Step 11 of the 12 Steps: Knowing God Better

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry it out.

This is the latest edition of the North Texas Conference newspaper and this week’s edition shows all of next year’s assignments of pastors to churches. This makes it official: David Weber, Jacksboro.

My heart is with those who are moving to new places this morning, because I remember what it was like four years ago doing the same thing. I was thinking this week of what that one last thing might be that I would want to talk to you about if we in fact were on our way to somewhere else. And what that topic would be is exactly the same theme as this 11^th Step.

Whether we are involved in the 12 Steps and learning to live sober, or whether we are moving through our lives with the desire to better know and more closely follow Jesus, we must arrive at a place- not a geographical place, but a spiritual place. It is that place where we enter into state of communication with God, a place of prayer and meditation with God.

Those words- prayer and meditation- are loaded with traditional meanings. If there is one thing I hope you know by now about me by now, and feel good about exploring for yourselves, it is that we must not ever bound in our journeys with God by the traditions of other people, no matter how old and well established those traditions are. There is the familiar story of the new bride who was serving her husband her family’s special roast beef. After a couple such meals, the husband asked his wife why she always cut the ends off the roast before putting it in the oven. “It’s better that way.. it browns better, I guess” was her response, which was the only response she had.

When the in-laws came to visit, mother-in-law prepared her version of the family’s roast beef special recipe and new husband watched her as she cut off the ends of the roast, too, before adding various spices. “Why do you cut off the ends like that?” he asked.

“It just makes the roast better, more juicy, it cooks better that way..I think. Anyway, that’s the way we’ve always cooked it in our family,” was her answer to the question that she’d never been asked before.

At Christmas, new wife and husband made the journey to grandma’s house. On Christmas Day, grandma announced that they would be having her special roast beef dinner. New husband immediately inserted himself in the kitchen to do more research. He watched as Grandma got an old, slightly dented roasting pan from under the stove, and set it beside the cut of roast.

He watched as Grandma, too, meticulously cut the ends off the roast, before putting it in her pan. “Why, Grandma, why do you cut the ends off the roast?” he asked, again.

And finally he heard the real, very unmysterious answer: “So it will fit in the pan,” she said.

It never hurts to ask, “Why?” about anything. Roast beef or God, it doesn’t matter. Because the answers, when we find them, are almost always rooted in formerly unquestioned traditions, and sometimes- even in questions about God- we find that it had to do with something as silly as the size of the pan, or the size of the mind that God was being fit into.

Why do we pray in the ways that most of us pray? We know the answer, historically, and it doesn’t have very much to do with anything particularly “holy.” In the Middle Ages, as the relationship between the Church and the State was growing stronger, by force from the leaders of both parties, it was decided to pattern some of the outward worship practices of the Church to the well-established legal traditions of the State. There really wasn’t that much difference anyway between standing in a court of law and standing in a church at that time.

People would get on their knees when approaching royalty, or representatives of royalty like judges. Sometimes they’d even crawl from the back of the room to emphasize their lowly station in life compared to the high and mighty person in front of them. So we now kneel to pray. And lower our heads. Kow-towing, they called such a practice in China.

Similarly, because mere mortals were not allowed to look directly into the eyes of some royalty, some priests adopted that custom, too, and made the people close their eyes in prayer. Even in the 18^th century, in New England, ushers would walk around the room and make sure people had their eyes closed during prayer. If they didn’t, they might get a little knock on the head from the sticks the ushers carried with them. So we close our eyes, too.

When people would beg mercy from the court, they would put their hands together, in a formal sign of pleading. So we put our hands together in prayer.

Priests and judges were regarded as necessary intermediaries between God and humans; you want to have God hear you, then you go to the places where priests and judges hang out- the church or the courtroom. Even today, you’ll notice that courtrooms often, suspiciously, look like the front of a church. Actually, it’s the other way around. Churches were designed to look like courtrooms- the jury box, the judge’s bench, the bar. So we come to church to pray.

“Why?” It’s always a good question.

Here’s another one: Why are so many drunks reluctant about coming to church, and why, when you do get them there, do they sit there in a cold sweat, running their fingers down the bulletin to see how close we are to that last hymn, and “how fast can I get to the exit?” Well, it’s because many of them have stood right here in places that look a whole lot like this.

“License suspended, 30 days, 2 years…”

Or worse: “The prisoner is reprimanded to the jailer..”

And even if the drunk has never been to court, or even if a person has no problem with any of the obvious addictions, coming to church is made to feel like a threat sometimes, like the preacher, or God, will be keeping tabs on what you wear and how still you sit, or even be able to know somehow what crazy, “unholy” thoughts you may be having while sitting there. Yikes!

Now, back to the original thoughts I was having about the most important thing I could say to you, about prayer and meditation. About everything, really. And that is this: Follow Jesus.

Follow the priests and the judges, if they are following Jesus, until you can strike out on your own directly behind him, if you need to. Learn about and practice prayer in church, if you need to, but only so it becomes a natural and normal part of life outside of here as well. But make that your ultimate goal- following Jesus- and everything else falls into place.

So, as we’re following Jesus, where and when do we observe him praying? Everywhere and often, apparently. There were times of formal prayer on his part that were recorded- think of his teaching of what we call the Lord’s prayer, or think of that night in the Garden of Gethsemane before his death. We know how the Hebrews prayed- like this: arms spread up and out, eyes wide open. Not at all unlike a puppy or a cat who rolls over on its back to show its vulnerability and trust in you. Openness is the key here I think, an invitation, not a wall. And eyes wide open, listening for God, but also watching for God, not only during prayer, but during life, all the time.

And if communication with God through prayer by following Jesus is the most important thing- that, I think, is the most important thing about prayer: keeping our eyes, ears, hearts and minds open; permitting our imaginations, our visions, our dreams, even our daydreams, to be ready, on call, and aware that God is everywhere and can speak to us, be seen by us, in church yes, but everywhere else, too. If we choose to see God in all things.

Again, following Jesus: he drew lessons from the birds of the air, the lilies of the field, grains of wheat, fig trees, rocks by the road, from bread, from a cup of wine. He saw the image of God in children wanting to be near him, in a widow dropping her pennies in the collection plate, in a short guy up in a tree, in lepers, in a demoniac, in fishermen, tax collectors, grieving people, poor people, sick people, in people who were hungry, thirsty or in prison.

His eyes were wide open. Imagine following him! Imagine him stooping down to watch the ants, imagine him sighing when he looks out a field of wildflowers, imagine him tracing the clouds with his eyes, or becoming lost in the moon’s glow.

Imagine him reaching out to touch those lepers, those children, those fishermen, that drunk, that addict. It’s not hard at all to imagine is it? We can easily imagine that because it’s the Image of God in Jesus and the same Image of God in us, talking back and forth right now, and that is prayer. That is praying like Jesus prayed, all the time, aware and awake, open and vulnerable to messages in the wind that are without words, and to the silent thunder of God’s voice in the quiet of a sleeping child’s face or in the serene face of one whose body is about to die.

The path behind Jesus that I am describing is at odds sometimes with the practice of religion as it is often taught. A lot of people sitting around a Twelve Step table come to realize that. It is not about the rules of church, the very rules that some of us were rebelling against (we thought) when we began to drink, or use, or otherwise sacrifice our souls on the altars of our Selves. It’s not about religious dogma and human doctrine, it’s about relationships, between ourselves and God and with each other.

It is about learning to be grateful for those same birds of the air and lilies of the field that Jesus was. It’s about not being afraid, like Jesus wasn’t afraid, to touch lepers and scoundrels. It’s about not being completely spiritually satisfied by meeting together in church, as beneficial and inspiring as that might be! It is about being anxious to get back into the world and follow Jesus there in all the places where you may not have thought before about his being present.

Step 11, again: Prayer and meditation are so that we can “improve our conscious contact with God.. so that we may have knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry it out.”

If we can get over the notion, and I know Jesus enables us to do this, if we can get over the notion that we are standing on top of a world that was created for us, and realize, instead, that we are a part of something that is still being created, then- no matter who are or what we have been- everything can be new.

Religion has often taught, tragically, that the world, the earth, other people, and everything in the world are ours to exploit, to use at our leisure as quickly as possible. That system of thinking came directly out of the Greco-Roman world that Jesus stood up to and died fighting against. That system of thinking is a breeding ground for jealousy, greed, and all kinds of psychological problems because it flies in the face of God’s face, God’s image, in us. It is easy to be disappointed and even bitter toward the world and the people around us when we have bought into that easy-to-buy-into tradition, It’s also easy to drown that disappointment and bitterness, for awhile, or to smoke or inject it away.

But Jesus leads us into a better way. We can follow Jesus into a continuing

Creation, where he shows us the tools- love, grace, and forgiveness- with which we can be co-creators, with God, of this part of God’s universe. We can follow Jesus into a world that burning with God’s beauty and we can be changed by it in the same way Moses was when he encountered the burning bush of God’s voice.

If we’re on top of the world, we’re alone. If we are part of Continuing Creation, we are in community with every single thing in the universe, from the rings around Saturn, to the baby blue jay learning right now to fly, to the sunflowers beginning to bloom, to the healthy baby just born anywhere in the world, to the old man or woman dying somewhere else.

And why in the world would someone want the dark curtain of alcohol, or the wretched selfishness of drugs to remain standing between themselves and..all of that?

Next week, Step 12, and we’ll talk about the very best thing step of all- helping others escape from behind that dark curtain and leaving behind the soul cancer of selfishness. We’ll see the real party that following Jesus leads to.

Step 10 of the 12 Steps- Building Markers

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

In anthropology, the study of humans, their cultures, and their emigrational moves from Southern Africa to the various continents of the worlds, one of the earliest pieces of evidence, looked for by anthropologists of human presence, is found in stones. Stones piled in an unusual way, or fitted together, or erected in a particular formation, like Stonehenge, are often the first indicators of an ancient human presence.

Stones were used by ancient humans for thousands of years before the refinement and firing of various ores into metal took place. But even before rocks were used as tools, they were used as fire boundaries, as altars, markers, and memorials.

It’s a tradition, a human endeavor, which has never stopped. Distance markers laid by ancient Greek then Roman armies are still found throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Stone monuments and stone plaques built into walls are still an affirmation of the stone’s permanent qualities over the impermanence of human flesh. We have grave markers built for loved ones- a continuing, modern manifestation of something which began happening even before humans had a language or the tools to write on rocks with.

A pile of stones- in the form of a circle, or in the carved heads on Easter Island, or in the form of a pyramid in Egypt or Mexico, or a carved commemorative cornerstone, or a headstone up here at Oak Grove- a pile of stones, or a special stone, is a primary and certain indicator of human habitation. We are, after all, the only species aware our impermance and therefore the only species which has developed both a need and the skills to use rocks in these ways.

Here’s part of a story from Genesis that shows rocks being used in a particular way that has everything to with Step 10 of the Twelve Steps. It’s OK if yo don’t see the connection yet, because you will.

Jacob was Abraham’s son, the father of Judaism. Jacob was the leader of a band of families, all related to Abraham, and which included Laban and his sons. Bands of families, like some churches, even some countries, occasionally get to squabbling with each other over real or perceived problems and either fight it out, or go their separate ways. Jacob and Laban, lucky for newly born people of Israel, decided to go their separate ways when Laban’s sons accused Jacob of keeping all the good livestock for himself. Which is exactly what Jacob had been doing.

Genesis 31: 45-55

⁴⁵So Jacob took a stone, and set it up as a pillar. ⁴⁶And Jacob said to his kinsfolk, ‘Gather stones,’ and they took stones, and made a heap; and they ate there by the heap. ⁴⁷Laban called it Jegar-sahadutha: but Jacob called it Galeed. ⁴⁸Laban said, ‘This heap is a witness between you and me today.’ Therefore he called it Galeed, ⁴⁹and the pillar Mizpah, for he said, ‘The Lord watch between you and me, when we are absent one from the other. ⁵⁰If you ill-treat my daughters, or if you take wives in addition to my daughters, though no one else is with us, remember that God is witness between you and me.’

51 Then Laban said to Jacob, ‘See this heap and see the pillar, which I have set between you and me. ⁵²This heap is a witness, and the pillar is a witness, that I will not pass beyond this heap to you, and you will not pass beyond this heap and this pillar to me, for harm. ⁵³May the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor’—the God of their father—‘judge between us.’ So Jacob swore by the Fear of his father Isaac, ⁵⁴and Jacob offered a sacrifice on the height and called his kinsfolk to eat bread; and they ate bread and tarried all night in the hill country.

Now Laban saw this particular rock pile as a witness, a reminder to Jacob that if Jacob wouldn’t be watching him, God was. And he also saw the pile of rocks as a line in the sand, a boundary. “That’s your side, this is my side”- like two kids fighting in the back seat of a car. The rock pile was made official by breaking bread over it and eating before each party went its separate way.

Whichever role the rock pile officially played for the tribes of Jacob and Laban, it was an important role. It was a reminder of God’s presence, or it was a boundary. Which is what Step 10 is: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

By now, we’ve come a long way. To have come this far in the Steps means we are looking outward for answers and guidance, toward God as we know God, and not inward, toward ourselves, who we now know we really didn’t know very well at all. We, those of us who really thought we needed alcohol, have been surrounded now for weeks by people who, we’ve learned, were also really messed up but who have been able to live sober. We have become dependent on their stories, their encouragement, their insight into themselves and us.

We’ve looked hard and long at ourselves, figuring out, piecing together where we’d gone wrong, when we had stopped drinking alcohol and when alcohol had begun drinking us. We made the first faltering, hesitant attempts to turn those shortcomings over to God, as God sits there with us in the hearts, love, and presence of people who not only want us to get well but believe we can get well.

We’ve even begun to make some amends. We’ve found out that some persons we hurt in our addictions have sometimes been hurt beyond any chance of healing. Others are skeptical as the dickens, which they should be; they don’t want to be hurt again. And some accept our stumbling, inadequate apologies.

We are, at this point, maybe at our weakest, most dangerous point in the whole 12 Step process. Because this is where we begin to say, way too often, sometimes repeatedly, to ourselves. “Hmm..I’ve done pretty good so far. I’ve come a long way.”

And indeed we have. We’ve been sober now for six weeks, six months, six years- however long it is- when those suicide bomb statements about ourselves to ourselves come bubbling to the surface. And I know that it’s not hard to remember saying those kinds of things about a whole range of bad habits humans suffer with.

“I’ve not smoked a cigarette for two months now..pretty good!”

“I’ve made it a whole week without complaining to anyone about anything..I must be getting better!”

“I’ve not clicked onto a porn site in a month,” “I’ve not gone shopping crazy since last Christmas,” “I’ve not had a hit, a snort, a poke, a taste, in a year now and I’m feeling great!

Amen, amen, amen to all those statements- hallelujah for you! Here’s your 30 day, 60 day, six month, one year token, we’re proud of you!

But it’s then, on the way home, sitting alone in front of the TV, or waking up one morning with the pressures of the day already accumulating, that the other part of those self-congratulatory statements gets spoken: “I think I’ve got it under control. In fact, I feel like a new person, I really do. I feel great!” Then:

“I think I’ll have a drink. Just one, for old time’s sake. I know how to handle it now.”

If you have never put that set of sentences together yourself, then you know people who have. And we all know the rest of the story is worse than the first chapters.

Which is why Step 10 is vital. It is a never, never-ending step for anyone who ever wants to change their ways, by allowing God to change their ways. We’ve got to keep to door of vulnerability open to God. We’ve got to know that the chemistry, the physiology of our brains that made us crazy to drink- or whatever- in the first place, is still the template to which our actions will default. Nothing has changed except our perspectives and our relationship to some new, also formerly weak people and to God. The synapses in our brain are still sitting up there by the millions like dry sponges waiting to be wetted down by golden liquids.

“I know how to handle it now.” We know that demonic thought is always on its way to being said. And there is a great one word, two syllable, unquotable response which we also need to be ready to make to ourselves when that lie is ready to be spoken. And if that’s the first line of defense for you, so be it, put your head in a pillow and scream until you believe it.

But you can also, while you’re still climbing the hill of the Twelve Steps, do something else which is of far greater permanence, and won’t scare the kids if they were to catch you screaming into a pillow.

You can build rock piles. Along the way, you can start building memorials of where you were on a given day in your struggle. You can start, early on, to build boundaries around your new perceptions and your new behavior that will remind you that there are places you cannot cross into again. There are fences which must separate you from the grass on the other side no matter how green it seems to be.

One of those rock-piles can be coming out of your anonymity. That’s not for everyone, but it is for some of us. I’m open about my own problems for two reasons: the second is so that others with the same problem will know that they have a friend. They really do. But the first reason I’m open about it is that the more people I tell, the more people I’m accountable to. I don’t want you ever to have to hear that your cousin’s daughter-in-law’s boss’s sister saw me at the liquor store in Bryson, Wichita Falls, or Fort Worth or anywhere else. It’s protection. It’s a boundary line for me. Every single one of you helps me, whether you knew it or not, to never drink again.

Another rock pile marker is, as I said before, a Jacob reminder that while no one is watching, God is. And I don’t think God is watching us with a scorecard in one hand a lightening bolt blow gun in the other. I think God is watching us with hope. God is my co-pilot, you remember that famous poem from WWII. Well, I think of God as my cheerleader, too. God is our cheerleader. God cheers while the rest of the world doubts. God hopes for us when the rest of the world has given up. God is even there to scream into a pillow with us, I think, and so it is entirely appropriate to build a heap of stones, a pillar, to God. A picture on the wall that only you know the real meaning of. A rock on the fireplace, an altar in the backyard that you can see from the window over the sink, a plastic Jesus ridin’ on the dashboard of your car, it doesn’t matter. Build it, because those self-deluding lies are always looming, waiting to be born. Again.

And one more thing when those lies start to be said, promptly admit it. That’s where a sponsor, a pastor, a wife, a husband, a confidant, is vital. Don’t pretend to be strong. We’re not, admit it. Don’t pretend that it doesn’t matter to anyone that we are wrestling again. It does.

Step 10 must never stop. It is yet another way to pray, as Paul said, continuously. Or as Jesus prayed, “Deliver us from evil.” Because that is what anything that separates us from the love of God, the cheerleading of God, is.

No one with a predilection toward bad behavior can afford to think of themselves as invincible, in control, or on top of whatever that “problem” is. We never were in control before, and we will never be in full control again. The process of self-examination, of gaining new insights, must be on-going.

It is possible for awhile, to act sober while all the old stimulations and wrong attitudes are still pinging away inside. That’s called being a “sober drunk.” It’s like driving a car with no oil: it will get us down the highway a little ways, but at some point, the engine’s going to blow.

That’s why we maintain our engines. That’s why we must maintain our sobriety. We must constantly be shedding the weight of burdensome attitudes- losing the baggage that got us where we were, where we never want to be again.

Rock piles- markers which point us to God, and away from ourselves, help us do that.