12 STEPS - Step 4

Step 4

We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

In Step 4 of the journey of Recovery we seek to take a deep introspective look into our hearts and behaviors. Step 4 reads like this: “We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” Now, that isn’t something we who have battled addiction, compulsive behaviors, and hurts typically enjoy doing. Because if we are honest, many of us have made a practice of hiding; we want to conceal or minimize our sins and the pain we have inflicted on others. This hiding, this practice of minimizing, plays out in a variety of ways. It can range from flat-out denial to trying to convince others that they are in fact the ones that have an issue and they are the ones making mountains out of molehills.

David was as Sick as his Secrets

Unfortunately, the longer we stay in this habitual state, the greater the prison we make for ourselves. Until we are ready to face what we’ve done, how we’ve wronged others and how we’ve sinned against God, the sicker we will become. Yes, sicker. Consider the words of King David when he writes about what it was like when he sought to deny and conceal his sin. He writes in Psalm 32:3-4, “For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.”

You see, concealing our sin is like ignoring a cancer that is living within us and pretending it will just go away. But we know that healing for cancer doesn’t work that way. The longer we give that cancer life, the greater the probability it will spread. Sin makes the heart sick and spreads and taints everything. Statements like “it’s not that bad”, or “others have done worse”, or “what about what has been done to me?” are all smokescreens and become roadblocks to sobriety and spiritual health.

Honesty that Leads to Grace

The beauty of Step 4 for a believer in Christ is that we know the Lord already knew every sin we had committed, or would ever commit, before the Spirit drew us into relationship with Jesus. No new information is ever going to cause God to love the believer in Christ any more or any less. God’s love is fixed on us because of the perfect and finished work of Jesus appropriated to us by faith. So, the searching and fearless inventory we are called to make in Recovery is actually an invitation to experience God’s grace. Consider what David writes in verses 5-6 of Psalm 32: “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”

So, there is great reason and great hope for Step 4. Renewal starts as we acknowledge our sin and need for the Lord’s grace. May the words of David in Psalm 139:23 be our common cry: “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!” Let hiding and minimizing give way to honesty, truth, and boldness, and may we remember that God “delights in truth in our inmost being” (Psalm 51:6).