Today’s devotional time was hugely sentimental for me. The devotional message was all about God using our adversity as a blessing and this will come about in His timing. Well, when I got to my Bible reading I was reading Isaiah 30 when I came upon the verses 19-26. There I had marked this section and wrote: “This entire section is like a promise from God to me for Celebrate Recovery. Today I told my story to my sponsor–Carol.” This was dated 6/23/08. (In September of 2008 we kicked off our Celebrate Recovery ministry.) Carol was the only one in our leadership team qualified to be a sponsor as the rest of us were going through our first step study with her leading. We had permission at that time to let our sponsor be a woman until we had qualified men to sponsor one another. So many times I’d call her during those days, months and confess my struggles and weep thinking what a mess I am. She’d always remind me of the voices I had been listening to and who the speaker of them was. Then she’d remind me of God’s promises and I’d weep more. I called her before writing this to thank her once again for being God’s sponsor for me during my most vulnerable years in recovery.

This passage goes on to say, “He will send you rain for the seed you sow in the ground and the food that comes from the land will be rich and plentiful….” Our ministry has been in operation for 16 years now and along with it we have added the restoration classes and now the counseling services. God has truly taken my adversity and made it a blessing. How grateful I am to get to be a tool in God’s Workshop.