There are many over the years who have come into my counseling room and wondered how they can restore the relationships in their lives. For me, it seems like the simplest thing in the world, but it is also the hardest. What’s required is a heart change — to surrender in thought, word, and deed because you know your life is unmanageable without it.
Whenever I see the word “unmanageable” I always think of the initial steps of the Twelve Step program. There can never be any power for change in our lives until we accept our lives are unmanageable when we try to control our lives and others’ lives.
And this is the pivot point of Christian discipleship. Nobody is a true disciple until they pick up their cross and carry it. Until the person gives up what they cannot keep to gain what they cannot lose, they really have no idea what the true Christian life is.
It ought to be self-evident when our relationships are going wrong that our heart is still the problem. Where there is even a modicum of control exerted over another individual, there might be the appearance of being just one degree off, but we might as well be a million miles away. Nobody, especially wives and children, like being cornered.
People can detect very quickly who they can trust and who they can’t. And it doesn’t matter how much we say we are worthy of another person’s trust. Only THEY can determine whether we are trustworthy or not. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. And yet, when we truly display a heart motivated to make amends, as if nothing else matters, somehow the doors are open to the rebuilding of trust.
Paradoxically, when we are truly motivated to make amends for the bad and wrong things we’ve done in the lives of others, the last thing we’re interested in is arguing that they trust us. Arguing that they trust us is control!
A transformed heart has absolutely no self-interest because it knows that self-interest is bondage. A transformed heart trusts God absolutely for the timing and circumstances of good things to come. A transformed heart sows in faith without any bargaining for a return on investment. A transformed heart is the antithesis of control. And when a transformed heart is encountered by those who were hurt, those who were hurt detect that something’s changed.
I’m absolutely convinced that the tenets of the Twelve Step program are pivotal for such a change, and the Twelve Step program is instrumental in overhauling a heart so the covetousness of control can be expunged to be replaced by “a heart of flesh” that is solely motivated around making amends.
When a person is solely motivated by making amends in those closest relationships, miracles start to happen. And even if those miracles don’t happen immediately, the person who is motivated to make amends does not lose heart because they are convinced in themselves that it’s what they should do and always should’ve done.
There is nothing like accountability in an individual where excuses are no longer acceptable. In such an individual, there is the power of Jesus. Their capacity for not only confession but for repentance is astounding. They are living as if all they can see is the log in their own eye. And God’s power runs in such a life to a great extent.
The Twelve Step program, for me, is Christian Discipleship 101. The Christian life is a heart life. It really doesn’t matter how much Bible knowledge you have. What counts is the heart.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Tribework
Featured Image by Dale Forbes from Pixabay
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