ABOUT CELEBRATE RECOVERY
Overview
The purpose of Celebrate Recovery is to fellowship and celebrate God's healing power in our lives through the eight recovery principles found in Beatitudes and Christ centered 12 steps. This experience allows us to be changed. We open the door by sharing our experiences, victories, and hopes with one another. In addition, we become willing to accept God's grace in solving our life problems.
By working the Christ Centered steps and applying their Biblical principles found in the Beautitudes, we begin to grow spiritually. We become free from our addictive, compulsive, and dysfunctional behaviors. This freedom creates peace, serenity, joy, and most importantly, a stronger personal relationship with God and others.
As we progress through the principles and the steps, we discover our personal, loving, and forgiving Higher Power-Jesus Christ.
Things We ARE: |
Things We Are NOT: |
| * Safe place to share * Refuge * Place of belonging * Place to care for others and be cared for * Place where respect if given to each member * Place where confidentiality is highly regarded * Place to learn * Place to grow and become strong again * Place where you can take off your mask * Place for healthy challenges and healthy risks * Possible turning point in your life |
* Place for selfish control * Place for therapy * Place for secrets * Place to look for dating relationships * Place to rescue or be rescued by others * Place for perfection * Place to judge others * Quick fix |
Small Groups
Celebrate Recovery small groups provide a safe place to share experiences, strengths, and hopes with others who are going through a Christ-centered recovery.
Small Groups WILL:
- Provide a safe place to share your experiences, victories, and hopes with others who are going through a Christ-centered recovery.
- Provide you with a leader who has gone through a similar hurt, hang up or habit.
- Provide a leader who will facilitate the group as it focuses on a particular principle each week.
- The leader will also keep Celebrate Recovery's "Five Small Group Guidelines."
- Provide you with an opportunity to find an accountability partner.
- Encourage you on your journey!
Small Groups Will NOT:
- Attempt to offer any professional clinical advice. Our leaders are not counslers.
- Allow its members to attempt to "fix" one another.
Small Group Guidelines:
- Keep your sharing focused on your own thoughts, feelings. Please limit your sharing to 3-5 minutes.
- There will be no cross talk, please. Cross talk is where 2 individuals engage in a dialogue, excluding all others. Each person is free to express their feelings without interruption.
- We are here to support one another. We will not atempt of "fix" another.
- Anonymity and Confidentiality are basic requirements. What is shared in the group stays in the group. The only exception is when someone threatens to injure themselves or others.
- Offensive language has no place in a Christ-centered recovery group.
Principles & Steps
Celebrate Recovery has developed 8 Celebrate Recovery principles and Biblical comparisons for the 12 steps originally developed by Alcoholics Anonymous. This material is copyright protected by Celebrate Recovery.
Eight Principles Based on the Beatitudes
- Realize I'm not God. I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is unmanageable. "Happy are those who know they are spiritually poor."
- Earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to Him, and that He has the power to help me recover. "Happy are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."
- Consciously choose to comm it all my life and will to Christ's care and control. "Happy are the meek."
- Openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust. "Happy are the pure in heart."
- Voluntarily submit to every change God wants to make in my life and humbly ask Him to remove my character defects. "Happy are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires."
- Evaluate all my relationships. Offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me and make amends for harm I've done to others except when to do so would harm them or others. "Happy are the merciful. Happy are the peacemakers."
- Reserve daily time with God for self-examination, Bible reading, and prayer in order to know God and His will for my life and to gain the power to follow His will.
- Yield myself to God to be used to bring this Good News to others, both by my example and by my words. "Happy are those who are persecuted because they do what God requires."
Celebrate Recovery 12 Steps and Biblical Comparisons
- We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. (Romans 7:18)
- We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. (Philippians 2:13)
- We made a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God. Therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God -- This is your spiritual act of worship. (Romans 12:1)
- We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the LORD. (Lamentations 3:40)
- We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. (James 5:16)
- We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. (James 4:10)
- We humbly asked Him to remove all our shortcomings. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (! John 1:9)
- We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make admends to them all. Do to others as you would have them do to you. (Luke 6:31)
- We made direct admends to such people except when to do so would injure them or others. Therefore if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5:23-24)
- We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. So if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall. (1 Corinthians 10:12)
- We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry it out. Let the word of Christ dwell in your richly. (Colossians 3:16)
- Having had a spiritual experience as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. (Galatians 6:1)
Serenity Prayer
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;
taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is;
not as I would have it;
trusting that You will make all things right
if I surrender to your will;
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with You forever in the next.
AMEN