Ministry uses Bible to help individuals deal with hurts

Mary Rudewicz  approached her 32nd birthday with caution. As a teenager, she began having a strange recurring dream. Although by the time she awoke, she rarely remembered the details of it, one thing was for sure. She would die by the age of 32. Or so her dream told her.
   
For much of her life, this perception gave her both a sense of urgency in achieving everything she wanted by that early age and a sense of relief that her struggle with low self-esteem would soon be over.
Through the help of the Celebrate Recovery ministry of Saddleback Community Church in Lake Forest, Calif., which helps people overcome their hurts, habits and hang-ups through 12 steps taken from the Beatitudes of Jesus, Rudewicz overcame struggles with low self-esteem.
   
More than 5,000 people have been through the 12 steps at Celebrate Recovery, and an average of 500 people attend the weekly gatherings.
   
Now the program is being duplicated at 800 other churches around the country, with 150 other churches planning to start Celebrate Recovery programs in the coming year. The program should be translated into languages in the next five years.
   
“Celebrate Recovery is different from all of the self-help books I had read before,” Rudewicz said. “I always thought they had what I need, but it was always a program that worked for someone else. It never sunk in to me. Celebrate Recovery has been the only thing that has changed me from the inside out. It wasn’t about taking a video or a book and internalizing it. It’s about God changing me.”
   
Rudewicz still remembers the words Pastor Brett Eastman spoke to one of the first classes, “Everybody look up here. I have one thing to tell you. Your Father in heaven loves you. He wants you to put all your trust in one Man — Jesus Christ — who died on the cross, so you would live forever with Him in paradise.”
   
Right there — in the middle of CLASS 101 — Rudewicz committed her life to Christ by praying the “sinner’s prayer” and was baptized a week later.
   
Celebrate Recovery encourages believers to claim their identities in Christ, not in their addictions. Representatives of the ministry said that step often helps those in recovery take a more graceful and forgiving attitude with those in their lives. (BP)