Important Choices in Your RecoveryImportant Choices in Your Recovery
Life Recovery Today with Stephen Arterburn
Stephen Arterburn talks about choosing to feel emotions, persevere wisely and practise authentic humility within a biblical recovery framework. The conversation focuses on how these three choices support healing from addiction, emotional pain and broken relationships.
28:34•5 Oct 2026
Feeling, Persevering and Staying Humble in Life Recovery
Episode Overview
- Feelings act like warning lights, revealing what is happening inside and pointing to areas that need attention.
- Numbing emotions with addiction, work, food or other behaviours blocks genuine healing and growth.
- Perseverance is trusting God enough to try different strategies, rather than just doing the same thing harder.
- Hope is presented as always available, even when circumstances feel overwhelming or hopeless.
- Authentic humility includes admitting limitations, asking others how one has contributed to relational pain, and avoiding spiritual arrogance.
“Trying harder makes trying harder.”
What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol, compulsive behaviours, or emotional numbness? This episode of Life Recovery Today with Stephen Arterburn zooms in on three choices that can make or break that journey: feeling your emotions, staying the course, and walking in humility. Speaking straight from his book *Healing Is a Choice*, Steve talks about why the “choice to feel” is so crucial.
He shares his own heartache from divorce, describing pain that “felt like an ice pick through my heart,” only to realise in counselling that what sat underneath was fear, not anger or shame. Using a funny-but-costly story about a neglected warning light on a Ford Taurus, he compares feelings to dashboard lights: ignore them and things can seize up fast. You’ll hear how emotions are framed not as weaknesses, but as messages from within that point to areas needing attention.
Steve points to Jesus as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with the bitterest of grief,” showing that deep feeling is part of a healthy spiritual life, not a failure of faith. The episode then shifts to perseverance.
Steve challenges the idea that perseverance means just trying the same thing harder: “Trying harder makes trying harder.” Instead, he talks about trusting God enough to try new strategies—like support groups, therapy, or Bible study—especially when hopelessness whispers that it’s time to quit. Finally, he tackles humility with humour and honesty, contrasting fake spirituality with real honesty about struggle. A truly humble person, he says, can ask others, “What’s it like being around me?” and actually want the answer.
Aimed at people dealing with addiction, overeating, depression, anxiety, or broken relationships—especially those drawn to a biblical 12-step approach—this episode offers practical, faith-rooted tools and a gentle nudge to feel deeply, stick with the process, and stay honest about being human. Which of those three choices is your next step?
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