Tag: Recovery and Faith

This Crucified Life: What I No Longer Miss

Timothy R. BermanLeave a comment

What is the purpose of this message today? Why focus on what I no longer miss? Because today’s message is about what dies and what rises within each one of us. Luke 9 is the clearest, the sharpest, and the most recovery aligned call Jesus ever gives. It is a call to deny self. A call for us to take up our cross daily. A call to follow after Him. And it is one where we are asked to count the cost because it requires that we lose our life in order to save it. It is where we come to the end of ourselves, attempting to gain the appeasement of those around us, to gain what the world may offer us, yet lose our very soul in the process. It speaks directly to the “things I no longer miss” in my own addiction, codependency, chasing the girlies, and pretending to be someone I never was.

Welcome back, fellow travelers. If you haven’t watched the recent devotional in our Set of the Sail series— “The Lord Giveth Knowledge: The Spiritual Awakening of Christian Recovery”—I encourage you to do that. In that message, we talked about walking the crucified life… not coping, not managing, not surviving… but dying to self so that Christ may live fully in us. Having a real genuine spiritual awakening to the things of God.

Today, we’re going deeper. Because if we’re honest, many of us have spent years trying to “manage” life on life’s terms. But Sacred Sobriety is not about management. It’s about transformation. It’s about stepping boldly into the victory Christ already secured.

You and I have twenty‑four hours today. And I want to take a few of those minutes to speak directly to the wounds, addictions, anxieties, fears, and faith crises that have shaped us.

Because there are things I no longer miss. And I want to show you why.

Anchor Verse — Luke 9:23–26: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.”

This is the heartbeat of recovery. This is the heartbeat of discipleship. This is the heartbeat of Sacred Sobriety.

Jesus is not calling us to cope. He is calling us to die— to ego, to self‑will, to the old patterns, to the old wounds, to the old survival strategies. And in that death… He calls us to live. To live a blessed and abundant life. To live with peace of mind and joy in our hearts. Yet to do this – he invites us in because we are heavy laden, weary travelers and are in much need of rest (Matthew 11:28-29).

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From Surviving to Thriving: The Spiritual Awakening Every Christian in Recovery Needs

Timothy R. BermanLeave a comment

If you’re not familiar with the early story of Alcoholics Anonymous, it’s often said that the ideas behind the Twelve Steps were shaped by the Oxford Group—a gathering of Christian men committed to honesty, confession, restitution, and surrender. Bill Wilson, one of AA’s founders, was deeply influenced by them. But today’s devotional isn’t about the origins of AA. It’s about a man named Rowland Hazard, whose struggle with alcoholism led him to seek help from the famed psychiatrist Carl Jung in the early 1930s.

After extensive treatment, Jung told Hazard something that sounds harsh but is deeply honest: his condition was hopeless from a medical standpoint. His only hope, Jung said, was a spiritual experience—a profound awakening that would transform him from the inside out. That realization eventually shaped the foundation of AA itself. Hazard’s spiritual awakening, experienced through the Oxford Group, was shared with Bill Wilson, and from that encounter the Twelve Steps were born.

Let’s sit with that for a moment. Because in my own journey—through recovery, sobriety, homelessness, fear, doubt, and a faith crisis—I had to face the same truth: everything was utterly hopeless until I had a spiritual awakening. Some call it “hitting bottom.” But I’ve come to see it as the moment the Holy Spirit reveals Christ to us in a way the intellect alone could never reach.

Today, many try to think their way into faith. They know about God but never come to know God Himself. And that brings us to the heart of today’s message: What does it mean to truly know God—and Jesus Christ whom He has sent? (John 17:3)

Our anchor verse is Isaiah 1:18–20, where God invites us to “come and reason together.”

Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: if your sins are like scarlet, will they become like snow? If they are red like crimson, will they become like wool? If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land, but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

This is not an intellectual debate—it is an invitation to examine our hearts, our wounds, our failures, and our inability to save ourselves. It is a call to return, to be still, and to know that He is God.

Today, we explore what it means to know Christ, to know the Father, and to know who we truly are through a genuine spiritual awakening.

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