Tag Archives: recovery

Wholeness Group this evening

Addiction & Grace by Gerald May

Our new Wholeness Group is still in its infancy. We are meeting for the third time tonight, looking at chapter two from Addiction and Grace. There is still plenty of time to catch up and join in the conversation. I still have about three extra books for anyone who needs one.

Remember, this group is less about recovery and more about finding balance and healing. We are not trying to fix anyone in our sessions together. There is opportunity to share stories, struggles, hopes, and ideas.

The two big keys for me out of the reading for this week are these two lines, both on page 31:

“First, although God calls us all toward more perfect life, we cannot personally achieve the state of perfection. … Second, we need to recognize that the incompleteness within us, our personal insufficiency, does not make us unacceptable in God’s eyes.”

Struggling with our addictions, whether they are chemical, relationship, work, or whatever, is about realizing our limits. We can’t fix ourselves. We can’t easily solve this addiction. And that fact does not make us less lovable. We are still loved. God still finds great value in us. There is always hope. Once we admit that we cannot simply overcome these issues, the more likely we are to begin the path toward healing.

If you know someone who is looking for a safe place for this kind of conversation or if you need an informal, supportive group of folks to vent about your struggle to find wholeness, join us this evening, 6:30 PM in the Disciples Room at East Dallas Christian Church (629 N. Peak St., Dallas, TX).


A Preview of Addiction & Grace

Addiction & Grace by Gerald May

Our new Wholeness Group meets again tomorrow evening at the church, 6:30 PM. It is a group that is open to everyone. The book we are reading is Addiction & Grace by Gerald May, and it has tons of good stuff for our conversation. Here is one of my favorite few sentences from the first few chapters:

Grace is the most powerful force in the universe. It can transcend repression, addiction, and every other internal or external power that seeks to oppress the freedom of the human heart. Grace is where our hope lies.

Our wholeness group is not about fixing anyone. I don’t think any of us have any answers in the first place. Addiction itself is a disease/process that all human beings are afflicted with. Some of us are addicted to chemical substances, and others are addicted to work, family, gossip, computers, information, power, and so on. And so while the book will help us understand the processes behind our addictions, the hope is that we will discover more about grace – why it is such a gift and how it can help us in our struggle to be loved and deal with our addictions.

Gerald May describes sin as anything that gets in the way of us being able to fully love ourselves, one another, and God. I like that definition a lot. One of our key directions of our group is that we will explore that in deeper detail but also practice some ways of finding balance in our lives, balance in our relationships with God and one another.

Join us – it’s an open invitation. I will have some extra books on hand if you are joining us for the first time.


Wholeness Group

Addiction & Grace by Gerald May

Tonight, we are organizing our first gathering of a new wholeness group here at the church. This is a new small group that is about encouraging participants on a journey to wholeness, especially a sense of spiritual health. It’s not a recovery group, but we expect to have some folks in the church and our neighborhood participate who struggle with addiction of various kinds, know family members and friends who have battled such challenges, or need a place of support and encouragement. We will read Gerald May’s Addiction and Grace together as food for thought and reflection. Everyone is welcome to join us for this first meeting at 6:30 PM in the Disciples Room.

Shoot me an email if you have questions.


Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 32 other followers

%d bloggers like this: