12 Steps to Transformation — A Journey with God

At ECV, we believe that God has the power to change lives. Many of us
have had that experience. Just two simple snapshots of who we once were
and who we are now tell a powerful story of God’s transforming work:
changing our hearts, shaping our image of our selves and the world, set-
ting us free.
But, at the same time, each one of us, when we’re honest with ourselves,
we know that there are things that never seem to change: ugly old habits
that keep hanging around, broken patterns in some of our most impor-
tant relationships, pictures of ourselves that just aren’t healthy. Some of us
have to pause for a moment to get in touch with that stuff. Some of us live
there every day, seemingly beating our heads against the wall with the
something deep in ourselves that just won’t change. We feel stuck. We feel
powerless. We feel out of control.
In December 1934, Bill W. was in exactly that place—stuck, powerless,
and out of control. He was addicted to alcohol and had been for years.
But he had a powerful spiritual experience that changed his life forever.
He learned that coming to the place of realizing that the power to change
is simply beyond your control is itself a place of power—if it becomes the
impetus for opening yourself up to God’s transforming work. In time, he
found that others, if they could admit their powerlessness and get in
touch with God’s power could also find transformation. Alcoholics
Anonymous was born.
AA’s 12 steps have helped millions find and maintain sobriety. At their
core, the 12 steps are the basic truths of the good news of Jesus—not sur-
prising, as Bill W. and many other early AA members were part of the
Oxford Group, a worldwide Christian revival.
For Lent this year at ECV, we’re going to spend the season seeking God’s
transforming work in our lives. And we’re going to use the 12 steps to
frame our experience together:
1. We admitted we were powerless over Sin—that our lives had be-
come unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could re-

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 store us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of
God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the
exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of
character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to
make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except
when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong
promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our con-
scious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only
for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we
tried to carry this message to everyone, and to practice these
principles in all our affairs.
As you can see from this simple list, these steps outline a serious journey
of self-discovery and disclosure before God. We will have to come face-
to-face with some ugly things in our lives that often we’d rather not see.
When this happens it’s very important that we distinguish between con-
viction and condemnation. Conviction is often something we experience
when we encounter God whereas condemnation is never from God. Both
come from encountering the ugly truth about ourselves. The basic differ-
ence is that condemnation is conviction robbed of hope. Condemnation
says: you’re ugly, you’re broken and you’re never going to change. Convic-
tion says: there may be ugliness, there may be brokenness, but that’s not
who you are. Who you are—as God’s beloved creation—is beautiful and

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whole. And, by God’s grace, you can become—and indeed you are be-
coming—this truest self. (2Corinthians 3:18) So, let me encourage you,
when the journey of transformation becomes difficult: remember that
while God will convict us of sin, he will never condemn us. And when he
does convict us, he does so in order to draw us forward to transformation
into the likeness of Jesus. So, press through and listen for the hope.
In the pages that follow are bible passages, some brief reflections, and
some prompts for prayer. Each day’s reflections and prayer prompts were
written by a member of the ECV teaching team for this season: including
Josh Williams, Liz Moore, George Black, and myself. Our sincere hope is
that you will meet with God in the biblical texts and interact with God in
prayer.
God has power to change lives. Let’s press into what God has for us in this
season.

Matt Croasmun
Teaching Pastor
Lent 2014

* To be clear: ECV is not an AA group, even as we’re going through the

steps. If you’re attending an AA, NA, or other recovery group, please contin-
ue to do so. And if, in this season, you realize that substance abuse is some-
thing for which you need help, please pursue a local group. For local meet-
ings (include a few at United Church), you can visit www.ct-aa.org

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Lent Prayer Challenges

As we engage Jesus in the questions he asks, it’s crucially important that we bring
the real things of our lives into the conversation. To this end, in addition to en-
gaging Jesus on the questions that come out of the scripture we’ll look at, I also
want to invite us to be intentional about praying for at least these two things:
1. for something it would take God to change in your life. What’s one
thing that you would like to see change in your life that only God
could make happen? Being honest about our need for transformation
is more or less the first step. Let me just encourage you: there’s some-
thing of an experimental quality to this, so, even if you haven’t prayed
much or haven’t really experienced a lot of answers to prayer, take a
risk and pray and see what God might do. Treat it like a “faith experi-
ment.” Maybe God will answer your prayer; it could be the beginning
of a serious faith adventure. Now, of course, we begin this journey ex-
pecting that transformation is a process that takes time. We probably
ought not expect to see everything in our lives suddenly transformed
over night. But let’s dare to expect to see a significant turn towards
health and wholeness. I believe God has the power to transform lives;
let’s see what he will do if we offer him the opportunity to work in and
through us.
2. for six people in your life in New Haven who are not trying to fol-
low Jesus who you’d like to experience more of the good things of
God. We’re going to spend a lot of time in this season praying for
God’s transformative work in our own lives—which is great! But God
isn’t just at work in our interior lives; he’s also at work in our networks
of relationships with our families, our neighbors, our co-workers, and
our friends. In fact, part of what we’re going to pray for in this season
is that God would be transforming our relationships, healing them
from the effects of our brokenness. But, just to dig in that much more
on this other-oriented aspect of this season, we’re also going to com-
mit, right from the start to pray for six folks in our lives not yet fol-
lowing Jesus who we’d like to experience God’s best. (The reason to
pick folks in New Haven is related to this: by praying for folks right
here in our city, we also invest our hearts and minds in our city, in the
here-and-now.) Even if you’re not sure what you believe about Jesus
or about God, I’d encourage you to pray for others in your life as part
of the “faith experiment” aspect of all of this. After all, if there is a
God and that God has both the power and compassion to bring about
good things in people’s lives, you’d want that God at work in your

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 friends’ lives. If, at the end of these six weeks, it seems like there’s not
really anything to this faith thing, well, the practice of regularly pray-
ing for folks you care about will at least have helped you grow in love
for these folks. And if God is real, then your friends may well benefit
from your prayer.
So, as we embark on this journey of transformation together, pray about
what you’d like to see God change in your life and pray for good things for
your friends. (We won’t presume to pray for specific changes in our friends’
lives unless they’ve expressed specific desires for change.) In addition, I
would encourage you to invite folks just beginning to consider faith to pray
with you. What a cool blessing to have God answer a prayer (plus, we’ve
found again and again that God is eager to answer the prayers of folks who
are trying to check out who He is).
I’ll tell you from personal experience one thing that can easily trip up this whole
process. There’s actually a hidden first step that can be missed: deciding what
specific things, people, etc. to commit to pray for. So, take a moment right now to
consider at least as a starting point:
What’s one thing that you would like to see change in your life that only God
could make happen? (You’ll have opportunity to reflect on this a bit more as part
of the first two weeks’ devotionals.)

List a handful of folks in your life in New Haven who are not currently orient-
ed towards Jesus who you’d like to experience more of the good things of God.

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 Step One

We admitted we were powerless over Sin—

that our lives had become unmanageable.

Reflections by Matt Croasmun

Monday, Week 1
Mark 2:13-17

13
Jesus went out again beside the sea; the whole crowd gathered around
him, and he taught them. 14 As he was walking along, he saw Levi son of
Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And
he got up and followed him.
15
And as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners
were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples—for there were many who
followed him. 16 When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating
with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, “Why does he
eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 17 When Jesus heard this, he said to
them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are
sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

Reflection: The scribes of the Pharisees—some of the elite religious leaders’ of Jesus’
day—object to Jesus hanging around with “tax collectors and sinners”—folks they
thought didn’t have their stuff together enough to be with Jesus. The scribes figure
these folks aren’t Jesus’ kind of people. But Jesus says these are exactly the kind of
folks he is inviting to follow him. He’s come to call not the righteous but sinners. He’s
like a doctor; he’s of most value for the sick. It seems like the only folks on the out-
side of what Jesus is doing are the “healthy,” the “righteous”—or at least folks that
think of themselves that way. Ironically, the scribes—by considering themselves su-
perior to these “sinners”—have placed themselves on the outside.

Prompts for Prayer: The first step is sometimes summarized simply as “admit-
ting you have a problem.” Are you willing to do that or are you tempted to think
that you are among the healthy who have no need of Jesus’ healing? Engaging the
twelve steps the way we are invites the comparison to addicts. Is it easy or diffi-
cult to imagine yourself a sin addict? Where has it become clear that your life has
become unmanageable? In what part of your life is it most clear that you are sick
and need of Jesus’ healing? What would it look like to admit that you are a sinner
in recovery? The first step in inviting God to transform us—to help us become
our very best selves—is simply to admit that we don’t have what it takes to do it
on our own. Begin by making that confession today.

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Tuesday, Week 1
Romans 3:9-26

9
What then? Are we any better off? No, not at all; for we have already
charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, 10 as it
is written: “There is no one who is righteous, not even one; 11 there is no
one who has understanding, there is no one who seeks God. 12 All have
turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is no one who
shows kindness, there is not even one.” 13 “Their throats are opened
graves; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of vipers is under
their lips.” 14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” 15 “Their
feet are swift to shed blood; 16 ruin and misery are in their paths, 17 and
the way of peace they have not known.” 18 “There is no fear of God before
their eyes.”
19
Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are un-
der the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world
may be held accountable to God. 20 For “no human being will be justified
in his sight” by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes
the knowledge of sin.
21
But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed,
and is attested by the law and the prophets, 22 the righteousness of God
through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinc-
tion, 23 since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24 they are
now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in
Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his
blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, be-
cause in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously
committed; 26 it was to prove at the present time that he himself is right-
eous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

Reflection: In Romans, Paul, the ancient church planter, is writing to a mixed

group of Jews and Greeks. Each group is tempted to believe that, by practicing their
religion, following their cultural norms, they more or less have their lives under con-
trol. Paul says that, no matter which culture we belong to or which religion we fol-
low, we simply don’t have what it takes to live a just (or “righteous”) life. Paul insists
not only that each of us sins (does things that ruin our relationships with God and
with one another), but rather that each of us lives “under the power of Sin.” This is

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Sin-with-a-capital-S, a cosmic tyrant that has taken control of our lives. It’s not just
that we’ve made a few mistakes. Sure, nobody’s perfect. But that’s not what Paul’s
talking about here. Paul’s point is that each of us has fundamentally lost control of
our lives; we’re under Sin’s power. And the consequences are dire. In vv. 10-18, Paul
quotes a litany of passages from Israel’s scriptures that make it clear that we’re all in
the same boat: we’re a mess. But there’s good news: our inescapable injustice is more
than overcome by God’s justice. It’s not about what we can accomplish, not about
how many religious rules we can follow. God is able to accomplish what we cannot.
God’s righteousness overcomes our unrighteousness. There’s hope if only we can ad-
mit that we’ve lost control and need rescue.

Prompts for Prayer: Paul’s description of our predicament as being “under Sin”
is really stark. Do you tend to imagine yourself as someone who just makes mis-
takes once in a while or as someone who has fundamentally lost control of your
life—someone “under Sin”? Do you still have hope that, through simply trying
harder—perhaps even trying harder to follow some good religious practices—
you could get where you need to go? Paul seems to suggest that that sort of hope
is foolishness. What would it mean for you to admit that your problems go deep-
er than merely trying harder? How can you make a decision today to trust not in
your own righteousness—your own justice—but rather in God’s righteousness—
God’s justice? The other important truth here in this passage is that the scope of
any real transformation—anything of significance we want to see change in our
lives—is whole-life. That is, the sort of transformation we’re after—the kind that
will last—isn’t just a matter of fixing up one thing here and another over there. It’s
about whole-life overhaul. The more clearly we see our brokenness, the clearer
that will become. Are you ready? Are you willing to look clearly? Ask God for
courage to be willing to see the full scope of your need.

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Wednesday, Week 1
1 John 1:5-10

5
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that
God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have
fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not
do what is true; 7 but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we
have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses
us from all sin. 8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and
the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just
will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we
say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Reflection: At first, this passage seems like it’s making a pretty familiar point:
hypocrisy is no good. God is good—100% good—so if we say we’re God’s people but
we don’t reflect God’s goodness, then we’re deceiving ourselves. Fair enough. No one
likes a hypocrite. Religious people are constantly giving God a bad name by not
practicing what they preach. This is a problem. If you stopped reading at the end of
verse 6, you might think that the takeaway is: so try harder; be better; stop giving
God a bad name! But then there’s verse 7… apparently “walking in the light” doesn’t
mean being perfect; after all, it involves the “blood of Jesus” cleansing us from our
sin. Verses 8 and 10 make this explicit: walking in the light has everything to do
with admitting that we’re not perfect—letting our secrets out into the light, so they
can be forgiven (v. 9). This is what “walking in the light” is all about: living
transparently.

Prompts for Prayer: Generally our instinct when we do something we’re not
proud of is to hide it as well as we can. John suggests precisely the opposite: if
we’re seeking transformation, our best move is to bring all our ugliness—all our
sin—into the open so that Jesus can forgive us and cleanse us from sin’s ugly con-
sequences. This principle is fundamental to the hope we can have for real, lasting
transformation. Because the goal is no longer an unattainable perfection. Rather,
the goal is transparency: if we live our lives in the open, we still won’t be perfect,
but we’ll be living in a way that opens us to Jesus’ transformative work. That’s
good news. It’s a maxim of the recovery community: “You’re as sick as your se-
crets.” Today, the invitation is to stop keeping “secrets” from ourselves, from one
another, and from God. In what parts of your life do you like to pretend you have
it all together? John says “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” What
would it look like to stop lying to yourself and admit the full extent of your
brokenness?

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Thursday, Week 1
Romans 7:14-20

14
For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into
slavery under sin. 15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do
what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not
want, I agree that the law is good. 17 But in fact it is no longer I that do it,
but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells
within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.
19
For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
20
Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that
dwells within me.

Reflection: A German monk named Martin Luther read these words and they
changed his life forever. For centuries, generations have recognized something
deeply true to life in this description of simply trying harder to do the right thing—
simply trying to become the people we want to be by sheer force of will. Our experi-
ence is that we simply don’t have what it takes. Somehow, even—or especially—in
our “private” struggles, it seems like we’re not alone. We’re at war with ourselves—or
worse. “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (v. 15) This is evi-
dence for Paul not just that we’re weak-willed. This is evidence of what he insisted
back in Romans 3 (Day 2): we live under the power of Sin. Somehow, Sin—the pow-
er of brokenness that is somehow both a power from outside and yet dwelling within
us—acts in our place. This is going to take more than just trying harder.

Prompts for Prayer: For Martin Luther, taking this text (along with others) seri-
ously meant abandoning his religious efforts at becoming the person he wanted
to become through force of will. It turned his life on its head, pushed against
much of what he had been taught, and set him on a life journey that would
fundamentally reshape the world. What might God want to do in and through
you if you would just stop trying to get better and instead admit that things have
gotten to the point that they’re beyond what you can handle, beyond what you
can control? What adventures might begin with this sort of admission? Ask God
for the courage to throw in the towel on your self-improvement projects, whatev-
er they might be. Invite God to show you God’s plans for your transformation.

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Friday, Week 1
Romans 7:21-25

21
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies
close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, 23 but I
see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making
me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man
that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to
God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am a slave
to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.

Reflection: One way we can imagine that we’re going to get a handle on things in
our life is by “following the rules.” This is more or less one of the ways Paul talks
about “the law”—the Jewish religious law that Paul observed for much of his life.
But, ironically, Paul says there’s just one “law” that he’s found is 100% reliable:
whenever he tries to do the right thing, he meets resistance. Paul doesn’t get very
specific about what this is, but I think we know the kind of stuff he’s talking about.
It’s the sort of stuff that, like Paul says, seems so instinctive, that it’s almost like its
just part of our bodies: our instincts, our habits, our knee-jerk responses. This is the
sort of stuff we can’t consciously control. What we need is rescue (v. 24). The good
news is that God is offering exactly such rescue through Jesus—but only if we’re able
to come to the place of surrender that this passage describes.

Prompts for Prayer: Where in your life have you experienced the sort of dis-
connect that Paul’s been talking about the last two days? Where in your life do
you feel not just that you’ve fallen short of where you’d like to be, but that you’re
actually just not able to do the things that you want to do? Where are you stuck?
Paul’s description of his pre-transformation state is stark: he says he’s stuck in a
“body of death.” As we talked about on Day 2, the fact is that real transformation
always goes beyond the “presenting issue.” We’re sick; Jesus is ready to be our
doctor (Day 1), but the symptoms that bring us to Jesus are usually just that:
symptoms. Transformation involves being willing to see the full scope of our bro-
kenness—what Paul calls living “under Sin.” It can feel like things are getting
worse before they get better. What sorts of habits, instincts, or past experiences of
pain are at war with whatever it is within you that wants to receive God’s trans-
forming work? (vv. 22-23) Ask God to begin to rescue you from these things that
seem so instinctive that they’re beyond what we can control with our conscious
minds.

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8
 Step Two

We came to believe that a Power greater

than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Step Three

We made a decision to turn our will and our lives

over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Reflections by George Black

Monday, Week 2
Luke 18:9-14

9
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they
were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up
to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The
Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I
am not like people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collec-
tor. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But the tax col-
lector, standing far off, would not even look up toother heaven, but was
beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell
you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for
all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves
will be exalted.”

Reflection: The Pharisee and the tax collector in the passage are presented, quite in-
tentionally, as stark opposites. The Pharisee is a religious leader who “does all the
right things,” while the tax collector is quite literally a traitor—a Judean man who
collects taxes for the oppressor of his people, the Roman government, while stealing
even more money from his fellow Judeans on top of the tax. Yet Jesus said that it
was the tax collector who walked away justified and not the Pharisee! How can that
be? Jesus tells us plainly when he says “for all who exalt themselves will be humbled,
but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” The Pharisee believed that his good
deeds not only made him right with God, but that they also made him better than
others, specifically the tax collector right next to him. The tax collector, on the other
hand, knew that no amount of personal effort could save him; he needed God to do
it for him. “God, be merciful on me, a sinner!” At the point that we come to terms
with the fact that we cannot save ourselves by our own will, and that God is both
willing and able, we experience a freedom like no other, and that freedom is the gift
of a relationship with a God who is big enough to handle our shortcomings!

Prompts for Prayer: In what ways have you not given your sin to God? In what
ways to you even struggle with the idea asking God to take your sin and forgive
you? God loves you deeply, and wants you to come to Him with all that you are.
Ask God to reveal that love to you, and then ask him to show you what stops you
from letting Him bring the good things he wants to bring in your life. God has
what it takes to set us free.

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Tuesday, Week 2
1 John 2:1-2

1
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not
sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus
Christ the righteous; 2 and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not
for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

Reflection: John shares with us some beautiful things about God’s heart. The first is
that God knows how destructive sin is to us and our relationships, and desires that
we avoid it. “I am writing these things do that you do not sin.” The second is that
even if we do sin, Jesus Christ himself is our covering. Jesus not only offered his life
for us, but he also advocates for us to God, constantly pleading our case so that then
we do fall into sin, we are very much covered by his blood and his words. There is
freedom in knowing that we serve a God who foresees the mistakes of his creation,
and loves us through them, in spite of them. As we come to know God, we see that
even though sin often feels unavoidable, God has made provision for us, and that
provision is himself.

Prompts for Prayer: What are places or areas in your life where sin often feels
inevitable and unavoidable? Spend some time with God, asking him to reveal
those spaces to you, and then ask him to show you what it means to trust him in
covering those sins as he leads you closer to himself.

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Wednesday, Week 2
Romans 8:1-11

1
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Je-
sus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from
the law of sin and of death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by
the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the just
requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to
the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the
flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live accord-
ing to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 To set the
mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and
peace. 7 For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God;
it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, 8 and those who are in
the flesh cannot please God.
9
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God
dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not be-
long to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of
sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who
raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the
dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells
in you.

Reflection: Last week, Paul told us that it’s not just that we sin, it’s that we’re under
Sin. In this passage, he describes this in terms of enslavement to the flesh—that as-
pect of ourselves that is aligned with Sin. Paul says it straight: it is impossible to
please God when we are doing what the flesh wants for us to do. Those who give
their lived over to God, however, are no longer “in the flesh, but in the Spirit, since
the Spirit of God dwell” in them. When we acknowledge that God is good and we
submit our will to Him completely, his Spirit, his very self, lives inside of us, and we
are no longer powerless against the pulls and urges of the flesh. If you are finding
the fight to do right feels impossible for you to win, it is because it is impossible for
you to win—on your own. Only when we submit to God will we “belong” to Him,
and only then can we experience the life that comes when we are free from sin!

12
Prompts for Prayer: Is there sin in your life that you have been attempting to
overcome apart from God? What is that sin? Make a list of prevalent places in
your life where you have not yet invited God into your struggle, and then pray
that God would send his Spirit to enter each and every one of those spaces. Take
time to see what God may be saying to you about those struggles, and how he
wants to love you through them. Give thanks to God that he has the power to set
us free from the patterns and cycles of Sin against which we are powerless on our
own.

13
Thursday, Week 2
2 Samuel 11:2-6, 14-17

2
It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and
was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the
roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful. 3 David sent some-
one to inquire about the woman. It was reported, “This is Bathsheba
daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” 4 So David sent messen-
gers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was
purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house. 5 The
woman conceived; and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”
6
So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent
Uriah to David.
14
In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of
Uriah. 15 In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest
fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down
and die.” 16 As Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place
where he knew there were valiant warriors. 17 The men of the city came
out and fought with Joab; and some of the servants of David among the
people fell. Uriah the Hittite was killed as well.
26
When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made
lamentation for him. 27 When the mourning was over, David sent and
brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son.
But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.

Reflection: David was a young man ordained by God to be the king of his people.
God chose him when he was a young boy and helped him overcome obstacles to be-
come king. This same David slept with another man’s wife and then killed that man
as to cover up his gross error. David, like all of us, was capable of untold darkness,
and when he gave himself over to his fleshly desires, many people around him
suffered. As we will ready in tomorrow’s devotional, not even David knew that he
was capable of such darkness, and we often feel the same about ourselves! We
would like to believe that there is sin that we are somehow “above” or “beyond”, but
given the right circumstances, we are all capable of the same darkness as David. We
must be brave enough to look into the darkest places of ourselves, and acknowledge
the sin we are capable of if we are to ever experience true freedom from our sin!

14
Prompts for Prayer: Part of the reason that we often find it difficult to rectify
mistakes we have made in our lives is because we are ashamed and astounded
that we were capable to such sin in the first place. Scary as it may be, have you al-
lowed yourself to look deep enough to see the depths of your moral and spiritual
condition? If not, ask God for the courage to do so, and ask him to talk with you,
and to help you make sense of what you find. (Remember, we look at ourselves
honestly in God’s presence because we have hope that God has what it takes to
set us free from Sin.)

15
Friday, Week 2
2 Samuel 12:1-13

1
The LORD sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him,
“There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.
2
The rich man had very many flocks and herds; 3 but the poor man had
nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up,
and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager
fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a
daughter to him. 4 Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was
loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who
had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared that for
the guest who had come to him.” 5 Then David’s anger was greatly kindled
against the man. He said to Nathan, “As the LORD lives, the man who has
done this deserves to die; 6 he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he
did this thing, and because he had no pity.”
7
Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the LORD, the God of
Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of
Saul; 8 I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your
bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had
been too little, I would have added as much more. 9 Why have you de-
spised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight? You have
struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to
be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.
10
Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, for you
have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your
wife. 11 Thus says the LORD: I will raise up trouble against you from within
your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give
them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this
very sun. 12 For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel,
and before the sun.” 13 David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the
LORD.”

Reflection: David not only killed a man because he wanted his wife, but he also
was blind to the depth of his sin. When Nathan told him a story mirroring David’s
choices, he demanded that the man who committed such acts be punished! One can
only imagine how hard it must have been for David to look up, only to see that the
reflection in this mirror was indeed himself. God made it clear that David’s sin

16
would not only affect him, Bathsheba and Uriah, but that it would seep into the
lives of his children, both born and unborn, and eventually ripple into the entire
kingdom he ruled. Sin not only breaks relationship with God, but its affects are
often far-reaching, breaking the relationships we have with other people. Our sin
hurts others, and we must be honest with both our capacity to sin, and the effects it
has on others if we are to truly become free from its grip.

Prompts for Prayer: It is hard enough to acknowledge that are private. It is much
harder to know that our mistakes hurt people we both care about and are respon-
sible for. As you spend time with God today, ask him for strength! Make a list of
people you are aware you have hurt in the past or present, and then ask God to
reveal to you sins you have forgotten and the pain that they caused. If you can,
write down the specific sin you made against this person, and ask God for empa-
thy and insight into this person’s pain. (Save this list. God will use it as a touch-
stone for his work of reconciliation.)

There is a traditional AA prayer that coincides with the Third Step. Perhaps we
can pray this prayer to align ourselves with what God is doing at this point in our
journey together:

God, I offer myself to Thee – to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Re-
lieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficul-
ties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power,
Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always.

17
18
 Step Four

We made a searching and fearless

moral inventory of ourselves.

Step Five

We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another

human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Reflections by Josh Williams

Monday, Week 3
Psalm 51:1-6

1
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according
to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thorough-
ly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my trans-
gressions, and my sin is ever before me. 4 Against you, you alone, have I
sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in
your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment. 5 Indeed, I was
born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. 6 You desire truth in
the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

Reflection: These honest words are the beginning of a psalm of King David, a Psalm
tradition tells us he wrote after he was convicted of some really devastating mis-
takes. He committed adultery with a married woman, tried to conceal the resulting
pregnancy, and eventually ordered his adulteress’ husband to be killed in the front
lines of battle in an attempt not to sully his reputation. (See the previous two pas-
sages above.) These are ugly moves. Yet as horrible as those acts were, David be-
lieved he could still approach God. In this text, he asks for mercy and a washing
away of wrongdoing. It is almost as if his sinful mistakes cling to him like a second
layer of skin. David trusts that God has the power to wash away his sins and he ap-
peals to God based on the faithfulness of God, not his own morality. It is good news
that God’s compassion and his interest in transformation—truth in our inward be-
ing—results in an invitation to know ourselves as broken and to posture ourselves
as students learning God’s ways in our hearts.

Prompts for Prayer: Like David, we have made mistakes—recently or in the

past—that weigh us down. Sometimes, we either feel disqualified from forgive-
ness because of how big our errors have been or we justify them based on how
small or normal they are. What if we did something else? In an effort to be
known by God and to be known as broken, what if we listed out our sins and
brought them before God believing it is His faithfulness, not our morality that
will secure our forgiveness? When we trust in God’s forgiving nature, it becomes
easier to confess sin– to simply share where we have missed the mark of God’s
best for our lives. Appropriately, the fourth step is to “make a fearless and search-
ing moral inventory of yourself.” On the next page, boldly and prayerfully list out
sins that you have committed or unhelpful patterns or habits you practice. Listen
to God’s voice of care, not a voice of condemnation, and let God guide you. Fin-
ish by writing out a prayer of confession and praying it to God—the One whose
steadfast love and abundant mercy cleanses us. Trust He is with you.

20
21
Tuesday, Week 3
Proverbs 28:13

13
No one who conceals transgressions will prosper, but one who confesses
and forsakes them will obtain mercy.

Reflection: This proverb, on its face, might seem confusing. After all, don’t we dis-
cover reports about deceased world leaders or iconic activists that reveal moral
compromises, scandals, and disappointing truths hidden from the public eye? Cer-
tainly, these figures still prospered in ways. What if, let’s say, prospering did not
mean worldly fame or even a good reputation? What if there is a much richer defin-
ition of what it means to prosper? Let’s consider the proverb again. Why might one
who confesses and forsakes transgressions obtain mercy and live more freely? I think
there is a fundamental experience of freedom that comes when we let someone into
what we have experienced as the “darkness.” It takes work to keep things in the sha-
dows, and it is work that, frankly, exhausts us. Confession and forsaking sin is cer-
tainly not easy, yet it does provide a clear path to obtain mercy. It brings us into the
light.

Prompts for Prayer: Let’s pray for God to bring His light to our lives, especially
in places where we have concealed transgressions—our own or others’—and cre-
ated darkened corners in our lives. Take time today to confess sin to God in
prayer and take a risk and confess sin to someone you trust. God values our con-
fessions to other people because it humbles us and, ultimately, removes shame
from us as we bring things into the light. Thankfully, God promises that we ob-
tain mercy through these actions. Wait on His Spirit to release mercy to you and
enjoy the freedom that God gives through our simple acts of trust.

22
23
Wednesday, Week 3
Luke 15:11-32

Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of
them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will
belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. 13 A few days lat-
er the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country,
and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14 When he had
spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and
he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the
citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16 He
would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating;
and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to himself he said,
‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare,
but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I
will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I
am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired
hands.” ’ 20 So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far
off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his
arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I
have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be
called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a
robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and san-
dals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and cele-
brate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is
found!’ And they began to celebrate.
25
“Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached
the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the slaves and
asked what was going on. 27 He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your
father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and
sound.’ 28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out
and began to plead with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all
these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never dis-
obeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so
that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came
back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fat-
ted calf for him!’ 31 Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with

24
me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, be-
cause this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and
has been found.’”

Reflection: The story of the father and his two sons is one of Jesus’ most famous
parables. It is the third in a sequence of stories about lost things prompted by one of
the Pharisees, the religious experts of Jesus’ days, grumbling about how Jesus eats
with tax collectors and sinners. In these stories, Jesus shows the value of what it
means to be found. The younger son in this parable, at a certain point, knows he is
lost. His despair is so great that he can only fathom being one of his father’s hired
hands, not a son. There is another lost son too: the older brother. While the younger
brother knows he is lost, the older brother is lost in his anger. The older brother’s
anger and bitterness blind him from seeing the work of reconciliation happening in
his midst. While the younger brother prepares a confession before he even sees his
father, the older brother has a confrontation when he sees his father. Even though
these brothers are quite different in the ways they are lost, the father reacts surpris-
ingly similarly to both. The father pursues each of them: running when the younger
son is still far off, leaving the party and pleading with the older brother. He listens
deeply to both. He shares what he has: throwing a party for the younger brother, de-
claring everything he has is the older brother’s. Whether the father is responding to
a confession or confrontation, he knows how to welcome lost people of any kind.

Prompts for Prayer: Take time to reflect. Where have you been like the younger
brother in your life? The older brother? Any time you felt like both? Pause and
sense what God is saying to you. Is he responding to a confession you have made
earlier this week? Is he drawing out a holy confrontation that you have been un-
able or unwilling to engage thus far? Embrace the ways God is speaking promises
over the confessions you have made during this Twelve Step journey. Equally em-
brace the ways God is speaking truth to address areas where, like the older broth-
er, you thought you were fine. Often, God stirs up areas like that in his mercy to
awake us to the reality of our need for God, especially if we are proud of other
“righteous” parts of our lives. Thank God that He does come to us when were still
a long way off and that God pursues us even when reject Him.

25
Thursday, Week 3
Psalm 139:1-18

1
O LORD, you have searched me and known me. 2 You know when I sit
down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. 3 You
search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my
ways. 4 Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it com-
pletely. 5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
6
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain
it. 7 Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your pres-
ence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you
are there. 9 If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest lim-
its of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand
shall hold me fast. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the
light around me become night,” 12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. 13 For it was
you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s
womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonder-
ful are your works; that I know very well. 15 My frame was not hidden
from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the de-
pths of the earth. 16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your
book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of
them as yet existed. 17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How
vast is the sum of them! 18 I try to count them—they are more than the
sand; I come to the end—I am still with you.

26
Reflection: This psalm is an incredible way of capturing David’s experience of God’s
ever presence. God knows us. Every single part of us. The good and the bad. Wher-
ever we go, God is there and He sees us. This can terrify us or make us in awe of
God. Our response probably depends on how we view the character of God. If God
is not good, then this psalm becomes a whole lot creepier and disturbing. If God is
good though, this psalm is extremely comforting. This is David’s experience and his
invitation for the reader. No matter where we are in life, God will be with us. Given
that God already knows us and his thoughts about us are countless, it appears that
He will be able to easily converse with us. In verse twelve, David even responds to a
common objection that we are too distant or dirty for God to interact with Him by
saying that “even the darkness is not dark to [God], the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to [God].” How might that change our conversation with
God? If our darkest moments are moments where the light of God is somehow still
present, then how might that change how we view our own story and the way we
view and talk to God?

Prompts for Prayer: If you knew you could not go anywhere from the Spirit of
God or get away from talking to Him, what would you finally bring up with
Him? Even as we have been exploring confession and bringing parts of our lives
to the light, is there a part of your story you have been pushing aside or not
talking about plainly? The fifth step is “admitting to God, to ourselves, and to
another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” Does the knowledge that
God is always with us and that we, truly, cannot run from Him help us in sharing
the exact nature of our wrongs to God? Does being fully known help us admit
our wrongs to ourselves too? Others? Today, choose to tell the whole story or as
much as you can given where you are right now. Pray that story to God, take time
to write it down or process it yourself, and start to consider how you can share
that story with a trusted friend. Celebrate that in God knowing us—the heights
and the depths—we can still rejoice that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
We can trust our lives are not hidden from God and we can choose to respond
with honesty to ourselves, to God, and to others.

27
Friday, Week 3
Psalm 139:19-24

19
O that you would kill the wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty
would depart from me—20 those who speak of you maliciously, and lift
themselves up against you for evil! 21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O
LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? 22 I hate them
with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies. 23 Search me, O God, and
know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. 24 See if there is any
wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Reflection: A bit hard to believe that these verses follow yesterday’s passage, right?
In some ways, it does make some sense. When we tell our story—the whole story—
we often remember and realize how much people hurt us, how we felt betrayed or
misunderstood, and how even as we sinned, people did sin against us. These are
painful realizations, and they drive David to pray against who he calls “the wicked.”
As we process our lives, we too might be tempted to lash out against those who have
hurt us. David’s choice of turning to prayer, however uncomfortable to read several
millennia later, is a good one among other options available to him. In fact, David
does end this prayer with a call for God to search him and know his heart. David
wants to know if there is any wicked way in him. This humble stance as it relates to
dealing with other people is a necessary one and one that encourages God to speak
and mediate in difficult situations with others.

Prompts for Prayer: As we struggle with processing pains caused by others in

this Twelve Step journey, I think David’s path provides us with a few options. The
first is to pray that God would deal with the ones have hurt us, not for us to take
matters into our own hands. In doing this, we have to trust that God is a God of
justice and one who creatively acts in our world today to promote mercy. The
second is for us to pray against our spiritual enemies, forces at work against God
and His good purposes in the world. Thankfully, we know that God’s creation
was all “fearfully and wonderfully made” and that we can pray against spiritual
forces that influence ourselves and others we know without praying against peo-
ple. Lastly, we are called to pray in humility to see if there is any wicked way in
us, anything that God hates that we are involved in, and to accept God’s leader-
ship as He leads us to an abundant life, not a shadow of that reality. These are
steps of reconciliation that God will use to increase wholeness in us and in our
communities.

28
 Step Six

We were entirely ready to have God remove

all these defects of character.

Step Seven

We humbly asked Him

to remove our shortcomings.

Reflections by Matt Croasmun

Monday, Week 4
Psalm 51:7-12

7
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be
whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you
have crushed rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my
iniquities. 10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right
spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not
take your holy spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit.

Reflection: There are two things that distinguish a godly community from any other
when it comes to sin (and neither has anything to do with being less sinful to begin
with!): First, a godly community is honest about its sin (that’s mostly what we’ve
been focusing on so far). But, second, a godly community has, well, God—a divine
power at work helping us actually transform, helping us become our very best
selves. Here, David prays for God to do what God does best: help him, a broken per-
son, become whole again. David trusts that God has what it takes to help him
change. He knows there’s a lot to do—he compares the process to being created anew
(v. 10), with a clean heart and just spirit bringing him new life.

Prompts for Prayer: This is really where the rubber meets the road, where we in-
vite God to bring his power to bear on our weakness. I encourage you to pray
these lines of this Psalm as a prayer today. If there are particular sins, habits, or
cycles of a brokenness that are particularly heavy on your heart, pause between
verses of the Psalm to name those specifically as you invite God to cleanse you.
God does not withdraw because of our brokenness (v. 11). Rather, God draws
near, because as the Physician who makes us well, he knows that it is times like
these when we most need his presence. Finally, David asks twice to experience
God’s joy as part of his restoration. End your prayer by asking to receive God’s
joy.

30
Tuesday, Week 4
James 5:13-18

13
Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They
should sing songs of praise. 14 Are any among you sick? They should call
for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing
them with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 The prayer of faith will save the
sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed
sins will be forgiven. 16 Therefore confess your sins to one another, and
pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the right-
eous is powerful and effective. 17 Elijah was a human being like us, and he
prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months
it did not rain on the earth. 18 Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave
rain and the earth yielded its harvest.

Reflection: James writes this letter to offer very practical advice to people trying to
follow Jesus in their daily lives. In this passage, he encourages us, wherever we’re at,
to go to God. If we have needs, we should bring them to God. If we experience joy,
we should sing praise. There’s no state of mind or of heart that excludes us from
God’s presence. And that’s good news because, as James argues here, there is power
in God’s presence, power in our prayers. This is part of the power of confessing our
sins to one another—we can invite others to pray for us. Likewise, when people con-
fess to us or share their needs for transformation with us, we can believe that our
prayers on their behalf are powerful.

Prompts for Prayer: We’ve spent a lot of time in this season praying through our
own stuff, praying for God’s work in our own lives—which is great. But we each
have other people in our lives that we know we’d like to experience God’s best.
Perhaps one of those folks has confessed something to you in this season or
shared something they’re seeking God’s help in seeing transformed. Take some
time today to pray for those things. Even if someone has not shared specifics with
you, let’s simply pray for God’s best for them (let’s not go praying for things we’d
like to see them change!). Our prayers have power because our God is good.

31
Wednesday, Week 4
2 Corinthians 3:17-18

17
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
freedom. 18 And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord
as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same im-
age from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord,
the Spirit.

Reflection: Jesus’ presence (the Lord’s presence) is marked by freedom. Jesus’ Spirit
is with us and through that Spirit comes freedom—from our sin, from our broken-
ness, from our shame. Verse 18 is one of the most beautiful and complex verses from
Paul’s letters. The image he paints is of looking into a mirror—which, in the ancient
world, was always a bit dim, a bit hard to make out detail. So, Paul says, in our en-
counter with Jesus through the Spirit, it is as though we’re seeing his glory—the full-
ness of his status as God’s beloved—but only as through a dim mirror. But the mir-
ror image has another payout: when we see Jesus this way, what we’re seeing is, in
some sense, ourselves (that’s what you see in a mirror), as we ourselves are being
transformed into Jesus’ likeness, as we come to know ourselves more and more as
beloved of God. The image is full of seemingly contradictory tensions. What we see
is the glory of God—but only through a mirror dimly. The transformation seems
mystical—but yet it becomes real only in stages. This is the heart of transformation
in God’s presence. It is at once a miraculous, God-powered process and yet also hard
work whose fruit we only see bit by bit.

Prompts for Prayer: This passage should give us hope to celebrate the small
changes we’re seeing God bring about in our lives. How have you begun to see
God’s transforming work take root in your life? Remember, while the ultimate
goal is nothing less than “the glory of the Lord,” what we live is instead incremen-
tal steps “from one degree of glory to another.” Where have you seen these sorts
of steps? Invite God to reveal to you the divine image he is revealing in you. Give
thanks to God for the work he is doing. Ask for patience along the way.

32
Thursday, Week 4
Romans 6:4-11

4
Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that,
just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we
too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in
a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like
his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of
sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For
whoever has died is freed from sin. 8 But if we have died with Christ, we
believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised
from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over
him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives,
he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and
alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Reflection: Earlier in Romans (see Tuesday, Week 1), we saw Paul argue that our
problem isn’t just that we sin, but that we are under Sin’s power. We’re actually
stuck. On our own, we have no way of simply choosing to do what is right. Seeing
the problem this way means that Paul knows the solution—God’s solution—must be
drastic. The way Paul puts it here is this: the life we’re living in sin (here he says
we’re literally living in Sin’s body) is a lost cause; the only way forward is to die with
Christ and be raised to a new life in Christ’s Body (“in Christ Jesus,” v. 11). In other
words, God uses the resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead to raise us
to new life in which Sin and Death no longer have power over us. All of this Paul
says happens in baptism, when we choose to confess publicly our dependence on Je-
sus and enact our participating in his death and resurrection (in going under the
water and coming back up). But, whether or not we’ve been baptized, there’s still al-
ways a choice to be made, a choice to know ourselves as people being transformed in
God’s presence, as “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

Prompts for Prayer: How has God been inviting you in this season to “die to” as-
pects of your life? What habits has God asked you to lay down? What ways of
seeing yourself has God invited you to set aside? As we keep being reminded in
this season, we don’t have what it takes to make these changes on our own. But
God does. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to raise us
into new life in which we are set from from Sin’s reign in our life. Thank God to-
day for his resurrection power—his power over death—and invite him to put that
power to work in your life more and more each day.

33
Friday, Week 4
Romans 6:12-23

12
Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to
make you obey their passions. 13 No longer present your members to sin
as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who
have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God
as instruments of righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over
you, since you are not under law but under grace.
15
What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under
grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to
anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, ei-
ther of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to right-
eousness? 17 But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin,
have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which
you were entrusted, 18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have
become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms because
of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members
as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present
your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
20
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
21
So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now
are ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have
been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sancti-
fication. The end is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free
gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Reflection: Here Paul continues to encourage us to live in the sort of new life that is
available to us through God’s resurrection power. The central argument he makes is
to compare the “freedom” we might imagine we have when living “by our own
rules” to the true freedom we have in obedience to God. I think we can see the truth
of what he’s saying in our own lives. “Freedom” to continue in destructive patterns is
hardly freedom at all. But, when we’re tempted to turn back to patterns that are
comfortable or ways of seeing ourselves that we’ve lived with for so long, these things
precisely try to sell themselves to us as “freedom.” Ultimately, Paul says, this sort of
“freedom” is actually slavery. Paul reminds us: The deal God gave us—new life in-
stead of death—is a good one. Let’s not be deceived by the charms of the life we died
to in deciding to turn over our lives to God.

34
Prompts for Prayer: Paul boldly makes an argument here in favor of obedience
rather than what pretends to be “freedom” (v. 16). Obedience is not something
our culture encourages us to seek. But, ultimately, obedience to God is what
brings true freedom in our lives. Pray today that God would help you walk in
obedience today—that you would hear God’s voice, discern what you hear, and
walk in courage into the things God has for you. This is the beginning, the mid-
dle, and the end of our transformation with God: the life of obedience. Let’s em-
brace that life together and ask God to truly set us free to walk in obedience to
him.

There is a traditional AA prayer that coincides with the Seventh Step. Perhaps we
can pray this prayer to align ourselves with what God is doing at this point in our
journey together:

My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray
that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the
way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from
here, to do your bidding. Amen.

35
36
 Step Eight

We made a list of all persons we had harmed,

and became willing to make amends to them all.

Step Nine

We made direct amends to such people wherever possible,

except when to do so would injure them or others.

Reflections by Liz Moore

Monday, Week 5
Luke 19:1-10

1
He entered Jericho and was passing through it. 2 A man was there named
Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. 3 He was trying to
see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he
was short in stature. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see
him, because he was going to pass that way. 5 When Jesus came to the
place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down;
for I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he hurried down and was happy
to welcome him. 7 All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone
to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” 8 Zacchaeus stood there and said to
the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and
if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as
much.” 9 Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house,
because he too is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek
out and to save the lost.”

Reflection: Zacchaeus refuses to let anything get in the way of his view of Jesus—
not his height, the crowds, or his past. He was a tax collector, which meant that he
was actively betraying his people by working for the oppressive Roman government
and garnering a salary through extortion. We should feel the shock of those who
witness Jesus invite himself over to Zacchaeus’ home—Jesus, a man who speaks the
truth of God and performs miracles in the name of God is choosing to spend time
with the unsavory tax collector Zacchaeus, a sinner. But when we get to Zacchaeus’
home we see that he is not there to justify his actions but to atone for his crimes, not
just in equal measure but four times what he had stolen. And he offers all of this,
demonstrating a chance of direction in his heart, not by the command of Jesus but
by simply standing in the presence of Jesus, who came to seek out and save those
who are lost.

38
Prompts for Prayer: Often, we avoid facing Jesus because we know that he might
expose not just the way our sin, our self-serving, has hurt us, but because he
might reveal how our sin has hurt others and our relationships to others. Zaccha-
eus’ approach to Jesus takes bravery, but Zacchaeus is also seeking freedom from
his past as he enters into a new way of living in right relationship to God, himself
and his community. Have you been avoiding the presence of Jesus? Have you
done so in order to avoid addressing friends and family who you’ve left in the
wake of your self-serving desire? Would you like the freedom that comes from
inviting Jesus in to restore your past? Consider that Jesus came to seek you out,
even as you seek his help in these things. The task of making amends with those
whom we have hurt is too daunting when we embark on it without first knowing
the Jesus who sees us as we dare to get close to him and then invites himself over.

39
Tuesday, Week 5
Leviticus 6:1-7

1
The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 2 When any of you sin and commit a
trespass against the LORD by deceiving a neighbor in a matter of a deposit
or a pledge, or by robbery, or if you have defrauded a neighbor, 3 or have
found something lost and lied about it—if you swear falsely regarding any
of the various things that one may do and sin thereby— 4 when you have
sinned and realize your guilt, and would restore what you took by rob-
bery or by fraud or the deposit that was committed to you, or the lost
thing that you found, 5 or anything else about which you have sworn false-
ly, you shall repay the principal amount and shall add one-fifth to it. You
shall pay it to its owner when you realize your guilt. 6 And you shall bring
to the priest, as your guilt offering to the LORD, a ram without blemish
from the flock, or its equivalent, for a guilt offering. 7 The priest shall
make atonement on your behalf before the LORD, and you shall be forgiv-
en for any of the things that one may do and incur guilt thereby.

Reflection: The book of Leviticus is found in the Old Testament and continues the
story of how God was forming the Israelites to play a special role in his plans to rec-
oncile the world to himself. Leviticus contains many of the laws and regulations
that God established through Moses about how his people, though sinful and bro-
ken, could meet with him through the aid of the priestly class, the Levites. Through
ritual, sacrifice and prayer, one could reestablish a relationship with God after one
had sinned and broken that relationship. Even though we might see an act of sin as
just against another person, in these verses we see that God sees sin as an act
against another and against Him. So, should I steal something from my neighbor, I
must right my relationship to my neighbor and right my relationship to God.

Prompts for Prayer: When restoring the imbalance that results from our sin and
brokenness we tend to think that either the relationship with the other OR the
relationship with God needs to be restored. Rarely, to we acknowledge that both,
equally, need to be addressed. Where in your life do you have areas of sin that
you need to bring to God? To others in your life? Leviticus invites us to see the
help of a priest to make atonement on our behalf before God to receive forgive-
ness. Where do you need to seek the help of Jesus, our high priest, to receive his
atonement for our sin to restore right relationship to God?

40
Wednesday, Week 5
Matthew 5:23-24

23
So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that
your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there
before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and
then come and offer your gift.

Reflection: This is a section coming from the most famous teaching that Jesus gave,
called “The Sermon on the Mount.” In the course of the sermon, Jesus not only en-
courages his followers by calling them blessed (while also saying that each blessing
comes through a particular kind of personal difficulty) but also challenges them in
the way that they should live in order to experience the Kingdom of God. The verses
for today reflect the seriousness with which he viewed breakdowns of relationship.
Put in more commonplace language, Jesus is effectively saying that when you try to
enter into a posture of worship of God and suddenly remember a grudge that a
friend has against you, get up and make things right immediately. Then return and
make things right with God. This is not a polite suggestion, but a command from
Jesus.

Prompts for Prayer: Steps eight and nine indicate that we should make a list of
those who we have wronged in order to right the relationship. While we may
have a running list of those we have hurt, sometimes the wrongs that we have
committed against our friends run so deep with shame or certainty that we are
blind to the wrong we have done. We need the help of the Holy Spirit to reveal
our brokenness and the brokenness we have created in others. Would you con-
sider inviting the presence of God to come and be with you? And in the time that
God is with you ask him to reveal to you those whom you have wronged and the
relationships that need to be restored. But there is one more step, not just for re-
flection, but for action: God has revealed this brokenness in a relationship so that
you would go and restore it, in humility, in love, and in weakness. Know that the
God of forgiveness is with you as you return to him.

41
Thursday, Week 5
Matthew 18:15-20

15
“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the
fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you
have regained that one. 16 But if you are not listened to, take one or two
others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evi-
dence of two or three witnesses. 17 If the member refuses to listen to them,
tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the
church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 18 Truly I
tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and what-
ever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19 Again, truly I tell you,
if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for
you by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my
name, I am there among them.”

Reflection: When it comes to resolving conflict in our relationships, the question of

how to do that is often interrupted by our lack of desire. As we’ve seen in earlier re-
flections this week and in steps eight and nine of recovery, making amends and re-
solving conflict to those whom we have hurt is a necessary part of our recovery and
restoration. Here, Jesus is offering us a pretty straightforward and helpful approach
to resolve conflict in a healthy way. When conflict isn’t addressed in a healthy way,
it spreads in a community like a disease through gossip and bitterness, creating
more hurt and broken relationships along the way. Jesus gives us a process to ad-
dress someone who hurts us: first addressing them directly, which usually is lower
on our conflict resolution checklist. Jesus gives us practical steps to resolve conflict,
but in the final verse of this section, he reminds us that in the process of reconcilia-
tion he has also given us himself.

Prompts for Prayer: The steps for this week ask us to make a list of all the people
that we have harmed and become willing to make amends with them. Have you
considered making a similar kind of list? If not, what’s holding you back? The
challenge we receive from AA, and from Jesus is to actively work to restore these
relationships. This passage not only gives us a method to approach conversations
of reconciliation, but also shapes how we can receive them. Ask God to prepare
you as you enter into these conversations. Ask God to be with you in the midst of
these conversations. Remember that when we try to resolve conflict by ourselves
we seek only to self-justify, but when we, in humility, meet with others to restore
relationship we gain Jesus himself.

42
Friday, Week 5
2 Corinthians 5:16-21

16
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view;
even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know
him no longer in that way. 17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new cre-
ation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
18
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and
has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was
reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against
them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 20 So we are am-
bassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we en-
treat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he
made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become
the righteousness of God.

Reflection: Paul, a member of the early church and one who spread the good news
of Jesus across the ancient world, is writing to the church in Corinth to help encour-
age them to live into the new lives given to them by Jesus’ life offered on the cross to
reconcile us to God. Paul himself is no stranger to the regrets of a former life as he
was one who hunted and murdered followers of Jesus, had an profound encounter
with Jesus and was then transformed into someone who was a key builder of the
early church (for more of Paul’s story check out Acts 9). So these words from Paul to
us are not just wishful thinking, but something that he is experiencing first hand.
He is a new creation, no longer one who persecutes Christians but one who has a
ministry of reconciliation—he is now one who reconciles people to God. His call to
the early church here is one of continued movement forward, as they know them-
selves as new people and as they are invited to share with others the love and peace
and grace they have received through Jesus.

Prompts for Prayer: As Paul says in this passage, we can be made into a new cre-
ation, that everything old and broken in us can be made new as we embark in re-
lationship with Jesus. That as we are united to Jesus we are able to become more
like the people we were made to be. Sometimes parts of this “newness” happens
quickly and sometimes this happens over a period of years. Where are you long-
ing to see “everything become new” in your life with the help of Jesus? Have you
considered that your experiences of seeing the old things in your life pass away
might make you a reconciler of people to Jesus? Ask God where he would like
you to act as an ambassador from the Kingdom of God to broken places and peo-
ple we see in the world around us.

43
44
 Step Ten

We continued to take personal inventory and

when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Step Eleven

We sought through prayer and meditation

to improve our conscious contact with God,
as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge
of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Reflections by Josh Williams

Monday, Week 6
Matthew 26:69-75

69
Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant-girl came to
him and said, “You also were with Jesus the Galilean.” 70 But he denied it
before all of them, saying, “I do not know what you are talking about.”
71
When he went out to the porch, another servant-girl saw him, and she
said to the bystanders, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.” 72 Again he
denied it with an oath, “I do not know the man.” 73 After a little while the
bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of
them, for your accent betrays you.” 74 Then he began to curse, and he
swore an oath, “I do not know the man!” At that moment the cock
crowed. 75 Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said: “Before the cock
crows, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.

Reflection: Peter’s denial of Jesus is an iconic moment of disobedience in the life of

faith. Days before, Peter confidently asserts he would never disown Jesus. Yet, he
does. It is easy for us to point a finger at Peter’s failure, but I wonder if we find our-
selves in similar situations. When it is expedient do we detach ourselves from Jesus?
Do we sometimes blatantly do things we have pledged not to do—even if our ac-
tions loosen a bond of trust with God or ignore a conviction we sensed was right?
As a disciple of Jesus, Peter walked with Jesus day by day, side by side. So, what
happened? For Peter, he gave into fear. What if I get caught? What if I am defined
by Jesus and that truth brings bad things into my life? Peter’s fear stirs confusion.
Peter’s confusion results in disobedience. This cycle of sin is incredibly damaging,
and it drives Peter to despair.

Prompts for Prayer: Where do we see ourselves straying from attachment to Je-
sus, whether we are considering faith for the first time or if we have been follow-
ing Jesus for a long time? Is our attempt to distance ourselves from Jesus part of
a pattern or bigger issue? The tenth step is “continue to take personal inventory
when we are wrong and promptly admit it.” This is a process where continuing is
important as we build persistence in obedience. Spend time dialoguing with Je-
sus about ways you separate your heart and mind from him. Like Peter, choose
to mourn that loss. Pray, journal, or even create art in response to this story and
be encouraged that Peter, just like us, experienced transformation and saw his
cowardice become courage in his lifetime.

46
Tuesday, Week 6
Romans 8:12-17

12
So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live ac-
cording to the flesh—13 for if you live according to the flesh, you will die;
but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
14
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15 For you
did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have re-
ceived a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 it is that very
Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if
children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact,
we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Reflection: Today’s passage focuses a lot on the Holy Spirit. If you wondered yester-
day how Peter changed from someone who denied Jesus to the one who helped
found the church, then you wondered about the work of the Holy Spirit. The
eleventh step is “to improve our conscious contact with God praying only for knowl-
edge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.” This step acknowledges that
the Twelve Step journey is a spiritual one and that we need God’s will and God’s
power to walk it out. Seeing our lives as material and spiritual might be new for
some of us, but it is fundamental to understanding Paul, the early church planter
who wrote this letter to the church in Rome. Paul suggests that we can receive differ-
ent kinds of spirits: one is a spirit that enslaves us to fear and one is a spirit that
adopts us into the family of God. The latter is a Spirit that invites us into relation-
ship. It is not our own perfection that marks us as children of God; instead, it is the
work of the Spirit that draws us into loving family with God and others. This is
good news for our journey of transformation. The one who is transforming us is the
same one who invites us to belong as we are being changed not as a result of any
perfection that we have undertaken.

Prompts for Prayer: Paul says that when we cry “Father!” the Spirit bears witness
to our connection with God. In other words, when we make our faith relational
the Spirit adopts us further and more deeply into relationship. Take time today to
relate to God personally. Address him and welcome the Spirit’s presence in your
midst. If there is an area of slavery in your life prompted by fear, then ask the
Spirit to bear witness there. Be open to how God wants to meet you through His
Spirit.

47
Wednesday, Week 6
Romans 8:18-30

18
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth compar-
ing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with
eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation
was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who
subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its
bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children
of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor
pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have
the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the
redemption of our bodies. 24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is
seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if we hope for
what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
26
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to
pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for
words. 27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the
Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of
God.
28
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God,
who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew
he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that
he might be the firstborn within a large family. 30 And those whom he pre-
destined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and
those whom he justified he also glorified.

Reflection: All of creation is groaning for redemption, the restoration of all things!
Not only is creation groaning, but we are groaning too. Somehow, our groans have
power through God’s spirit. As we have sought to take a personal inventory of
wrong and to grow with God, we may have struggled with hope. Am I really going
to change? Is God real and if He is, does He care? Does He have power? Thankfully,
hope does not come from what we see. Ultimately, hope is born out of faithful wait-
ing, a time where we can build expectancy for what God will do. We do not wait
alone. God’s Spirit waits with us. Paul even says that the Spirit intercedes for us
when we do not know how to pray. If this journey has every brought you to a place
of silence where words have not been enough, be encouraged that the Spirit inter-
ceded for you in that time. I think one prayer the Spirit prays over us is “that all

48
things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to
his purpose.” No matter where we are on this journey of transformation we can
choose for the love of God to define us and trust the God who promises to work all
things out for our good.

Prompts for Prayer: Where have you been tempted to lose hope during this
journey? Bring that area before God. Have you been groaning about it? Silent re-
garding that issue? Be encouraged that God has been turning your groans into
prayer and interceding on your behalf. Take time to be still and to feel God work
within you. Let him give you hope. After that, reflect with God about His prayer
for you. How is God interceding for you? Take to listen to God’s voice and write
down what you feel is His prayer for you. Thank God for the promise of working
all things out in your life.

49
Thursday, Week 6
Romans 12:1-2

1
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. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but
be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern
what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Reflection: Paul sees transformation as a full experience: mind, body, and spirit. I
am reminded of a story from a local ministry where during the time of offering gifts
to God someone literally placed themselves by the offering table to give themselves
away. That is one way of looking at presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice.
Whenever we position ourselves to be given to God, we resist a temptation simply to
consume and to absorb the ways of the world: the good, the bad, and the indifferent.
There is an alertness that comes from offering yourself over to God and Paul de-
scribes a transformation that comes from our minds being renewed. Often, we view
the mind as the last place of transformation. Can we really change unhelpful
thought patterns? Deeply ingrained habits or tendencies that enable bad choices? To
God, our mind is simply another place to experience renewal. Something about this
restorative process brings us closer to God’s will, God’s good, perfect, and pleasing
plans for our lives.

Prompts for Prayer: Has doing the Twelve Steps been a way you have offered
yourself to God? How might you be able to offer yourself through it? Additional-
ly, ask God to bring to mind a thought pattern or habit that has begun to change
since starting the Steps. Thank Him for being at work. Is there another thought
pattern that you want to bring before God? Reflect on how not being conformed
to this world, the regular patterns of doing things, can free you and renew your
mind.

50
Friday, Week 6
Luke 22:32-49

32
Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death
with him. 33 When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they
crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his
left. 34 [Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what
they are doing.”] And they cast lots to divide his clothing. 35 And the peo-
ple stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved
others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!”
36
The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine,
37
and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” 38 There was
also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”
39
One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and say-
ing, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other re-
buked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same
sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed have been condemned just-
ly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has
done nothing wrong.” 42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you
come into your kingdom.” 43 He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will
be with me in Paradise.”
44
It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until
three in the afternoon, 45 while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the
temple was torn in two. 46 Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Fa-
ther, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed
his last. 47 When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God
and said, “Certainly this man was innocent.” 48 And when all the crowds
who had gathered there for this spectacle saw what had taken place, they
returned home, beating their breasts. 49 But all his acquaintances, includ-
ing the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance,
watching these things.

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Reflection: Today is a day of mourning. In his journey to the cross, Jesus faced
ridicule, physical suffering, and abandonment. Ultimately, he experienced death. Je-
sus died next to ordinary criminals. Even at the scene of his death, Jesus related to
sinners extending mercy to the criminal who asked for it. Jesus, one marked by in-
nocence, is surrounded by sin and brokenness. This horrible place is also the only
place where Jesus could have been obedient. There was no other place to run. Jesus
remains and obeys even forgiving those who harmed him. Where will obedience
take us? If it is obedience to Jesus, it will look like self-sacrifice—perhaps, even days
where the pain and anguish of the cross seems very close and real to us. The
eleventh step reminds us to improve our contact with God, and it is important to re-
member that the suffering of Jesus is a way we can draw near to Him. Through
suffering and dying, Jesus allows us to suffer with him, not alone.

Prompts for Prayer: Where in your journey of transformation have you stepped
into suffering? Has it been hard to be reminded of sin, brokenness, and ways we
need to repent, to turn from our wrong? Has reconciling with people who we
have hurt and who have hurt us been painful? Has it felt costly to trust in God
when we do not know why He is asking us to take a certain path? Any heartache,
sadness, or hurts you have encountered on this journey are things you can take to
the cross because your pain and weakness is not foreign to Jesus thanks to His
obedience. Take time to reflect on the difficult parts of this journey for you. Write
down what has been hard, ways you have encountered suffering, times that have
seemed dark. Trust that Jesus’ obedience to the Cross, even to death, is relevant
to your experience. Knowing that Jesus—even in his own suffering—spoke to the
criminal on the cross next to him, trust that Jesus will speak to you. Ask Him to
meet you in the hardships of this experience and to show you how He is still with
you. After that, take time to meditate on Jesus’ own sufferings. Use your imagina-
tion to sense what this day was like for Him. Grieve with Jesus and thank Him
for what he did that day.

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 Step Twelve

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps,

we tried to carry this message to everyone,
and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Reflections by Liz Moore & Matt Croasmun

Monday, Week 7
Matthew 28:1-10

1
After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Mag-
dalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And suddenly there
was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven,
came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like
lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4 For fear of him the guards
shook and became like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, “Do
not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.
6
He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place
where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised
from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you
will see him.’ This is my message for you.” 8 So they left the tomb quickly
with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met
them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet,
and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and
tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

Reflection: Jesus isn’t just a spiritual leader and savior for his followers, he is also a
friend. When two of his friends (those not in hiding fearing their own execution) go
to grieve at Jesus’ gravesite, they instead find an angel who tells them that Jesus is
alive again! The Jesus who they had known and watched die on a cross is no longer
in the grave, he has been raised from the dead and has started heading to Galilee.
For those of us familiar with the big claims of Jesus, his resurrection seems like the
plot twist we’ve been expecting, but to be hit by the gravity of this revelation in
Matthew we have to remember that Jesus’ friends watched him die on a cross,
watched his body taken down and helped wrap him for burial in tomb. They would
have expected to find a large boulder in front of the tomb which would have attend-
ed by Roman guards. The expectation was to go to the tomb to mourn, not to be
told that their friend who was dead is alive again by an angel who appears like
lightening. You can imagine their shock as they walk away form the tomb, trying to
process what they had seen and heard, only to be met by Jesus on the road—not as
a ghost but as fully man and fully God. Jesus has risen from the dead! There is no
other response than to fall down and worship at his feet.

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Prompts for Prayer: Be refreshed by the resurrection of Jesus! Try to enter into
the emotional space of his friends who go to visit his grave. Like them, as you
reread this passage, approach the grave of Jesus in expectation of mourning him
only to find an angel instructing you that Jesus is alive! What emotions follow for
you as you imagine yourself in the place of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary?
Do you experience doubt? Fear? Joy? Pray through these emotions. Resurrection
is moving from death to life. Where do you still experience death in your life?
Lift those areas of your life up in prayer and ask for the power to hope in and re-
ceive new life. Consider what God has revealed to you about himself and your re-
lationship to him over Lent.

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Tuesday, Week 7
Matthew 28:16-20

16
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Je-
sus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but
some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heav-
en and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples
of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have
commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the
age.”

Reflection: This passage follows in the same chapter from our reading yesterday. Je-
sus has risen from the dead and has met up with his disciples in Galilee who are
shocked to see the breathing, speaking Jesus. At the same time, the religious authori-
ties who were threatened by Jesus’ life before his death are trying to stifle any word
of Jesus’ miraculous resurrection (Matthew 28:11-15). Then we have these words
from Jesus to his followers, encouraging them that he has power over all things and
that because he has this power they can go and share with others the teachings and
experiences of Jesus. Their ability to go out and tell the nations about Jesus is con-
tingent upon his power over all things demonstrated not only through his life but
fully through his resurrection and the disciples’ experience of the living Christ. Jesus
lastly leaves his followers with the encouragement that he will be with them always,
reminding them that the call out is not just one of purpose but of relationship with
him—because their lives have been radically changed through relationship with
him, they are able to go out and offer the same opportunity to others.

Prompts for Prayer: Step Twelve encourages us to share whatever experience

we’ve had of transformation with others. What have you experienced in this sea-
son that you can share with others in your life? When Jesus commands his fol-
lowers to go and make other followers, what fears or hopes came to mind? Bring
these to God in prayer. Did any particular people or places come to mind as you
considered these words of Jesus—either those that seem unreachable or those
you hope to know Jesus? Invite Jesus to be with you as you pray for those people
now.

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Wednesday, Week 7
Psalm 51:13-19

13
Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to
you. 14 Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, O God of my salvation, and
my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance. 15 O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 For you have no delight in sacri-
fice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. 17 The
sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart,
O God, you will not despise. 18 Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, 19 then you will delight in right sacrifices,
in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on
your altar.

Reflection: Without remembering the greater context of this psalm the power of
these verses can be lost in a presumed moral superiority of the author—or even of
us. This is the famous poem of David where he writes of his heart conviction after
sleeping with a married woman and then placing her husband on the front lines of
battle to die. The author of these words is a man who has just been shown his own
sin, asked God to cleanse his heart and restore joy in his life. These are the words of
a man who is on the precipice of receiving God’s mercy—an action that compels
him further to share with others about the goodness of God out of a heart that over-
flows with gratitude, not with obligation. David offers his own broken heart to God,
knowing that it is a brokenness that only God can repair. It is this awareness of his
own brokenness that makes him helpful to others who are seeking their own
transformation.

Prompts for Prayer: In these verses we witness the rawness of repentance of sin
and the hope of restoration, and in kind are compelled to reflect upon the state of
our own hearts. In a sense, through this poem, David is teaching us the ways of
God—that our God is one who loves us enough to expose the places of death and
addiction in our own lives so that he can bring new life. Over the past weeks of
Lent, where has God been shedding a compassionate light on the places where
your spirit is broken? Have you felt able to give him access to these places in or-
der for him to rebuild you? Consider doing that now. Ask God to replace parts of
your spirit marred with sin or wounds with healing and new life. What have you
learned through seeing clearly your own brokenness that God might have you
share with others in your life? On the next page write a poem like David’s—re-
flecting the place that you were in and the joy or hope you have in who God is.

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Thursday, Week 7
Romans 8:31-39

31
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is
against us? 32 He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for
all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? 33 Who will
bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to
condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the
right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. 35 Who will separate us
from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or
famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake
we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be
slaughtered.”
37
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who
loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height,
nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us
from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Reflection: Having described the way that we have been set free from Sin by God,
Paul expresses his confidence in God’s faithfulness to us. Nothing can keep us from
God. As Jesus experienced, not even death can separate us from the love of God. If
we were tempted at the beginning of this journey to rely on our own faithfulness,
having gone through the process we’ve gone through, it is now 100% clear: it is God’s
faithfulness that provides a firm foundation.

Prompts for Prayer: Especially this Easter Week, having celebrated Jesus being
raised from the dead, we can be confident that nothing can separate us from God.
God is pursuing us in love. Our brokenness did not deter Him. Our enmity did not
deter Him. Not even death can hold Him back. What are you struggling with today
that you are tempted to believe could separate you from God? Paul tells us that Je-
sus whom God raised from the dead “intercedes”—prays—for us. Let’s give thanks
to Jesus for His faithfulness to us and put before him the struggles of our day.

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Friday, Week 7
John 21:1-19

1
After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea
of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. 2 Gathered there together
were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee,
the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. 3 Simon Peter said to
them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They
went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
4
Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not
know that it was Jesus. 5 Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish,
have you?” They answered him, “No.” 6 He said to them, “Cast the net to
the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now
they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. 7 That dis-
ciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter
heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and
jumped into the sea. 8 But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging
the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a
hundred yards off.
9
When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on
it, and bread. 10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have
just caught.” 11 So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full
of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so
many, the net was not torn. 12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have break-
fast.” Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because
they knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to
them, and did the same with the fish. 14 This was now the third time that
Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.
15
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon
son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord;
you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 A second
time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to
him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my
sheep.” 17 He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love
me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love
me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I

60
love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. 18 Very truly, I tell you, when
you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever
you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and
someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not
wish to go.” 19 (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he
would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.”

Reflection: Many of the disciples were fishermen before they met Jesus, and it seems
logical for them to return to their former trade once Jesus has been executed. But at
this time in John’s account, we read that this isn’t the disciple’s first encounter with
the risen Jesus, it’s their third. And yet the disciples return to their lives before they
met Jesus, and they fish—unsuccessfully. The text implies that now that they have
had an encounter with the resurrected Christ, they cannot return to being just fish-
ermen, but rather, as we see with Jesus’ interaction with Simon Peter, that now the
disciples are truly to be fishers of men. What’s even more powerful about Jesus’ in-
teraction with Simon Peter is that not long ago, three times Simon Peter denied
even knowing Jesus. Here, we see Jesus not condemning Simon Peter for his faith-
lessness and fear but reestablishing relationship and reinstating Simon Peter as one
that Jesus wants to take care of his people. But the care that Jesus is commanding to
Simon Peter is not a passive one but one that requires following further after Jesus
into places where Simon Peter may not want to go.

Prompts for Prayer: It is only out of our personal experience of the love of Jesus
that we can move forward into offering life-changing love to others. The disciples
as a group needed to re-experience a way that they had come to see who Jesus is
through the a miracle of abundant fish. As Lent draws to a close, what is a way
that you’ve experienced the love of Jesus in your past that you need to re-experi-
ence this week? What is an experience that you’ve had during Lent that is a new
experience of the love of Jesus that you may need to re-experience in the future?
Write the fullness of this experience down so that in times of being stuck be-
tween a death and resurrection you might be able to recall the goodness of God.
Out of this experience of the love that you now have for Jesus, where is he invit-
ing you to follow after him and feed his sheep—share what you’ve been given?

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 Serenity Prayer

God, give me grace to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,

Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.