Life Connections to the Recovery Bible - I and 2 Samuel

[janbear]

I Samuel 3:1-10 A challenge of recovery is learning to listen for God’s voice , which can come to us in many ways; through a deep inner prompting; through wise advice from a friend, counselor, or sponsor; through meditation on Scripture; or through prayer. When God calls us, a first we may jump up and run to the nearest friend or meeting. but eventually we will learn to pause, sit still, and actively listen.

[janbear]

I Samuel 8:4-22
God has always respected the free will of human beings, even when he disagreed with their choices. He will never force us to do his will. But even when we make wrong choices, he is still in control. His plan we move forward-sometimes through our mistakes, sometimes in spite of them.

[janbear]

I Samuel 15:35-16:1 Samuel’s mourning over Saul was different from God’s grief. Samuel probably felt overly responsible for Saul’s failure since he was Israel’s spiritual leader. Maybe this is why God told Samuel to quit mourning and get moving. It is quite right for us to mourn our losses and failures, and the failures of those of close to us. But we also need to let go and move on after we’ve allowed ourselves to grieve.

[janbear]

I Samuel 18:10-15 Anger and fear are often closely related. When we get hostile toward someone, it usually means we feel threatened or afraid of that person. Though Saul was king and was the hostile aggressor, he was also most afraid. In recovery, when we feel hostile toward someone, we can learn to look behind the anger and identify the underlying fear that we need to face.

[janbear]

I Samuel 23:1-5 One reason for David’s success was that he frequently “inquired of the Lord” That principle is stated in Step Eleven, where through prayer and meditation we seek to improve our conscious contact with God, asking hum to show us his will and give us the power to carry it out. We may not receive answers as specific as David’s, but the more we inquire of the Lord, the better we’ll be able to discern his will for us.



I Samuel 26: 7-11 Codependents have a hard time figuring out which responsibilities are ours and which are someone’s else’s. All too often we leap too quickly into the fray, fighting battles we don’t need to fight and forcing outcomes that are best left in God’s hands. David knew that Saul’s life was not his to take. He decided to leave the timing and the means up to God-something we all need to do at times.

[janbear]

2 Samuel 12:1-6

Like David, we all have blind spots-areas in which we succumb to unhealthy or addictive behaviors without fully realizing it. How do we identify these blind spots? One way is to examine what really makes us angry. Behind the anger we usually find wounds or weaknesses that need healing. Another way is to listen carefully when we are confronted by a trustworthy person such as a close friend in recovery, a sponsor or a counselor.

[janbear]

2 Samuel 13:1-18:33 If we look to previous generations, we can likely see how dysfunctional patterns have been passed on to us. In these chapters, we witness the tragic consequences of David’s adultery with Bathsheba in the lives of his children. As we might expect, Amnon and Absalom committed the same two sins as David-sexual immorality and murder.