Month: July 2024

The Life Recovery Bible has helped millions of people meet the only one who can break the chains of addiction. Helping readers encounter God through his Word and study Scripture with notes and features created by addictions experts to specifically combat the hold addictions have, the Life Recovery Bible is a resource for new life. Each feature in the Life Recovery Bible leads readers to powerful resources for recovery that are found in Scripture. Articles and guides offer help to anyone starting or running recovery groups at a church or in the community.

The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is the foundation for many recovery programs. The Life Recovery Bibleconnects these steps back to Scripture, allowing God to take over. Throughout the Bible you will read devotionals that are based on the 12 Steps and emphasize how God’s Word can transform lives. Read this Step 10 devotional based on James 1:21-25.

Step 10: We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

“So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls. But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.” James 1:21-25, NLT

How many times do we look in the mirror each day? Suppose we looked in the mirror and found that we had mustard smeared around our mouth. Wouldn’t we immediately wash our face and clean up the problem? In the same way, we need to routinely look at ourselves in our “spiritual mirror,” the Bible. Then if anything is wrong, we can take the proper steps to fix it.

James uses a similar illustration to show how God’s Word should be like a spiritual mirror in our life. He said: “But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it” (James 1:22-25).

This illustration supports the sensibleness of making a routine personal inventory. As we examine our life, we need to respond with immediate action if something has changed since we last looked. If we put off taking care of a problem, it may soon slip our mind. Just as we would think it foolish to go all day knowing there is mustard on our face, it is not logical to notice a problem that could lead to a fall and not correct it promptly.

Learn more about the Life Recovery Bible

The Life Recovery Bible emphasizes God as the ultimate source of recovery and offers essential tools and features to break people free from the grip of addiction. It is widely embraced in 12 Step recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, correctional facilities, and by individuals seeking help taking their life back from destructive behaviors and substances. Millions of lives, like Peter’s, have been transformed with the help of the Life Recovery Bible.

Read Peter’s story:

I grew up in a violent alcoholic home and became the monster I swore I would never be. It still pains me to think about my rock bottom. Around 2001, I began, one way or another, to try to wrestle the monkey off my back, and I just couldn’t do it. I was the “In and Out Kid”: 30, 60, 90 days sober, and then a jag; 30, 60, 90 days sober, and then a jag.

At one of these points, I remember sitting in the basement of a local Alano Club after about 90 days in, and a very spiritual man looked me in the eye and said, “You know, you’re about due. I can see a bender on the horizon. There’s a jag coming around the bend like a freight train that’s on the loose. You need to get a Recovery Bible.”

I had never heard of such a thing. I said, “What’s that?” And he said, “Well it’s a Bible that is the Word of God, the Living Word of God, but it’s annotated and footnoted by and for people in recovery.” Well, I left at that moment and drove down to Eau Claire, WI, which is a bigger town around here, and I went to the Christian bookstore and bought myself a Life Recovery Bible. That changed the vector of my life! From that point on, one reading at a time, one day at a time, one step at a time, one prayer at a time, it worked.

A few years later, one of the elders at the church I had been attending saw me knit together recovery and Christ using the Life Recovery Bible, and he suggested, “You need to start a group here.” At the time, I guess pride had crawled back into me, and I kept telling him, “Yah, I’ll pray on that, and I’ll get back to you.” Life was good, you know? The wife wasn’t afraid of me, the kids weren’t afraid of me, the police weren’t pulling me over three times a week, the boss didn’t want to fire me. I was just fat and happy.

Then once again the Holy Spirit used a 2×4 to get my attention, and I found myself out of a job, so I went to God in prayer. I can still hear that voice in my head that told me, “Ah, schedule opened up, has it?!? Got a little time for me now?!?” We began a Life Recovery Group on December 5th of 2009 at that same church, and it has since grown and sprouted into 8 different meetings at 5 different churches locally—and the ones in prison and jail, as well.

Learn more about the Life Recovery Bible