Presented to TSA Alberni Valley Ministries, 27 July 2025 by Major M Ramsay
The
previous few weeks I have been camping with Susan and Heather – and coming back
here to work: some weeks I was more with them such as last week and some weeks I
was more at work here such the week previous.
The
themes I have been preaching on lately are what I have been reading about the
past few weeks: forgiveness and the Kingdom of God. I have been reading a few
books and articles by and about Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He shares some
examples about the power one has when they forgive. You can even be free of
awful hurts – pain from murder, torture, racism, etc. – by forgiving people who
harmed you. Forgiveness can save your mental, emotional and spiritual health.
Last
week was also one of my favourite recent sermons; I was reading a lot of
liberation theologians so I shared some of my ideas of the Kingdom of God –
where there are no more wars, no more prisons; where countries take the
resources we currently spend on killing other people’s children and use them to
save our own and other children instead.
This
week I have been reading a lot about Alcoholic Anonymous’ 12 steps so I will
speak about that. I have often left AA meetings realizing how good a vehicle
they are for the gospel and have often quoted them in various sermons.
This
week I noticed that I could arrange the 12 steps of AA into 4 categories of
Salvation; so I will share these and the12
steps as they relate to Holiness, as I understand them:
Category
1 - Steps 1-3: the Sovereignty of God (Jonah 1)
1. We
admitted we were powerless over [sin] — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We came
to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us…
3. We made
a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we
understood Him.
I want
to share a bit of a miracle related to Category 1, the sovereignty of God – my
phone stopped charging on Monday (I need it for work, for a lot); I was camping
last week ¾ of an hour west of Langford, past Sooke. I drove a long way to lot
of places to see if I could get a tech to help me. I couldn’t. I needed my
phone at least for an alarm clock as I had to get up at 3 or 4am Wednesday
morning to get here for work. When God placed preaching about ‘His sovereignty’ on my mind, I prayed for the
sovereign God to charge my phone so at least I would have an alarm on Wednesday
– and He did! And then it stopped charging again. God does all kinds of big,
little and other miracles for His Kingdom and His purposes. (He also used
others here to fix my phone on Wednesday too. God is good.)
When I
think of the sovereignty of God I think of Jonah. We know the story of Jonah.
Jonah knows that God can save people from destruction; God asks Jonah to tell
Jonah’s enemies how to be saved from destruction – Jonah says ‘no’. Not only
that. Jonah says, ‘I am outta here’. God tells Jonah to go to an inland city
like Saskatoon or Red Dear and tell them how they can be saved; so, Jonah hops
the first boat to Japan. The actual city is Ninevah, in modern day Iraq, and
Jonah heads to the Mediterranean Sea, but you get the point. Jonah knows God is
sovereign, but Jonah made the mistake of thinking he could thwart that somehow.
God
then proves He is in charge, of course. When Jonah hops on a boat to run away, God
sends a storm and all the people on the boat believe they are going to die;
they ask their gods and each other why this is happening; they find out that it
is Jonah’s fault; they ask Jonah what to do so that the storm will end; Jonah
says ‘kill me’ – really!?! Jonah would rather die that do what God wants him to
do. Eventually they do throw him overboard, the storm stops and the other
people on the boat are saved; everyone worships God.
But of
course, God didn’t let Jonah off the hook by letting him die. Much to Jonah’s
dismay God sent a big fish to swallow Jonah, keep him from the storm for three
days. The fish then vomits him on shore and God says [more or less], ‘Jonah now
go and do what I told you to do in the first place’. God is sovereign.
Step
2: Restoration - Jonah begrudgingly does it, God restores the whole city of
Ninevah – nothing is impossible for God
Step
3: Turning our will over to God – Jonah never really reaches this stage- Jonah
winds up whining and complaining under a branch the Lord gave him; the Lord
then took the branch away – and Jonah complained all the more.
Better
examples of turning our will over to God, repentance, is Terah and Abraham’s
family. Terah is Abraham’s dad. They are called by God, in turn, to move to
Canaan from Babbel. We remember that story. The people of the earth think they
are better than God or at least equal to Him – they don’t even have the
understanding of the sovereignty of God that Jonah does. God had told the
people to disperse, go and fill the whole earth in Genesis 1 but they decide
that they would rather challenge God, stay and build this tower to the heavens and
make a name for themselves instead of following God’s direction… God then says,
(I’m paraphrasing) challenge accepted. He knows that they cause all these
problems working together because they are speaking the same language; so, He
confuses their languages – He makes them speak a whole bunch of different
languages and since they can’t understand each other the people go to the
different areas of the earth like they were told too. Abraham’s family was
called to Canaan. Terah, his dad, looks like he started that journey and then
gave up. But Abraham repented, turned His will over to God and continued.
An
even better example is Saul in the NT. He persecuted God’s people: Christians
and Greeks (Gentiles). God then strikes him blind while travelling the road to Damascus
and God winds up using him as one of the main Christian ministers to the Greeks
(Gentiles); as a result of his turning his will over to God, in history we
remember him by the Greek version of his name, ‘Paul’, rather than the Hebrew
version of his name ‘Saul’
Category
2 - Steps 4-7: Confess Our Shortcomings (Galatians 5:19-21)
4. We made
a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted
to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our
wrongs.
6. Were
entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly
asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
About
a month ago of so we preached a number of sermons on Galatians 5 and the fruit
of the Spirit vs. the fruit of ourselves, the flesh. During one of those
sermons, I told Gerry Fostaty’s story from As You Were: The Tragedy at
Valcartier. I will summarize it here:
Gerry
was a cadet leader at camp. As part of the camp, the young children he led
learned how to use weapons properly and how to take care of the weapons and how
the weapons worked and all kinds of things like that.
In
one class, the adult instructor was handing out dummy grenades for the children
to examine. The dummy grenades are different from the real grenades: the
dummies are brightly coloured - orange, pink, blue – not the military green of
combat weaponry. The cadets, these children were encouraged to take apart these
dummy grenades, put them back together, examine how they work, etc., etc., etc.…
Apparently
and disastrously in with the orange, pink, and blue-coloured grenades was at
least one live green grenade. The children were passing this live green grenade
– along with the toy grenades – along the line of cadets in the class. They
were taking the pin out and placing it back in and they were holding (I don’t
know what the term is but…) the safety and disabling and reassembling it along
with the coloured grenades and then… one little boy pulled the pin on the live
grenade and holding it out too long…
One
deadly green grenade had mixed in with the harmless coloured grenades and this
one green grenade brought death and destruction with it. The result of this
green grenade in the room full of children is essentially the same result as hatred,
discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissentions, factions, envy,
and other defects of character wind up in our lives.
Therefore,
we need to make a moral inventory – we need to find those and other green
grenades in our life. We need to point them out to God and someone else. God
knows but He likes us to tell Him when we figure things out – because He loves
us. We need to realize that we can’t actually get rid of all of these green
grenades by ourselves – if we try, they may blow up in any of a myriad of ways.
We need to ask God to get rid of the grenades because He really is the only one
who can safely do that.
Category
3 - Steps 8-11: Keep us Blameless (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24)
8. We
made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to
them all.
9.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would
injure them or others.
10.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted
it.
11. Sought
through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we
understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to
carry that out.
Who
here has never hurt people? Who here has never made anyone mad at you? I could
at this point hand out papers and pens or pencils and ask you to make a list of
all the people you have hurt – but we probably don’t have enough time. I
probably couldn’t get past Grade 2 by the time our time is up today. (Romans
3:23: for we all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God)
Step 9.
Make amends where we can – this is important: if you stole 1 million dollars,
if you have some way to pay it back, do it. If you don’t’, you can’t. Also, it
is suggested that you don’t throw anyone else under the bus. If you robbed a
bank or stole from work, you might or might not want to rat out your
accomplices and the security guard who was asleep at the desk – but that may
cause more harm than good. You would have to figure that out. Adultery is often
mentioned here in the literature – if you slept with a married person’s spouse
– and it is still unknown years later; you probably don’t want to surprise the
spouse and ruin a reconciled marriage just so you can feel good. That would be selfish.
Basic rule of thumb: don’t let fear be an excuse to not make amends – always
stand up to your fears. But some people get such a high out of confession that
they wind up outing other people in the process – this is bad. Don’t make other
people’s lives worse so you can feel good.
Steps 10
and 11: keep it up! Make a moral inventory (step 4) and keep on making moral
inventories. See where those green grenades are. We will each probably make
mistakes in the future too. Let us be aware of that and let us confess our sins
-mistakes, shortcomings – as they happen. John Wesley did this daily. We should
do the same: set up times of prayer, meditation and reflection and confess our
mistakes to others, ourselves, and God. Personal devotional time, connecting
with God is so important. It is the only way we can ever fully have peace in
our lives.
Category
4 - Step 12: Evangelize (Matthew 28:18-20)
12.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to
carry this message to [others], and to practice these principles in all our
affairs.
That
is our final step and the last category – Evangelize. I will teach you some
Greek. εὐαγγέλιον (euangelion) evangelism is the Greek word for ‘Good
News’. Evangelism means ‘good news’: When you share good news with some one you
are evangelizing them. This is what the word means and that is what it is meant
to be. We can be saved from so much here and now and forever: that’s what
salvation is; we can share that good news with others: that’s what evangelism
is.
So today
we went through the 12 AA steps, applied them to holiness and organized them
into four categories of Salvation. The categories are:
Step One: Let us acknowledge the
sovereignty of God
Two: Confess our shortcomings
Three: Let God keep us blameless
Four: Evangelise, share the Good News
That
is my hope. That we will all experience this Holiness, this peace with God as
we live out our Salvation both now and forever – and then that we will share the
Good News of that possibility and that reality with others so that they can
experience the love, joy, hope, and peace of Christ that can get us all through
all of the struggles of this life and keep us holy unto eternal life.
Let us
pray.
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