Willpower is not enough. You need more, and that more is a Higher Power. Every recovering alcoholic or addict--regardless of length of sobriety--will reach a time when the only thing that stands between him or her and picking up a drink or drug will be a personal relationship with a Higher Power.This book is an invitation to explore and nurture that relationship. Reconnecting with the Christian roots of Alcoholics Anonymous, Higher Power combines classic biblical teaching, spiritual formation, and contemporary 12-Step practice. Higher Power is an excellent resource for anyone in recovery seeking to develop a personal relationship with a loving and merciful God. [Doug Himes] knows his Bible. He knows his Big Book. And he knows a multitude of quotations relevant to the way out. Here is an extremely well written, scholarly formula for renewal. I loved reading it. And so will you. --Dick B., author of 44 books and more than 1,000 articles on AA history and Christian recovery Douglas Himes provides those who suffer from addictions with much inspiring and practical wisdom and guidance that can help them walk the ego self-emptying path that leads to the realization of their true self and life in God’s image. His own 12-Step experience and considerable spiritual knowledge and practice enrich the value of his insights. --Tilden Edwards, Founder and Senior Fellow, Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation Douglas D. Himes, Ph.D., is a trained spiritual director and sought-after retreat and workshop leader who provides spiritual counsel at Cumberland Heights, one of the country’s leading alcohol and drug treatment centers, in Nashville, Tennessee. A former Fulbright Scholar and Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, he has degrees in physics and historical musicology and is published in two languages in seven fields. In his words, “I was so smart that it took me only nine and a half years to get the First Step. This book parallels my now life-saving journey from self-sufficient knowledge to universal truth.” Higher Power Seeking God in 12-Step Recovery By Douglas D. Himes Abingdon Press Copyright © 2012 Douglas D. Himes All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4267-4581-2 Contents Preface, A PRAYER IN THE DARKNESS, Chapter 1: Do You Want to Be Made Well?, Chapter 2: Finding Our Way out of the Darkness, Chapter 3: Choose Life, Chapter 4: Beginning Again, Chapter 5: Gather Up the Fragments, Chapter 6: You Are Called by Name, Chapter 7: Claiming Our Authentic Self, Chapter 8: Standing on Holy Ground, Chapter 9: Living into Our Importance, Chapter 10: Learning to Pray, A PRAYER FOR SOLITUDE, Chapter 11: Caring for Our Anger, Chapter 12: Granting and Accepting Forgiveness, Chapter 13: Losing and Finding Faith in God, Chapter 14: Saying Yes to God, Chapter 15: Surrender to Live, A PRAYER FOR FAITH, Notes, CHAPTER 1 DO YOU WANT TO BE MADE WELL? Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Bethzatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be made well?" The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me." Jesus said to him, "Stand up, take your mat and walk." At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. —John 5:2-9a The miracle of recovery contains a paradox: one must consent to the miracle in order to participate in it. This chapter poses the question whose answer is the gateway to the miracle. * * * It seems a strange question: "Do you want to be made well?" The man in John's Gospel had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years. He was sick, miserable, helpless, pitiful. Why wouldn't he want to be made well? Why wouldn't anyone who had been sick that long want to be made well? Located in northeast Jerusalem, the pool in the story is actually two pools surrounded and separated by five porticoes, or covered porches. According to a combination of ancient folklore and Jewish superstition, it was believed that an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water. Whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well from whatever disease that person had. As a result of this belief, the five porticoes were filled with invalids—sick people with all manner of diseases and disabilities—waiting for the stirring of the waters and hoping then to be the first into the pool. It was into this gathering of broken humanity that Jesus walked. The Gospel tells us that the central character of the story is a man who has been paralyzed for thirty-eight years. He has come to this pool—perhaps every day for thirty-eight years—hoping to be magically healed by the stirred waters.