Faith-Empowered Bible Verses That Can Help Support Recovery and Life Transformation
Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
James 3:18 – Am I Willing to Make Peace Thoroughly and Honestly?
I started the last section with James 3:14-18 which is summed up in the last line:
18 And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
This point is a primary focus for a recovery journey and for a faith journey in general. At this point in the Fourth Step, it is time to see if you are willing to be that peacemaker at all costs. That question for each of us is, “Am I ready to trust God and work to make peace at all costs?”
The question for each of us is, “Am I ready to trust God and work to make peace at all costs?”
If the answer is yes, it is time to test that commitment against reality. Whatever we think we truly believe is only a theory until it is tested. How many of us have genuinely believed that we were absolutely done with our addiction, but when tested with reality, that was not true?
Let’s examine how we test this theoretical commitment to peacemaking at all costs.
We must be willing to make amends where amends where we have done harm, provided that we do not bring about still more harm in so doing. In other words we treat sex as we would any other problem. In meditation, we ask God what we should do about each specific matter. The right answer will come, if we want it.
Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 69
This paragraph from the Alcoholics Anonymous book speaks specifically about the sex inventory but alludes to what comes next for the entire Fourth Step and all the inventories. That is the “…we treat sex as we would any other problem” part. If done correctly, each inventory landed on a list of issues we have.
We must be willing to make amends to anyone on the list. That means… “ANYONE!” This is a massive testing of your faith and trust in God and if you are truly committed to the idea of nothing counting except “thoroughness and honesty.”
Very few people are entirely there when this point in the steps is reached. This tends to be a point of a colossal struggle for some.
As a general rule, I prefer when people describe the process as “working the steps” as opposed to something like; “doing a Twelve Step program” or “on Step Four,” etc. If done with thoroughness and honesty, every part of a Twelve Step journey is work. Like a weightlifter on a journey to success, the resistance has to be pushed through to get the gains.
You are the resistance that has to be overcome to get the gains.
The difference in the Twelve Step journey is that most of the resistance is within you. You are the resistance that has to be overcome to get the gains. This willingness to trust God and be completely open to whatever is put in your journey to recovery is a heavy lift.
Are you honestly willing to make amends to anyone anywhere on your list? There may be at least a few that you are not ready to. This is a tremendous opportunity to learn the art of relying on God.
James 1:5-6 – Ask in Faith Without a Doubt
5 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. 6 But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.
This is the time to “pray until something happens.” With my sponsors and mentors, it was every individual one whom I was not completely open to making amends to. I had to pray daily for each one individually and wait for some answer in my heart or mind that would make me willing. Your sponsor(s) and mentor(s) may have other methods, but the completion point must always be the same to have accomplished this part of the Fourth Step. “We ask God what to do about each specific matter, and we are willing to make amends where we have done harm.”
Pray Until Something Happens!
The “where we have done harm” statement is a bit of a trick since such a huge part of working this step is converting everything to a “my part” section; essentially, The Fourth Step lists where we have done harm.
James 4:8-10 – Revisiting Drawing Near to God as Recovery (Concluding Step 4)
8 Come close to God and He will come close to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be miserable, and mourn, and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into gloom. 10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.
We started talking about the Fourth Step with this verse, and now we revisit this verse with some hindsight. The details outlined here, as some aspects of what it means to draw near to God, are a bit clearer when viewed through the Fourth Step and will be even more so when looking at the remaining steps.
Cleansing your hands and hearts is a process. When we look in a mirror, much of the resistance to these cleansings is hiding in plain sight. We are the primary resistance and the obstacle we will struggle with throughout this process. We tend to recoil from everything we are shown we need, and we are told to avoid many things we are drawn to.
This is a job where access to more strength than you usually have is necessary. We are not strong enough to fight this fight we have been losing repeatedly by this point in life.
In this book you read again and again that faith did for us what we could not do for ourselves. We hope now that you are convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from Him.
Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 71
God is our power, strength, guide, and measure of success for this journey. This is a thorough and honest search for what has disconnected me from God. The fact is that He wants to power and strengthen me for the journey, but I keep doing things that oppose Him and His will. Much like everything else in the Fourth Step, I have been looking at this from a perspective that probably at least leans toward the idea that I need help and God is not giving it to me when in reality, I am the one creating an environment where I am not getting what God is trying to give me freely.
God is our power, strength, guide, and measure of success for this journey.
That may sound depressing and self-destructive, but the obvious response is to stop doing that and do something that will end better. All of this is a battle between self-will and God’s will. The struggle between what I have learned to be comfortable with and what God has shown me He would like me to do. We are trying to visualize and understand that in the Fourth Step written work. The end goal is knowledge with the understanding of the areas where our way is at odds with the right way. The right way being an absolute of behavior and thought set by what the Creator says, is how He created us to work.
If we have been thorough about our personal inventory, we have written down a lot. We have listed and analyzed our resentments. We have begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality. We have commenced to see their terrible destructiveness. We have begun to learn tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people. We have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct, and are willing to straighten our the past if we can.
Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 70
The way the Fourth Step is outlined in the Alcoholics Anonymous book and the way many sponsors and mentors work a person through the steps each segment is set up as a surprise. The idea is that if you know too much about what is coming, it will change what you write and discuss.
In this passage, you finally have details about the target for this work.
- You should have written down a lot
- You have listed your resentments
- You have analyzed your resentments
- You have started comprehending the futility and fatality of simply having those resentments
- You have started to learn a deeper level of tolerance of other people
- You have started to learn a more profound and healthier level of patience with people and situations
- You have started to learn a more profound and healthier level of how to show goodwill towards all of humankind and want to live it that way
- You have converted each list into a list of people YOU HAVE HURT by your conduct
- You are willing to straighten out every situation and person you hurt by your conduct
That is a robust list of targets to aim for. This is also an excellent list for sponsoring or mentoring others who reach their Fourth Step. Many misconceptions surround the Fourth Step that renders that entire process a complete waste of time for many.
One that is relatively common about not just the Fourth Step but working steps, in general, is that it is some magic set of checkboxes, and if you can convince a few people that you have checked all the boxes, you are magically better.
Another is that the Forth Step finds its magic in writing; if you write down a bunch of stuff, you can move on and say it is all good.
Only two, maybe three, of the goals listed here have anything to do with writing. The rest are all focused on change. Writing and saying you did a Fourth Step is only meaningful with profound changes in how you see and think about things.
The following paragraph talks about God being able to remove “…whatever self-will has blocked you off from Him.” That is the last one for the list that was not listed yet. You grew closer to God and trust him more.
God Can and Will Remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from Him.
That was the foundation of this step. This foundation has been laid through the entire process before this. Every step is a step of drawing nearer to God.
The Fourth Step is a method to work on purifying your heart. Being willing to make amends is a willingness to cleanse your hands.
Learning to view what you used to think of as good is really a bad when you measure against what God has instructed. That is turning your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom if you genuinely see how terrible all of this honestly is.
For the people profoundly affected by these realities, the feeling of regret can be a tool for growth. That is the “Be miserable, mourn and weep…” part.
All of this is tied to one idea. The idea is that we are humbling ourselves in the presence of the Lord so that He can be the one to lift us.
One response to “The Bible and Recovery: Divine Guidance Through Bible Verses for Finding Sobriety and Healing… (part 8: Step 4 | Concluding Step Four)”
[…] ◀️ Step 4 – Conclusion 🔗 […]