Living Free Every Day®

Today's Scripture

"Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give in to sinful desires. Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God." Romans 6:12-13 NLT
Thoughts for Today
"You shall have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:3). When sin controls our life, it becomes our god. And this happens all too often to everyone--including Christians. Sadly, the statistics on divorce, pornography, adultery, and similar behaviors are not that different in the lives of Christians. And then there are the everyday so-called "little" offenses: gossip, anger, lying. You get the idea.

Today's scripture warns us not to let sin control the way we live. When we give in to sinful desires, our body becomes an instrument of evil to serve sin.
Consider this … 
Jesus paid a great price to give us new life. Now we must give ourselves completely to God. Then instead of our body being an instrument of sin, it becomes an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God.

How does your life look? Is it controlled by pornography or alcohol or drugs? An adulterous relationship? Anger? Perhaps it's gossip. Success at all cost. Gambling. Pride. Are you ready to let God regain control of your life? Are you ready to be free of the sin? Sin hurts you. It hurts those you care about. And most of all, it displeases God and separates you from him.

God wants to help you, but you have to make a choice. Will you ask for his help today?
Prayer
Father, forgive me for this sin in my life. I know I've let it take control. I am ready to give it up, but I need your help. In Jesus' name . . .
These thoughts were drawn from …
The Ten Commandments: Applying the Foundations of Living to My Personal Life by Jimmy Ray Lee, D.Min. Knowing that there are absolutes that define moral conduct and ethical decisions is essential for believers surrounded by relativistic values. This guide helps us understand God's boundaries. It shows how the Ten Commandments apply today. It also discusses the biblical laws on which the legal codes of every civilized society are based. This guide is written in a way that helps people see the Ten Commandments in light of today's problems. Note: This curriculum was written especially for small groups, and we encourage people to use it that way. However, it can also be used effectively as a personal study for individuals or couples.

 

 

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Where Bill W. Came From

Born behind the bar in his family's big red inn—117 years ago this week—Wilson's Vermont youth wasn't exactly bucolic. His encounters with early adversity show how the child was father to the man.

The Vermont inn where Bill W. was born photo via

By Susan Cheever The Fix

11/27/12

Alcoholics Anonymous cofounder Bill Wilson was born on Thanksgiving behind a bar. His father’s family owned an inn, the sprawling red-gabled Wilson House on the south side of the village green in East Dorset, Vermont, a small town where quarrying and polishing local marble was the only industry. (His father, Gilly Wilson, was a quarryman.) Raised in these humble circumstances, Bill Wilson grew up to pioneer a movement that has forever enriched our view of addiction. It’s instructive to study Bill Wilson’s early years, because in ways that seem more than coincidental they prepared him for the role he would play in history.

Born in 1895, William Griffith Wilson was a dyed-in-the-wool Vermont boy. AA is deeply rooted in the rocky soil and granite traditions of New England, from its grass-roots, town-meeting democracy as Bill expressed it in the twelve traditions to its farm-boy practicality to its understanding of the limits of temperance. When Bill Wilson finally met Dr. Bob Smith, AA’s other cofounder, in a gatehouse in Akron, Ohio, when Bill was almost 40, one of their bonds was that they were both Vermont boys—Smith was from St. Johnsbury—and their broad vowels and dropped consonants sounded like home to each other.

Bill Wilson’s start in life was not promising. His mother, 25-year-old Emily Griffith, had a difficult labor, and the baby was finally delivered by primitive forceps, half-asphyxiated, “cold and discolored and nearly dead,” his mother later wrote in a letter to her son. “There is evidence of alcoholism” in the Wilson family, the authors of AA’s official history, Pass It On. Even now the Wilson House, still run as a hotel, has the extravagant architecture and colors that somehow reflect the generous, experimental attitude of a drinker on a good day.

Bill Wilson’s parents abandoned him and his sister, Dorothy, to the care of their stern Griffith grandparents.

By contrast, the Griffith House across the village green is trim and gray, and his mother’s family was all hard-driving teachers, lawyers and judges. “The first indication that the marriage was in some trouble may have appeared during Emily’s pregnancy,” wrote Robert Thomsen in his biography of Bill Wilson, Bill W. Emily suggested that her husband go out alone, and he began to do that more and more. By the time Bill was 10, his parents’ marriage had come apart. They both had other plans—Gilly got a quarryman’s job in the West, and Emily went to Boston to become an osteopathic physician. Bill Wilson’s parents abandoned him and his sister, Dorothy, to the care of their stern Griffith grandparents. Bill moved into the narrow Griffith House, a house so small that going downstairs, the awkward, lanky boy had to stoop to keep from bumping his head. At night if he wanted to stretch out in bed to read, he had to put his feet out the window to accommodate his height.

Bill W. grew up at a time when the temperance movement was sweeping New England. Groups like the Washingtonians and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union were advocating an end to drinking—a reaction to the previous century, when America had been the drunkest country in the world. As a boy, Wilson learned, in school and through observation, that drinkers cannot be legislated into people who do not drink. Vermont was a dry state, but “going to Cambridge” was the euphemism for crossing the border into New York on a liquor run. In temperance clubs, people who had taken the pledge held meetings to help each other stay away from a drink.

Arriving in adulthood, Bill Wilson was already a complicated, educated man.

Bill’s gruff, prosperous grandfather tuned out to be an ideal father-surrogate for the abandoned boy. In mourning for his own son when his grandson moved in, he was won over by Bill’s determination and charm. He gave the boy books, and encouraged his musical talent—Bill was an accomplished fiddler and violinist—and mechanical experiments. He enrolled the boy in a private school, Burr and Burton, in nearby Manchester, where Bill became a big man on campus, a promising student, the captain of the football team and the boyfriend of the local minister’s pretty daughter, Bertha Bamford. Arriving in adulthood, Bill Wilson was already a complicated, educated man who knew the forks and was also at home in the marble quarries of East Dorset.

What happened over the next two decades—Bertha’s death and Bill Wilson’s first serious depression; his engagement to Lois Rogers, an older girl who summered in Manchester; his Wall Street success and severe alcoholism—was certainly not what he would have wished for. Yet his Vermont roots and education, the resilience developed in the wake of his parents’ abandonment, his exposure to both the hardscrabble quarry families and the wealthy summer people of Manchester, all seem necessary stones in the foundation that helped him find a way to stop drinking, a way that has become a worldwide movement with millions of members.

East Dorset hasn’t changed much since 1895. Winter is coming on, the woodpiles are high, and fires are lit in the Wilson House. Nights are freezing, and there will soon be snow on the hillsides of Mount Aeolus above town. Christmas decorations are going up in front of the Town Office on Mad Tom Road. The sprawling, red-clapboard Wilson House and the trim, gray Griffith House still face each other across the green. 

Susan Cheever, a regular columnist for The Fix, is the author of many books, including the memoirs Home Before Dark and Note Found in a Bottle, and the biography My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson—His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. She is a frequent visitor to the Wilson House and East Dorset.

Time to Talk: Get Help Talking to Your Kids about Drugs and Alcohol

Time to Talk: Get Help Talking to Your Kids about Drugs and Alcohol

Hi Joseph, The holiday season is upon us! Before we gather for food and good tidings with family and friends, we at The Partnership wanted to wish you and your family a happy holiday season. Here's our card to you: We hope you'll take a minute of your time to give to The Partnership so our vision and "wish" that all young people will be able to live their lives free of drug and alcohol dependency can come true: http://my.drugfree.org/help-make-a-difference Happy holidays, Steve J. Pasierb President & CEO The Partnership at Drugfree.org

www.councilsepa.org      CERTIFIED RECOVERY SPECIALIST (CRS) TRAINING (54 PCB Credits)  SATURDAY PROGRAM Starts Saturday, January 12, 2013 Ends Saturday, May 11, 2013 Location: Southern Bucks Recovery Community Center 1286 Veterans Highway, D-6, Bristol, PA 19007, 215-788-1718
Pre-registration is required  REGISTER ONLINE BY CLICKING HERE Registration Help Desk: 215-489-6120, ext 1 Class size is limited         This condensed bi-weekly Saturday program provides the 54 hours of educational training required for the Pennsylvania Certification Board Certified Recovery Specialist (CRS) credential. The CRS provides community-based support to individuals through their life skills and recovery experiences while serving as a role model, advocate and motivator to recovering individuals.
This Saturday Training Meets twice a month and includes Five Modules            Recovery Management -- 18 hours         Education and Advocacy -- 12 hours         Professional Ethics and Responsibility -- 12 hours         Confidentiality -- 6 hours         Additional Addiction Training -- 6 hours         In addition, a three-hour segment on Saturday, May 11th, will be provided for preparation for the CRS exam. Please visit The Council Web site to review the complete course curriculum.     Daily Program Agenda:  9:00 am to 4:30 pm; training sessions are held twice each month  There is a one-hour break for lunch Instructors:  Staff members of The Council of Southeast Pennsylvania with a history of more than 14 years of providing recovery support services. Program Cost: $540 54 hours may be applied toward the PCB CRS credential  PCB CRS Exam Fee: $100.00 REGISTER ONLINE BY CLICKING HERE
Program Sponsorship and Accreditation: The Council of Southeast Pennsylvania, Inc., is a PCB-approved provider and affiliate of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, serving the southeast region of Pennsylvania. PCB Education Provider #031.

Philadelphia Recovery Community Center organizing street cleaning on Jan. 21, 2013

VOLUNTEERSSOUGHT FOR MLK DAY OF SERVICE

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. —Dec. 12, 2012 — The Philadelphia Recovery Community Center (PRCC) seeks volunteers to help clean the streets of North Philadelphia on MLK Day, Jan. 21, 2013, a national day of service commemorating the life of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The cleanup is a community service project of PRO-ACT’s Amends in Action committee.

“For individuals in recovery, a day of service is an opportunity to make living amends by giving back to the community,” said Cheryl Poccia, volunteer coordinator for PRCC. “Our street-cleaning project is becoming an annual tradition here at the center, and we welcome community members to join us.”

Volunteer cleanup crews are deployed from the center, which is located at 1701 W. Lehigh Ave., Unit 6, in North Philadelphia. Last year’s cleanup efforts began at 8 a.m. and ran until 1 p.m.

The center also seeks donations of brooms, shovels, rakes, trash bags and gloves, as well as food items for the volunteers.

Interested volunteers should contact Stacie Leap, chair of PRO-ACT’s Amends in Action committee, at 215-385-3131 or email Stacie.leap@icloud.com.

About Philadelphia Recovery Community Center

Established in 2007, PRCC is a collaboration between Pennsylvania Recovery Organization-Achieving Community Together (PRO-ACT) and the City of Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual DisAbility Services. Programs and services include peer-to-peer recovery coaching, life skills workshops, housing and credit information sessions, health and nutrition programs, discussion groups, drug- and alcohol-free social activities and more.  

About PRO-ACT

PRO-ACT is the regional nonprofit organization working to mobilize and rally individuals in recovery from addiction, as well as their families, friends and allies in a campaign to end discrimination, broaden social understanding and achieve a just response to addiction as a public health crisis. PRO-ACT is hosted by The Council of Southeast Pennsylvania.

About The Council of Southeast Pennsylvania, Inc.

The Council of Southeast Pennsylvania, Inc. is a private nonprofit prevention, education, advocacy, and intervention organization, providing a wide range of services to families, schools, businesses, individuals, and the community. Founded in 1975, The Council serves the Southeast region of Pennsylvania and is a member of a nationwide network of National Council on Alcoholism and DrugDependence Affiliates. The Council has offices and Recovery Community Centers in Doylestown, New Britain, Bristol, and Philadelphia. For help with alcohol, tobacco or other substances, or for information on the disease of alcoholism and addiction, call 800-221-6333, toll-free, 24-hours a day. For more information, visit www.councilsepa.org.