Hope Is AliveSample

"Make A Mandate"

It’s important to build your recovery on a firm foundation that includes several key aspects. As we’ve discussed in previous devotionals, surrendering daily, establishing routines, and developing a network of accountability or “Hope Partners” are critical. This foundation you are building will act just like old Bubba did in that famous scene in ​Forrest Gump.

​You know the one I am talking about. Forrest and Bubba have just finished a long, brutal day of being at war in Vietnam, and the rain was pouring down upon them. They plop down in the mud back to back. Old Bubba leans back and says, “Forrest,​ I'm gonna lean up against you, you just lean right back against me. This way we don't have to sleep with our heads in the mud.”  The foundation you’re building is what you need to keep your head out of the mud. 

Time and time again throughout the first few years of your journey through sobriety, you will look to these tools you are building and creating and call them into action when the time comes. One key to ensuring a strong footing is a strong mandate statement. Like a mission statement that outlines an organization’s values and core beliefs, a mandate is a single sentence that draws you back to the core of who you want to be as a person in recovery. 

Your mandate acts as a barometer or measuring stick for you to gauge your conduct, your decisions, and your reactions, reminding you at crucial moments what’s important to you.  “I Will Not Use, No Matter What!” I wrote that phrase in my lecture notebook during my stay in rehab, and I still remember the exact moment I wrote it. A feeling of strength came over me as I made a personal mandate that I was done with my old way of living. This statement has pulled me out of many traps the past few years; countless times this personal agreement with myself motivated me to make the right decision in a circumstance that could have proven to be very dangerous.  

So what is ​your  mandate? Have you ever sat down and thought about it? Do you have a statement you live by, something that drives you forward or keeps you on track? Call it your rudder, your barometer, your compass, your GPS—whatever you want. Just get one that means something to you and convicts your heart to act.  I’m a firm believer in confessing our mandate. The Bible says, “out of the abundance of the heart a man speaks.” Another verse says, “as a man thinks, so he is.”  Here is the deal: what we say reveals who we are. Our mandate reveals our hearts desire, so say what we believe. I challenge you write your mandate today and to confess it to yourself and others ​daily. 

I love this passage in Psalms. 

“Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers! For they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb. Trust in the LORD,, and do good;  dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the LORD, ​and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.” PSA.37.1-6

Three words stand out to me in the passage above: ​trust, delight, and​ commit. Trust in the Lord. Delight in obedience. Commit to the Lord. Sounds a lot like a mandate to me.