Carried By His Wings© -- Sexual Purity Recovery

Wings Devotional Recovery ... May 29, 2008

Just For Today – Honesty

STEP FIVE:   Is the discipline of Confession.

STEP FIVE: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another person the exact nature of our wrongs.

“Therefore Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”  --James 5:16a

"More realism and therefore more honesty about ourselves are the great gains we make under the influence of Step Five.  As we took inventory, we began to suspect how much trouble self-delusion had been causing us.  This had brought a disturbing reflection.  If all our lives we had more or less fooled ourselves, how could we now be so sure that we weren’t still self-deceived? 

How could we be certain that we had made a true catalog of our defects and had really admitted them, even to ourselves?  Because we were still bothered by fear, self-pity, and hurt feelings, it was probable we couldn’t appraise ourselves fairly at all. 

Too much guilt and remorse might cause us to dramatize and exaggerate our shortcomings.  Or anger and hurt pride might be the smoke screen under which we were hiding some of our defects while we blamed others for them.  Possibly, too, we were still handicapped by many liabilities, great and small, we never knew we had.

"Hence it was most evident that a solitary self-appraisal, and the admission of our defects based upon that alone, wouldn’t be nearly enough.  We’d have to have outside help if we were surely to know and admit the truth about ourselves—the help of God and another human being."

© 1952, AAWS, Inc.; Printed 2005; Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pgs. 58-59 Alcoholics Anonymous, AA, and the Big Book are registered trademarks of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services. Just For Today is neither endorsed by, approved by, associated, nor affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., or The AA Grapevine, Inc.

Wings Devotional© Daily Meditation Translation

is property of Wings Of Eagles Recovery©

Just for Today -- A Daily Devotional

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What we must remember in Step Five and all the steps that are designed to help us do our inventory and admit our shortcomings is that it has taken us many years to get to the point of our addiction accumulating the bad characteristics one by one.  It will also take years to replace those characteristics with positive and Godly traits.  It is like peeling an onion; you take off one layer at a time.  With each change or removal of a negative shortcoming, we expose another area that we may never know existed in our lives. 

True honesty with God, we and another is the key to working any of the steps, especially Step Five.  Having outside help, another person is what will help us to see our need for change, it will give us accountability to be honest, and it will challenge us. 

In the Bible, we are shown that when believers come to faith in the beginning they are like babies … hence we in the beginning of recovery are also like babies…but God has never intended for us to stay in a baby state, we are to grow to maturity both in faith and in recovery.  Working Step 5 helps us to grow, adding onto the foundation of Jesus and recovery, different characteristics of our faith, which replace the old manners and ways and grows us ever closer to our Lord Jesus.

2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord;

3 seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.

4 For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

5 Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge,

6 and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness,

7 and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love.

8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  – II Peter 1:2-8

* As you make your requests known to the Lord, include:

·        greater personal discipline,

·        worldwide persecuted Christians,

·        Hedge of protection to our children

·        Blessings to our spouses

·        Godly men in Government

·        Rest and Peace to our pastors

·        Your activities for the day.

Love One Another

Stand Together

Fight this war, no matter the cost

Pray for our children

Turn our hearts toward heaven

Seek to be one nation under God.

God Bless and Guide You in your Christian Walk Today

“The Lord bless you and keep you,
the Lord make his face shine upon you
and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”
-- Numbers 6:24-27

You can help when no one else can."
  -- c. 2001, Alcoholics Anonymous, page 89
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