We've all searched for happiness — usually in all the wrong places, trying all the wrong things. But there’s only one place where we can find tested-and-proven, absolutely-gonna-work principles that will lead to healing and happiness. These principles come in the form of eight statements from the truest of all books — the Bible — and from the most revered Teacher of all time — Jesus Christ. Jesus laid out these principles for happiness in the Sermon on the Mount in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 5. Today we call them “the Beatitudes.”

Change, Jesus says, can be ours, but the pathway to change and happiness may not be exactly what we’re expecting. 

The power to change comes only from God’s grace. In Principle 1 we start working and living this program in earnest. When we admit we’re powerless, we go on to recognize that we need a power greater than ourselves to restore us. That power is the one and only true Higher Power, Jesus Christ. 

The first step of the Christ-centered 12 Steps relates to Principle 1:

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.

“I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.”
(Romans 7: 18)