Lesson #7 Sponsor (2 of 2) - For God Fore His Glory

STEP FOUR

(WHILE SEEKING FRIENDSHIP WITH JESUS)
WE MADE A SEARCHING AND FEARLESS
MORAL INVENTORY OF OURSELVES.

“Let us examine our ways and test them, and
Let us return to the Lord,” Lamentations 3:40

PRINCIPLE FOUR

OPENLY EXAMINE AND CONFESS MY FAULTS
TO MYSELF, TO GOD AND TO SOMEONE I TRUST

“Happy are the pure in heart,” Matthew 5:8

LESSON SEVEN
SPONSOR
PART TWO

Working this step means
- We acknowledge feelings are a part of us
  - Feeling our feelings
  - Allowing ourselves to have feelings
    - Is a key to our inner healing and recovery

One goal of this step is to open up
- So the emotional part of ourselves can heal

Working this step means we accept truth
- Feelings are not the disease
  - Not feeling them
  - Repressing them
  - Holding back is the problem
    - Unfelt feelings can cause disease
While working this step, we can accept truth that we can heal
- Our healing is possible
We can heal at as deep a level
- As we have been affected
We don’t have to work this step perfectly or well enough
- It will work because of the effort we make to work it
- It will start a process of moving us forward on our journey
While working this step, be as honest as possible
- Be open
- Be willing to do what feels right for you
- Don’t let it overwhelm you
- Do it when it feels right to do so
- Be Kind
  - Gentle
  - Compassionate with yourself
- Not judgmental
  - Critical
While working this step, we may come to a place where we need to admit
- The life practice we have made of avoiding ourselves
While working this step, your inventory may seem
- Primitive
- Rudimentary
  - That’s ok because
    - ALL this step asks is the best form of self-examination
      you can give
    - That will be sufficient enough to propel you along the road
      to inner healing and recovery

A future Fourth Step will become more refined as
- We become more aware of what bothers us
- Other secrets we have felt badly about
- Things that were overlooked
While working this step, we begin the crucial process of examining
our behaviors
- Most likely we won’t like it
  - We will discover it is good pain
    - Healing pain
We take this step
- Not to blame
- Not to hold ourselves responsible for the behavior of others;
  instead to
  - Explore
  - Understand
  - Take responsibility for
  - Cherish who we really are
We take this step to enable ourselves to
- Heal
- Take care of ourselves in any circumstance
If we don’t know what issue to deal with
- Ask God to reveal it
  - He will answer
Not facing our pain, not facing our fears, is often the great motivator
to the self-defeating behaviors we have developed

Taking this step which requires us to look within is the key to
- Releasing our pain
- Producing inner healing
- Recovery
- Health in our lives
Taking this step will help us to stop looking to others to stop our pain
and help us feel better
- With the help of our Higher Power
  - We’ll begin to do that for ourselves
While working this step be
- Honest
- Kind
- Gentle
- Understanding with yourself
We have been doing what we believed we needed to do to survive
- Now we are on our way
  - To becoming fully alive
  - To being an overcomer

Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully
On the grace to be given you when Jesus is revealed. As obedient children,
Do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as He
Who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written:
“Be holy, because I am holy”
1 Peter 1:13-16.

This excerpt of Pastor Ray Stedman’s sermon on “THE FOUNDATIONS,” offers better
understanding:

“CHOSEN IN HIM BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD!”

Do you see what that does for our sense of identity as Christians? We are not afterthoughts in
God’s working. We are not accidental members of His body. There are no second-class citizens
in the church of Jesus Christ; we are all equal, chosen of the Father, selected to be members of
His family, added to the new creation, the new order that God is producing in this world.

What a fantastic privilege! It is not because of anything in us, but because of everything in Him.
The purpose of all this is that we are to be holy and blameless. God says that He chose us for
that reason, that we might be holy and blameless!

Now, I’d like to ask a question: How many of you here are holy? Raise your hands, would you?

I submit to you that these great facts are so revolutionary, so radical, that we hesitate to
believe them! We hesitate to apply them to ourselves despite the fact that they are true. The
reason we hesitate is that we have such distorted ideas of what these words mean. We think
that holiness is sanctimoniousness, and that it results from a kind of theological de-worming
process we must go through, and we don’t want to claim that for ourselves. But it is not that
at all.

HOLINESS means “WHOLENESS,” and WHOLENESS means “to be restored to the originally
intended functioning,” to be put to the proper use, that’s all. Physical wholeness prevails
when the body works the way it was supposed to. And, when your whole being functions
the way it was intended to do, you are holy.

Now let’s look at the other one, BLAMELESS. Most people refuse to think of themselves as
blameless because they know that they have done many things for which they ought properly
to be blamed. That is, they have made choices, deliberately, against Light, against knowledge
of the results. They have purposely done that which they knew they ought not to have done.
They could have done otherwise but didn’t. And who is not in that boat? Therefore, they feel
they are to be blamed. But they are confusing this word with another, because it is not SINLESS.
Never having done anything wrong is SINLESSNESS. But you can be sinful, and still be
blameless. Do you know how? By handling your sin in the right way.

If you did something that injured someone else, and the full result of it was not visible to you
when you did it, but afterward you saw how much you had hurt the person, and you
acknowledged it, apologized to them, did what you could to restore it, then there would be
nothing further you could do, would there? And from that point on you would be blameless.
You would not be sinless — you still did it — but you also did all you could to handle it rightly.

The idea is the same with our offenses against God. What can you do about your sins, your
evil? You can’t go back and straighten it all out, no, but you can accept His forgiveness. You
can acknowledge your need. You can put it back into His capable hands to straighten out
the results. And when you’ve done that, you’re blameless!

This is what God has chosen for us to do — to learn this wonderful process of being WHOLE
and BLAMELESS. Notice that these things are to be reckoned true even though we don’t feel
that way. That is the way it is in nature also.

You get up in the morning and look at the sun and say, “The sun rose this morning.” It looks
as though the sun were traveling around the earth. But you know better than that, don’t you?
You look out across the landscape, and it looks flat, and you say, “The earth must be flat.”
No, you know better. Even though you can’t see that the earth is round, and revolves around
the sun, you have learned to accept these facts despite your feelings. That is exactly what we
are called on to do here. Accept the fact that God chose you in Christ to make you HOLY and
BLAMELESS. And as you walk before Him in His prescribed way that is what you are. And then
rejoice in that great fact. Now look at the second great aspect which is recorded of the work
of the Father, and which is related to the first:

“He destined us in love to be His sons through Jesus Christ,
According to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious
Grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved”
Ephesians 1:5-6 RSV

Here is a partial explanation of how God takes care of all the past failures and the shame of
our lives, in order to produce someone who is HOLY and BLAMELESS. It is by means of a
change of family relationship. “He destined us to be sons,” or, literally, He “foreordained us
to Sonship standing,” or, as the Authorized Version puts it, to “Adoption” as sons.

We are familiar with the process of adoption. Adoption means leaving one’s family, and joining
another. Leaving behind all that was involved in the first family, and assuming the name, the
characteristics, the resources, and the history of another family.

This is the way Paul describes this relationship. We all belong initially to the family of Adam.
We leave it, in Christ, and, thereafter, we belong to a new family, the family of Jesus Christ.
We are no longer part of the family of Adam. Now that doesn’t mean that we are not human;
it means that we no longer need to be possessed by fallen Adamic characteristics. We are still
exposed to temptations, to believe in them and to act that way, but we don’t have to — that’s
the point. We’ve been transferred into a new family.

And, more than that, the emphasis is upon living as a full-grown, mature, responsible son. We
are not put into this family as mere babes; we are put in as mature, grown-up children. As soon
as we grasp the Truth we can exercise it. In other words, to put it very simply, we are to live
exactly as Jesus lived. He was a Son, the Son of the Father, and, as such, a certain way of life
was His. And now we have it too, in Him, living exactly as He did.

This is how Jesus described His own life: In John 6:7, He said:

“I live by means of the Father”

That is, “The Father is My resource, My wisdom, My strength, My power. The Father
is the secret of how I act, and what I do, and where I go. The Father is living in Me, and working
in Me. And in everything I do, it is not I; it is the Father.” He went on to say:

“And as I live by means of the Father; so he who eats Me
[That is a beautiful figure for partaking of Christ, trusting in Christ]
Will live by means of Me”
John 6:57 RSV

That is the secret of the Christian life. What a beautiful way to live! By the same method that
Jesus lived, in the same way that He arrested the attention of humanity — this is the way that
we are called upon to live. We have been made sons in Him, like Him, so as to share His life. It
is this, you see, that pleases the Father. Isn’t that amazing?

Our heavenly Father, we thank you for these vast truths.
We pray that our understanding may be made equal to them. We can’t grasp
Them properly apart from the work of Your Spirit, and we pray that
You will open our eyes, and help us to see that these things are true indeed,
That they undergird our lives. And as we venture out upon them, as we dare
To apply them to ourselves, You will take them, and make them lead us
Into the liberty of the children of God, so that we will be free,
Free despite the circumstances under which we live, and despite the people
With whom we have to share in a relationship. We are a free people.