This Week’s Recovery Application Challenge
Be sure to complete TWIRL 021 before continuing this TWRAC activity.
Fool or Free? Dead or Alive?
Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. Then, spitting on the man’s eyes, he laid his hands on him and asked, “Can you see anything now?” The man looked around. “Yes,” he said, “I see people, but I can’t see them very clearly. They look like trees walking around.” Then Jesus placed his hands on the man’s eyes again, and his eyes were opened. His sight was completely restored, and he could see everything clearly. Mark 8:23-25 (NLT)
When the fireman gets a hold of you, you might have some difficulty initially seeing through the clouds of smoke before you. Life does that to us. Our circumstances can make the picture a cloudy one. But as Jesus Christ begins to rebuild the house that is your life, He lets the light of truth into your house. Since there is still self-centered sin in your life, it seems as though your house is still smoldering, even burning at times. However, through the clouds of smoke that is the circumstances in your life, the sunshine of God’s truth and love is continually breaking through. Jesus is the truth we can plainly see when the Son is in our eyes.
So the question is: What does it mean to fix your gaze on Jesus; switching your emphasis from lifestyle patterns of addictive sin toward lifestyle habits of recovery? Fool or free? Dead or alive? The answer is in the ABC steps to the kind of real authentic recovery that will transform your life. That is why this recovery plan, straight from the Word of God, is what I refer to as transformative recovery. Are you ready to take the plunge into a new life of real authentic life-long recovery?
The purpose of the following questions is to examine the issue of doubt for you who has been given sight but still does not see, which may sound judgmentally harsh, but when we’re honest, we all feel foolish at times as we struggle to see through the haze.
- What do seeds of doubt in the reality of God’s power in your life feel like for you?
- Do you ever wonder, even feel foolish, that God is not real, or that Jesus is not alive, and if He is, is not paying particularly close attention to you? Explain.
- Do you wonder and doubt, if Jesus Christ is alive, is He engaged and participating in the activity of your life, especially during times of difficulty and need? What does that feel like?
- What would you say it means when Jesus spit on the man’s eyes, touched the man and asked Him, “What do you see?”
- What would you say it means when the man said, “I see people, but I can’t see them very clearly. They look like trees walking around”?
- During times of difficulty and need, do ever feel like God responded to your need… sort of, but you could not see clearly what God is doing in your circumstances? Explain.
“But while I am here in the world, I am the light of the world.” Then he spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and spread the mud over the blind man’s eyes. He told him, “Go wash yourself in the pool of Siloam” (Siloam means “sent”). So the man went and washed and came back seeing! John 9:5-6 (NLT)
- What would you say is the point of spreading mud (mud that Jesus made by mixing his saliva with the dirt on the ground) over the blind man’s eyes and telling him to wash the mud out of his eyes in order to full experience the power of God in His circumstance?
- What would you say would have resulted for the man had he not washed the mud out of his eyes?
- Is it possible that Jesus, alive in your life, has spread mud over your eyes in response to your need? What might he be asking you to do to be able to see clearly your way in recovery?
If someone spit in my eyes, everything would look blurry to me, too. Perhaps you need to go deeper in your recovery walk with Jesus in order to be touched again to be able to see clearly the way out of something, or the way into something. Maybe the mud is a metaphor for the things, and perhaps sin, that gets in the way (or possibly what God has put in the way) to being able to see and experience the fullness of what God wants and has for you. We are called to submission unto obedience in our relationship with God. Then we are free and alive. The problem is when doubt and disbelief become a distraction to freedom. Take some time now to pray for sight. Pray continually to be touched, and touched repeatedly by Jesus until you see the way clearly.
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