Recovery Attitudes

HONESTY
We have a lot of words to describe dishonesty! Act, acting, baloney, bear false witness, bogus, bull, B.S., bunk, cheat, coloring, , concoction, deceit, deception, delude, delusion, doctor, double-dealing, duplicity, embellish, equivocation, exaggeration, facade, fable, fabrication, fairy tale, fallacy, falsehood, false pretenses, forgery, fraud, , guile, half-truth, hatch, hoodwink, hyperbole, insidiousness, insincerity, invent, kid, lead astray, lie, lip-service, make-believe, make up, manipulate, mendacity, misconstruction, misleading, misrepresentation, overstatement, perjury, perversion, pretense, prevarication, pull one's leg, quackery, rationalization, sham, spin, story, strategic misrepresentation, stretch, subterfuge, tamper with, terminological inexactitude, underhandedness, untruth, varnish, warp, weasel, white lie, whopper, and yarnto name but a few! In the early stages of recovery, one of the things that surprise many of us is the degree that we became comfortable with dishonesty. The lives of addicts are strewn with lies. We lied to others about our involvement with addictive behaviors and we lived double lives as we tried to appear normal while hiding what we were doing. We lied to ourselves and said that what we were doing wasnt so bad. We lied again as we said wed quit after we participated in our addiction just one more time. We told lie after lie to ourselves, God and others. We did not know how habitual lying had become. Of all the qualities necessary for a full recovery, the ability to become scrupulously honest is one of the most important and difficult to achieve. Unless we are honest with ourselveswe will live in denial about our true condition. If we cannot be honest, we cannot change. Honesty is built a day at a time. It is a learned behavior. When we live honest lives, we will not be ashamed for others to see and know what we are doingeven in private. Honesty is the foundation for rebuilding the trust we may have lost with others and regaining our self-respect. In this lesson well remind ourselves about the importance of scrupulous honesty and look at areas of our life that may need additional improvement.

SUBMISSION STEPS Voluntarily submit to any and all changes God wants to make in my life and humbly ask him to remove my character defects.(CELEBRATE RECOVERY: STEP 5) Matthew 5:6 Happy are those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires. We admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. (STEP 5 OF THE 12 STEPS) James 5:16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. (STEP 6 OF THE 12 STEPS) James 4:10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. We humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings. (STEP 7 OF THE 12 STEPS) 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. STEP REFLECTION All of us know the old saying that Honesty is the best policy; but, for those of us caught in addictions and compulsive behaviors, we have been anything but honest. We have told numerous lies to ourselves and others to cover our tracks and hide the behaviors for which we are ashamed. The submission step in this lesson reminds us that we must learn to be entirely honest if we are to be entirely ready for God to remove our defects. 1. List five lies that youve told yourself regarding your hurt, habit or hang-up. 2. List five lies that youve told others regarding your hurt, habit or hang-up as a means of covering up your behavior.

SCRIPTURE STUDY PROVERBS 30:8 (NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION) Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.

COLOSSIANS 3:9-10 (NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION) Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. ________________________________________ SCRIPTURE REFLECTIONS 1. When is it hardest for you to tell the truth? Under what circumstances do you find yourself either shading the truth or being dishonest? 2. What is the main idea Paul is trying to get us to see in Colossians 3: 9-10? RECOVERY WISDOM
Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. Thomas Jefferson

________________________________________ WHAT DOES THIS SAYING MEAN TO YOU? GIVE AN EXAMPLE OF HOW IT WORKS IN YOUR LIFE.