alcoholics and love.

equality with God

I remember being in Alcoholic's Anonymous meetings and hearing , "It works if you work it." Over and over again these words were spoken. It was an anthem, spoken at the end of meetings as an encouragement before leaving. In the sense of AA it meant, if you do the twelve steps to the best of your ability sobriety can be accomplished. If an alcoholic is not active in the 12-step program at the early stages of recovery and they are maintaining sobriety, then there would be no reason to "work it." In most cases a person gaining sobriety on their own either means they are very strong willed or are not a true alcoholic, they may have just became mixed up in drinking. For the common alcoholic there are meetings to go to, steps to be done and sponsors for guidance. Although, if he or she does not put the effort into recovery, the chances are, they will continue drinking and drugging in a downward spiral of lifelessness.

I believe that the same that is said about working the 12-steps can be said about love, "it works if you work it."

Most of the time in my life I feel that God is taking care of my love towards others, that it is naturally happening. Which is not completely untrue, I do believe the closer one becomes to God the more natural it becomes to love others. The one thing I do know about love is that God's love is always constant and never changes. That is God's love, not of human effort but the very nature of God. As humans how are we to love? We cannot love always constant like God, we cannot be equal to God, He is too wonderful. Jesus, "who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped... made himself nothing and took the nature of a servant."

Jesus, may not have had to work for love either, because although He was human, He was God. He did have a lot to say about love though. Many of the authors of the new testament wrote about love. The way they wrote about it is very interesting, they don't simply tell the people they wrote their letters too, to just love and leave it at that. Jesus and these authors instructed ways to love people, knowing that the ability for humans to love was not naturally built in.

I would like to share with you some verses from Philippians 2, a chapter titled "Imitating Christ's Humility"

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:" Phil. 2:3-5

I believe the natural way of a human is to be selfish, to think about ourselves at all times, worry about ourselves and to share our interest with others. We have the nature of interrupting conversations to put our input in or to tell someone something cool that we have in our lives. We have the nature of "one-upping" everyone else. For Christians, we have the nature to tell a better God story than someone else or as I am guilty of sometimes, sharing words of wisdom that may not pertain to an issue someone is speaking to me about just to say, "Look what I know." Why are we like this? Why do we HAVE to be better than someone else?

... It is our nature. Why would we need a Savior if we were not like this. Why would we need the example of Jesus' servanthood if it were natural for us to serve? Would God's grace be as beautiful as it is if we were perfect?

What are we to do then in order to love, if it is not our nature? How do we receive God's love and then turn around and show it to the people we face everyday? How do we say, "Equality with God is something that cannot be grasped," and then still love others?

We work it.

Work for it, we take these words that have been given to us from God in the new testament and put them into action. We practice to become better at loving others. We will fail, be rude and question our ability to love. To be on guard of this, be quick to accept God's love at all times and to trust that His spirit will give us the resources to love others. Over time, I believe, it will become much more natural to love and God will introduce us to new ways to love that we may have never thought of. Love moves, God moves and this movement has always been going on and will never stop moving.

LOVE, it works if you work it. Praise God!