To Keep It…SHARE IT!
Over the last few weeks I’ve been diving into the life of Bill W.
Most Americans have either never heard of him or know all about him. He sort of designed it that way.
Bill was a up-and-coming stock trader in the 1920′s and was doing pretty well for himself. He was a risk taker and the life of the party. Over the years however he found that it took more and more alcohol to really enjoy himself, and before long, he was drinking just to “feel normal” again. As the 1929 stock market crashed, he took to drinking heavily, and soon his entire life revolved around the bottle. He scared his wife Lois and regularly promised sobriety only to let her down time and again.
He was ‘powerless’ in the face of his own addiction.
He was brought to the very bottom when his wife finally came to her senses and checked him into a ‘sanitarium’ – a kind of hospital and mental institution for substance abusers and the insane. He was tied to his bed as he wallowed in his own shame. This, from a man who was topping the charts on Wall Street only a few years earlier. He better than any of knew the vicious poison…and luring potion of alcohol.
He found God in that sanitarium. From that moment on he began to give himself over to a “Higher Power” – the same way he formerly gave himself over to alcohol. His wife and friends were at first skeptical, then overjoyed! But he was not out of the woods yet. His temptations were still there. He believed that part of his life now was to share the path to sobriety with other drunks – that somehow he needed to keep telling the story of his own redemption in order to hold on to the sobriety he sought out every day – one day at a time.
Bill’s returned to work – and on one occasion he was sent to Cincinnati, OH. Far from his routines in New York City, he found himself tempted more than ever to finding the nearest lounge and no doubt falling off the wagon once again. In a last ditch effort he went out in search of a drunk who might listen to his tale. He comes across Bob S., drunk and depressed as Bill had been in that sanitarium.
One movie script of their encounter has Bill sitting down with a skeptical Bob, Bob going on and on about how Bill was wasting his time trying to convince Bob to stop drinking. ”Doctors, shrinks…they’ve all gave me their best, but nothing stuck,” Bob grunted to Bill, “What makes you think you can do anything for me?” Bill leaned forward with a drunk’s desperation in his eyes and responded,
“I’m not here to do anything for you, I’m here for me.”
Thus began Alcoholics Anonymous.
Sharing the story of salvation from alcohol is the key to keeping your own sobriety. “To keep it, you have to share it.” It’s like breathing – if you want to keep your breath, you have to share it – breathing in and keeping it will only kill you! You have to let it go to get it again.
This is how it works on Wikipedia as well, if you want to set the record straight on the wingspan of a flying squirrel, you add your tidbit of knowledge to the flying squirrel Wiki page. But simultaneously, you share it with the rest of the world.
It’s like our own salvation. It’s like the mission of the church. We are simultaneously “re-presenting” the Gospel to ourselves when we share it with others. And when a church or a Christian fails to share the Gospel with others, they fail to experience it themselves, and they become more of a problem to the world than a beautiful response to the problems of the world!
So keep the sobriety of your salvation. Follow the advice of Bill W., who understood more than most how desperately he needed to give it away, day after day…
To keep it, SHARE IT!
Katrina 1:52 pm on January 19, 2012 Permalink
Well written!