A Bridge Between Recovery and Christians

Helping Recovery Find Christ. Helping Christians Find Healing.

I believe God has called me to stand in the space between two groups of people who need one another more than they may realize.

The first group is made up of people in Twelve Step recovery. Many have experienced the life-changing power of surrender, rigorous honesty, personal inventory, confession, forgiveness, amends, accountability, and service. They have learned to depend on “a Power greater than ourselves” or “God as we understood Him.”

Recovery has taught them how to seek spiritual help, but some are still uncertain about the identity of the God they are seeking.

They may be curious about the God of the Bible, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, yet hesitant to approach Christianity. Some have been wounded by the Church. Others associate Christianity with judgment, hypocrisy, or rigid rules rather than grace and relationship. Many have learned how to surrender to a Higher Power but are beginning to ask a deeper question:

Who is the One to whom I am surrendering?

I understand that question because I lived it.

For decades, Twelve Step recovery taught me to surrender, become honest, examine my character, make amends, seek forgiveness, serve others, and depend upon God. Recovery saved my life in many ways and prepared the soil of my heart.

But eventually, God invited me to know Him more fully—not merely as a Power of my own understanding, but as the God who reveals Himself through Scripture, through His Son Jesus Christ, and through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

Recovery taught me how to surrender.

Jesus taught me Who I was surrendering to.

The second group I feel called to serve is found within the Body of Christ—the Church.

These are people who believe in God. They may know Scripture, attend church, pray faithfully, serve others, and sincerely desire a close relationship with Jesus. Yet many are quietly carrying unresolved pain, childhood wounds, family dysfunction, fear, resentment, shame, pride, control, people-pleasing, perfectionism, or unhealthy relationship patterns.

They love God, but their unhealed wounds and unexamined character patterns can make it difficult to hear Him clearly, receive His love fully, or allow the Holy Spirit to work freely through them.

Faith does not automatically erase everything that has wounded us.

We can know Bible verses and still be driven by fear. We can serve in ministry and still avoid honest self-examination. We can speak about forgiveness while carrying deep resentment. We can love Jesus and still try to control people and outcomes. We can attend church every week while remaining trapped in denial, shame, isolation, or unhealthy family patterns.

These struggles do not mean that someone’s faith is false. They mean that healing and spiritual formation are often lifelong processes.

This is where the wisdom and practices found in recovery can offer something valuable to the Church.

Twelve Step recovery teaches people to tell the truth about their lives. It gives them practical ways to identify destructive patterns, acknowledge their powerlessness, take responsibility for their behavior, confess their wrongs, make amends, establish healthy boundaries, and live in daily dependence upon God.

These practices do not replace Jesus, Scripture, the Holy Spirit, the Church, professional counseling, or discipleship. At their best, they can help remove some of the emotional and relational barriers that keep people from receiving the healing and transformation God desires for them.

Recovery offers tools for becoming honest.

Jesus offers the truth that sets us free.

Recovery helps us recognize our wounds and patterns.

Jesus meets us in those wounds and begins transforming us from the inside out.

Recovery teaches us to surrender our will.

Jesus shows us that surrender is not submission to an impersonal force, but trust in a loving Savior.

I believe these two communities have gifts to offer one another.

People in recovery can remind the Church that transformation requires humility, honesty, accountability, confession, and daily surrender. They understand that healing happens in safe communities where people can tell the truth without pretending.

The Church can offer people in recovery the beautiful truth that their Higher Power has a name. God is not distant, vague, or created from our individual understanding. He has revealed Himself. Jesus is not waiting for us to become perfect before approaching Him. He meets us in our brokenness, offers forgiveness and grace, and invites us into a living relationship with Him.

The Holy Spirit does more than help us manage our character defects. He renews our minds, transforms our hearts, produces spiritual fruit within us, and empowers us to become more like Christ.

I am not called to tell people in recovery that everything they have learned is wrong. Much of what I learned in recovery prepared me to recognize the truth of the Gospel.

I am also not called to tell Christians that recovery has something Jesus lacks. Jesus is the source of our salvation and healing. But recovery-informed practices can help us become honest about the wounds, defenses, and destructive patterns that interfere with our ability to live in the freedom He has already made available.

I believe God is building a bridge.

On one side are people who understand surrender but may not yet know the One to whom they are surrendering.

On the other side are people who know the name of Jesus but may need help surrendering the wounds and character patterns that keep them from experiencing His transforming love.

My calling is to meet people on both sides of that bridge.

I want to help people in recovery explore the God of the Bible, encounter Jesus, and experience the Holy Spirit without dishonoring the journey that brought them this far.

I want to help Christians discover the healing practices of honesty, inventory, accountability, amends, healthy boundaries, and daily surrender—without replacing the Gospel or compromising the truth of Scripture.

This is the heart of Coaching with God:

Helping Recovery Find Christ.
Helping Christians Find Healing.

We do not have to choose between spiritual truth and emotional honesty.

We do not have to choose between the Church and recovery.

We can bring our faith, our wounds, our histories, our questions, and our character struggles into the light. We can allow Jesus to meet us there. And together, we can become healthier, humbler, more loving members of the Body of Christ—people through whom God’s grace can flow more freely into the lives of others.

Perhaps these two groups are not as far apart as they appear.

Perhaps God has been preparing them to help one another.

And perhaps the bridge between them begins with one honest conversation, one willing heart, and one courageous prayer:

“God, reveal Yourself to me, heal what stands between us, and help me surrender my whole life to You.”