I will sing of the steadfast love of the LORD, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations. For I said, “Steadfast love will be built up forever; in the heavens you will establish your faithfulness. “ Psalm 89: 1-2

Perhaps what I’ve learned over these last 37 years of sobriety is something about forgiveness. At 70 years old I’ve passed the halfway mark now. I awakened to faith in Christ the last time in 1990, two years into the sober life. It was about four years before I worked the 4th step, “made a searching and fearless moral inventory…”

Jesse sponsored me, a grizzled old man with a fast handshake and a big heart. I came in with a “high bottom”, meaning I had not lost all yet. For the previous year I had been taking courses to become a Certified Alcoholism and Drug Dependency Counselor, and at one point I took one of the self-tests for alcoholism. There I was, still in Stage 1 but gaining momentum. I had a great fear of alcoholism because of my home life growing up, and I didn’t want to put my family through that one day.

I became close to Jesse and his family, and he brought me into his church. Many years later I would come back there as one of the pastors.

I don’t hold up my own program as a model for others, but I have stayed away from alcohol and drugs for a good bit of time now. I learned about forgiveness in a big way when I finally wrote the 4th step and went to Jesse for the 5th: Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

I used the classic Seven Deadly Sins as a model for my writing, and I went to Jesse’s one afternoon. He prayed; I read everything aloud. He prayed and blessed me. We went out to his backyard barbeque pit on that afternoon in Houston, and he took out his Zippo lighter and set the pages on fire. I watched that confession flame and lift into the air and I felt a new freedom.

This blog started as an idea for the intersection of discipleship and recovery, and more and more I believe in forgiveness as the link to both. There’s five points to forgiveness that I teach now in a prison ministry and at our church. I’m grateful to Dr. Timothy Keller and his book Forgive for some of this.

1. Look to Jesus, not peers. Your peers will disappoint you.
2. Forgiveness means absorbing the loss. We have to absorb the loss if someone acts against us. If we say something like, “I’ll forgive you, but I’ll never forget this!” — we are not forgiving, we’re posturing. If we forgive a debt, we absorb the loss ourselves.
3. Jesus absorbed the loss Himself when He bore our sin upon the Cross. He paid the price, He absorbed the loss, He forgives completely.
4. We can’t do this. There’s no way.
5. Jesus can, and does, and we can through Him.

How do we begin? We make a start.

Proverbs 3: 5-6 — Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and the Lord will direct your path. (Make a step! God will show you the next one. You need to be moving.)

Romans 12: 1-2: I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Our minds need to be renewed, we need to find a new way of thinking and seeing things, what Jesus called being “born again.” But once we are born again, we have to continue to grow up.

The Twelve Steps of Recovery are an outline of salvation leading to discipleship, and I believe useful for everyone.I’ve used them and recommended them and studied them for years, and sought help and community in churches and in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Forgiveness is the key, or so it seems to me. Keep moving forward, trust in the Lord, and the He will direct your path.

Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation. Psalm 91: 14-16.

Where have you seen God?