Pathway to Peace

I just want to take a few minutes tonight to say hello and to let you know the whole team at Celebrate Recovery misses you and is excited to get back to our Friday nights!

If you are new, CR meets every Friday in the teen center, or the Box, at Crosswinds Church. We have been meeting there for over 13 years!

It is a safe place to heal, a confidential place to share and to learn, and a healthy environment to meet new people, find some accountability and to recognize you are not alone!

We hope you can join us soon on-site. More details to come regarding when we can meet on site…stay tuned to social media and to our website (crosswinds.church/cr) for more details.

Announcements;

CR on-site

Guidelines

Crosswinds re-open

Phone number, CR to 332-2218

Some of you will head out this weekend to be with family and friends to celebrate the 4th of July! For those of us here in the Finger Lakes on Canandaigua Lake, the weather is amazing!

I want to share one scripture with you today that I found very encouraging.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=81&v=umHi4Uhv1YU&feature=emb_logo

Nourishment for our Recovery

We need food for sustenance, growth and physical health. When we eat, we grow stronger. The better we eat, the better our physical health. It goes back to that old add-age…garbage in garbage out. How about we don’t count that for this 4th of July weekend! Likewise…we could use the same acrostic...”gigo” and say good in good out.

I am not the best model to gauge the gigo analogy for my diet choices. But, I can tell you that I am continuing to learn what is best for me and follow guidelines that help me stay in a fairly healthy place.

Well, we know that proper nourishment is needed for healthy recovery growth as well. What do I mean by that?

At Celebrate Recovery we recognize we cannot hide from the facts.

Life is challenging

Stuff happens

Sometimes because of me and sometimes because of someone else

Sometimes just when we think have a foothold on that very struggle, it sneaks up and slaps us in the face. - Unexpected...

Think back to our physical health....when I am healthy to start, the healing process from an illness or a surgery or even a broken bone can be (not always) but is more likely to be quicker and easier.

The same goes for our recovery health, when we are continuing to work and grow in our recovery, that “slap in the face” as it were may sting, but it doesn’t have to leave me helpless.

I think these last several months of unrest and stepping into the unknown have been:

challenging (to put it mildly)

Have not been our fault (although our reaction is under our control)

And may have come right at a time when you thought you had a firm foothold in your recovery.

Let me first encourage you by letting you know that “you” never had a firm foothold anyway. How can that be an encouragement? Because it can’t be just “you” in your recovery. To gain true ground, you must include your recovery team. As we have shared on these FB live events, Recovery must include your

accountability team,

must include your recovery meetings

and must include God.

The firm foothold comes when you combine these things so that you can gain a firm grasp and you can move into tomorrow with confidence.

When you prioritize these areas, when the struggle attempts to knock you off balance, you have strength to stand.

So how do I keep this momentum going?

and, What if I’m stalled?

Pathway

I came across a Scripture I have been studying these past few weeks and I thought it so encompassed the healthy path we must follow to pursue new life, through a “healthy recovery”.

In the verses prior, Peter is teaching the reader that all those things necessary for living a new life are readily available to us.

All that we need to escape the life of hurts, habits and hangups of the past is right there for us to grab hold of.

No longer do we have to live day-to-day unable to overcome ....unable to move forward.

The answer is not found simply in the how, but rather in the Who.

Through Jesus, God has provided the Who...... through faith (our personal belief, our trust, our obedience) in Him, we encounter the how...

to me, the verse read like a manual to changing your life…and isn’t that what recovery is all about?

2 Peter 1:5–10 ESV

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.

This verse is so full of guidance and instruction for us. Not in a legalistic form, but rather in a step by step process. These verses remind me to take it step by step. Each choice taking me closer to the joy and to the hope…to the new life found in and through Jesus.

I want to read it one more time to you…but this time in the Message translation:

2 Peter 1:3–11 The Message

Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received! We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you—your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust. So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books. So, friends, confirm God’s invitation to you, his choice of you. Don’t put it off; do it now. Do this, and you’ll have your life on a firm footing, the streets paved and the way wide open into the eternal kingdom of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ.

I encourage you to meditate on those verses this week, whether you are in a good healthy period, or whether you are picking up the pieces from some wrong choices. For those in the healthy period these verses remind us of the path we must maintain to stay on track .... In turmoil, these verses (step by step) will guide back onto the pathway to peace.

If you learn something new as you study this passage this week, share it with someone else. It is in our desire to share with one another that we can be both an encouragement to the and to ourselves.

I look forward to following up on any comments this week.

Closing

I look forward to being back together with you soon! We will be posting some details on our website (crosswinds.church/CR, on FB and other social media outlets. Stay tuned. Fridays will look a little different, but with change comes opportunity! Let’s embrace the opportunities

I encourage you to choose to have a safe, healthy 4th of July celebration.

Blessings

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