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Move beyond self-help to a spiritual awakening

Find Sustainable Healing & Joy - The Fix book and workbook

On Awakening

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Twelve Steps but don’t really know what they are. The coauthor of the Twelve Steps was a hopeless alcoholic named Bill Wilson who found recovery as the result of a Damascus Road–like spiritual experience in a hospital room where he was dying from alcoholism. From that day forward, Bill never drank again.

The Twelve Steps derived from the teachings of a Christian organization called the Oxford Group, but Wilson rewrote them in such a way that people, regardless of their religious background or spiritual orientation, could benefit from them. What Bill Wilson came to understand was that the addict’s problem was principally spiritual, not psychological or moral, and therefore required a spiritual solution. Thus, the purpose of the Twelve Steps was to enable alcoholics (or anyone else who wanted fixing and a better life) to have a spiritual awakening.

  • According to Bill Wilson, if you committedly “work the Steps,” you will eventually have a vital spiritual experience that will give you an entirely new and radically beautiful orientation toward life. 
  • You will be given a “new pair of glasses” through which you will see yourself, others, and the world in a startlingly fresh way. 
  • The Twelve Steps will displace the broken old ideas that were once the guiding force of your life and replace them with a whole “new set of conceptions and motives.” 
  • This renewed relationship with God or a “Power greater than ourselves” will reconfigure our personality (our all too predictable and habitual patterns of thinking, feeling, acting, and interpreting our experience of the world) and render our addictions unnecessary. 

The Steps don’t just help a person abstain from a substance or habitual self-limiting behavior, though that’s obviously a big part of the deal. More importantly, they address the underlying emotional, spiritual, and psychological issues that caused the addiction in the first place. The aim of the Twelve Steps is to draw us as close to God, ourselves, and others in this lifetime as possible. They teach us how to live joyfully in a riven world where we will never feel quite at home. They work.

The genius of the Twelve Steps is that it’s predominantly a practice-based program that brings about the profound psychological and spiritual shift that mere intellectual belief in God cannot. Moreover, I believe the Twelve Steps are completely consistent with the gospel. They put wheels on the teachings of Jesus. They transform faith from a belief system into a lifestyle.

Given how helpful they are for the Christian, I’m amazed at how long the church has overlooked them as a design for living.

I have a pal named Gene (not his real name) who was fired from his role as senior pastor of a large, theologically conservative, nondenominational congregation for showing up drunk to church one Sunday. He was only a minute or two into his slurred sermon when the elders realized he was completely potted and escorted him out of the sanctuary. There were no altar calls that week.

One night after a meeting, he said to me, “Isn’t it ironic that I have found more grace, forgiveness, acceptance, and healing in the basement of churches where Twelve-Step recovery groups meet than I ever did upstairs in the sanctuary where so-called ‘normies’ gather to worship? I wish they knew what they’re missing!”

Now, here’s the good news. 

  • Bill W. said that the Twelve Steps offered a spiritual solution for not only the alcoholics and addicts meeting downstairs in the church basement but also for everyone upstairs in the sanctuary and beyond who is searching for “home”—a solution to the Big Ache—which is all of us.
  • I have seen the Twelve Steps unscrew countless people’s screwed-up lives. And, yes, you can be one of them.

How to Use This Book

As a person in recovery, I’m no stranger to self-defeating habits and addictions. It wasn't until I embraced the Twelve Steps that I found true freedom. I know from personal experience that Twelve Step recovery is more than just a life-saving strategy for guiding substance users into sobriety. Everybody is addicted to something to numb the discomfort of living in a messed-up world, but the good news is that if you committedly "work the steps," you will eventually have a vital spiritual awakening that will give you an entirely new and radically beautiful orientation toward the life God has for you. The Fix is designed for anyone who wants to move beyond self-help to a spiritual awakening. I invite you to grab a few friends, The Fix book and workbook and have at it!