To believe, we have to trust. Trust is the key component of belief. When I was a teenager I broke my relationship with God. It was a relationship that had developed through the early religious training I received in Catholic grade school. The fact that I broke my relationship with God did not change that I had always believed in God. I believed in God even while I was living the life of an alcoholic -- in utter pandemonium. My behaviors had nothing to do with my belief in Him. It was my lack of trust in Him which led me astray from a relationship with Him for so long. Trust, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is "assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something".
To have such certainty for the Supreme Power requires humility, exactly that which the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous gives us. The incorporation of the steps of such a program into our lives begins the break down of our egos, so that humility (and all the many benefits from it) can seep into our lives. After some time we actually develop a hunger for it. I have learned in my experience with the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that humility is the key which unlocks the door to the grace of God. It is only through this grace that we remain sober and recovered from our addictions and the manifestation of our character defects. Our egos must be deflated and our human desires subrogated to the will of God. Belief is necessary but trust is essential.
TRUST IS THE KEY COMPONENT OF BELIEF.
The Twelve Steps have had an effect on my life that alcohol could never provide. While I thirsted for alcohol to make me feel whole, its effect was a fraudulent manifestation of the person I was born to be. Pride and fear comprised my daily operating principles. Humility in any form was absent from my life and Trust was achingly unavailable. Step by step, interlocked as the basis for permanent recovery, I began to uncover fragments of humility, followed as promised, by an awakening to The Power Within me and a subsequent safe place to live. As you point out, I was always looking for faith, tortured by its elusiveness, and self-condemned to the ultimate depth. Today I am aware of The Force and t thirst for more. In AA, I have been gifted with The Power to sate the formerly insatiable me. And to know with certainty and without thinking that The Force is always with me.
ReplyDeleteMichael loved when you wrote "I have been gifted with the power to sate the formerly insatiable me." The Theological definition of Grace is "Divine love and protection bestowed freely upon mam." Belief in god alone wont bring to us the Grace of God but trusting enough to "turn our will and our life over to the care of God" will bring to us the grace of God...Thank you...Armand
ReplyDeleteFive minutes before I sat down to write this I was in a state of distress. I had an emptiness in my gut that had been there for days, almost the week entirely. The anguish and despair that's just couldn't shake were tormenting me. I recalled my sponsor guiding me through a rough energy, telling me I had to "change my state" - and I knew it had to be done. But how?
ReplyDeleteI meant to pray but instead just tried to connect with God. I knew I believed in Him and His miraculous abilities but it wasn't until I trusted that He was already there(here, with me…now) that I could breathe steady once again. I imagined what the depths of the palace of my mind looked like and led the feeling of Him and Love towards the destruction. Like a cloud passing over and revealing the sun my pain was taken away and the presence of joy restored to its home, me.
I couldn't have changed anything without first trusting I wasn't doing it alone. What would I do without this knowledge? That I don't know.
Caitlin Happy that you were able to find a relief from your human state by trusting in the source of your spiritual state. As it says in How It Works "that one is God may you fin Him now." Trust is the key component of belief...Thank you...Armand
ReplyDeleteI love reading your replies to one another. Without giving away any plot secrets of The Force Awakens, Han explains to the uninitiated that the force "is true, all of it." Han's total transformation from unbeliever to believer showcases the power of human transformation so evident in these blogs and in your lives.
ReplyDeleteUnknown Thank you so much for your comment. The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous if integrated into ones life in such a way that it becomes there life transforms an atheist or an agnostic to a believer and a believer into praying only for the knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry it out...Thank you...Armand
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