Spiritual Pathways || Phase 1 | Lesson Eleven

You know God is interested in more than just your behaviors. Psalm 139, He put us together in our mother's womb. He knit us together. He made all of us. In this section of Spiritual Pathway, that's what we're unpacking. How God made all of you, all the different pieces. We talked about our spirit, which is like our heart, our ability to create, a passion generating place where it comes from. We talked about our brains, where the thoughts and the feelings are generated. Last session we talked about your body and how that's our touch point for the world and how we can honor God with our bodies. Well in this one today, we're gonna talk about our relationships. And remember, spiritual formation, as we understand it, coming from Renovation of the Heart by Dallas Willard. We love that quote from Andy Stanley that said, the spiritual formation really is just the process of me growing to want what God wants for me versus what I want for me. Because when my wants drove everything that I did, like step forward from the twelve and twelve, when my instincts that were God-given got outside their natural function for what they were supposed to be, it left me bankrupt when I was pursuing those things outside of how God designed them to be. Well today, we're gonna talk about how God designed us for relationships and our interactions with the people that are around us. In Genesis 3, in the creation story, it talks about how God created all these things and everything that God made, it said it was good. He made land and light and dark and and he made all the animals and the birds and the fish and all those things and that was all that stuff was good. There was one thing that came out of creation that God said was not good. And he said that was not good was was that man was alone. You know, God created us to be in connection with other people. And the reality for us, the truth for us is, is that we can't experience the fullness of relationship with God without embracing that there's a vertical piece to that and there's also a horizontal piece to that. Like that I can't experience relationship with God unless I can experience closeness or relationships with other people. There's a quote from an author named Jenny Allen that says that it's impossible for us to be intimate with God if we're not

intimate with another human being. And taking intimate out of sight just like of a bedroom or a romantic concept or context and realizing that it's just a closeness thing. That we cannot be close to God without being close to another person or other people. You may have heard some of those sayings, right? Like if you have a good apple when you put it in a bowl with bad apples that the good apple is gonna get corrupt or you know birds of a feather flock together or maybe like you know you can't hoot with owls and soar with eagles. But the reality, the truth is that it is not possible for us, it is not possible for us to separate our actions from the people that are around us completely. And Dr. Joseph Nowitzki in his book, If You Work It, It Works, The Science Behind the Twelve Steps, he says that the two greatest predictors for your sobriety, the two greatest predictors for your recovery are your beliefs and your actions. And you cannot separate those completely from other people. Other people influence us. You've been in groups of people where the mood around them influenced you or you've been in groups of people around where where you were a part of doing things that maybe you would not have not went with, that you would have not even thought of doing if you were by yourself. But the group of people you were in, the group of people you were in impacted your willingness to participate in that situation. You know one of the things that was crazy for me when I was first getting sober was understanding how the things that I had done to keep myself safe from being hurt were also things that ended up being things that were hurting me. You know I've been in a relationship with my wife for 20 years of marriage and we were together dating six years before that. Like we've been together for, you know, I think it's almost 29 years now. And man, we would argue, or we would have like those hard discussions. My wife would say, like, I feel like I don't even know you. And that would make me angry because I was like, how in the world do you not know me? Like you know me better than anybody. I know me probably better than I know myself. But what I've come to understand is we've been navigating and negotiating and figuring this thing out how to live

life is that I really had built walls up that separated me from that close connection with other people. Every relationship that I had was transactional. If I did good, I deserved good. And I felt like I needed to perform for every single relationship in my life. And man, as God started tearing down those walls... But what I realized was it had worked at keeping me safe. The reason I had built those walls up was to prevent myself from being hurt or to prevent myself from being taken advantage of, and they worked at that. But they also, the unintended consequence of those was that it kept people at a distance. And what I've come to understand, too, is it kept God at a distance. That's why it just doesn't work when people say, well, God is my sponsor. Like, that doesn't work for us because we can talk ourselves into anything. I can get a message in my mind and think this is from God, and really it's just messages from me. And so my people know that I walk with in recovery. If they think about making a decision, the two things I'm gonna ask them is, one, have you prayed about it? And two, have you got a second opinion? Like, that relationship with other people is vital. Relationships with other people is vital for our recovery. I would say that's really one of the two things you have to have. You have to have a consistent connection with a power that's greater than you,

and you have to have consistent fellowship or consistent connection with other people that are in recovery. How you manage or navigate those two things, like, there's lots of pathways, but those relationships make that big of a difference. What would it look like in your life if you embrace God's design for your relationships? What would it look like in your life if you said, I'm gonna take the relationships that I have, and I want those to be in line with what God's plan for me is? Because you can show up to treatment, and you can find people that are there just going through the motions. You can find people to agree, to cosign on whatever it is that you wanna do. But if I'm bringing my relationships in line with God's design for me, allowing those people around me to impact and to motivate, and man, you think about what it's like. I say, if you wanna go fast, go alone, but if you wanna go far, go together. Man, I wanna be sober more than anything, and I wanna be sober no matter what happens to me in this life, no matter what comes. If I wanna go far, I gotta go with other people, and it's impossible to think that you can be close to God without being close to other people

because God designed us for relationships. Have you heard the saying, an apple a day keeps the doctor away? I have. Does it work for you? No, I don't like apples very much. Unless they're dipped in caramel. Of course. And you got peanuts all over them. Well, then you're probably gonna be seeing your doctor more often. You're better off not eating apples. Maybe so. Well, like you just told us about relationships and how that's a core piece of how God designed us to be wired, doing life with other people, but also that it's important that those are quality, healthy relationships. It's also important that the material we interact with is also good and healthy. And I think for me, over the years, it's been hard. I've picked up plenty of books that were crazy. Yeah, yeah. And to have a guide of some sort that's like, okay, this is vetted, this is a good resource. That's what we've wanted to create for you. And so in your workbook, you're gonna be able to see a list of resources in the back. And some of these are laying here. One of our favorites is a book

that's laying here. One of our favorites is the Get Out of Your Head by Jenny Allen. And she has a quote that says, it's a lie to think we can be intimate with God without first being intimate with other people. And whether or not we choose to step towards God, there's always gonna be a need for interaction with other people. And so how are we gonna navigate that? Yeah, I think you have those conversations, you walk into a center and somebody comes up to you and says, I was searching on YouTube and I found this guy. And it's like, first thought is like, oh no, I hope they weren't some kind of lunatic talking about whatever. It's like, you know, anybody can upload to YouTube. You know what I mean? So, and there's some great stuff that's on there, but there's also some stuff that's a little bit sketchy. So lean into people that you trust. And it's kind of like, I think the way I'd like to do it is if, usually if I'm reading a book and they mention a book, I wanna read that book. The same thing if you're in the rooms, right? If you try to pick a sponsor, it's like you hear somebody sharing about something and you like what they've got, then you reach out to that person.

You know what I mean? So it's a good idea to maybe use that as a starting point. Cause you know, Google could not be your friend sometimes when it comes to finding resources. That's so true. Well, and the reason I have. of this dictionary included in the stack is because, uh, my brother gave this to me for Christmas one year. I don't know if that was like, nice, or it's actually really a sweet story as to why I got it. But what this reminds, what this reminds me of is like the importance of definition and truth. And there is so much on the market that is related to God or spiritual things, but isn't necessarily truth. And so as our pastor always reminds us, check it with scripture. Do not let anybody else's version override truth for you, but check it with scripture. So in the midst of all the resources, the Bible's top on that list as well. So, um, grab one of these, check out the list, or if you hear of something that's been a really good resource for you, we'd love to hear about it as well, but we hope that these will help encourage you in your recovery journey.