An exciting part of recovery and spirituality happens in Celebrate Recovery Lesson 5: Turn because you learn how to turn your life over to our Lord, Jesus Christ, through trusting, repenting, and understanding His place in your life.
Celebrate Recovery lesson five (Turn) is fantastic because you see how simple it can be to just trust God and turn problems over to Him.
In this lesson, you will find relief as you stop carrying such a heavy load on your back. You’ll be able to do this because you trust in the Almighty One and know that HE has your back! That’s really all you need!!
In Celebrate Recovery lesson five: Turn, we jump to Step 3 in Alcoholics Anonymous and Celebrate Recovery; we’ll also move ahead to Celebrate Recovery’s principle 3.
Don’t forget to pat yourself on the back for all the hard work you’ve done up to this point! You have stepped out of denial, accepted you are powerless, put your hope in the Lord, and are now making decisions based on truth because of the sanity you now have!
These things were taught in the previous lessons. If you haven’t explored them yet, I recommend starting with Celebrate Recovery Lesson 1: Denial. The last lesson, Celebrate Recovery Lesson 4: Sanity, prepared you for this one! Both have free study guides!
To understand this lesson fully, I recommend attending the step studies at Celebrate Recovery, which is a Christ-centered recovery program for anyone with hurts, habits, and hangups. However, you don’t need anything for this lesson but a pad and pencil to answer some questions! Let’s continue the journey on the road to recovery!
What is Celebrate Recovery Lesson 5: Turn?
Celebrate Recovery principle 3 is: to Consciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ’s care and control. That is so freeing! Step 3 goes with this principle, and it says: We made a decision to turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God. What a load off our shoulders – to turn it all over to Him!
Happy are the meek. – Matthew 5:5
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. – Romans 12:1
| Lesson | Principle | Step | Bible Verses |
| 5 | 3 | 3 | Matthew 5:5; Romans 12:1 |
If you’ve been following along, you know that Celebrate Recovery loves acronyms, so in lesson 5, we use the acronym for TURN, which tells us how to turn our lives over to the one and only Higher Power, Jesus Christ. This comes straight from Celebrate Recovery lesson five.
- Trust
- Understand
- Repent
- New Life
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What Does “Celebrate Recovery Lesson 5” Mean?
As previously mentioned, Celebrate Recovery is a 12-step, Christ-centered recovery program for anyone with hurts, habits, or hang-ups that uses step studies, which are similar to Bible studies. During a step study, you typically gather with a group of like-minded individuals once a week for a few months to dive into the CR curriculum.
Since anyone is eligible for Celebrate Recovery, you should consider joining! We all have pain of some kind and could use some encouragement in our lives. Celebrate Recovery can change your life in unexpected ways!
The CR curriculum discussed in these articles is straight from John Baker’s Celebrate Recovery Participant’s Guide. The first 6 lessons come directly from Stepping Out of Denial into God’s Grace: Participant’s Guide 1. You can usually purchase this study guide when you attend your first step study.
Celebrate Recovery guides were created by John Baker and Rick Warren. The CR curriculum is based on the Beatitudes. If you explore the Celebrate Recovery 8 principles, you’ll better understand these Bible verses.
What Does Meek Mean?
In the Bible verse that goes with this Celebrate Recovery principle, we hear the word “meek,” but what does that mean? Some versions of the Bible (CSB, for example) state that meekness means “gentleness” or “humble.”
Being humble means that you are willing to submit yourself over to others and that you have a great deal of self-control. Being gentle means that you are willing to let God control your life.
These two traits are paramount to being a strong Christian, but they can be tough to demonstrate at times of frustration or impatience.
Happy are the meek. – Matthew 5:5
Since being humble and gentle aren’t natural traits, have you ever wondered how to build these things and become more “meek?” Let’s take a look.
According to Positive Psychology, humble people are gifted at making friends! This is likely because of their attitude to put others’ needs before their own and their excellent listening skills!
Here are a few more tips to increase your humility:
- Consider the needs of others above your own more often.
- Try a bit more modesty when dealing with your relationships.
- Ask others how you could be more gentle and understanding, and take their feedback as a growth opportunity!
- Think about how you are giving back to the world. What are you doing to make a lasting difference?
- Learn what your strengths are, grow from them, and add more to your toolbox!
- Give out compliments freely!
- Show kindness to others. Check out the Random Acts of Kindness Calendars on this website!
- Practice meditation or mindfulness journaling.
- Memorize the Serenity Prayer.
- Connect with nature!
- Repeat the affirmation: I know my strengths and talents, but I’m humble and don’t require recognition or to be the center of attention. This was also in Positive Psychology’s article.
What Does It Mean to Turn Your Life Over to Jesus Christ?
In the last Celebrate Recovery lesson, we learned how to make decisions based on the truth of God’s word, and we saw all the gifts we receive when we realize that God can restore us to sanity!
In this lesson, we learn HOW to turn our lives over to God, especially if we struggle with things like control and perfectionism!
When you turn your life over to Jesus Christ, you let go! Worrisome attitudes fade, and you feel more at ease with Jesus on your side. It’s a powerful thing! You can feel more confident in everything that you do because you know that Someone Else has your back – Someone who does miracles!!
To turn your life over to God means you let go of the fleshly desires – wants, cravings, passions – and instead, become a new creature in Christ. You rely on faith in Jesus Christ instead of what you feel that you gain from your fleshly desires.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has become! – 2 Corinthians 5:17 (TLB)
How Can We Become New Creatures?
As we continue on the road to recovery, we want to become the best versions of ourselves that we can be. How can we take what we learn in Celebrate Recovery and apply it to our Christian lives?
The first thing you will want to do is to build a relationship of trust with the Lord.
- Join a Celebrate Recovery step study!
- Study the Bible!
- Join a Bible study!
- Communicate with God through prayer!
- Use a prayer journal!
- Practice Bible journaling!
- Rely on God and trust Him!
- Join a church! Go to Bible class!
- Make Christian friends!
- Build your current Christian friendships!
- Practice humility (meekness)!
As you look at this list, you may be overwhelmed! Realize that you don’t need to do all of this at once! Consider this more of a checklist; just do one thing at a time. When you are comfortable with one, move on to the next item and add it into the mix!
Related: What is the Importance of a Bible Study
Related: How Prayer Can Improve Your Life
There is also a Celebrate Recovery Study Bible that you can purchase online. Use that Bible or any study Bible to learn more about God and to listen to what He is saying about how you should lead your life. The guidance is in there; it just takes a little exploring! Take it one day at a time, and you’ll succeed!
Celebrate Recovery Lesson Five Highlights
CR Lesson 5 Notes
So far, we have discovered:
- How to step out of denial
- How to admit we are powerless
- How to accept God
- How to have hope in your faith
- How to stop our insane habits
As we talk about how to turn our lives over to God in Celebrate Recovery’s lesson five, I encourage you to reach out to your new Celebrate Recovery friends, as they are able to provide you with the encouragement and understanding that you need!
Let’s look at the acronym for TURN!
Trust
The biggest thing you can do to turn your life over to God is to trust Him. You have the faith you need to believe in Him; now, it’s time to put that faith into action by trusting His plan for your life.
It can be a challenge when you don’t understand it, but that is where trust comes into play.
Read your Bible daily; seek God in all that you do, and you’ll see His power at work in your life.
If you declare with your lips, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. – Romans 10:9 (GNB)
Understand
While it’s easy to rely on our own understanding, your own understanding caused problems – what brought you to recovery in the first place! Don’t depend on yourself to overcome your hurts, hang-ups, and habits; instead, please continue to depend on Jesus! He knows the problems in your life, and He knows what’s best for you if you daily turn to Him.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. – Proverbs 3:5-6 (TLB)
Repent
To repent, you must not only turn away from sin; you must also turn toward God. You will experience a new kind of freedom in your relationship with God – something you have never experienced before. Tell God: “Today, I want to turn my life over to You and repent of my bad habits, trusting Your wisdom for my life instead.”
Turn from your sins and act on this glorious news! – Mark 1:15 (TLB)
Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remake you so that your whole attitude of mind is changed. – Romans 12:2 (PH)
New Life
Now that you have opened your heart, you have new life! You are no longer a slave to sin. Instead, God has said you are no longer guilty of those things because His Son, Jesus Christ, died on the cross to wash those sins away. Now, the power of sin has no control over your life.
Now God says He will accept and acquit us – declare us ‘not guilty’ – if we trust Jesus Christ to take away our sins. – Romans 3:22 (TLB)
In the Celebrate Recovery curriculum, it makes a point to say that when you turn your life over to God, you have made a once-in-a-lifetime commitment, but the study guide advises you to recommit to Jesus daily and pray the principle 3 prayer each day.
Principle 3 Prayer
Dear God,
I have tried to do it all myself through my own power, and I have failed. Today, I want to turn my life over to You. I ask that You be my Lord and Savior. You’re the One and only Higher Power!
I ask that You help me think about myself and my will less and less. Instead, help me to daily turn my life over to You, to seek Your direction and wisdom for my life.
Help me have victory over my hurts, habits, and hang-ups. Help me stay aware of all the miraculous work you are doing to change my life. Help me always do Your will, not my own.
In Jesus’ name, I pray,
Amen
Read about the Celebrate Recovery Serenity Prayer for some sensational memory techniques for memorizing prayers like this one!
Lesson 5 Questions
- What’s stopping you from asking Jesus in your heart as your Lord and Savior? If you already have, discuss your experience.
- Specifically, how has relying on your own understanding caused problems in your life?
- What do you think “repent” means, and what do you need to repent?
- What does “not guilty” according to Romans 3:22 mean to you?
- You now have a new life. What does that mean for you?
- What does the principle 3 prayer mean to you?
These study questions came from the Celebrate Recovery Study Guide. Talk about them with your step study group at Celebrate Recovery. That is a safe place to share!
Additional Celebrate Recovery Resources
A Celebrate Recovery Video – Celebrate Recovery Lesson 5: Turn
In this video by Pastor Lacey of the Grace Church in Florida, Celebrate Recovery lesson five is discussed.
Free Recovery Lesson 5 Study Guide
Enjoy a free Recovery Study Guide. Use the questions in your small group or step study to engage with each other even more regarding lesson 5! This is NOT an official Celebrate Recovery study guide; I made this study guide to go with this lesson, however.
My Story – In Regards to Celebrate Recovery Lesson Five
I’m Michele, a grateful believer in Jesus Christ, and I struggle with codependency, workaholism, perfectionism, and anxiety. I celebrate recovery from alcoholism and addictions.
In looking at this step, my biggest fear was that I didn’t have any good habits or wisdom for my life as I should have. I didn’t rely on God for my answers, and I suffered more than I should have because of it. As I searched for the answers to the questions that weighed heavily on my mind, I learned that most of them were related to my love life.
I found it hard to trust God because my life hadn’t gone according to my plan. Part of the problem was that I was looking too far inward and not outward at all.
I forgot that God’s plan is bigger than what we can see, and His timing is not the same as ours! He did eventually bless my life with the Christian man of my dreams!
It’s normal to feel frustrated when things don’t go our way in life. We have a plan and expect everything to go a certain way. When it doesn’t, we blame God and question Him.
Really, we should be thanking Him for knowing the best things for our life and work to understand Him better by studying our Bibles, being in community with other Christians, and praying.
My Tips on Celebrate Recovery Lesson 5
- Make Christian friends.
- Realize where you are making bad decisions, and turn things around.
- Determine where you are relying on yourself instead of God and fix things.
- Talk to God through prayer. Use a prayer journal if it helps.
- Join those who are saved! Ask questions to your fellow Christians!
- Find a good church home to go to – a place for fellowship and learning.
- Go to Celebrate Recovery meetings! Hit more than one meeting a week if you need to!
- Study your Bible and learn more about God and Jesus.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the 8 principles of Celebrate Recovery?
The Celebrate Recovery 8 principles are based on the Beatitudes in Matthew 5.
- Realize I’m not God. I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is unmanageable.
- Earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to Him, and that He has the power to help me recover.
- Consciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ’s care and control.
- Openly examine and confess my faults to myself, to God, and to someone I trust.
- Voluntarily submit to every change God wants to make in my life and humbly ask Him to remove my character defects.
- Evaluate all my relationships. Offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me and make amends for harm I’ve done to others, except when to do so would harm them or others.
- Reserve a daily time with God for self-examination, Bible reading, and prayer in order to know God and His will for my life and to gain the power to follow His will.
- Yield myself to God to be used to bring this Good News to others, both by my example and by my words.
What is the Serenity Prayer?
The Celebrate Recovery Serenity Prayer says, God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. This prayer is used in Alcoholics Anonymous and Celebrate Recovery.
What are the 12 steps in Celebrate Recovery?
The Celebrate Recovery 12 steps are based on the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
- We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.
- We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- We made a decision to turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God.
- We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- We humbly asked Him to remove all our shortcomings.
- We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
- We made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- We continued to take personal inventory and, when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
- We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
- Having a spiritual experience as the result of these steps, we try to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Who goes to Celebrate Recovery meetings?
Anyone can go to Celebrate Recovery meetings. You don’t need to be a Christian or have an addiction or be an alcoholic. Actually, anyone with hurts, hang-ups, or habits can go to a Celebrate Recovery meeting, so locate one near you today!
How can you turn to God?
The best way to turn to God is through prayer and Bible reading. When you pray to God, you are communicating with Him, and we are His children; He wants to hear from us! Reading your Bible will help you understand God better and learn to follow His will for your life.
Conclusion
We’ve discussed a lot about Celebrate Recovery Lesson 5: Turn.
- What is Celebrate Recovery Lesson 5: Turn?
- What Does Meek Mean?
- How to Turn Over Your Life to Jesus Christ
- How to Become a New Creature
- Notes, Questions, and a Prayer from the Celebrate Recovery Study Guide
- Additional Celebrate Recovery Resources
- My Story and Tips in Relation to Celebrate Recovery Lesson 5
- Frequently Asked Questions
- And Much More!
My hope is that you are now turning your life over to Jesus Christ and trust God to guide your life. Make sure you grab your free Lesson 5 study guide!
Also, be sure to grab my free printable Serenity Prayers in my shop!! There is a wide variety of designs!
Please share your testimony or questions in the comments. We benefit from one another’s successes!
Please help this ministry by sharing this post on social media. Let’s work together on the road to recovery!
I look forward to sharing the next CR lesson with you – Celebrate Recovery Lesson 6: Action! Sounds moving!!
