Three years ago I was in pain. It was the pain of slavery to lust which was causing me deep trouble and threatening to ruin my entire life. The pain brought me into the SA fellowship. Thanks to the SA fellowship, and to my sponsor and through working the SA program, my deep trouble gradually turned into a blessing—into a life that is clean and sober. Sanity returned and I found a true connection with God. I don’t think I would ever have sought God so actively but for the pain and the brokenness that lust had caused me. This amazed me. What had seemed to me my worst misfortune turned out to be my greatest blessing. Isn’t that a miracle?

I wanted to share my experience with people in SA and so, I began to help others to turn the greatest trouble in their lives into their greatest blessing. The most sacred gift is to find purity and connection with the Truth and to become happy through giving up lust and working the Steps. It gives me the strength to help others on the same journey.

To consider the difficulties briefly, I find that most people are not ready to seriously surrender a lust hit. The newcomer, tormented by the pain of lust-insanity, has no experience of sobriety to which he can relate; it’s all hazy and distant while lust is a life-long, deep, deep habit; lust is never further than a fantasy away; resisting is unfamiliar and painful.

My task as a sponsor is to help him to want a sober life. By sharing my experience, I can feed the fragile sprout of his desire for sobriety; the desire to live a life that is happy, joyous, and free. I try to inspire him by my example. I go through it all with him, the states of recovery that I experienced; the phases I identified; the challenges of recovery and the hope for a meaningful life that I have achieved, one day at a time, through recovery. The rest is up to the Higher Power.

Sometimes my ego wants the sponsee to recover according to my idea of how it should be. At times, I am tempted to be the leader in the sponsee’s recovery instead of God. The truth is that God is in control. I am just an instrument for doing His will. This means that I must constantly invite God into every facet of my work with the sponsee. In this way I allow Him to work more effectively through me—to find the right words, the right suggestions, the most appropriate recommendations to make in every particular case. God teaches me to be flexible with each sponsee, showing me how each one is different, and that each needs his own individual approach.

Therefore, I listen to God and I choose His leadership suggestions in the sponsor-sponsee relationship. This makes it much better and more interesting.

In my experience, one undeniable blessing that accompanies sponsorship is the deep joy at seeing sponsees’ lives change and become successful through the help that I give them in working their program. I too have my own recovery story, the story of being sponsored. With God’s help, I can really make a difference to someone who is suffering the horrors of lust addiction. When I do this, I feel I am acting in accordance with God’s will; and life in harmony with God’s will brings me the highest joy!