Spiritual Survival Guide
6: Keeping It Going: Moving Beyond Survival Mode
who and how we are . Here’s how the A.A. folks put it: Step Ten: We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Step Eleven: We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. When you hit step ten in A.A. or one of the other 12-step programs, something interesting kicks in. You get a kind of worksheet. A daily log. A checklist. It’s similar to that searching and fearless moral inventory of step 4, only this time it’s only for today. You forget the past. You forget yesterday. And you just focus on today. Just keep it current. Ask yourself “How did today go?” Here’s the underlying idea: Today nothing should be left out. Nothing of who I am should be left out of the process. All that I am, everything that I’ve got, it’s all part of the mix. No motive unexamined. No behav- ior unchecked. None of my bad and self-destructive and God-dishonor- ing habits are going to be allowed to grow back unopposed. To make sure that nothing gets left out, you find yourself a 10th-step buddy, an accountability partner who’s going through the same thing at the same time. Just as it’s easier to clean house when you’re doing it with someone else, it’s easier to do your ongoing spiritual house-cleaning with someone else. Because buddy systems work. Because God made us to encourage each other We’re talking about spiritual “growth.” Not perfection. Growth . A.A. calls it “ improving our conscious contact with God. ” We call it growing closer in our relationship with God, going deeper and becoming more
disciplined in our prayer life, being transformed and growing into the image of Christ. In one place, the Bible puts it this way: May you be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. (Colossians 3:16) It’s about the growth process of being filled, of growing, of bearing fruit. And so the point of moving on to steps 10 and 11 is to move from the crisis of the intervention stage to rehab and renewal and restoration. It’s to move from damage control to some new construction, from emptiness to fulfillment, from decay to growth, from powerlessness to empowerment, and leaving nothing out in the process. It’s about just living the Christian life one day at a time, walking the Christian walk, just putting one foot in front of the other. Instead of constantly bouncing off the walls, this is where we get grounded. This is where the lessons take deep root, where the insights get put into action, where we get empowered, where nothing gets left out and everything gets engaged. This is where we’re finally in position to take the final step. Step Twelve: Mission We carry the message. We give it away. We pass it on. We give ourselves in love. We leave no one behind. We’ve now come eleven steps towards a changed life in God. Each step building on the last. Each step intensifying the transformation. Each step growing in power. Eleven steps of accumulated power and insight and truth and freedom. Eleven steps to concentrate spiritual change. And then one final step to unleash its power for others. One step to
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