Many Find God in the Adversity They Encounter - Interview

Christian Recovery Radio.com Interviews by Dick B.

Excerpts from Edward Grinnan Radio Interview Today

Dick B.
Copyright 2012 Anonymous. All rights reserved

Dick B. today hosted a very unusual interview show on Christian Recovery Radio today, June 13, 2012. Edward Grinnan is a Christian leader, a recovered alcoholic, an “erstwhile” playwright, author of the new book, Promise of Hope, and Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of Guideposts Publications. His story today kept me salivating in wait for the complete victory details.

Before I summarize some of the interview parts, I want to point out that Edward Grinnan has just returned from the AA 2012 Founders Day Events in Akron, Ohio. There Edward was the keynote speaker at the “Seiberling” Gate Lodge events at Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens, where Henrietta Bucker Seiberling introduced Dr. Bob Smith to Bill Wilson and set the great alcoholism recovery program off on its program of what its cofounder Dr. Bob called
love and service.” Grinnan was joined by banker, charitable and religious benefactor, Guideposts Foundation Vice Chairman, and Board Member Ronald E. Glosser at Stan Hywet Foundation in Akron.

And now for some key snippets from the Grinnan interview by Dick B. today on www.ChristianRecoveryRadio.com where you can find and listen to all the details.

First, as to Guideposts. It is a publication begun by the famed preacher, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale of New York. Peale was a great friend of many of the people who helped Alcoholics Anonymous develop its early Christian recovery program. Such people as Bill Wilson, Dr. Robert Smith, Dr. William D. Silkworth, and Rev. Samuel M. Shoemaker, Jr.

Second, Grinnan believes that 95% of today’s Guideposts subscribers probably fall in the category of “practicing, Bible believing, church going, saved Christians.”

Third, though a very grateful, recovered alcoholic in A.A. itself, Grinnan emphasizes that Guideposts a very broad base for its message of deliverance—showing people what God can do for them in their lives outside of A.A. Rooms. It tells them that their lives can be shaped, protected, and enjoy real happiness in a daily walk with God.

Out of his own experience, Grinnan believes that many—not all—people find God in adversity. They find an awareness. They find a presence. They also find that Christ—the love of Christ—can free them from what he calls a “disease of shame.” Grinnan states he can and does take humble joy from his own statement: “I am Edward. I am an alcoholic.” As such, he now, with that statement and in the fellowship of A.A., feels accepted, not judged. Not ostracized, shunned, condemned, weak, and immoral. He says the disease of shame compromises moral judgment, leaves the alcoholic in a “lake of shame”—a person dying of shame, and separates the suffering person from “God, and Christ.”

But he tells of what may well have become his worst or at least final “bottom.” He was perched in the window of a Denmark hotel. One leg outside and the other in. Contemplating release through suicide. “God touched me,” he said. He was “pierced by light”—perhaps similar to that experienced by Bill Wilson on his last visit to Towns Hospital. His bottom was hollowed out. And, as he relates, “The love of God found and saved me.” One is reminded of the words in Psalm 40:1-2: “I waited patiently for the LORD; and He inclined to me, and heard my cry. He also brought  me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet  upon a rock, and established my steps.”

Edward’s account is laced with talk of “story.” Sharing the story of deliverance from shame and guilt and condemnation; the story of how Christ told him he didn’t have to be ashamed, that he had been saved by the redemptive love of Christ. Much as Hawaiians often mention “talking story,” so alcoholics are able to relate how their faith has enabled them to find that, in the deepest throes of diversity, God has touched lives, saved them, and enabled them, if they wish, to “see the Lord in life daily.”

Listeners will thoroughly appreciate the Grinnan story as they listen to ChristianRecoveryRadio.com and turn to the “promise of hope” that is offered in Grinnan’s book and life.

dickb@dickb.com

Gloria Deo