Join us at Ward Evangelical Presbyterian Church for a great time of training, fellowship and encouragement. We’ll have the Seven Keys of Celebrate Recovery and the Advanced Leadership Training events available. Click Here to Register.

This event is being held at:
Ward Evangelical Presbyterian Church
40000 6 Mile Road
Northville, MI 48168

Questions about registration? Please send an e-mail to registration@saddleback.com or call (949) 609-8020
Questions about the location? Please call (248) 374-7400

Join us at New Life Christian Church for a great time of training, fellowship and encouragement. We’ll have the Seven Keys of Celebrate Recovery and the Advanced Leadership Training events available. Click Here to Register.

This event is being held at:
New Life Christian Church
14550 Lee Road
Chantilly, VA 20151

Questions about registration? Please send an e-mail to registration@saddleback.com or call (949) 609-8020
Questions about the location? Please call (503) 663-5050

Join us at Community Church Derby for a great time of training, fellowship and encouragement. We’ll have the Seven Keys of Celebrate Recovery and the Advanced Leadership Training events available. Click Here to Register.

This event is being held at:
Community Church Derby
The Riverside Centre
Riverside Court
Derby
Derbyshire
DE24 8HY

Questions about registration? Please send an e-mail to registration@saddleback.com or call (949) 609-8020
Questions about the location? Please call 01332 332044 or click here

United States partipants Click here to register
International participants click here to register*

*This year’s general sessions will be translated to Spanish via headphones available at the event

This event is being held at:
Saddleback Church
1 Saddleback Parkway
Lake Forest, CA 92630

Questions about registration? Please send an e-mail to registration@saddleback.com or call (949) 609-8020
Questions about the travel arrangements or local hotels? Please click here

But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

Principle 7 states,

Reserve a daily time with God for Bible reading, self examination and prayer in order to know God and His will for my life and to gain the power to follow His will.

This daily time alone with God is crucial for those of us in recovery. If you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, declared Him your higher power, then you need to spend time praying to Him and reading the Bible, which is all about Him. Through the pages of Scripture we can learn about the character of God, His plan for us, and how we should live. As well as what He has planned for us in the future.

Do you need comfort? Read the Bible.

Do you need encouragement? Read the Bible.

Do you need to be challenged and called to a higher standard of living? Read the Bible.

Do you want to know God more and learn more about yourself in the process? You guessed it, read the Bible.

Lots of us have a hard time making this daily time a priority. We make excuses and come up with all kinds of reasons we just can’t get it done. Thankfully, one of the reasons people use for not reading their Bibles is a thing of the past. For years people have said that Bibles are big and bulky and that when they read their Bible in public, it can scare people off.

Enter in the electronic Bible. If you have a smart phone, laptop or tablet computer such as the iPad, you can carry books to enhance your quiet time as well as a plethora of Bibles.

Including the Celebrate Recovery Bible. If you would like to carry your Celebrate Recovery Bible with you where ever you go, head on over to the Amazon Kindle store and pre-order a copy today. Then on June 14th it will instantly download to any Kindle device, including Android phones, iPhones, iPads, computers and the Kindle itself. You can also pick up an electronic copy of the Celebrate Recovery participant guides while you’re there. That way you’ll have all of the Celebrate Recovery material with you all of the time.

Reserving that daily time with God has never been easier. We hope you enjoy the new ways to engage with the Celebrate Recovery tools.

One Day Seminars are full day training events designed for those who are leaders in Celebrate Recovery groups or who are interested in starting a Celebrate Recovery ministry. There are two tracks available, the Seven Keys of Celebrate Recovery and the Advanced Leadership Training track.

The Seven Keys of Celebrate Recovery is the track to sign up for if you are interested in starting Celebrate Recovery or if the Celebrate Recovery in your church has been up and running for 6 months or less. This is the foundational track that explains what should be done, and what should be avoided to have a healthy, growing Christ based recovery program. If you’ve never been to a One Day Seminar or the Summit, this is the place to start.

The Advanced Leadership Training track helps take your existing Celebrate Recovery to the next level. If you’ve already been to the Seven Keys track, this is the one to check out. This track offers lots of Q&A and practical advice for growing and sustaining your Celebrate Recovery ministry.

We try to offer many different One Day Seminars all over the United States to make it easier to come. We just posted 5 new dates and cities that we’ll be visiting in the next few months.

Click here for more information and to register for a One Day Seminar.

Don’t forget to check out Celebrate Recovery on Facebook and Twitter

Join us at Woodlawn United Methodist Church for a great time of training, fellowship and encouragement. We’ll have the Seven Keys of Celebrate Recovery and the Advanced Leadership Training events available. Click Here to Register.

Maybe you’ve noticed it’s been a few weeks since we last posted on this site. I (Johnny) have meant to get to it, but as I said, time has been flying by. Every chance I’ve had to sit down and write something has been interrupted and the time to write has not been there. Have you experienced this? I bet you have. I’d guess that there have been times in your life where there was just simply not enough time.

Calendars get filled up with meetings and things we need to do. Our to do lists overflow and become unmanageable and frightening. We have expectations to meet, things we need to do, and things we want to do. All of this leads to one thing, and that one thing will rob us of our serenity. That thing, is stress.

All of us have stress and to be honest, we will always have things that stress us out. We won’t be able to change that. As long as we’re here on earth we’ll have stressful situations, deal with stressful projects or have people that stress us out. So, what do we do about it?

One option is to let the stress take over, burn out and eventually go crazy. That’s not a very attractive option, is it? Another option is to try and manage it. Try to get organized enough, get the perfect to do list, get the most inclusive calendar, and learn different techniques to manage the stress when it comes on. There’s nothing wrong with calendars, lists, or taking deep breaths, but they probably won’t work in the long run.

Just like our hurts, hang-ups and habits, the only lasting option, is to admit that we are powerless over time, our schedules, and other people, and give our stress to Jesus. You and I need to admit that we are powerless to control our calendars and that our to do lists are unmanageable.

Now, I’ll be honest, I stink at this, at handling stress. I’m a worrier by nature and I tend to internalize my stress. But I’m trying to do this in my own life. I’m trying to turn over my worries and stresses to Jesus, early and often. So, with that disclaimer in mind, let me share what’s been working for me.

There are a few passages of Scripture that are so powerful during times of worry, stress and fear. I’ve written these down on post cards and have them all over the place. They’re in my office, on the refrigerator at home, on my dashboard in my car, and they serve as bookmarks. This has helped me to keep them in the front of my mind and made them easier to memorize and focus on as I get stressed. Here are the verses:

Philippians 4:6 & 7

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

I could write about those verses everyday and not get tired of them. If you’re a worrier like me, or if you’re stressed out, this verse is a great one to memorize and meditate on.

Another one that speaks to me is 2 Corinthians 4:18,

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

So much of what stresses us out is temporary and, sometimes, not all that important. This verse reminds us to focus on Jesus instead of our problems.

1 Peter 5:7 tells us to,

Cast all your anxiety on Him, Because He cares for you.

And Psalm 4:8 says,

I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

There are many, many more verses that tell us to give our concerns, our worries, our stress to God, these are just four that I’ve come to rely on, sometimes on a daily basis.

So, what’s stressing you out today? What’s looming on your calendar or your to do list that’s causing you to worry or fear? How are you going to handle it?

Are you going to let it take over and burn you out?

Are you looking for the perfect system that will help you manage it?

Or, will you turn it over to Jesus today?

Maybe write down those verses, or verses that speak to you, and read them every time the stress begins to take over. Try to memorize them and talk to Jesus about your worry, fear and stress. I can tell you in my own life that it makes a huge difference. The stressful situations and people won’t disappear, but our reactions can to them can change.

Like pretty much everything in recovery, it won’t happen overnight, but it will happen.

“Realize I’m not God; I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is unmanageable.”

There’s a lot packed into that seemingly simple realization, but it is the starting point on the road to recovery. This I is where it all begins, so let’s look at why. Today, we’ll focus on just the first four words, “Realize I’m not God…”

This may seem like a no brainer. For some of us it might be easy to look around and say, “Of course I’m not God. If I were, things would be much different.” But the fact is, this struggle to realize that I am not God is as old as time, and is something that, to varying degrees, we all struggle with. Because what we’re talking about here, is pride.

The Bible clearly states that God is the creator of all (Genesis 1:1) and that He created man in His image (Genesis 1:26-27). One of humanity’s great problems, and the root of sin, is the desire to replace God as God and make ourselves god. This is what the serpent told Eve in the garden (Genesis 3:5). This desire to be God has caused us pain since the beginning, and we’re still fighting this desire to this day.

Paul tells us in Romans that we “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like man” (Romans 1:22). We have place ourselves in God’s rightful place. As a result things get out of whack. When we are the center of our own universes, we simply can not operate as we are designed to.

What Principle One helps us do is, humble ourselves. We Realize that we aren’t God. Principle One helps us realize that we have all, from time to time, put ourselves in God’s rightful place.

As noted above, it was pride that caused Adam and Eve to listen to the lie and trust the Serpent. It was pride that got Satan kicked out of heaven (Isaiah 14:12-15). We are told that God is in direct opposition to the proud, but that He gives grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5, James 4:6 & Proverbs 3:34) Principle One is the beginning of the recovery process, because it is the beginning of us humbling ourselves, seeing ourselves as we are, creation with a creator who deserves to be worshipped.

For you and I to begin this process we have to make that switch. We have to allow God to be in His rightful place and see ourselves where we belong. That’s humility. As we begin the recovery journey, we all need to start here, and it’s a good idea to return to this realization time and time again.

Today ask yourself, “Have I come to this realization?” Think about your relationship with God. Who is at the center? What are the signs in your life that God isn’t at the center? How can you make the switch?

Next time we’ll look at the next few words of the Principle.