Vision and Recovery

Vision and Recovery

“Alice: ‘I don’t care where.’ Cheshire Cat, “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go’ – Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Knowing where your life is headed is one of the most powerful and valuable elements of recovery. Recovery requires a vision of our future self. Without a vision that pulls us forward our efforts at sobriety, mental wellness, and recovery are unsustainable. Life is simply too hard and if we don’t have a reason to get up when it knocks us down over and over again, we’ll just give up and stay down. This vision must be able to weather the storms of life and be the North Star to guide us no matter how far off course we have gone.

The greatest weakness and deficit of Psychology across all of its disciplines is a lack of clarity on our spiritual nature which feeds an absence of vision for what a healthy human being looks like; how they think, feel, and act. It is really our spiritual dimensions that must be healed and provided with a vision of goodness and value, meaning and purpose.

Pretend for a moment that you are “an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe.” You have a mind which encompasses your thoughts and feelings, you have a heart (spirit, will) which chooses the actions you take and directs your life, a body that responds to your will, relationships all around you, and you have a soul which integrates (or fails to integrate) all of the dimensions of your person.

You have lived a life with all kinds of experiences, and you have wounds and scars, growths and strengths, delights and smiles, tears and moans, memories and dreams. One day you realize your life is troubled and burdened and in need of help and healing.

Addiction and mental distress are symptoms of spiritual wounds. Recovery is the healing of those wounds and grace-fueled growth in Christlikeness.  

Addiction and mental health distress are symptoms of spiritual wounds that always include and involve the body. Healing requires a deep understanding of proper form and function of the physical as well as spiritual dimensions of the person; mind, heart, soul, body, and relationships and the wisdom from God, and spiritual gifts in how best to guide and facilitate that healing. God must permeate and surround the process.

A Description of Spiritual Healing and Maturity

It is now helpful to provide a description of a person who is on a journey of healing and what the various dimension increasingly manifest.

<This section is summarized and modified from Renovation of the Heart pages 218-221>

Thought life: They think about God. He is never out of their mind. They love to dwell upon God and upon his greatness and loveliness, as brought to light in Jesus Christ. They adore him in nature, in history, in his Son, and in his saints. (Acts 2:13; Ephesians 5:18), They have a strong sense of reality and practicality. Their mind is filled with biblical expressions of God’s nature, his actions, and his plans for them in his world. They do not dwell upon evil. It is not a big thing in their thoughts. They are sure of its defeat, but they still deal with it appropriately in specific situations.

Because their mind is centered upon God all other good things are also welcome there: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise,” their mind ponders those things (Philippians 4:8). They are positive and grateful, based upon the nature of God as they understand it.

Feelings: The emotional life of these children of light is deeply characterized by love. That is how they invest the emotional side of their being. They love lots of good things and they love people. They love their life and who they are. They are thankful for their life—even though it may contain many difficulties, even persecution and martyrdom (Matthew 5:10-12). They receive all of it as God’s gift, or at least as his allowance, where they will know his goodness and greatness and go on to live with him forever. And so, joy and peace are with them even in the hardest of times—even when suffering unjustly. Because of what they have learned about God, they are confident and hopeful and do not indulge thoughts of rejection, failure, and hopelessness, because they know better.

Will (spirit, heart): These children of light are devoted to doing what is good and right. Their will is habitually attuned to it, just as their mind and emotions are habitually homing in on God. They are attentive to rightness, to kindness, to helpfulness, and they are purposefully knowledgeable about life, about what people need, and about how to do what is right and good in appropriate ways.

These are people who do not think first of themselves and what they want, and they really care very little, about getting their own way. “Let each of you regard one another as more important than himself; do not look out for your own personal interests, but for the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4). They are abandoned to God’s will and do not struggle and deliberate as to whether they will do what they know to be wrong. They do not hesitate to do what they know to be right.

Body: Their body has come over to the side of their will to do good. It is constantly poised to do what is right and good without thinking. The Spirit has substantially taken over their “members.”

For their body and its parts are consecrated to serve God and are habituated to be his holy instruments. They instinctively avoid the paths of temptation. The bodies of these people even look different. There is a freshness about them, a kind of quiet strength, and a transparency. They are rested and playful in a bodily strength that is from God. He who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead has given life to their bodies through his Spirit that dwells in them.

Social relations: In their relations to others, they are completely transparent. Because they walk in goodness they have no use for darkness, and they achieve real contact or fellowship with others—especially other apprentices of Jesus. “If we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). And “The one who loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause of offence in him” (2:10, PAR). They do not conceal their thoughts and feelings (nor do they impose them upon everyone). Because of their confidence in God, they do not try to manipulate and manage others. In their social contexts they do not go on the attack or on the hunt, intending to use or to hurt others.

Moreover, they are completely noncondemning, while at the same time they will not participate in evil. They pay it only the attention absolutely required in any social setting, and beyond that, patient and joyful nonparticipation is the rule. They know how to really “be there” (wherever “there” is) without sharing in evil, as was true of Jesus himself. They do not reject or distance themselves and they know how to “love the sinner and hate the sin” gracefully and effectively.

Soul: Finally, as you come to know these people you see that all of the above is not just at the surface. It is deep, and in a certain obvious sense, it is effortless. It flows. The things we have been describing are not things the children of light are constantly trying hard to do, instead, these are features of life that well up out of a soul that is at home in God.

This is the outcome of spiritual formation in Christlikeness. It doesn’t mean perfection, but it does mean we have a person whose soul is whole: a person who, through the internalized integrity of the law of God and the administrations of the gospel and the Spirit, has a restored soul. Such a soul effectively interfaces God and the full person and enables every aspect of the self to function as God intended.

<end of excerpt>

This is where all Christian Counseling is directed and focused and this is what we invest ourselves in helping to facilitate.