Choosing to Risk and Serve in RecoveryChoosing to Risk and Serve in Recovery
Life Recovery Today with Stephen Arterburn
Steve Arterburn talks about choosing healthy risks and serving others as two key decisions that can deepen recovery and healing. He shares personal stories, biblical perspectives, and practical examples to show how faith, courage, and service can reshape life beyond addiction.
28:32•12 Oct 2026
Choosing Risk and Service for Deeper Life Recovery
Episode Overview
- Working the 12 steps repeatedly and more deeply can address underlying wounds and clutter of the soul.
- Trying to eliminate all risk is a lie; healthy risks, taken with faith in God, open the door to growth and new relationships.
- Shutting down emotionally after pain may feel safe, but it keeps life small and can block future blessings.
- Serving others, even in simple ways, is a powerful part of recovery and can reveal purpose through spiritual gifts.
- Healthy risk and service require humility and discernment, avoiding situations that clearly compromise sobriety or wellbeing.
“If you don't risk, then you don't ever have to have faith that God's going to be there for you, no matter what.”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? This episode of *Life Recovery Today with Stephen Arterburn* zooms in on two surprising choices that can move recovery from surface-level change to deep, soul-level healing: taking healthy risks and serving others. Steve talks honestly about his own painful divorce and the temptation to shut down emotionally to avoid ever being hurt again.
You’ll hear him say plainly, “If you don't risk, then you don't ever have to have faith that God's going to be there for you, no matter what.” Risk isn’t about walking into a bar to prove how strong you are; Steve jokes that “maybe that’s not risking, maybe what that is, is stupidity.” Instead, he points to uncomfortable but healthy steps: saying no when you’ve always said yes, letting others support you, or edging out of fear one small step at a time, like the woman who was terrified to leave her bedroom yet eventually got to a doctor with someone by her side.
He explains how that “lie that I can protect myself and eliminate risk” kept him stuck, and how choosing to risk love again led to marriage, a blended family, and, as he puts it, “the reward, oh my goodness, has been phenomenal” – struggle included. The second big theme is serving. Steve shows how helping others is woven into the 12 steps and how service can start small, like making coffee at a meeting.
He talks about spiritual gifts as “secret powers” that God gives and shares how three people in a week told him he had the gift of hospitality. Serving, he says, can shift you from being “stuck obsessed with yourself” to finding purpose and connection, while also warning against using service to avoid your own healing. If you’re wondering whether it’s time to take a new risk or step into serving, this episode might be the nudge you’ve been waiting for.
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