Twelve Steps: A Christian Process For Healing And Transformation Series

Many of you probably already practice both surrender and practicing the will of God. Now I’d like to share with you a tool that will transform your entire life.

It’s called the process of taking a personal inventory. For those of you out there today who have been through a lot of traumatic experiences in your life, of you’ve gone through hard times, I can’t recommend this process enough to you. I’m absolutely amazed by the power of putting things down on paper. The act of writing out what we’ve been through is a process by which our soul is cleansed from past struggles.

When we go through hard times, trauma, depression, sorrows, and addictions it’s like we accumulate wreckage in our minds. And pretty soon that wreckage piles up to the point that we can barely function on a daily basis. We begin to live and feel as if we’re constantly surrounded by a cloud of doom. That cloud comes from these piled up past traumas.

So if you’ve got piled up sorrows from the past, grab a notebook and pen, or open up a word document on your computer and start writing. Write down exactly what happened. Honesty is vital in this process. If we rewrite history or leave the worst parts out, we won’t find any healing. But if we share the real truth about what has happened, and what our part was in it, then we’ll find healing. Once we’ve written all these things down, and when I did this I had over fifty pages, we take it to someone we trust deeply. It could be a trusted friend or pastor. And we read what we wrote to them and talk about what happened. This second part of confessing it is vital. The act of telling another person, for some reason, is the part that really clears this stuff out. Then we pray, thanking God for setting us free from these past harms, and many like to burn the pages as a symbol that in Christ all of these things are gone. Set free. He has set us free.

Those are steps four and five. Six and seven are steps that help those seeking healing to identify character defects, like fear, inconsideration, and selfishness, and to begin to practice the opposite of those harmful attitudes. The principle is inventory, matched with confession.

The final principle I’d like to share with you today is called reconciliation. As a non-believer, and an addict I hurt many people in my life. I think my family is who I hurt the worst. But also my extended family. And my close friends, coworkers, and college teachers. When we practice reconciliation, a biblical concept, we go to those we have harmed in the past and we ask for their forgiveness. But in addition, we also ask how we can make it right. They call this making amends.

I’d encourage you to consider in your life, how you’ve hurt others. It’s best I think to start with family. And then consider friends as well. How can I make it right with these people? How can I make amends for the wrongs I’ve done to them? This is probably the hardest part of the principles we’ve talked about so far. It’s very humbling (step 1) to go to family members and friends and admit the wrong we’ve done. But are we so proud? Do we have so much ego?