Unveiling the positive impacts and transforming power of faith on recovery.
The Role of Faith Communities in Promoting Health and Recovery
Faith communities provide a supportive environment for individuals seeking recovery and overall well-being. They offer fellowship, encouragement, and a sense of belonging.
16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. A prayer of a righteous person, when it is brought about, can accomplish much.
James 5:16 encourages believers to confess their sins to one another and pray for each other, highlighting the importance of community support in the healing process.
I ran across one study published by a Doctoral Student at the University of Texas, which notes that faith-based communities can be an essential part of a person’s recovery, but when that community is not adequately prepared, individuals needing recovery can lead to “undesirable outcomes.”
Faith Communities Readiness to Engage in Addictions Recovery Programming
The most relevant understanding we must gain from this research and the statements of James is that while faith communities are central to recovery, all faith communities are not the same. Without getting too deep into the weeds of these communities, why don’t we use some simple indicators that we can all use?
18 Easy Ways to Measure Communities
As we study the book of James, many deep concepts throughout James describe what an actual walk of faith should look like. Here are a few of the most apparent ideas:
- Demonstrate perseverance and joy in the face of the worst trials and challenges (James 1:2-3).
- Seek wisdom from God and make prayer a consistent practice (James 1:5-6).
- Listen attentively and be slow to speak while controlling anger (James 1:19-20).
- Be eager to listen, slow to anger, and slow to become defensive, making you a person of understanding and reconciliation (James 1:19).
- Practice genuine care and compassion for others, especially the marginalized and needy (James 1:27).
- Avoid favoritism or discrimination and treat all people with fairness and love (James 2:1-9).
- Use wealth and resources responsibly, be generous, and care for the less fortunate (James 2:15-16).
- Engage in acts of mercy and kindness, and demonstrate faith through compassionate actions (James 2:14-17).
- Exercise self-control, tame your tongue, refrain from gossip, and use words to build up others (James 3:2-12).
- Act humbly and pursue wisdom from above rather than worldly wisdom (James 3:13-17).
- Embrace humility and resist pride, recognizing that all good things come from God (James 4:6).
- Seek reconciliation and forgiveness, promoting peace and unity (James 4:7-10).
- Trust in God’s sovereignty and, avoid arrogance in making future plans, acknowledge that life is uncertain and dependent on God’s will (James 4:13-15).
- Trust in God’s providence and have patience in waiting for His timing, knowing He is faithful (James 5:7-8).
- Exhibit integrity and honesty in all interactions, speaking the truth in love (James 5:12).
- Do what you say you will do and do not do what you say you will not do (James 5:12)
- Do not keep failures, slip-ups, and internal issues to yourself, but share with those who will help you and pray for you (James 5:16)
- Help others on a similar faith journey who struggle to get back on track (James 5:19-20)
A simple measure that might be helpful is that these traits permeate the group, the messaging, and everything the group does. If there are clear leaders, these traits also should be the default lifestyle of every one of them.
These are not perfect measures but are an excellent starting point. Even if for no other reason than they will not be able to give away something they don’t have, those are traits all of us in recovery need. There are many other factors that one could come up with as indicators of an unhealthy group, especially when discussing faith-based groups, but this is an excellent bare minimum group.
Also, as I always state, if it proves to be completely impossible to find this sort of group, you can always try to build this faith community around yourself. The fact is, if you cannot find one, you still need one.
Faith and Forgiveness: A Path to Emotional Healing
Forgiveness is a fundamental aspect of faith that contributes to emotional healing. Research shows that forgiveness is linked to improved mental health, reduced stress, and enhanced relationships.
16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. A prayer of a righteous person, when it is brought about, can accomplish much.
Forgiveness is such a key for many of us when trying to free ourselves of the painful torment of holding resentment. The adage in recovery circles for describing resentment is “drinking poison and expecting some other person to die.”
I think of it a bit more dramatically. Imagine a person who only has a hammer as a tool. That person is minding their own business when some person comes along and does something terrible to this person. This person feels the other person deserves punishment for their actions and may even express that feeling to be ignored. In retaliation, the person with the hammer gets angry and hits himself in the head with the hammer. The person who hurt him is baffled by this behavior and stares at the person who hit himself with the hammer. The one with the hammer sees the person who did the terrible act paying attention and hits themselves again with the hammer. Finally, the person who did the terrible act walks away and moves on with life, and the person with the hammer keeps trying to teach that person a lesson by hitting themselves in the head with the hammer.
In this extreme, the person with the hammer is destroying themselves to punish someone who is no longer thinking about them. Even when that person was thinking about the one with the hammer, it did no good. This is resentment.
Holding resentment is like drinking poison and expecting some other person to die!
The Faith-based idea of forgiveness is challenging to live out for sure. We all, on some level, want to be able to punish others who may or may not deserve some form of punishment by holding on to the negative emotions within ourselves. Isn’t that just punishing ourselves in the hope that we somehow magically transfer some level of that discomfort to them? We are hitting ourselves in the head with the hammer, hoping the pain also transfers to them.
The Faith-based ideas of forgiveness are difficult and complicated and, from many people’s perspectives, often seem ridiculous. Still, when you look at it, the forgiveness that seems so absurd actually makes more sense than the resentment we hold on to so tightly.
Faith as a Source of Inner Strength and Resilience
Faith provides a foundation of inner strength and resilience. It enables individuals to face life’s challenges with hope and trust in a higher power.
3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
I have previously spoken about this, so I will only go into some detail here. Recovery, by nature, requires perseverance and a determined focus on some actions, changes, and ways of thinking that we resist with all of our beings at times. At other times we encounter varying levels of internal resistance to things we know we should be doing or thinking.
Another internal issue we face in recovery, there is the issue of hope. Sometimes, the idea that we can ever get improvement or fix the damaged parts of our lives does not exist. It seems hopeless. In some cases, this hopelessness was the last straw that preceded this level of addiction or alcoholism and could even be considered the breaking point or cause.
The Power of Faith: The Gateway to Recovery
Faith has been shown to add to this inner strength and resilience that we all need for recovery. From the perspective of people of faith, this resilient faith is given as a gift we must use to make it through tough times. The reminder of James is that the use of this persevering faith in times when it is hard to use is the source of strengthening and will be the tool that, over time, can build each of us to the point of perfection.
“A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing.” — Victor Hugo