When I stopped drinking, the fog cleared and I peeked through to what was real again—glimpsing truth, and not the story I had made up. When I am out of denial, I can remain above the emotional weather.
The alcohol that I thought was helping me cope, was just fogging my vision of the truth—keeping me in the fog. It was taking me further into darkness. I heard a woman say in a meeting yesterday, “I can truly say that there is no spirituality without physical sobriety.”
Once I surrendered the obsessive drinking part to God. He took it. That was the physical part of my sobriety. By choice, I turned to God to help me solve this physical addiction. That choice opened the door to a personal relationship with God— a partnership.
Once the physical drinking was gone, there was still my thinking. A friend of mine always says, “It’s not the drinking, it’s the thinking.” The alcohol was not an option anymore to blur my thinking. My brain was clear, but my thinking was not. My mind can still play tricks on me in the form of denial. I don’t want to stop thinking. But, my best thinking got me in trouble in the first place. At times, OVER-thinking! That’s where the spiritual part of my sobriety starts.
I have to partner my thinking with God’s will. I get to pray and ask for God’s help—then surrender to His will—for God to guide and direct my thinking and for His will to be revealed. I pause to consider the circumstances surrounding my decision. God often works through the situations I find myself in. He speaks to me through the people in my life.
How do I shift from my will into God’s will? I try to pay attention to the feelings or prompts I receive. The Holy Spirit guides me out of the dark toward the light and then the right choice. Then I have to trust God for the outcome.
How do I do trust?
With faith. The illusion in this life is that I have control of the outcome. I do not. First, I pray every morning to get out of God’s way with prayer—relieve me of the bondage of self, that I might better do your will.
G.K. Chesterton said this, “God is like the sun; you cannot look at it, but without it you cannot look at anything else.”
Whew, Yes! I want to look at the world of choices I have through the God Lens. That is Trust. I already KNOW what MY will is—I have to have faith and trust that God will show me how to walk in His Will.
Trust God with the details. Then pay attention.
Pray.
Listen.
Trust.
God’s will, not mine be done.
"Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.”
Psalm 143:10
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