

Grace doesn't mean that you can just sit there; you are still going to have to work at your recovery. Accepting God's grace just means that with His help, with His gift of grace, you can now do what you could never do without His help.

You can’t get better on your own, yet far from this being a negative thing, when this spurs you to feel God's grace, to realize that it's His gift to you that has led you to recovery, and that through His strength, you can get better…it's an incredible feeling.