Cultivating Peace in my Recovery

Hey, this is a piece of writing I done for a talk I was ask to give at my community church camp. So hope it blesses you. 

 Cultivating Peace in my Recovery

I've built a teaching and a testimony here but mostly its a story of God's faithfulness, Love and peace in my life that i pursue in recovery. Its built around a block of scripture that's foundational for me which is - 

Philippians 4:6-9

New Living Translation

6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus 8 And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, honourable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. 9 Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.

So what is Peace? Google defines it as a few things.

1. freedom from disturbance; tranquillity

2. a state or period in which there is no war or a war has ended

3. or as we Anglicans know the peace to be a ceremonial handshake or kiss exchanged during a service in some Churches (now usually only in the Eucharist), symbolizing Christian love and unity

4. the Bible project says In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for peace is shalom, and in the New Testament the Greek word is Eirene. The most basic meaning of shalom is complete or whole. The word can refer to a stone that has a perfect whole shape with no cracks. It can also refer to a completed stone wall that has no gaps and no missing bricks. Shalom refers to something complex with lots of pieces that are in a state of completeness, and wholeness. It goes on to say that Jesus’ Birth Brings Eirene. This is why Jesus’s birth in the New Testament was announced as the arrival of Eirene. Remember that’s the Greek word for peace. Jesus came to offer his peace to others like when he said to his followers, “My peace I give to you all.”

I know for myself Peace is that place I have where I can have the hope and faith that God will be with me no matter what happens in my life. This wasn’t always the case it was quite the opposite. I’ve titled this talk Cultivating peace in my recovery, you might wonder, recovery from what? I’ve struggled with poor mental health and distress as well as addictions for a big chunk of my life. I’m now over 3 and a half years clean and sober and living with Better mental health.

I think some of us here will be able to relate to this type of recovery, yet I think we all live at times in a state of recovery, as Christians, we are recovering from the world daily as we follow Christ and not the world, and with Covid, we are now in a state of recovering from a time of unknowns, anxiety and a lot of worries. I think in these times Peace can be hard to find.

 I want to break down this scripture today to share with you how for me, this scripture has been a foundational word of God that’s aided me in building the life that I now live today, which I can say has a lot of Peace.

I’m going to go over each verse in this scripture and share some of the points that have helped and continued to help me cultivate not only the peace of God but also to have a relationship with the God of peace. And it’s a peace that’s available for you too.

Philippians 4:6 says Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. My NLT study bible says (Believers need not worry about anything because the heavenly father loves his children and cares about their needs, and he has invited his children to pray about everything)

I grew up as a pretty anxious child, with undiagnosed ADHD in a family that unfortunately did not have the tools to nurture me. To cope with my worry and anxiety I decided pretty young that my feelings are facts and that this is how life is. school was awful, I couldn’t make friends, was bullied and abused and struggled to learn. I had a lot of messages growing up that I needed to be not seen and not heard, and as a child who struggled to get her needs met, I conclude that I was unloveable.

 At a young age, I lacked any ability to know what I was feeling, and thinking most of the time. I lived as impulsively as you could imagine because how could it be any different? I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, however, my mum was a Christian and I did spend random times within church spaces. Yet I always found the “Sunday Christian” hard. Are we meant to just have freedom in Jesus on Sundays? What about on Monday morning when I have to go to school or work? Or Wednesday when I wake up from a nightmare and I don’t want to be alive? What about the other 6 and a half days?

As I built on my relationship with God and let Jesus be my friend I realised that I have access to a loving father (whether I feel it at that moment or not) and he wants me to not worry but pray about everything, talk to him about it all, not just the bad but the good, not just the urgent but the easy-going, not only the big stuff but the small things. It’s out of his love for us that he wants to hear our needs, which he cares deeply about. And for me, it’s hard sometimes to trust that.

In 2013 my life had become pretty unmanageable, so I ended up in a residential treatment programme called Te Whare Mahana, which is where I met my very close friend Suzie. She would tell me a lot about this community called Blueprint where people do life together and love each other unconditionally and told me about how the church worked and how they welcomed everyone, especially the rejected. (which was me!) 

 I had been around church spaces for long enough to think this sounds like another of those “but we do love you except you need to fit into this box.” I’m sure many of us have had this experience of church. But I decided to trust her and move to wellington and turns out she was right.

 It was hard to accept that, as I made friends, they liked me for me and wanted to spend time with me just because they enjoyed my company. This was new to me because in my past the friends I had were people I used with, in my addictions. People I would drink or do drugs with or have inappropriate relationships with. They didn’t like me for me, they liked what I could offer or bring them.

When I moved to Wellington I lived at Suzie’s place, Daniell street in the lounge for 6 weeks before I moved to Tawa With the beautiful Cindy and Andy Newport. They loved on me in ways I had never experienced, including surprising me with a trip to rainbows end, which was always a childhood dream.

I moved into the Cuba street intentional flat about 5 months after moving to wellington and I know none of us knew what was instal. What I started to experience was an unconditional love I hadn’t experienced in my life. And it was hard and painful to accept and to trust because I had never experienced it before.

The thing that kept me in the community during this time was My close friends and the people in my intentional community flat and the rhythms but also my ability to pray, and trust that God is there for me in all the situations that I was going through.

The unconditional love of my friends and community created a safe space for me to start trusting God above and beyond my feelings. And that then led me to decide to get serious about my recovery.

This verse ends with “and thank him for all he has done”. I know I’ve found it hard to be thankful in the face of pain. I think of times when I’ve been struggling while attending church, sitting in a service, seeing others being thankful left me at times feeling overlooked by God.i would sit there thinking “Whats so wrong with me that unable to be thankful? And Why can’t I have a life that I truly feel thankful for? “

I realised not so long ago that my inability while in my pain to thank him isn’t a weakness nor stops God’s goodness. It doesn’t change anything about God, it does however stop me from seeing the bigger picture in my life and where God is working. Focusing on this painful moment that goes past validating my current emotions (feelings are valid but not always full of the truth) led me into resentment, bitterness, and hopelessness.

 I realised that even through gritted teeth and even though I don’t feel it I can still thank God for what he has done because I know that this painful moment will pass. And God is big enough to handle our situation, no matter how much we don’t feel like thanking him.

He knows that thankfulness grows in us a capacity for compassion and peace and the ability to see past our pain. We also don’t need to carry it all on our own. Community holds us firm and God’s peace is bigger than our situation.

Philippians 4:7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus (MY NLT study bible says The life of trusting God (Highlighted in verse 6) brings Gods peace)

I think God’s peace is a gift, like grace, he offers it to us but if we don’t take it, open it and find a place for it in our lives, we can end up not having this gift offered to us.

I’ve got many life-changing moments in both my time in community and in my recovery but one important life changing one was a chat with Scottie (Our community Leader) where I had been discerning for a while I think at least 6 months about going into a rehab called te nikau. At the end of our conversation, he said to me, “well Aleisha something needs to change or you’ll need to most likely leave this flat”.

When I tell you that, up until that moment any hint of rejection in my life would have sent me spiralling, reacting in anger is an understatement, but at that moment a voice I know to be God said in my head, “he’s right, something does needs to change.”

 I went away for some respite, where I spent a week away on my own and prayed and prayed. I prayed for any other way. I prayed that God would just heal and fix all the brokenness in me so I didn’t need to go away. This was one of the first times I experienced full honesty and openness in my prayer. I was desperate to not have to go away. Fortunately, God loves me so much to not leave me where I was.

Being in community, a community that Loves God and loves their neighbour as their selves broke through to me in a way where I was able to start engaging with a loving God, not a God who expected me to live a life of trying to be perfect, following the bible to a T and if I don’t then my suffering is my own fault. That was all lies. Because God loves us completely just as we are.

 He is a God who loves us so much he doesn’t want to leave us where we are and a lot of the time it feels unfair, painful and pointless. What I’ve found to be important in these times is to be open and honest in prayer with him. It builds our ability to trust and grows our faith. And that’s the soil where peace can be nurtured and grow.

 That choice of saying honestly to God how we feel “this is a hard time, and I’m having a hard day and I just don’t know how to do this anymore” is like that emptying of the bucket of the weight of your world. God then comes in and fills in the space with his peace. And as we choose to live in Jesus, that peace will start to guard our hearts and minds. And it’s a gift that the world cannot give. John 14:27 says I am leaving you with a gift – peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.

The verse from Philippians ends with a promise from God that his peace will guard our hearts and minds as we live in Christ Jesus. I think it’s fair to say most of us know what a life far away from Jesus is. I always come back to how Jesus lived his life. He was loving to all people, he spoke with wisdom and grace and that made the truth he spoke give hope to those who could receive it and be hard to hear to those who needed it. He loved God with all his heart, mind, body, soul and strength and loved his neighbour as himself.

When I think of how to live in Christ Jesus so that God’s peace will guard my heart and mind, I go back to how Jesus lived and what he stood for which is clear in Luke 4:18 the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, and that the oppressed will be set free. As I choose to live in Jesus and believe what the bible does say, this truth overcomes any lies that the enemy tries to plant in us, which steals our peace. This truth becomes a guard for our hearts and our minds, and I believe all of us in one way or another have experienced a lack of peace. True peace requires taking what’s broken and restoring it to wholeness, this is what Jesus offers us daily. It’s living and resting our whole lives in him, resulting in protection and peace over our hearts and minds.

philippians 4:8 And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honourable, right, and pure, lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. ( MY NLT study bible says Paul urges the Philippians to focus on God’s good gifts so that, even during suffering and persecution, their lives will be exemplary and their minds and hearts will be filled with peace)

so on the 1st of April 2019, I started at Te nikau which is a Christian-based and run rehabilitation centre for addictions and other things that get in the way of living a healthy life. A big focus on their program is that God created us all Good, in his image and that things in our life things like trauma, abuse, rejection, maybe our parents weren’t emotionally present or we lost someone we love, anything that we weren’t able to process or work through becomes the driver behind why we do the things to avoid our pain.

 I ended up in mental health services just before my teens, I started to self-harm and didn’t want to live anymore. Drugs, alcohol, my mental distress and other things started to drive my life from a young age. All now I see as a way of trying to manage the pain and suffering inside of me. A lot of that pain and suffering was from my trauma of my childhood.

So at te nikau, they encourage you to talk as much as you need to when you need to about the things going on inside of you. And this meant that if at 4 am you wake up and you are triggered to go find a staff member(or whoever was sleeping in the room in your unit) and speak about it.

What I learnt was that all my unprocessed trauma was driving my distress which drove my behaviour. I used anger as a defence mechanism to keep people away and also as a false sense of control. And these things robbed me of my peace. My suffering was so big I couldn’t see any goodness of God. But as I weeded through my life I started to create space where I could experience God’s peace.

I realised I had been fixing my thoughts on all the opposites of what God is asking of me in this verse. I was focusing on hurts, lies, and rejections. And in recovery, it is important to do so, for a time to be able to process and work through them.

Facing the unfaceable which I know most if not all people here have things in their life that they have said “ I can’t ever face that, there’s no point, it’s in the past” these things take up space in us that the true, honourable, and right, pure, lovely and admirable things that God says about us would be.

I stand here today saying this like it sounds easy, but it’s not and I and many here can tell you it’s so not as simple but the journey to full wholeness in Christ is worth it. The world wants you to believe that your worth is in it. that Your worth is in your identity, your work, your personality, how much money you have or what you look like.

The world wants you to believe you can find peace via its standards, but God says differently and we must choose to believe what he says about us, not what lies the world wants us to buy into. The world doesn’t offer us peace it offers us an instant relief that’s temporary and needs a high cost paid the longer it goes on.

Romans 12:2 says don’t copy the behaviour and customs of this world but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Throughout my recovery, I’ve held this scripture as a working step in which I will be able to cultivate his peace in my life. It’s so hard not to compare to others all the things we don’t have. I can’t say just don’t do it, but the more you choose to not engage in those lies the lies of ‘oh ill be happy when this happens’ or ‘ ill will have peace and joy when I achieve this thing’. You can cultivate God’s peace right now just as you are, by being brave and talking to him honestly.

One other point I want to touch on is the phrase Spiritual Bypassing: I first heard this through one of the best Podcast series by my favourite author Lysa terkerst called therapy and theology, I highly recommend it.

 Anyway Spiritual bypassing is defined by a "tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks". The term was introduced in the mid-1980s by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist.

When I moved to Wellington I got into prayer ministry. I trained as a prayer minister and was very conservative, judgemental, and legalistic. I lacked grace and I can now see it was because I thought all I needed was more God in my life and to follow the bible literally.

That to me was going to be the answer to my suffering. That was how I was going to be “normal” and have a good life.

 It did not work though prayer ministry has been a big tool in my life and my recovery. Back then I had taken it to this extreme because there were too many things I couldn’t face in my past. Things that were traumatic that I never thought I could face.

I would use scripture or Christian lingo as a bypass to what was going on. A classic one is “oh I’ve just given it to God so now I’m good.” Or “Others have it worse than me so I need to be thankful” My intention wasn’t pure, it was to bypass what was really going on. And so it didn’t work. It didn’t create honesty with God and doesn’t lead to peace.

We need to find that balance of trusting God with all of our mind, soul, body and strength and also be willing and aware to let God lead us to freedom and healing, even if that means rehab for 17 and a half months! Thinking about the True, Honorable and right, pure, lovely and admirable things of God that Paul is asking us to do, with a lens of honesty and right intentions with yourself self will help you. And lead to God’s peace.

The recovery bible Says this about Peace - Peace comes when we focus on those things that provide lasting value to our life. The more we commit ourselves to know God’s will through prayer and study of his word, the better prepared we are to help ourselves and others in the process of recovery. And I think just supporting anyone in the community.

Philippians 4: 9 - Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you. (MY NLT study bible says Everything Paul had taught them by word or example about the kind of life God desires)

Te nikau was like a plant nursery for me, it was a place where I could be stripped bare, planted in rich, healthy soil and build deep roots of recovery to give me the foundations I need to live my life. A lot of my recovery has happened outside of this program. I graduated after 17 and a half months on the 5th of September 2020, and I’m still living there, I volunteer and I also have access to counsellors and people to help me continue in my journey. 

 This has been key to my success if you want to call it that. I have to be daily and deliberate which is where I every day and deliberately do the things that keep me well, keep me connected to God and community and the things that help build my strong recovery.

It’s not too much different to the rhythms that intentional community might have, things that hold us when life is hard, boring, or mundane because let’s be honest life is hard and boring at times and is 80% mundane where we do the motions of life, go to work, come home, cook, clean, do our prayers. And then we have 10% great times and 10% not-so-great times (this is not an accurate description for everyone) it’s easy to get too laid back and slack off when we are tired, or bored or

for me I just get over working on having to put into practice all I’ve learnt in my recovery, which is feeling my feelings, validating my emotions but not getting stuck in them, forgiveness, grace for others and self and the hardest thing for me which is allowing myself to be loved and chooing to believe im worth loving.

These things for me if I don’t work on them daily and deliberately will steal my ability to not only have peace but to have a relationship with the God of peace.

This verse finishes with Then the God of peace will be with you, The inversion (compared with Philippians 4:7) is striking. To have the “peace of God” with us is much but to have “the God of Peace” Himself with us is more. 

 Paul says in verses 6 and 7 to Pray and gives thanks and then his peace will be with us, yet he goes on to call us into a deeper relationship with God by focusing on his ways so that God who is the ultimate peace will be with us, dwelling with us as we live our lives.

I really wanted to share with you all a time where I had the Peace of God and the God of peace during my pain and suffering.

 Since the end of 2016 my sister Frances had been fighting cancer, and they caught it quite late but she always seemed positive about it. I think in some ways I disconnected because the thought of loosing my closest family was too much. I think this created a false peace. I struggled to come to terms with it and as a way of coping didn’t speak to anyone about it really. I wasn’t yet in recovery and didn’t cope with theses things at all.

 It wasn’t until may 2020 when my niece, Frances daughter Katherine was diagnosed with cancer on her 11th birthday. And it was so out of the blue and unexpected. 

 I was just over a year into my time at Te Nikau. They both had to move to Christchurch for atleast 6 weeks because where they lived in Invercargill they couldn’t treat children for cancer and Katherine needed Chemo.

My sister in the middle of her own Chemotherapy treatment had to move all her own treatment, and all of this was at the end of our first covid lockdown. I felt so incredibly helpless, being in rehab and in the middle of my recovery I had no idea if I could cope.

I was given special leave to go down and stay and support them both for 11 days, which leading up to I had never prayed for anything like the way I prayed for their healing and that my own state of mind would cope with all that’s going on.

I remember just crying on the plane as I headed down, begging God for this not to be happening. That trip I was able to bless my sister and niece in many ways, but one way was just my presence because I was able to carry the peace of God. They had known me as dysfunctional in the past and I had even caused a bit of trouble for my sister as a teenager. God blessed me with a peace and that gave me the ability to be present not just physically but emotionally and spiritually. A peace that passed all understanding.

4 days after returning to rehab I got a call that Katherine had contracted a deadly infection that was untreatable and I needed to get down ASAP because they didn’t know how long she had.

The way God worked in my worst fears that Katherine will die from this is just an absolute miracle in itself and I don’t have enough time to be able to share all that he’s done in this at this moment but when we invite God into the deepest painful parts of our being there is a peace that does pass all understanding. God blessed me with friends who were able to be there for me in so many ways, finically, emotionally, and spiritually, this (blueprint) community had a prayer weekend for them and also friends who physically travelled and were with me. Having people who loved Jesus around me, brought with it peace and faith in our God of peace.

When Katherine died I was beyond devastated, and angry at God for not healing her, and it just brought up all the other injustices in my life. And the God of peace never left me once. I’ll be honest, It did rock my faith, and even more so when Frances died in march 2021 I knew God was real but I wasn’t sure if he was even loving.

 But even through this horrible season, The God of peace was with me. Through my doubt, he never left me.

In fact, he blessed me, with my close friends, my community, my recovery, love, grace and most important of all during this time peace. I can look back and remember moments when I was ready to relapse, melt down, run away and end it all. It was almost like every time his Peace and comfort would flood my body, speaking the truth over me. 

 I have come to accept that in life painful, horrible and unfair things happen, and there is an enemy who wants to at every attempt will drag us down and kill us. I’ve just had to find peace in that God is good and sometimes things happen and I don’t know why.

 And God is still good. And my grief is real and so is the peace of God and the God of peace. That’s a choice I make daily.

This is where I find the peace that gives me the strength to be brave in the face of anxiety, pain and suffering to trust God and hold hope that he is working all things out for Good.

I just want to leave you all with this, Peace can be found in the midst of your circumstances, right now. You can come as you are in this moment To Our loving Father, he is The God of peace and wants to dwell inside of us. Peace isn’t always instant, in that moment that we so need it, yet as we keep on trusting God, Being honest in our prayers and intentions giving Thanks for what he has done or not yet done and putting into practice the things he asks of us, not only will we find peace but we will receive the God of peace who protects our hearts and minds as we live in Christ Jesus, he is our ultimate form of peace.

Questions –

Have you experienced Gods Peace? If so share what that was/is like for you. If you have yet to experience his peace or are unsure, share what you think it could look/feel like for you?

To have the “peace of God” with us is much but to have “the God of Peace” Himself with us is more. Have you considered this difference before? Share what you think the difference between “The peace of God” and “The God of peace” could be.