Honesty

Save Your Marriage By Starting With a Clean Slate

If you really want to save your marriage, you must start with a clean slate. That means to get rid of the worldly attitudes and practices that have polluted your marriage and follow God’s plan for your marriage instead. We’re so used to treating our marriage like everyone else does, or the way we were taught, or from what we think is the right way to handle it, but look where all that has gotten many of our marriages of today.

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Heal Marriage After Adultery

Do you want your marriage nursed back to health? If you want your marriage restored it will take some effort on your part. Stop peering over the fence at your neighbor, and put your eyes back in your own yard where they belong.

First, the offended spouse needs to forgive completely (see my article, forgive a cheating spouse), and secondly the offender has to understand why he strayed from the marriage bed in the first place. Infidelity is only a symptom of a greater problem within the framework of the marriage.

If you have been unfaithful or have anything else pulling you away from your spouse, ask yourself why? What am I doing that would cause me to be disloyal? Don’t blame your spouse for your weakness. Grow up and take responsibility.

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Soft Addiction and Accountability

SELF-ACCOUNTABILITY
The key to overcoming bad habits or a Soft Addiction is to take the time to learn how to become self-accountable. If a person is not held accountable for something, there is little motivation to change. We, who struggle with behavior addictions can relate to this problem. It is a main element of denial. It is getting into the habit of saying, Who, Me!

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God Waits for Us to Draw Near to Him

When all the fighting and protesting is done, God waits for me to draw near to Him. I think that I make more trouble for myself than my own circumstances ever do. I try to control, to manipulate, to manage. And all that is so painful because I am working in a realm where I have no ability and certainly no talent. When I’m honest (which I’m finding isn’t nearly as often as I’d like it to be), I can admit that I’m really not very good at decisions. Many of the ones I’ve made have been simply horrible with drastic results. But when I wait on God and allow Him to make the decisions, things work out so much better. He’s really so much better at decisions than I am, and rightly so, because He sees the future and knows what’s best for me.

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Little Slips

“Whoever is faithful in very little–is also faithful in much; and
whoever is unrighteous in very little–is also unrighteous in much.”
Luke 16:10

We are apt to under-estimate little failures in duty.

It seems to us, a small matter:
that we do not keep an engagement,
that we lose our temper,
that we say an impatient or angry word,
that we show an unkind or harsh spirit,
that we speak uncharitably of another,
that we treat someone with discourtesy, or
fail in some other way which appears trivial.

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A.A. 12-Step Christian Parallels: Steps 10-12

Step Ten through Step Twelve

We have many times documented the frequent statements by A.A. cofounder Bill Wilson that his friend Rev. Sam Shoemaker was the major source of the Big Book ideas and Twelve Steps.1

And you can find almost exact parallels between the language Bill Wilson used in the Big Book and the language Shoemaker wrote in his many Christian books, articles, and pamphlets. Sometimes Bill’s parallel language is found in the instructions of the Big Book for “taking” the Steps. Sometimes his language is found in the Steps themselves.

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A.A. 12-Step Christian Parallels: Steps 7-9

Steps Seven through Step Nine

We have many times documented the frequent statements by A.A. co-founder Bill Wilson that his friend Rev. Sam Shoemaker was the major source of the Big Book ideas and Twelve Steps.1 In 1955, Newsweek named Shoemaker one of the ten greatest preachers in the United States.2 Shoemaker was known as a great communicator, and was described by his associate Rev. W. Irving Harris as a “Bible Christian.”3

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A.A. 12-Step Christian Parallels: Steps 1-6

A.A. 12-Step Christian Parallels from Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr.

Steps One through Step Six

We have many times documented the frequent statements by A.A. co-founder Bill Wilson that his friend, Rev. Sam Shoemaker, was the major source of the Big Book ideas and Twelve Steps.1 In 1955, Newsweek named him one of the ten greatest preachers in the United States.2 Shoemaker was known as a great communicator, and was described by his associate, Rev. W. Irving Harris, as a Bible Christian.3

There are many persuasive instances where one can find almost exact parallels between the language Bill Wilson used in the Big Book and the language Shoemaker used in his many Christian books, articles, and pamphlets.

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