What Is Required

This morning, while gleaning through my journal entries from April 2000, I found the following precious truth. I find that as I face this new challenge in my life (my sweetheart, Phil, losing strength by the month to ALS), I am needing to reread and glean strength for myself from my past journal entries.

This one really corrected my focus this morning. Hope it might help someone else.

PER/INVENTORY – admitting I am still trying to change my own heart and finding I cannot
April 13, 2000
He Did Deliver Me from Bondage, pp 52-54 contains the scripture references and “questions” leading into the study of the 6th principle, which is:

Only a mighty change in my heart, a complete change of disposition, of desire, will ensure any genuine change in my behavior.

PERSONAL COMMENT: Just writing out those words of principle six cause me to acknowledge the “good, but not good enough” nature of all the efforts that I have been going through for so many years to overcome my various addictions (mainly codependency and unhealthy eating.)

The challenge is that it is not my behavior that needs to be changed (as behaviorism and conditioning would propose).

It isn’t my mind, either, through cognitive therapy. It’s my heart that needs to be changed. And I cannot change my heart.

My heart is not about what I do, or what I think. My heart is where my beliefs reside.

My heart is where I retain what I believe about myself, about life, about God. What I believe, period.

It is a mighty change in what I believe that I need. That change cannot come by my thinking differently. No matter how much I try to reprogram my thinking.

In the AA Big Book, at the beginning, it touches on this truth where on page xii, it speaks of three levels on which a person can apply this program of recovery, and the “most important,” was the level expressed in the terms, “I believe . . .”

So the origin of all my actions are my thoughts, and the origin of all my thoughts are my beliefs.

So what do I believe?
I believe in Christ. Today, I will answer every temptation with my faith in my Savior, Jesus Christ.

Today’s prayer: Dear Father, I thank Thee for leading me to this witness from long ago. I needed it so much today: I will answer every temptation to fear or despair with my faith, specifically, in Thy Beloved Son, my Savior, my Jesus.