The Broken, Weary and Forgiven

The Broken, Weary and Forgiven

The quotes below are from Alcoholics Anonymous, affectionately known as The Big Book. There are words stricken and replaced in an attempt to demonstrate how this book can introduce people to God, Jesus Chris and fellowship with the Holy Spirit. All the quotes are from the chapter, “The Doctors Opinion“. The point is, if we simply turn our vision ever so slightly we can see life, people and love completely different. Reinventing the wheel is totally unnecessary.

In late 1934 I attended a patient who, though he had been a competent businessman of good earning capacity, was an alcoholic sinner of a type I had come to regard as hopeless.

No one ever sees themselves as “hopeless”. Those that do, a great many of them anyway, are no longer with us. If there is someone that becomes hopeless we need to be on high alert as that person is at risk of ending it all.

When a person is caught up in their sins, addictions and compulsive behaviors, it is very easy for people around them to see them in a light that creates distance, pushes them away and reinforces their belief that they are a bad person, a mean person or some other type of social deviant. The fact of the matter is they are sick, need love and don’t have a clue as to how to love themselves. A lot of them, in one way or another, have been pushed away from birth. Others still have a predisposition to addiction or other form deviant lifestyle that keeps them far from God. At the end of the day, they don’t know how to love themselves, so, finding God or inviting God into their lives doesn’t exactly make the list of priorities.

In the course of his third treatment conversation about love / God he acquired certain ideas concerning a possible means of recovery finding God. As part of his rehabilitation he commenced to present his conceptions to other alcoholics sinners, impressing upon them that they must do likewise with still others. This has become the basis of a rapidly growing fellowship of these men and their families. This man and over one hundred others appear to have recovered.

This is another view of spreading the gospel. We are saved, born again a new creature, and a huge part of our salvation is insuring we find as many sinners as possible that we can introduce to Jesus’ grace and mercy. What is interesting is how spreading the gospel impacts our lives. By continually planting seeds we stay in the Word, we stay closer to Jesus Christ and we walk with the Holy Spirit guiding our steps. The question then becomes, who is actually being recovered from / forgiven of their sins?