Celebrate Recovery (CR) is a Christ-centered twelve-step program that goes beyond the typical drug and alcohol issues. It helps people work through life’s “hurts, habits, and hangups.” As a Christian program, it generally meets and is sponsored by local churches. There are over 30,000 groups worldwide.

CR resolves several of the common objections to twelve-step programs with two major features:

• CR does not use the term “higher power.” There is only one “higher power” in CR, and that is Jesus Christ.

• In CR, we never declare our identity in our problems. While we do acknowledge our problems, we do NOT introduce ourselves as if the problem defines us. We declare our identity in Jesus Christ FIRST and then acknowledge the issues we struggle with. A typical introduction would be, “Hi, I am a grateful follower of Jesus Christ, and I celebrate victory over alcohol and struggle with codependency, and my name is Cindy.”

https://celebraterecovery.com/

It is helpful to know a few things about how God made us. Just like God is a three-part being (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), he made us in His image as a three-part being. We are a spirit, we have a soul, and we live in a body.

·       Our soul constitutes our personality: our mind (thoughts), our will (decisions), and our emotions (feelings).

·       Our body is the tangible, organic part of us.

·       Our spirit connects us to God. When we are born again, this part of us comes alive. The Holy Spirit lives in our spirit and allows union with God. As Christians, our spirit is perfect and contains the “mind of Christ” and all that we need for right living. 

Christian maturity is the process of changing our soul from being focused on self to being focused on God. Our spirit is made perfect when we are born again, but our soul (personality) doesn’t change automatically. We are still motivated by our carnal, sinful nature. Over time, we can shift the focus from our old self to the new, perfect, born-again nature.