Recovery Christian Center Daily Meditation - 3/21/12 - Step 10 - Old Issues Sometimes Come Back To Haunt Us

"If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts. " 1 John 1:8-10

Step 10: We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

One of the challenges with maintaining our spiritual growth is that sometimes issues we would prefer to be free of may still have a hold over us. Even if the particular issue hasn't plagued us in a while, a new set of circumstances may all of the sudden trigger the old familiar but destructive patterns. Since this old pattern doesn't line up with our new life in Christ, we maybe tempted to hide them and stuff them do our feelings of shame and guilt. We are afraid of disappointing God and ourselves. The enemy will also try to exploit our mistakes as a way of saying we are a failure and even try to get us to doubt our recovery and our relationship with God.

The text tells us, however, that God approaches our ongoing struggle with sin and self from a whole different perspective. He wants us to bring our issues to Him and He wants to help us get back on track. He knows that we are going to continue to struggle. Everyone in Christ and recovery struggles with something. Sometimes its a new issue that we are previously unaware of and sometimes an older issue that we thought had been removed just manifests in a new way. Either way we need to take all of this to God, immediately.

We can't get the help that we need if we try to pretend like the struggle doesn't exist. We are imperfect creatures serving a perfect God who will help us get a little less imperfect if we just ask.