Editor’s Note
by Editor(s)

As those of you who have followed our "Updates from Boone" the past few years will remember, our desire was always to have a Christ centered place of retreat where the wellness of the whole person is the priority, and where we might utilize the twelve steps of AA and the understanding gained from psychology and group dynamics. Why the twelve steps, or any psychologically based system of thought? When we are reviewing the articles in this issue, an answer presents itself. The point of all this is to help us get a view of ourselves. Until we can experience to the depths who we are not (Satan/I), we can never experience the fullness of who we are in Christ (Christ/I).

In "God’s Obsession," Norman beats his familiar drum about our true nature being God’s nature, and our highest calling being intercessors. God’s "obsession" is to live His redeeming life out through us individually-death to us, life to others. But the truth is, God’s life in us as us has been blocked by our own obsessions, from sometimes subtle obsessions to succeed, to look good, to make money, even to be a good Christian, to our more glaringly sinful obsessions for food, sex, and drink. All of these, of course, stem from the belief that "we," "just us," are in control of our lives, and then Satan gets to fulfill his great obsession: to use us as his instruments of unrighteousness.

"My Story" is an article about food addiction, but how clearly we who have dealt with any addiction issue can identify with the creeping denial that can set in and the anger and resistance to "bite the bullet" and take a rigorously honest look. Our addictions bring us to a place of powerlessness, where, as Brett points out, we are at God’s mercy and deserve harsh judgment, but are met with His grace. Yet this grace is really only experienced through our willingness to accept, to surrender, to be willing for God to totally replace "our" (Satan’s) insides with His own. We become "entirely ready," as the 6th step says, we appropriate "God’s Promises," as our anonymous contributor explains, by seeing to the depth of our need because of our sinfulness. Then with gratitude we see that Satan really has been God’s convenient agent because his misuse of us and our cooperation with him has brought us to the end, to powerlessness, to the conviction that unless we have God’s total takeover in our innermost selves we are beyond hope. But His promise is this: He has come to live His life in our vessel, and our past now is a gateway for others-it is our experience, strength and hope gained through battling the jungles of our own unbelief and addictions that can be freely given, without shame, to others. We are back to intercession. But this cycle has to be more than words. We have confessed who we are, then God has set about to show us the truth of our belief by first showing us the lie of who we are not, for which He died. Only then can the good news of Easter, He is risen, be true experientially in our lives.