"GOOD !!"

I really felt as though I heard from God so clearly this week. Really clearly.

For those who don’t know it, I’ve been in a Twelve Step/Celebrate Recovery type group since February. It takes a lot of humility and is mildly terrifying to go to a place where the very 1st core principle is to admit that one’s life is, at least on some level, unmanageable. Yikes. What an affront it is to one’s masculinity to make such an admittance of failure….or at least that was my perception at the time.

Six months later, I decided to start working a 12 Step workbook along with several of the other men in the group. The process of self discovery, disclosure, and repentance was a painful yet necessary process that has produced much growth, happiness and hope in my life. I can’t believe what has transpired in my life since the painful breakup that spurned so much of this growth forward. So much of it is borders on earth shattering and miraculous.

Steps 4 and 5 of the 12 Steps require that you make a fearless moral inventory and then to admit that inventory to God, to yourself, and finally to another human being. As I was busy admitting this to God Monday night, I kinda hung my head and said “man, I feel like so little of me is left.” This was because part of the admitting in my own life has gone hand in hand with large-scale surrender – more surrender than I ever thought was possible. I was really bummed about this, and wondered if I truly had anything left for God.

While still in that moment of lamentation and completely out of left field, I heard a joyful voice in my head say “GOOD !!!!” As in “you feel as though you have nothing left of yourself? GOOD !!!” And then I started to giggle, because if I’ve ever heard from God, then I heard from Him in that moment – not a doubt in my mind.

And since “living the Christian life” really means letting go and surrendering and letting Him live His life through me, then this makes total sense. God would be excited that I’ve come to the end of myself, as living in the Spirit would elicit this kind of reaction from God. And I need not lament the movement of “dying to self” in my own life; on the contrary, I can rejoice at such gracious and better stuff coming