Plugging Into Power - The One Year Love Talk Devotional for Couples
Plugging into Power
Pride leads to disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.
Proverbs 11:2
Over two million people show up every day. In most cities, almost around the clock, there is a meeting starting in an hour fairly close to you. There are no dues, no budgets, no buildings. Attendance is free—as long as you admit your weakness.
On June 10, 1935, Bill Wilson, a stockbroker suffering from an uncontrollable drinking problem, started the first Alcoholics Anonymous group in Akron, Ohio, when he got in touch with surgeon Robert Holbrook Smith, a total stranger and also an alcoholic. Today AA groups number over 100,000 and meet in 150 countries. Millions upon millions have found healing and meaning as a result of these meetings. They have found strength to overcome what had rendered them helpless.
It all starts with a single step: admitting that you are powerless.
Why would admission of powerlessness be the starting place for breaking a habit? After all, the goal is to gain power and strength over an addiction that has knocked you off your feet. So why start with acknowledging your weakness in the face of that addiction?
It’s a classic paradox: on the surface, it doesn’t make sense. It’s illogical. A contradiction. Yet this apparent oxymoron points out a great untapped reservoir of strength within the human heart. You see, contemporary studies have shown time and again that there is strength in owning up to our weaknesses—in admitting to ourselves that we need help, that we can’t make it on our own, that we still have interior work to do. When weakness is concealed, when we attempt to keep it hidden even from ourselves, it is actually compounded. Bringing it out into the open, on the other hand, allows us to begin the process of change.
Are you ready for a daring and vulnerable question to explore with each other today? Here goes: what weaknesses are you harboring? Can you admit your powerlessness in one specific area to one another right now? What makes this challenging for you as a couple?
If we refuse to take the risk of being vulnerable we are already half dead.
—Madeleine L’Engle
The One Year Love Talk Devotional for Couples
By Dr. Les Parrott and Dr. Leslie Parrott
Tyndale
$7.99
