Life Recovery Topical Index
Perhaps youd like to connect a variety of these tools to one subject or study, such as trust. This index helps you to navigate or cross-reference your way through this Bible. This index provides a starting point for locating recovery-related devotionals, notes, profiles, and recovery themes. It also makes it easier to return to a section you found particularly helpful.
Topics range greatly, including: emotional and mental states, both positive and negative relationship- and family-related subjects substance abuse, and many other scenarios within life. For instance, you could choose to look up: amends, anger, blame, depression, fellowship, joy, marriage, mentors, obstacles, or relapse, to name a small selection.
Here, we will continue to study the concept of trust. After searching for trust within the index, you find the word followed by a section of information directing you to recovery resources.
For example, trust is followed by:
- Noteswill be followed by numerous Bible passages
- Profileswill list the name of the person
- Twelve Step Devotionalswill list which step and how the topic is addressed in connection to it
- Recovery Principle Devotionalslists a principle to study
- Recovery Themesinclude the books of the Bible where this topic may be found
Not every word is linked to every resource, for instance, you will note that Serenity Prayer Devotional was not listed. We will discuss and explain these features in greater depth shortly.
How We Used To Pray
Often, people in recovery recall praying when they were addicted to drugs or alcohol. The prayers usually sounded something like please let this work outplease let my dealer answerplease let me get high just one last timeplease let me score this. Alcohol and drug addiction will hijack your brain, and really make all of your thoughts and behaviors revolve around using drugs or alcohol above all else. Our prayers were once pleas for the next fix, and as we enter a drug rehab program, our substance use disorder can finally take a seat we now begin praying with true meaning, for true meaning. Our daily prayers will transform the way we think and feel no longer obsessed with drug abuse, we are able to pray with gratitude for the opportunity to change our lives.
Set Aside A Specific Time Of Day For Your Study
Structure is important in recovery. If youre studying the Bible alone, reach out and ask someone close to you to help you adhere to this time. If youre studying with others, help each other keep this commitment.
Hebrews 10:24-25 instructs us of this importance: Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another.
This verse echoes the importance of Step Twelve. Also, dont forgeton top of this, you can pray or read your Bible anytime you need a boost or desire to feel closer to God.
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God’s Purpose For Your Life: 365 Devotions
Gods Purpose for Your Life is a Charles Stanley devotional that focuses on you guessed it discovering Gods purpose for your life. Addiction can consume a persons life, throwing any thoughts about the future out of the window. Especially for chronic drug or alcohol users, coming out of addiction and into recovery can be disorienting. Many individuals who come out of drug or alcohol addiction treatment feel lost and unsure about what to do with their lives after rehab. This lost and empty feeling is dangerous if left unattended, and often drives people back into their former habits. Gods Purpose for Your Life is one of the best Bible devotionals for addicts in recovery that help individuals who are healing from substance abuse tune their ears to Gods voice and help them understand His purpose for their life.
Christian Exercises Assist Spiritual Progression
Each of the following practices can aid you in recovery. By applying these exercises during Christian rehab, you become more open to the changes required to move forward.
- Prayer: Through prayer, you can get ever closer to God, seek answers for yourself, and enrich the lives of others.
- Meditation: Biblical meditation helps you to focus on essential passages of the Bible and gain a deeper understanding of the revelations.
- Openness to learning: Christianity teaches you to never close your mind off with regard to gaining knowledge and understanding of the world around you.
- Finding love and beauty in the smallthings: When were grateful for the minor things in life, we find perspective.
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Putting The Index To Practice
If you want to expand your search on a specific topic and study it in greater depth, each topic is followed by related concepts or issues. For instance, should you desire to further meditate on trust, you would see see also Doubt, Faith in parentheses. You now have a choiceyou can continue to read about trust, or you can study either or both of these concepts.
Before we continue our study on trust, were going to discuss this a little further. If you look back to the words in the parentheses, note that the first is an antonym and the second is a synonym .
With trust, you started with a positive concept. In parentheses you see faith, a word that will allow you to continue studying positive topics and information similar to trust. But what if you want to begin with a negative state that you are struggling with?
Within substance abuse and addiction, and throughout recovery, an individual may frequently battle a host of negative mindsets, feelings, and actions. Sometimes, a person may wish to look for verses and resources connected to these things as a way to overcome them.
To understand this, lets go back to our initial search for stress and take a momentary break from our study on trust. Stress can dominate a persons life with negativity, oppressing them in such a way that they dont feel independent from the effects of substance abuse. On this subject, if you look up bondage, you would be directed to an opposite and positive statefreedom.
Love And Community Are Christian Principles
Anyone who has been through addiction and recovery will tell you that a support network played a significant role in their healing process. By connecting with people around you who share common values and place love, understanding, and fellowship at the forefront of their lives, you vastly increase your chances of abstaining for the right reasons and maintaining the lifestyle long term.
If youre a person of faith who has lost their way or youre looking for somewhere to turn, religion can provide the foundation of support that you need.
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The Twelve Steps And Scripture
While many individuals realize The Twelve Steps are Biblically-based, not everyone may know exactly how they connect to specific Scriptures. This tool helps you to better understand this.
Each step is written out and linked with two to four passages of Scripture. These passages validate the important concepts within each step. One of the passages is supported by an excerpt. This is a great starting place for you if youre just starting out within The Steps, or if youd simply like to refresh your understanding of them.
To do this, you simply access this section, choose a step, read the excerpt, and pick a passage to study further. These passages do not include page numbers, so if you do want to read them, simply look up the page number of the book and proceed from there by finding the correct chapter and verse.
Heres an example:
STEP 2: We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
God is working in you giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him .
How Do I Use A Bible
The Life Recovery Bible is a New Living Translation of the Judeo-Christian sacred Biblical text. In the very beginning of this Bible, you will find all the books it contains organized both sequentially and alphabetically. These are followed with page numbers, making for quick reference. Before we proceed further, we will spend a little time explaining how the Bible is set up.
This Bible contains 66 books, each of which contain chapters. Every chapter is further broken down into verses. This is why when you see a certain Bible passage, you see three pieces of information represented. Together, these three things give you an exact location of a specific verse or passage within the Bible.
For example:
James 5: 13-14 represents James 5 : 13-15
Now to find this passage:
Again, if youre uncertain where James is, you can access the books page number in the beginning of the Bible. Once youre there, scan the text until you find the correct chapter, written out as CHAPTER 5. Now, to find the verse, you need to look for a small number to the upper left of each verse this is called a superscript. In the following example, the first superscript is 13, which means it is verse 13. Look closely, the superscript verse number isnt always located at the beginning of the columnsometimes a verse begins in the middle of a column.
Well use James 5:13-14 as an example:
The Power of Prayer
13 Are any of you suffering hardships? You
should pray. Are any of you happy? You
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The Twelve Gifts Of Life Recovery
A successful recovery can bring not only sobriety, but also a more positive and fulfilling life. Here youll find twelve potential gifts or positive outcomes. These could occur as you overcome the damaging behaviors of addiction and move into a new and sober life informed by the Word of God. Each gift is followed by one to two passages of Scripture.
These provide you with examples of positive goals or mindsets which you can integrate into your recovery plan.
What Is A Daily Devotional
Daily devotionals are readings for each day of the year that include Bible verses, questions, and other exercises that are meant to help the reader better understand scripture. Daily devotionals are usually books that incorporate scripture in discussions about specific themes or topics. For example, daily devotionals for people recovering from addiction would focus on Bible verses and stories that a recovering addict could relate to and apply to their lives in order to strengthen their relationship with God. These devotionals would also explain scripture in a way where it applies to a persons life as they manage their sobriety. Daily devotionals can be completed individually or in a group.
At Faith in Recovery, we offer a variety of Christian therapies and resources for individuals recovering from addiction, including bible studies. During these studies, our patients learn more about Jesus, build their faith, and learn how to lean on God and His word in sobriety.
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Best Devotionals For People In Addiction Recovery
The team at Faith in Recovery is well aware of Christian resources that are beneficial for individuals who are receiving or have received drug or alcohol addiction treatment. Below is a list of daily devotionals for recovering addicts that offer perspectives on scripture that are both relatable and promote spiritual healing.
A Devotion For Those In Recovery From Addiction
Addiction is one of the greatest scourges, a kind of terrorism of the soul…
by Edward GrinnanFrom Posted in Devotions for Good Health
Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world. I John 4:4
The e-mail had been forwarded to me from the prayer service of Guidepostss Outreach Division. It was from a woman urgently requesting prayer. A heroin addict, shed been through rehab twice and had relapsed again. Now she had to pull herself back up out of the pit of her addiction and face her family with the truth, and she wasnt sure she could go through with it.
I keep thinking Im hopeless, she wrote, that I will never get better. I cant pray anymore by myself. I need help. She didnt give her name, only her e-mail address.
Of all the seemingly intractable problems the world faceswar, hunger, environmental calamities, terrorismaddiction is one of the greatest scourges, a kind of terrorism of the soul. It affects rich and poor alike, advanced nations and developing ones, men and women, and people of all ages and races and religions. The toll addiction takes on the worlds economies is in the trillions. The personal suffering is incalculable.
Yet as someone who has not picked up a drink in many years, I know there is a solution, one that begins with the individual. By the grace of a Higher Power, any addict or alcoholic can take back his or her life from the grip of addiction.
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Digging Deeper: How To Use The Life Recovery Bible
Faith and recovery are both very personal experiences. Now that you have your Life Recovery Bible youre probably eager to get started. However, now that youre holding it in your hands, you might find that youre a bit intimidated by its size and small print. This is understandable after all, addiction often has some accompanying emotional problems, so you may be feeling overwhelmed to begin with.
For many people, even those outside of recovery, reading and interpreting the Bible can be a challenging task. It is these very concerns which have shaped The Live Recovery Bible. Within the pages of this user-friendly recovery-focused Bible, scripture perfectly complements important twelve-step principles.
How Do I Stay Positive And On Track
Addiction, and at times, recovery, can seem like a battle between the negative and positive. It can weigh heavy on your heart. Even those who practice the Lords Word will struggle with these things. But dont fearthe Bible gives us instruction on this too.
Its important not just to read His Word, but to put it into practice within our daily lives. In closing, well leave you with an impactful and positive directive from Philippians 4: 6-9. This passage is a great testament to the power that lies within persistence and positive thinking, in it Paul writes:
And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from meeverything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.
Let these words settle in and encourage you as you move forward in your treatment or recovery, nearer to alleviating your anxiety or depression, and closer to God.
The Bible isnt for one-time use. It is an anchor and an axissomething we should always return to both in times of struggle and moments of joy. Recovery is surely a journey with many challenges, challenges which may be made easier by the power of Gods Word as witnessed in The Life Recovery Bible.
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Making The Recovery Connection Within The Life Recovery Bible
Maybe youre just starting out on the path towards sobriety and looking for a little inspiration and framework on which to build your recovery. Or, perhaps youve put in the time, having been through detox and treatment, and now you want to invest in your recovery to protect what youve fought so hard to gain. Either way, The Life Recovery Bible offers a wide spectrum of recovery-based perspectives on what youre reading.
Again, these features are all easily found within the Life Recovery Topical Index. We will now return to our example and study on trust, beginning again at this index.
Dont Just Read Itspeak It
The Word of God is a powerful tool. Open up and share these words to those within your life who support you in this way, especially those who are also in recovery. If you dont have anyone like this in your life, consider looking into a church or a support group to meet people who you can share these words with.
Consider these verses:
- Proverbs 10:11:The words of the godly are a life-giving fountain.
- 1 Thessalonians 4:18:So encourage each other with these words.
Together these verses become very powerful, and from them we can infer that sharing Gods word with other believers can invigorate your life and recovery.
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Topical Bible Verse Finder
The Topical Bible Verse Finder is a great tool for a person looking to connect their day-to-day life to the spiritual direction set forth by Gods Word. These topics vary, and include circumstances you may struggle with with internally or as you encounter loved ones and various situations within your life and even positive concepts you may aspire to. Examples include: abuse, courage, decisions, dishonesty, guilt, forgiveness, and responsibility. Each topic is then followed by brief summaries of relevant passages.
As an example:
Perhaps youre finding it difficult to adjust to a sober life and feel very overwhelmed. If you look for stress, a common trigger for substance abuse and relapse, and a state of mind often linked to anxiety and depression, you will see several examples listed and summarized.
- Psalm 62:1-8: God is a refuge in times of stress. This summary appears to be more general.
- Exodus 18:13-26: Delegating work can alleviate stress. This summary appears to relate to stress which could be related to job or vocational responsibilities.
Hypothetically, though they could both be potentially helpful, the first appears more applicable to your situation. You now search for the page number listed after the example and find the correct passage. Once there, you find that verses five through eight really speak to you:
5 Let all that I am wait quietly before God,
for my hope is in him.
6 He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress where I will not be shaken.
alone.
