STRUGGLING WITH GOD?

STRUGGLING WITH GOD?
A NOVEL IDEA
Looking back to the start of the journey I call the process of life recovery, I certainly struggled not only with the word God, but with nearly anything spiritual. I think I fit the category that is called “spiritually bankrupt”.
I was brought up going to Sunday school and most of my family and people I knew went to a church of some type. People and church sort of became intermingled.
I learned of a punishing god growing up, I had an infant sister die; I lived with abuse, and upon announcing intent to get married (to my pregnant girlfriend), hit a rejection from a church that still boggles my mind. Church, people, death, religion, but today I understand the rejection did not come from the God I understand today.
So many I run into in my current life initially tell me they want no part of God. After discussion, I understand what they are saying, they want no part of the same things I had been exposed to and related to God. I learned what I had experienced was not bad things from God, but from a specific church, person or experience.
I truly believe that the life I have today would not be possible without a spiritual foundation and as opposed to spiritually bankrupt, today I have a rich spiritual life and conscious contact with a Higher Power that is mine personally. A Higher Power who is in keeping with my soul and beliefs, and conscious contact with this Higher Power works for me! It brings peace within, hope and serenity.
From the Big Book of AA, we are presented with this novel concept, and who could argue it?
“My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea. He said, “Why don't you choose your own conception of God?"
That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last.
It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning.
- Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 12

When I first looked at the 12 steps as a program that may help me, the word God jumped off the page and I recoiled. I was not ready for religion or joining what I perceived might just be a cult.
No secret. I did not accept the need to incorporate the 12 steps into my life when I came to the point that I really wanted life recovery. I had to work with “professionals” to get me to open my mind, and in working with others, and as page 12 above says, I was invited to choose my own concept of God for the purposes of my own recovery. How could I refuse that? What did I have to lose? It would be MINE, a concept I could relate to! I could transform.
So if you think you need to make some major life changes, think your spiritual life might be in a deficit position or non-existent and you are hung up about the God other people talk about, why not try a novel concept. CREATE YOUR OWN INSIDE OF YOU (or seek and find the one I know is there). You’ll stand in the sunlight with your God!
Struggling with the “God Thing” and just want to kick some thoughts around? Contact me through this site or through www.hopeserenity.ca. Ending the struggle may give you a great life.