God's Standard

Bible Reading:  James 1:21-25

Step 4 - We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord. Lamentations 3:40

Principle 4 –  Openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust. (Steps  4 and 5)

“Happy are the pure in heart.”

When making an inventory, some kind of list is usually used to help take stock of what’s on hand. If we lived our lives with dysfunctional influences, our idea of what “normal” probably won’t be a very good measuring stick for evaluating our lives. We’ll need another standard to help us take account of where we are.

The Jewish exiles who returned to Jerusalem had grown up in captivity. They started their inventory by finding a new standard. “The laws of God were read aloud to them for two or three hours, and for several more hours they took turns confessing their own sins" (Nehemiah 9:3).

The apostle Paul ridiculed the idea that we could measure our lives by the people around us. He said this of the Corinthian believers: “Their trouble is that they are only comparing themselves with each other, and measuring themselves against their own little ideas. What stupidity!… Our goal is to measure up to God’s plan for us" (2 Corinthians 10:12 – 13).

James wrote, “Humbly be glad for the wonderful message we have received, for it is able to save our souls… But if anyone keeps looking steadily into God’s law for free men, he will not only remember it, but he will do what it says, and God will greatly bless him in everything he does" (James 1:21 – 25).

In doing our moral inventory, we will get better results if we use God’s Word as a measuring stick. This should give the perspective we need as we seek to sort out our lives.

Our recovery involves coming to terms with ourselves as we really are.

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