This article deals with the inner struggle that we, as recovering folks, often deal with, as we trudge the road of happy destiny. It is a struggle of wanting to return to our old ways – even knowing the dangers and consequences that a reversal of direction from sobriety would bring. How wonderful would it be if from the moment we experienced our first taste of freedom from alcohol, that it endured forever and no thoughts of drinking ever occurred again. But that is not reality, at least not for most of us. It is this struggle that brings occasional relapse, and sometimes it happens after long years of abstinence. But this struggle is not unique. It is the same type of struggle that an obese person experiences when they eyeball a piece of pie, or the struggle of a child who does not want to tell a lie but does to keep from being disciplined. It’s a problem that all humanity has, to one degree or another, to want to do those things that we know we shouldn’t do, but we do it anyway.
Our program in Alcoholics Anonymous does go a long way at preventing relapse. A major obstacle in recovery is the inner conflict between the desire to drink and the desire to not drink. We may be in a good state of mind, and living life joyously, when all of a sudden something happens and spins us into a state of mind that creates the desire for a drink. Thankfully, the main tenets of our program all have a primary objective, namely, to help instill in us a desire to not drink alcohol. These tenets are the fellowship environment itself, attendance of meetings, development of a belief in God, self-examination, the acknowledgment of character defects, restitution for harm done to others, and the application of spiritual principles to our life. This combination of elements goes a long way towards keeping primed the desire to not drink.
None of these things stand alone, but form a process that allows us to grow and mature and become respectable human beings, where before we were helpless, hopeless drunks. Where would we be without the principles of the program, or without a belief in God, or without an inventory of our shortcomings? Can we depend upon just practicing the principles to give us freedom from our defects? Of course not. Our recovery path is inclusive of our dependence upon God from the very first step of surrendering to our powerlessness, to the last step of practicing spiritual principles. Struggling is also part of our walk, which is why we call it trudging the road to happy destiny. We know what happens if we rest upon our laurels.
With sobriety, we come to understand that our problems stem from our own sensuous nature, along with a distorted belief system, which has developed over many years of selfish living. We want to be a good person, but have a problem, because old habits are hard to break and error is deep within our belief system. It is the 12 Step process that encourages us to gain dependence upon God, to admit to our personal faults or deficiencies, to build a desire to not operate in those defects, and which motivates us to desire character growth through the practicing of spiritual principles. It is a process that works well. And, as we know, it’s progress and not perfection. It provides a method of character building, patterned after the spiritual growth process designed by God for the Christian. The A.A. program was initially Christian based, but was secularized just prior to the release of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1939.
We can add value to our recovery process by understanding the Christian process of sanctification. The spiritual growth path of a Christian is similar to a 12 Step recovery process. Once saved, there is a fierce inner battle that goes on between the flesh (self) and the indwelling Spirit of God, the old man and the new. If we do not learn how to overcome the strong inner urge to gratify the flesh, sin will take us captive and enslave us. Paul describes this war within us in the book of Romans. It is a struggle which all Christians can easily identify with.
Although our intentions seem right to us, we often realize that our sinful flesh refuses to respond to God’s moral Law. We find ourselves doing what we know we shouldn’t do and we fail to accomplish those things we know we should do. No matter how much we may wish to serve God, in our minds we find ourselves losing the battle to the pull of our bodies, aided by left over self-centered thoughts. It is suggested you read Romans yourself to help you identify the struggle within yourself. One part of our mind desires to serve God, and another part desires to serve our self. We want to do what is right, but our body will not always respond. The sin principle is always at work, and in our own strength, we cannot overcome it. Without spiritual guidance we only see choices from the natural bend towards selfish motives. Choices matter.
If you are a Christian and in Alcoholics Anonymous, you not only have a practical process for growth, but you also have the additional advantage of a helper. God in His infinite wisdom has provided help for our weakness by sending the Holy Spirit to show us the right choices. God knows that we cannot change ourselves since the sin nature within humanity is self-centered desires. The desires of the flesh are a powerful force. God also knows that the power of sin in our life is strong and that the very nature of sin blinds us to our specific sins. Our systematic recovery process helps us reach an understanding of individual powerlessness – a prerequisite to growth. We often learn the hard way that we are not only powerless over alcohol, but also lack power over most everything. This includes our inability to change our own bad habits and to remove character defects. When we take the seventh Step, humbly asking God to remove our character defects, a life-long battle ensues. When we leave out God, we fail. These failures will strengthen our understanding that without help from God we will always fail. (Excerpt from the book Eternal Sobriety, Chapter 8, The Helper)
Our Creator knows that humans have no ability to purify themselves to the standard of holiness required for eternal life. He does not leave us in the dark. In the book of Galatians, Paul gives us the key to a sanctified (holy) life. To sanctify someone or something is to set that person or thing apart for the use intended by its owner. In the theological sense, things are sanctified when they are used for the purpose God intends. A human being is sanctified as he or she lives according to God’s design and purpose. Sanctification involves the setting apart when we become saved, and then comes a lifetime of growing in the likeness of Christ. But our old ways and old desires are still with us and often resurface. We are not immune to the struggle just because we are saved. We need a lifetime solution. Paul the apostle gives us that solution in Galatians 5:16 when he says “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.”
Now this lifetime assistance, spoken of by Paul, is not valid for recovering individuals who are not Christian. In order to walk by the Spirit, you must have the Spirit of God living within you. A saved Christian is given the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is a biblical truth and was understood in the practices of the initial A.A. program, before it became secularized. A person in Alcoholics Anonymous who does not embrace the biblical God, certainly is helped by the other fundamentals of the program, but the moral law of God found within the spiritual principles of A.A. cannot, by itself, provide an inner restraint to the desires of the flesh. They certainly provide a standard of character attributes to be desired, but the practice of these things alone is not what sanctifies us. Practice of spiritual principles has a great effect on the recovery walk, but for best results we need to walk by the Spirit. That is how we will defeat, more often, the desires of the flesh. So, what exactly does this mean and how does one walk by the Spirit?
The very word “walk” provides a significant clue. Walking is done “one step at a time” The direction of the walk is also significant. When we are born of the Spirit, a new understanding of spiritual life begins. The Holy Spirit turns us in the direction of Christ, and now begins the task to create the desire in us to walk the path that Jesus took. For us, it’s a new path of selflessness, rather than the old path of selfishness. The 12 Step program was designed by God, and given to truly surrendered alcoholics to help us remove selfishness, and to be of service to others. We are fortunate that we have learned how to stop drinking and live life on a one day at a time basis. The spiritual life is a one day at a time walk and within the day it’s one step at a time as we develop a mindset to not carry out the desires of the flesh. Our part is to gain truth in our beliefs for the Spirit to energize right choices. This gradual process makes the walk more manageable. Thank God we are not asked to immediately become Christlike and reach a state of perfection. We would fail. It is progress and not perfection that we find on the walking path. The Holy Spirit knows exactly what we need.
In early A.A., the Bible was studied to develop the basic recovery program ideas. The early pioneers knew the Bible is God’s Word, and His Word speaks a lot about walking. As Christians in A.A. we are to walk in honesty, to walk in faith, to walk in consideration of others, to walk in humility, to walk in peace, to walk in gratitude, to walk in patience, to walk in non-judgement, to walk in forgiveness, to walk in love, to walk in truth and to walk in obedience to God’s Will. To walk a spiritual life, is to walk one step at a time, in the character attributes of Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit who is energizing us, as we conform to the image of Christ. That is how you live the Christian life, which in reality, is the real essence of a truly spiritual life.
Paul in Ephesians 5:18 puts it this way: “Be filled with the Holy Spirit.” This is how we should embrace Step 3 of our 12 Step program when we “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” In other words, give the Holy Spirit control over our life. What we are asked to do is to gain knowledge of God’s Will (renew our minds) while the Spirit provides the power we need to stay sober. Walking in the Spirit is being filled by the Spirit. Being filled by the Spirit is being saturated with the Word of God, which the Spirit revealed to humanity in the Bible, and which the Spirit illuminates to us as God’s Will.
So, walking by the Spirit is not a mystical experience; it is simply walking in line with the revelation of the Spirit, which He has brought us in scripture. It is made meaningful to us as we meditate on it. That’s how we are to walk. We walk by the Spirit, filled with the Spirit, who expresses His Will through the Word which we take into our mind. We are to renew the mind because the conflict also involves a desire to return to the old desires and old ways. “For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. (Galatians 5:17). “Flesh” in this passage identifies the sin nature that remains in us, doing battle with our new spiritual nature. It includes both the sensuous bend of our natural body. and our mind. with its lifetime of corrupt beliefs and desires. that need to be eliminated and renewed.
This is the condition of a saved person and in this state, it brings the conflict. The flesh is still there, and the Spirit is there, and this creates the conflict. The Holy Spirit is in every believer as a restrainer. The Holy Spirit’s role is to empower us in the direction of righteousness, but also to restrain us from just doing the things that we please. That is good news for the recovering person that has accepted Christ. Before we were saved, we did whatever we pleased, and had no consideration of the sin condition and no recognition of the real need for God in our life.
God understands the conflict in our life, and our natural bend for self, which has its desires for what it pleases. God has given us His Holy Spirit to restrain our unhealthy desires and a 12 Step program to guide us with our unique alcoholic recovery needs. It doesn’t mean that we never sin. What it does mean is we don’t always sin. And as we grow spiritually and become more and more like Christ, sin decreases and walking in the sunlight of the Spirit increases. The Spirit of God trains us with the Word of God, so that we sin less and obey more; and the result is spiritual growth. This is how it is in the dual walk we have as a recovering person in A.A. and as a Christian. We can be thankful that we are given a practical process with our A.A. program to help us apply God’s truth, which we find in the Bible. This is what I believe it means from the text found on Page 87 of the Big Book, “Be quick to see where religious people are right.”
There is a battle going on in all of us between our unredeemed flesh, with its desire to drink, and the indwelling Holy Spirit living within our new nature, with its desire to not drink. For us in recovery, a relapse can kill, so we should appreciate the conflict. The Lord understands it. He saved us. He loves us. He gave us His Holy Spirit, but He understands this is a very real battle. So, what is the solution to winning the conflict?
Is it an epic spiritual experience, in a moment in some kind of esoteric flash from heaven, that leapfrogs us to glory and we come to a point of perfection? No. It is a steady step by step by step walk. So here we are, recovering folks, and we have a new life, a new nature, new longings, new loves, and new desires. We have the Holy Spirit empowering us and restraining the flesh that is in us, but the flesh is still clinging to us. Sin is present, but it is no longer dominant. We progress, with each step, as we continue to renew our minds toward gaining attributes of the Spirit, and walking in the image of Christ. We are in the process of building character, as God sees it.
This series of articles will continue as we begin to look at building character from the standpoint of the fruit produced by the Spirit. Galatians 5: 22-23 tells us: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. These are not the only fruit produced in a Christian by the Spirit, but they represent a good starting point to appreciate the character God wants us to appropriate. An understanding of the spiritual meaning of this fruit, and what it means to let God’s Spirit lead us, will help us apply them as we grow in our walk with Christ. It is critical to understand the part we play in the process. We are equipped properly for the attributes and are designed by God to acquire them, but unless we participate in the process, they will not materialize. Our participation is to practice, practice, and practice the behavior, until it becomes a habit. The next article in this series is called “Building Character – As God Sees It – The Power of Good Habits“
If you would like to hear a short audio presentation on the inner struggle, have a listen here. Renewing Your Mind | The Inner Struggle | Aug 14, 2021