Rev. David Holwick G Twelve Step Christianity series
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
February 27, 1994
Matthew 7:7-11
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Step 10 - Continue to take inventory, display humility and honesty.
I. It's the beginning of the rest of your life.
The summer before I married Celeste, I stayed with my folks in
Colorado Springs.
The only job I could get was with ManPower, a temporary agency that
had me dig ditches, lay sod on soccer fields and recycle aluminum
cans.
At the end of the summer they got me something almost permanent:
a flunky at the city power plant.
While I cleared muck out of settling tanks, long trains from Wyoming
dumped carload after carload at the plant's storage area.
Bulldozers pushed it into mountains, and then funnelled it onto long
conveyor belts.
From there stamping mills ground it as fine as flour and injected
the coal dust into huge furnaces.
These furnaces were the loudest things I ever heard.
And hot, too.
Their intense heat drove steam through turbines which spun at 3,600
revolutions per minute.
The turbines were housed in concrete-and-steel casings 100 feet long,
10 feet tall, and 10 feet across.
They generated enough electricity for the whole city of 300,000.
A visitor to a power plant once asked the chief engineer, "Where do
you store the electricity?"
"We don't store it," the engineer replied. "We just make it."
When a light switch is flipped on one hundred miles, it literally
places a demand on the system.
That small need registers at the generating plant and prompts
greater output.
In the same way, God's grace and power cannot be stored.
Though inexhaustible, they come in the measure required, at the
moment of need.
But only if you're plugged into the system.
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A. Step 10 - "Continue to take inventory," display humility and
honesty.
1) We are sinners for life.
a) Just as alcoholics are never fully recovered.
b) Even apparently strong Christians can fall.
2) It is a lifelong process, like church.
a) We never outgrow it.
b) There are always new things to learn.
c) We never "graduate."
d) So where are all the students?
B. The unchurched Christian.
1) Many believe, few attend.
a) Dishonesty of "40%" attendance figure.
Group counted cars at church, compared to population.
Then compared percentage who claimed to be in church.
b) We need to do more than believe.
2) Church not necessary for salvation, but hard to imagine
growing without fellowship.
C. The churched Christian can be even worse.
1) Even churches often lack fellowship.
a) Dependence on professional clergy.
b) Lazy spiritual habits.
c) No discipline, no dedication.
d) Churches die out.
2) Dry? Try new approaches to vitality.
II. Improving contact.
A. Christian roots of 12 Steps are clearest in step 11:
"Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious
contact with God ..."
1) Focus is on relationship with God, not just sobriety.
2) God must be more than a solution to our specific problems.
B. If we seek God, we will find him.
1) You don't find what you don't seek.
a) Before high school, I had no interest in spiritual things.
b) Christianity was only church - bleech!
2) When God awakened a desire in me, I struggled.
a) Many doubts about whether it was real.
b) And if it was, could I find it?
c) Disciplined study of the Bible convinced me.
3) We often associate seeking with our past.
a) Spiritual desire needs to be a continual concern.
b) We are seeking a God who wants to be found. Matt 7:7
c) What is the best way to seek him?
III. Prayer and meditation.
A. Prayer is central to personal recovery.
1) Continuation of step 11: "praying only for knowledge of His
will for us and the power to carry that out."
2) Bill Wilson encouraged praying each morning and night.
3) Serenity prayer was his favorite.
B. What prayer cannot do.
1) It cannot be an end in itself.
a) "Are You Running With Me, God?" book by Boyd, a liberal.
1> Prayer as a psychic pushup.
2> Nobody is listening, but prayer makes us feel better.
b) Many forms of mediation are limited to this.
2) It must grow beyond childishness (not childlike-ness).
Letter from a young person to God:
Dear God,
I think of you in my prayers.
Along with my mom and my dad, my sister Paula, my grandma,
my two grandpas, my aunt Jenie, my aunt Gloria, my uncle
Sid, my uncle Jack and my cousins Billy and Sherie.
I spend at least three minutes on you every night!
Love,
Terry, age 8
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3) By itself, prayer doesn't make you spiritual.
Rev. Steven Felker compares it to the tension between
personality types.
Type A personalities are ambitious, aggressive.
Type B's are easygoing, non-competitive, relaxed.
"Lots of Type A's think of Type B's as slovenly failures."
They aren't; Type B's just do things differently.
It is the same with spirituality.
Spiritual vibrancy is not something you do; it is something
you are.
Spirituality is based on how we live, not simply on acts we
perform every morning.
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4) Spiritual checklist:
a) How is your marriage and other relationships?
b) How much progress are you making in personal holiness?
c) How is your time with God? Is there any?
C. What prayer can be - intimate contact with Almighty God.
1) Prayer is a two-way street.
2) We pour out our concerns to God. (see Psalms)
3) Through meditation, we hear his answers and encouragement.
IV. Seeking knowledge of God's will.
A. Faith is personal.
1) Not just belonging to the Christian ethnic group.
2) We can be surrounded by faith and not have it.
3) We must decide we want God's will for us.
B. God's will can cover day-to-day situations.
1) It is not just for disasters, or eternity.
2) Bible contains practical advice for all areas of life.
a) What to shun, what to seek.
b) Proper morals and attitudes.
C. Often we don't seek God because we want to avoid his will.
V. Seeking God's power to carry out his purpose for us.
A. You need God; you are NOT God.
1) Stop trying to protect, rescue, judge, and manage the lives
of those around you. (Children, spouse, friends)
a) This is just what you are powerless to do.
b) They are not your business.
c) They are God's business.
2) You yourself are not your business. You also are God's.
B. We are precious to God, and can trust Him.
1) When we feel weak, he can strengthen us.
2) When our prayers seem powerless, remember that God
himself prays for us. Romans 8:26
C. God has unusual power available to us.
1) Live one day at a time. Matthew 6:34
VI. How focused are you on God?
Copyright © 2024 by Rev. David Holwick
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