The Dick B. Christian Recovery Radio
Show Interview on August 9, 2012, of Christian Recovery Leader Chaplain/Pastor
Leonard Grubb of Ohio
Dick B.
Copyright 2012
Anonymous. All rights reserved
You Can Hear the Chaplain Leonard Grubb Interview Right Now!
______________________________________________________________________________
You may hear Dick B. interview Chaplain/Pastor Leonard Grubb
on the August 9, 2012, episode of the "Christian Recovery Radio with Dick
B." show here:
or here:
Dick B. interviews Christian Recovery leader Leonard Grubb,
August 9, 2012
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/christian-recovery-radio-with-dickb/2012/08/09/dick-b-interviews-christian-recovery-leader-leonard-g
Episodes of the "Christian Recovery Radio with Dick
B." show are archived at:
Synopsis of the Interview
A word or two about Chaplain/Pastor Leonard Grubb. Leonard
got sober in December of 1984, and we will tell you that part of his story in
the latter part of this synopsis. And, before that, some major and important
points he made during today’s interview. Here also are some details about
Leonard’s current status.
Leonard is a Chaplain/Pastor in Painesville, Ohio. He is
also a businessman entrepreneur. He heads up Christian Community Missions and a
Big Book Good Book Discussion Group. He is the Senior Chaplain of the
International Conference of Police Chaplains. Also, as an ordained minister, he
takes a group of 17 volunteers into the county jail each week to tell the
inmates about the hope that the Twelve Steps bring and the importance of
turning to God for help. He is a participating Christian Recovery Leader in the
International Christian Recovery Coalition, a member of its Speakers Bureau,
and has established a Christian Recovery Resource Center to serve his community
in Ohio. He is thoroughly versed in the history of early Alcoholics Anonymous
and in the Christian roots of the fellowship. He is also a bold and effective
speaker about God, His Son Jesus Christ, the Bible, and their relevance to
recovery from alcoholism and addiction today among those who want God’s help
and go to any length to get it.
The following parts of his interview deserve particular
attention here.
(1)
In December of 1984, He was despondent and ready to
take his own life. He turned on the TV and listened to a man who talked about
God and Jesus Christ and asking Jesus Christ to come into his heart. He asked
Jesus to reveal himself, and that happened – to the extent that his suicidal
proclivities, depression, and concerns over family went away. He firmly
believes from that, and other experiences, that God is there for anyone who
calls on Him. It was after he had been relieved of the compulsion that his Wife
chose to leave him and seek a divorce. So Sobriety was fraught with challenge
in that first year!
(2)
In about 2002 He sought and received ordination from
Christian Ministries International, and that allowed him entry into the county jail
where he and his volunteers share each week with some 35 men or 35 women. He
has established a recovery meeting at a mental health facility in Lake Co. Ohio
and uses our suggested format, pointing out that A.A. founders used the Bible
as the foundation for their recovery program. He is about to start another
group – the Twelve Steps of A.A. Big Book and Good Book Discussions – and share
the importance of a life based upon the Centrality of Christ and Dependence upon God..
(3)
One of Leonard’s most persuasive points can be very
helpful to Christians and others in A.A. who puzzle over the mention in Steps 3
and 12 of God “as we understood Him”.
Leonard takes issue with those who use the “as we understood Him” language as an
open door to all sorts of irrelevant “higher powers.” Instead, he said, his
take on the phrase is centered on the word “we.” He points out that the
founders of A.A. had spent many many hours studying the Bible, reading
Christian literature, and praying together. They had turned to God for help.
They were not telling people there was no God. Instead they were taking them
upstairs, getting them on their knees, and having them accept Jesus Christ as
their Lord and Savior.
When in 1939, Bill Wilson and the little
committee of four (which included Bill), threw in the phrase “as we understood Him,” they were not
making up some new deity. They were explaining to newcomers that their God was
the God of the Bible they had been studying. That they as a group did have an understanding of God. That God had
cured them when they had sought Him. And that the Steps were explaining that
they had been healed by taking the very 12 Steps that enabled them to turn
their wills and lives over to the care and direction of the very God they
understood and who had healed them when sought.
In other words, when the Big Book writers
and editors still retained dozens of unqualified references to “God;” a dozen
references to the “Creator;” mention many times of the “Heavenly Father” and
“Maker,” they were talking of their God as they
collectively already understood Him and that others could turn to and seek the
same kind of help from the Creator that the founders received.
(4)
Leonard pointed out also that they relied on a Creator
who looked out for their welfare and who loved them. He particularly pointed to
Bill Wilson’s statement on page 191 of the Big Book Fourth Edition, where Bill
stated emphatically that the “Lord” had cured him of his terrible disease. The
phrases were showing the suffering alcoholics that they could be new creatures
in Christ and turn to the God who showed them their alcoholism, delivered them,
and gave them the gift of an ability to control their alcoholism instead of
yielding to the temptation of a craving.
(5)
Ten or eleven years ago, Leonard was confronted with
surgery where doctors declared that it had shown them he did not have a
malignancy. Then he learned that he had blood cancer. With that, he dropped to
his knees and asked God for healing and help. Two weeks later, after he had
turned down chemo and radiation, a cat scan revealed that he was free.
(6)
Leonard pointed out that he frequently goes to a
website that publishes each day one of God’s promises—365 of them in the Bible.
And, of course, there are many more.
He points out that the Big Book contains twelve promises that show God’s
caring. But the www.365promises.com,
and the others he looks for and remembers, tell him to be bold because the
enemy can steal the joy if there is no understanding of the breadth of God’s
love.
Leonard produces a YouTube presentation which carries his
message; and he also points to two Facebook pages – one of which is www.facebook.com/theRecoveryNetwork
and the other is www.facebook.com/therecoverynetwork
. . He is doing his best to spread his message as widely as possible via new
media that recovery is possible through seeking God of the Bible, and Jesus
Christ just as the founders did.
Gloria Deo
No comments:
Post a Comment