We are in a series called Give It Up!  Rick Warren and his church have pointed us toward some truth and Hope and we want to pass it on to you.

How do you maintain your recovery?  How do you not lose the progress you are making in your Christian life?  Getting healthy is two steps forward, one step back.  We tend to repeat the patterns of our past.  It’s very easy to slip back.  It’s easy to slip back into old hurts, old habits, and old hang-ups.

Relapses happen in a very predictable pattern.  

First is complacency.  You start getting comfortable with short-term gains.  You start saying, “I don’t need any more help, my pain has been reduced, not eliminated but reduced, but I can live with reduced pain.  So I don’t need to go to the groups anymore.  I don’t need to work the steps anymore.  I don’t need a counselor or a “sponsor” and you become complacent.

The second is confusion.  That’s when you start rationalizing, saying, “Maybe it wasn’t really so bad after all, the problem really wasn’t that bad, I can handle it myself.”  You start forgetting how bad it was.  

Then you go to compromise.  You go back to the place of temptation.  You return to the risky situation that got you in trouble in the first place, whether it’s the bar, or the mall, or thirty-one flavors, or whatever.  You go back to that place.  Like the gambler who says, “Let’s go to Vegas, we’ll just see the shows.”  You start compromising.

The catastrophe is where you give in to the old habit, old hurt, and the hate comes back, or the resentment comes back, or the old hang-up.  You need to understand that the collapse is not the relapse.  The catastrophe is not when the relapse happens; it started much earlier.  The catastrophe is simply the result of the pattern that happened.

Relapse is right around the corner when we revert back to willpower.  It is also close by if we ignore one of the steps to recovery we have discussed.  Relapse is near if we try to recover without the support of others because we can’t do this alone.  Relapse is also close by if you see a bit of success and become prideful.

But you can prevent relapse.  Maintain every step we have talked about.  

Reserve a daily (DAILY) time with God for self-examination, bible reading and prayer in order to know God and His will for your life and gain the power to do it.  This is based on Mark 14:38: “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation, for the Spirit is willing but the body is weak.”  He’s saying it is human nature to have a relapse, to go back to things that mess us up even though we know they mess us up.  It’s human nature to let past problems revisit us, old hurts, and hang-ups come back to haunt us.  So He said, you need to have some safeguards.  And that’s what this step is about.

As you self examine… look at these areas:

Physical:  You ask the question, “What is my body telling me?”

Emotional:  What am I feeling right now?

Relational:  Am I at peace with everyone?

Spiritual:  Am I relying on God?

Now, take a passage of scripture and meditate on it.  If you know how to worry, you know how to meditate… just change the focus of your thoughts to God’s Word.  Take God’s Word and begin hiding it in your heart by memorizing passages that challenge you and encourage you.  

Keep working the steps.  Don’t stop. After all, you are in this life to live. Don’t stop living, keep stepping.