Why did things get so bad? Why did we have to lose so much? Why did we have to hit such a painful bottom? Paul gives us a hard answer: so that we would stop relying on ourselves. We were addicted to self-reliance. We thought we could handle it. We thought we were smart enough to manage the unmanageable. We had to hit a dead end—a place of total powerlessness—to finally realize that our battery was dead and we couldn’t jumpstart it ourselves. But here is the good news: We rely on a God who raises the dead. Our unity is built on this shared experience of resurrection. We were all dead in our addiction, and now we are alive in recovery. We don’t rely on our own strength anymore; we rely on the Resurrection and the Life. The dead end was actually a new beginning. | 
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