Acts 29

    What do you think of when you hear the word “recovery”?  Most people who have experience with family or friends struggling with some form of addiction will associate the word with Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) or Narcotics Anonymous (N.A.) or similar recovery program designed to help addicts.  Their programs are practically oriented.  They view drugs, and the accompanying side-effects, as the main problem.  Their primary goal is recovery through abstinence, sobriety and reliance on peer support.  It is unquestionably good to free someone from their addiction.  However, biblically speaking, accomplishing sobriety is not necessarily what recovery is all about.

     Recovery is about regaining what we were originally designed to be. It is recovering the “image and likeness” of God.

    "Then God said, 'Let us make people in our image, to be like ourselves. They will be masters over all life—the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the livestock, wild animals, and small animals.'
     So God created people in his own image; God patterned them after himself; male and female he created them." (Ge 1:26-27)

     As God says in this text, we were created to be “like” God. This indicates there are attributes of God that He has built into the fabric of our being. God possesses two categories of attributes – communicable attributes and incommunicable.
Incommunicable attributes are those that belong to God alone, things like omnipresence (being everywhere simultaneously), omniscience (knowing all always), omnipotence (all powerful), and immutability (not changing). These and many more belong to God exclusively. They are transcendent and beyond any characteristic humans possess.

     Communicable attributes, on the other hand, are those God has endowed us with, such as the requirement to love and be loved, justice, compassion, a requirement to exercise will, jealousy, kindness, creativity, awareness of self, etc.

     Have you ever been subpoenaed to appear in a pig or horse court?  This is a ridiculous question because it has never happened.  Animals don’t care about justice.  Justice as we know it is meaningless to them.  What about creativity? Do you know animals that lean into the future, dream of skyscrapers or bridges, airplanes or submarines and then go about bringing them into being?  Of course not, this is what makes us different than those creatures we have dominion over. As image bearers, God made humans co-regent over His creation.

     I hope this makes sense and is an “Aha!” moment for you.

     The reality we must all face is that, due to our sinful nature, the attributes that God has woven into the fabric of who we are have been twisted so as to be committed to serving “Self” and not God.  We are committed to love the lord “Me” with all our heart, soul and mind.  In our fallen minds we continue to believe that we must love ourselves fully in order to love others.

     This is completely opposed to Jesus’ instructions (Mat 22:37-40).  Our first obligation is to love God with gratitude.  He has invited and caused access to him, to his mercy and grace.  A lot of people will acknowledge this truth, and go no further.  God created us as bearers of His image.  We represent God to other humans and other creatures we know little about (Eph 3:10).  Don’t misunderstand, we are not God, but we do represent his communicable attributes.  The problem is we have bent those attributes away from loving God as first order, to loving ourselves.

     From birth, we are committed to self preservation, fulfillment, safety, the gathering of stuff for prestige and the avoidance of shame, pain, and abandonment. We are deeply committed to an environment and people that will serve these purposes.  When there is no cooperation we create and employ strategies to control.  Those controls are exercised to serve self, protect self, enrich self, and create status for self.  The very attributes we were endowed with to enjoy God, love Him, agree with Him and be fulfilled in a divine family are bent inward, toward self. People and things are expected to orbit around you and if you could make God obey, He too would orbit around you also.

     The tension arises when people, things and God will not cooperate. Our response is to control, with increased vigor, imposing our demands on others to force them to comply. When opposition gets overwhelming, painful, exhausting, fearful and hopeless, anesthetizing “Self” looks good.  It’s time to retreat from reality into entertainment, brain numbing chemicals, or adrenaline rush activity, all designed to escape reality. “You deserve it!” is what we tell ourselves.

     Recovery is telling the truth that we are completely committed to be in love with ourselves. In our pain, we choose ourselves before anything else. Relieving our pain is more important than the discomfort and pain we inflict on others. Our relief is priority over anyone else’s welfare. If it means another must suffer so I can have the relief I need, then they will just have to suck it up. “I need this.  If anyone prevents me from getting it, they will have to move out of the way. I will have it, no matter what the cost.”

     Recovery is putting down self-interest, repenting of “Self” idolatry, and going through suffering to come out the other side with reoriented attributes employed for the purposes He (God) has in mind. This gives the greatest fulfillment.

     Plenty of contrite people have gone before and can attest to not only changed lives, but also changed relationships, and purposes. They are men and women, who know what it is to suffer well. They are people who possess a depth of endurance which makes light work of things, by God’s grace, which would have brought them close to death in former times.

     Recovery is reorienting what we already possess, “God’s image”, toward and for the glory of our creator.  For instance, reorienting anger to conform to being angry about what God is angry about.  Giving and receiving love the way God does.  As a result of loving God well, we can love others.  As we agree with God regarding our true value, and purpose, we can love others well.  Loving others is a derivative of being loved. It is not the way to loving God, but rather the outcome of being fully loved.

     Recovery is restoring the image and likeness of God embedded in our very being for God’s glory. It is employing song, writing, prayer, service, truth telling, forgiveness, and reconsolidation toward believers and unbelievers because we know it well as grateful recipients.  It is being for others what Jesus has been for us. It is imitating Jesus’ character, purpose, and deeds, not out of legalism, but rather out of heartfelt gratitude and personal relationship with Him in whose image we have been created.