Inventory Lesson

Hey guys, I'm a grateful believer who came to recovery for codependency and food and body image issues, and currently I struggle with symptoms of ADHD, inattentive, and complex PTSD. And my name is Sabrina. So tonight we're going to talk about inventory, one of my favorite topics of all time. So let's jump right in. When we're talking about inventory, we are talking about principle four and step four. Principle four says openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust. Happy are the pure in heart, Matthew 5, 8. And step four says 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 340. Now before I jump into the lesson, I just want to make sure and say if you're a newcomer tonight, you are just starting your recovery process, and maybe this is even your first time at a Celebrate Recovery tonight, please don't feel like you are going to need to jump right into the process where we're talking about tonight with inventory. Just sit back, take it in, and when you get to the point where you've worked through steps one, two, and three, and you're ready to work that inventory process, hopefully this lesson will have prepared you a little bit for what you'll be doing. All right, so we're going to start with a couple of basics. So what is an inventory, and why is it important to our recovery process? Well, an inventory in general just means a list. It's just a list of anything. Businesses take inventory of the goods that they have on hand to see what they need to order. An artist might take an inventory of the different paintings or drawings or photos that they have so that they know what they can sell. And then in the same way, an event planner might inventory possible venues for an event that they're going to have. Well, when you're doing recovery, doing an inventory just means listing people, places,

and events that have impacted your life, whether in a negative way or a positive, because you're going to be doing both of those things. How they impacted our lives, and what part we might have played in it one way or the other, what's our responsibility in it, what kinds of things happened as a result of it. We're basically just getting to know ourselves and through the events that we've experienced in our lives. Now it's important for several reasons, but in my opinion, the most important reason is that we begin to understand ourselves better in ways that we've never seen or thought about before, because as we're working through this process, these things are being revealed. And this helps us grow and be transformed by the renewing of our mind, which is something that the Bible tells us to do. In step one, if you remember, we admitted that we're powerless over our addictions, right, and our compulsive behaviors. And the biblical comparison is Romans 7, 18. I know that nothing good lives in me that is in my sinful nature, for I have the desire to do what it is, do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. Now if you back up just a couple of verses to verse 15, it says, I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do. Can you relate to that? I certainly can. I have definitely been in places where I found myself thinking over and over again, I don't understand myself. Why do I keep doing these things that I hate? Why can't I stop? I would feel powerless to stop those things. Well, working at Invitory helps us to understand the connections between what we do, why we do it, and how we do it, which gives us insights to our own thoughts, feelings, and actions, which then allows us to begin to break those cycles of addiction, those cycles of compulsion, those cycles of behaviors that we don't want to continue doing but can't seem to stop.

I used to watch Dr. Phil a lot, and one of the favorite sayings that he had to me was, you can't change what you don't acknowledge. And I'll add to that, that you can't acknowledge what you don't understand or see about yourself. Sometimes it's not just about getting out of denial, it's about understanding, right? And so we might start to get out of denial about our actions and behaviors, but we still don't understand why. That's why this process is so important. It's suggested that you work on your inventory within a step study group, where you can work this step gradually through steps one, steps two, steps three, and then get to that inventory process. It doesn't mean that you can't work your inventory alone, or any time that you choose. Just know that it can be a really difficult process. step and having the support and encouragement of other people, hearing their answers and then sharing your own. Both of those things are that you're in an environment that is very rich for healing, for growth, for restoration, for transformation. In fact, this is a biblical concept. James 5 16 says that confession to others and prayer from others and to others actually heals us and so this is a process that God has set up in a very particular way that actually works towards healing. Now when you're ready, be prepared to get your inventory down on paper and that can be legitimately or literally on paper but I, for example, did mine digitally. I like to do mine on an Excel spreadsheet so however you choose, you're just going to need to be ready to get the information down somewhere. This helps you organize your thoughts and focus on recalling events that you've been through in your life, events that you may have repressed, events that maybe you haven't worked through yet or you might have worked through these events with a counselor or through another process or program that you've been a part of but getting it all down on paper helps you to clearly see the connections between the hurts that happened in your life, how those lead to the hang-ups that we end up having that create habits that we use as a result to cope and deal with the situations that we've been

through. You'll discover the root issues that show up as emotional triggers, repeated patterns of behavior and character defects. When you get this information down and you list these events, you start to see I behave in certain ways when I'm triggered in certain ways and I have particular issues that show up again and again for some reason when you're working through that. And through the process you will be amazed by the transformation that it brings and how you will continue to grow in your relationship with other people and your relationship with Jesus Christ in the process. Ephesians 431 tells us get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander along with every form of malice. The recovery process and doing an inventory specifically allows us to begin to pull up the roots that keep us stuck in our hurt and our pain and those behaviors that the scripture was just talking about that flow out of the hurts that we have been through, the experiences that we've had in our lives. Many people in our lives will believe that all we need to do is just stop, right? Just stop it. Stop feeling what you're feeling, stop engaging in your addictions and compulsive behaviors and you'll be good. You'll be okay. Just stop. Well we've learned that it's rarely that easy, right? I know for me I struggled with these things for 30-40 years before I got into recovery and we need to do some work in order to heal. Doing an inventory is a very very important part of that work. So there's a five-column inventory sheet that we use in CR. You may be familiar with it or you may not. If you get into a step study in the Participants Guide to Lesson 9 Inventory, there's a sample of the inventory sheet. You can use that and make copies but it's also very likely that your Celebrate Recovery program has copies of an 8 by 10 sheet of these so that you can make copies, as many copies as you want and sometimes your CR will just provide those for you. So check with your ministry leader, your training coach, the leaders in your groups and they'll take care of that for you especially if you are going to be doing a step study. All right so what we're going to do for the last portion of this training is we're going to actually go through the different

columns on an inventory sheet and talk about what goes in those columns. So the first one is the person. That's the first column. In this column you list the person or the object that you resent or fear. Now remember resentment is mostly unexpressed anger and fear and so that's what we're kind of working through. The good news is that if you work completely through Principle 4, you will see that your resentments fade as the light of your faith in Jesus Christ is allowed to shine on them and work through them through this recovery process. Now notice in the beginning I said that you're listing the person or the object. So even though this column is called the person, it can also be institutions or places. For example, you may have resentments or fears, negative emotions towards an organization. Some people have that towards church, right? or the government, or the medical establishment, or maybe you have a chronic illness that you've been dealing with for years and years that has built up resentment in you. So that might be something that you have a resentment against. And so it can be names, institutions, places, or people that you're going to be listing in this column. You want to try to list all of the people and things that you are holding a resentment against, or all of the ones that you can think of at the time. And you want to go back as far as you possibly can with this. Now, if it gets overwhelming, just back up and just take it one event at a time and do what you can. I'll usually tell people, pick out some of the biggest events that had the most impact on you and start there, and then just do it one at a time. Don't try to think in terms of the whole thing in case it will overwhelm you. The second column is the cause.

So it's been said, hurt people hurt people. I'm sure you've heard this before. In this column, you're going to list the specific actions that someone did to hurt you, or the institution, or the place, or whatever it may be. These are the events or incidences in your life that are connected to those people. And what did that person, object, institution do to cause you that resentment, or fear, or other negative emotions? Now, guys, this reflective look can be really painful. This is why having a sponsor or an accountability team, at the very least, is really important. An accountability team are just other people that are going through this with you. And so even if you don't have a sponsor, don't find a sponsor right away, you can still work this process. Because you have a group of women or men that you're going through the process with, so you have built-in accountability partners right there. Start to build relationships with people around you that are doing the process as well, and those are going to be the people that help support you. They'll help walk through the pain with you as you're going through it. And of course, remember, Jesus will be with you throughout the process as well. God promises in Isaiah 41.10, fear not, for I am with you.

Do not be dismayed, I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand. He's right there with you through the whole process. Column three is the effect. In this column, you're going to write down how the specific action, how that hurtful action affected your life, both in the past when that event happened and all the way up into the present. How is it still affecting you today? How has it affected you up until the point of this moment? Now, this can be lots of different things. This can be feelings that you have, how your feelings were affected, how your emotions were affected. What kind of belief systems did you develop as a result of this? Like, did your worldview change, or did you come to not trust a particular group of people based on a particular instance in your life? A belief system is anything that you believe about the world, about God, about a specific group of people, about an institution. And so what is your belief system about that? Sometimes it's that that group or institution is not trustworthy. One of the belief systems I developed through the experiences in my life was that I didn't matter. And that became a very ingrained belief system in me through many of the situations and experiences that I had in my life.

So that's something that was listed many times. You also would list shame or guilt that you might have felt or still feel, or inadequacies that you've developed. So how in any way did this affect you? The fourth column is the damage column. Now, for me, when I started recovery, it was confusing to me to try to figure out the difference between the effect and the damage. They both kind of sounded the same to me. However I was affected was damage. But that's not actually the case. The effect is, how did it affect your feelings, belief systems, shame, guilt, all of those things? But the damage is, what ended up actually getting broken as a result of this? So you had this effect, this event had this effect on you, and then it ended up damaging or breaking things inside of you. So for example, which of your basic instincts were injured or damaged? Your social instincts, for example. Have you suffered broken relationships, slander or gossip as a result of this event? Are you estranged from someone because of this? Do you have a broken relationship? Do you stay estranged from people in general because of trust being broken? So your social instincts is one thing. Your security, did your sense of security get damaged? damaged or broken? So was your physical safety threatened and that impacted the

way that you feel about security? Do you feel safe in general or in a particular environment or place or with particular people? Have you faced financial loss? So that can be something that's damaged as well. There was damage to your finances and to your financial security and so that's damage that can happen. Your sexual instincts, have you been a victim of abuse sexual or physical in any way so that your sexual instincts are damaged and broken and not healthy any longer? Has intimacy or trust been damaged or broken? A lot of the time in the recovery process these are two intimacy and trust especially trust I just hear over and over that has been damaged in people because of the things that they've been through in their lives so that is something else to put in the damage column. So you're gonna it's basically loss here that you're talking about. What did you lose? What got broken? Relationships, finances, intimacy, trust, all of these different things that can be actually changed inside of you as a result of it. No matter how you've been hurt, no matter how lost you may feel, I want to remind you that God wants to comfort you and he wants to restore you. Ezekiel 34 16 says, I will look for those that are lost. I will bring back those that wander off, bandage those that are hurt, and heal those that are sick. Please lean on him in this process. And then finally we have column 5, my part. Lamentations 340 says, let us examine our ways and test them and let us return to the Lord. It doesn't say let us examine their ways and test them. It says let us examine our ways. You already examined their ways in the first four columns. You're talking about the person, the event, the effect, the damage. Now you're talking about examine my ways and test them. You need to honestly look at yourself and determine not only am I responsible for part of the resentment of this situation, do I have any responsibility in that, but also what developed in me as a result of this event that is my responsibility to change, to look at, to develop or grow out of. Taking responsibility for the ways that we've hurt others as a result of our own hurt is a really important part of this step of looking at my part. We may transfer the pain that we've been through on to other people. So one thing you will list in this column is the

people that you've heard and how you've hurt them. Oftentimes this comes as a result of things that we've been through. Maybe we've been abused and we end up abusing other people. We don't trust people because of something that's happened in our life, so we turn around and treat people as if they're not trustworthy even if they are. So there are ways that we take responsibility. Psalm 139 23 says, Examine me O God and know my mind. Test me and discover if there's any evil in me and guide me in the everlasting way. The things that we're looking for that develop in us as a result of the event are things like character defects, choices that we've made, addictions, behaviors, compulsions, attitudes. Even though a lot of these things happened as a result of these events we've been through in our life, they become we have to take responsibility for our choices, for our addictions, our compulsions, the things that we ended up clinging to as coping mechanisms that continue to hurt us or hurt other people. And so we have to take responsibility for that in order for them to actually change. There are symptoms that develop from the event that end up continuing or carrying forward the hurt that we experienced. Now I want to note here, if you've been in an abusive relationship, especially as a child, but in any abusive relationship, you can find great freedom in this part of the inventory. You can write down that you are not guilty in this column for that abuse. You had no part, you have no responsibility. It is not your fault if you've been physically, sexually, or mentally abused. And like I said, especially as a child. Not only as a child, but especially as a child when you are truly at the mercy of other people's choices. So put not guilty in that column. Along with the not guilty, you may also list other things that are your responsibility. Like if you turned around and went on to abuse other people, or your attitude, or the way that you looked at life became you know, so dark and ugly, you have to take responsibility for changing that so that you can have peace and sanity and healing in your life. Celebrate Recovery has rewritten steps four for those that have been sexually or physically abused. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves,

realizing all wrongs can be forgiven. Renounce the lie that the abuse was our fault. As you're working through your inventory, one last note, please keep it balanced. You're going to list both the good and the bad events from your life, not just the bad events. This is super important. We want to take time to allow God to reveal to us or remind us the good things that we've experienced or done in the past, along with the bad. Now, I know it might be really difficult for you to do this at first, as you may be in too much pain to think about any kind of positives happening in your life. I struggled with that myself with my first inventory, but it will help keep you from being stuck in dark places as you work through your inventory to just remember that there has been some good things that have happened, and that'll get easier as time goes on. Finally, continue to develop your support team and pray continuously in this process. I hope that this is helpful information for you for your inventory. It is such a rewarding experience and a really great thing in the end, even though it can be a hard process to go through. Love you guys, and hope to see you soon. Bye.