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FOREWORD

You promise you’ll never do it again. You promise you’ll never overeat again, never hide food again, never bounce checks again, never yell at the kids for no reason again— never, never, never! You promise God and anyone who will listen that you’ll never repeat your destructive behavior. And you are sincere—heartbreakingly sincere. But repeat them you do. And you do. And you do. And day after endless day, your life repeats itself. You are caught in a cycle of repentance and relapse. You are in bondage. Does any of this sound familiar to you? Have you ever found, or do you now find yourself in bondage too? Are you swept up in a similar cycle of bad habits, selfdefeating behaviors, self-destructive and insane behaviors—compulsive, addictive behaviors? Do you ever wonder if there is a way out?

Several years ago, I took a good look at my life and realized that I was in a spiritual shambles. No matter what my good intentions were, no matter how I longed to change, and no matter how strongly I willed myself to change, it just wouldn’t happen. I was a mess of “socially acceptable” compulsive, addictive behaviors and it was killing me. I had lived what I believed to be the gospel of Jesus Christ and I was still miserable. And I was almost hopeless.

I remember reading the Book of Mormon and thinking that there was an important message hidden in those words of wisdom and I just wasn’t getting it. After weeks of pleading with the Lord for guidance, I was introduced to the Twelve Steps. I found some recovery in the fellowship of a Twelve Step group, but true recovery began when I turned back to the Book of Mormon. After learning the concepts and the principles in the simple, everyday language of the Twelve Steps, I returned to the Book of Mormon, and its mysteries opened up to me. The Twelve Steps were everywhere within its pages. That was when the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ really began to work in my life, and I began to be freed from the chains of emotional bondage, one link at a time.

I continued my fellowship in a Twelve Step group for some time, all the while wishing I were free to share the extra light that the gospel and the Book of Mormon shed on the principles behind the Twelve Steps. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. This same desire in the heart of another led to the publication of this workbook, He Did Deliver Me from Bondage.

He Did Deliver Me from Bondage illustrates the true principles that underlie the Twelve Steps with passages from the Book of Mormon. I have found that the Twelve Steps are nothing more (or more accurately, nothing less) than a bare-bones, step-bystep guide back to the Lord, Jesus Christ—the same step-by-step path found in fullness and glory in the Book of Mormon. I believe the Twelve Steps are a set of “baby steps” that lead to the “giant steps” found in the gospel. He Did Deliver Me from Bondage bridges the gap between the two.

I am very grateful for the recovery and the deliverance from bondage the Lord has orchestrated in my life thus far. Only He can lead us to that “mighty change of heart” of which Alma speaks. I pray that you will find Him and that this workbook may help you along the way.

— Karlene B.

AUTHOR’S “FOREWORD”

Hi, my name’s Colleen; I’m an addict. In other words, I’m a mortal struggling with the effects of the fall. Without conscious contact with a power far greater than my own, even the Spirit of Truth, the Lord, Jesus Christ (D&C 93:9), I cannot maintain anything resembling sanity or serenity.

Today, thanks to the twelve principles discussed in this book, learned first at Overeaters Anonymous, and later enhanced and magnified by corresponding scriptural validation, I have found that peace which passeth understanding, which only Christ can give (Philippians 4:7). In him I have found a perfect brightness of hope that shines through even the deepest darkness. I have sanity and serenity because of His living presence in my life.

When I remember Him and keep my eye single to His glory, and to the glory of the Father who sent Him to be my Savior and closest Friend, I experience a remission of lies in my mind and of sin in my life. I lose my desire to do evil; to do that which separates me from God. I lose my desire to turn to the things of this world for counterfeit solace and comfort. I stop eating extraneous food; I lose weight. I stop spending money I really don’t need to spend; my checkbook stays balanced. I stop trying to fix others; my relationships calm down. I stop fearing; I start hoping and trusting. My depression disappears.

When I apply these true principles in my life I am free—free of the lie of pride, free of the lie of self-sufficiency, free of the lie that any sin, either my own or another’s, is more powerful and permanent than God’s power to heal and atone. When I use these principles or steps in my life on a daily basis, I am not empty, and I am not alone. I am filled with a sure witness of Jesus Christ and of His personal love for me. Using these principles or steps, I am able to draw near unto Him, and unfailingly find that, as He promises in D&C 88:63, He draws near unto me. I feel His encircling arms of love (D&C 6:20); I recognize His words conveyed to me through the Holy Ghost (2 Nephi 32:3, 5); and I know that according to His own will, I may see His face (D&C 88:68). When He Did Deliver Me from Bondage was originally written in 1991, there was no recovery support group for Latter-day Saints who were struggling with the more “socially acceptable” compulsive, addictive behaviors such as overeating, overspending, workaholism, perfectionism, and so forth. Nor was there a group in which I could introduce myself using the religious terms I have used in this foreword. Today there are such groups, based firmly in a combination of the Twelve Step concepts and the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ. These groups were not created to compete with the Church or with other Twelve Step groups; rather they complement them all.

This study guide, which was originally written for use in the Heart t’ Heart Twelve Step program, has also used by several other programs, including LDS Family Services Addiction Recovery Program (ARP). The most exciting result to come from the development of LDS programs using the Twelve Step model of recovery is we are free to study the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ in harmony with and support of the principles in the Steps.

— Colleen H.

PREFACE: FIRST EDITION (1991)

In 1981 I tipped the scale at over 300 pounds. Believe me, I was the most miserable “active” Latter-day Saint I knew. Of course, I didn’t know many people, Latter-day Saint or otherwise, because of the isolated, imprisoned lifestyle I lived. I walled myself in with cleaning, cooking, canning, sewing, even with children and husband and, of course, with eating. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with cooking and cleaning— they are the necessities of life. Sewing and canning are worthwhile activities too. They are good basic skills that every person should know to be prepared for hard times when life might be scarce instead of abundant. The only problem was that I made my life scarce doing those very things. While my children languished around me, I sewed and canned and crafted my way through 16 years and 11 pregnancies. I made my energy and time so scarce that there was a “famine in the land” emotionally, while I obsessively tried to fit into the Mollie Mormon mold.

And my husband and children? In my obsession to make everything perfect, I created a prison out of something as potentially exalting as my family. I used their lives as an excuse to never get around to my own life. Even their cleanliness came before mine. I went to bed when they went to bed (11:00 p.m. because of someone’s just remembered school project), stayed awake until they fell asleep (12:00 midnight with my husband), got up when they got up (3:00 a.m. with the baby), and started the day before they did so their foundation got properly laid (6:00 a.m. to fix breakfast, conduct scripture study).

And what was I doing to sustain this concentrated pretense of perfection? Was I pursuing a course of daily personal prayer and scripture study to receive God’s direction and power in my own life? Heavens, no! After all, I had no life outside my husband and children—cleaning for them, cooking, sewing, canning; thinking, planning. And besides, I’d been to Gospel Doctrine class. I wasn’t a total scriptural illiterate. I knew that it was only after all that I could do to be perfect that I should turn to God, and I knew that if I ate just one more batch of cookie dough or one more helping of dinner I could do more. If and when I ever got through doing all I could, then I would rightfully seek God and worthily receive His input.

I mean, put yourself in my place. I didn’t want to ask prematurely, as Oliver Cowdery did, and get rebuked (D&C 9:7). What if I turned to God and instead of comfort received chastisement? What if, instead of direction, I got recriminating memories about temple and visiting teaching assignments I either missed or did with a weary, grudging heart? Thanks, but no thanks. A doughnut or four extra dinner rolls promised to help me forget, if even for a few moments, instead of remembering anything more I needed to do to be “busily engaged.” Eating was the one thing I consistently did for myself. Mother, the supreme nurturer and caretaker, finally got around to nurturing and taking care of herself at midnight by consuming food she had deliberately hoarded and hidden earlier.

It’s pretty obvious that I had a problem—a serious problem. It’s obvious to me today, but it wasn’t then. Back then I didn’t have time to recognize any problems in my life. All I needed was another Twinkie and I could make it; I could be there for one more act of service or hour of self-sufficient sewing or canning. Didn’t I ever diet? you might ask. Certainly! Constantly! At least constantly between that “last supper” of hoarded goodies at midnight and about 10:00 a.m. the next morning when the leftover pancakes from breakfast needed to be cleared. After all, how could I justify eating the eggs or fruit my food plan called for when I could feed them to the children tomorrow? How could I let these perfectly good pancakes go to waste! Hadn’t I just attended a homemaking lesson in which one sister demonstrated three dozen ways to use the lint from our dryer screens to avoid wasting it? I was in deep trouble, and digging myself deeper with every effort to get out. Even diets that lasted any length of time were only getting me into a worse mess metabolically. No matter how healthy the written plan of eating was, I could, with my perfectionistic, all or nothing, black or white thinking, pare it down to a third of its author’s original intent and lose twice as much twice as fast! And I would! I would lose a lot fast. Who wouldn’t on 500 calories of cottage cheese and lettuce leaves a day? Ten pounds in ten days. Wow! At this rate I would be a size ten by Christmas—and I could even overeat on my birthday in September, Halloween in October, and Thanksgiving in November if I just fasted three days after each traditional binge. Again and again, I would sit and mark a new calendar with each new resolve, projecting weekly weight loss. I’d chart and rechart my miraculous transformation-tocome with bar charts and graph paper, filling little boxes with “x’s” for each hour of my success. I would even fill in the boxes for the nighttime hours weeks in advance—after all, I would be sleeping between 1:00 and 6:00 a.m., right? Unless of course I was up at 2:00 a.m. with the baby for a nighttime feeding.

And thus I “dieted” my way up the scale instead of down, ending up in the summer of 1981 at about 315 pounds. I never knew for sure, because when the bathroom scale went all the way around the dial and started past the top number a second time, I stepped off forever.

I stepped off the scale and dropped to my knees. It wasn’t that I had never done that before either. In fact that was the most agonizing part of this struggle. The entire fifteen years of my insanity—and it is insanity to be on such a course of self-destruction— was riddled by times of desperately weeping and wailing to God. Time after time, in the temple and out, I had pledged to God that I would conquer this terrible destructive behavior. Education Week after Education Week sent me home determined to be good for the prescribed 18 (or was it 21?) days that it took to eliminate a “bad habit.” Sometimes I even made it through those lengths of time, but inevitably my devotion to my best self would fade, my old emptiness would return, and I would begin to overeat again. This was more than a habit. No amount of white-knuckled willpower gave me security against that first compulsive bite, which sooner or later led to another binge and complete self-degradation.

This time, in this prayer, though, there was to be no weeping and wailing on my part, no whining and justifying and rationalizing and bargaining. I was down for the count, and I knew it. I knew it because I had finally done all that I could do. I had sewn, canned, cleaned, quilted, made babies, served husband and children past a righteous balance (Proverbs 11:1) and had held four church positions at the same time. I had stayed up late and gotten up early. I had gone to Education Week classes, read books, made charts, made pledges, gone to every “quick-weight [money] loss” program I could afford. There was nothing left. Nothing. I couldn’t even pray—at least not out loud. I felt much like Joseph in the grove, oppressed under a great cloud of darkness; only mine had not appeared in seconds—mine had taken years to build up. I literally crawled to my bedside and crumpled there, and the tears finally came— tears of complete surrender to God. No words, no excuses, no pleadings, no answers— just tears. These were not tears of “poor-me” or “why-me.” Instead, these were tears of “not my will—but Thine be done.” Today, I know those tears were, at least in spirit, mingled with blood—Jesus Christ’s own atoning blood; for from that hour my deliverance began. If I had known then how close divine help actually was, I might have heard a spiritual witness, as did Daniel of old:

Fear not, [Colleen]: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand [instead of dictate], and to chasten [purify] thyself before thy God, thy words were heard and I am come for thy words. (Daniel 10:12)

I didn’t realize that at that moment of complete surrender, I was about to enter a whole new life, a life turned inside out.

After I was finally through crying, I dragged myself up and sat on the side of my bed. Feeling the impression that I needed to invest more than I ever had before, I decided to call a weight-loss clinic I had heard about that offered absolute control over your meals, preparing and delivering them to you, for a formidable price. At least it used to be formidable to me. Now a new spirit had come over me. I was now willing to go to any length, to pay any price, to do whatever God wanted me to do. I wasn’t running the show anymore, bargaining with life for a penny. I had to be willing to give all, or I would die, and I knew it.

I reached for the phone and phone book. Finding the appropriate number, I dialed. The line rang and rang. Tears sprang to my eyes again. Wasn’t I humble enough, desperate enough, willing enough? Here I was in a state of total surrender, ready to be led in all things, and even go bankrupt! I didn’t think there was a greater depth of humiliation and willingness.

Little did I know then that the course God was about to set my feet upon would require me to admit a bankruptcy far deeper than financial, develop a willingness to do God’s will that would require every day of the rest of my life and would catapult me into a life so filled with friends and truly unconditional love that I would even start to feel some love for myself.

The next impression that came was to reach out to a friend, to someone who loved me, who would listen to me. The friend I called had no answers for me, but that was okay, because God did. I was to realize later that from the moment of my admittance of personal powerlessness, of my absolute need for Him, He had taken over. All my friend could suggest was that she could put me in touch with a neighbor of hers who had been attending a weightloss program of some type and having a lot of success, and it didn’t cost too much. A quick call to this other person, Latter-day Saint though she was, was another increment of complete humility for me. I, who was usually terrified of interaction with strangers, found myself already being lifted and sustained by a power far greater than my own.

The lady didn’t say much but offered to take me to a meeting the next morning. I couldn’t believe it when I heard myself accept her offer. Me? Three-hundred and fifteen pound me was going to walk out in the broad daylight tomorrow morning and get in a car with a complete stranger? And not only a stranger, but one who had had lots of recent success at losing weight and was looking great besides! I ate my last pan of brownies that afternoon, trying to suppress the fear of the unknown and of the change I felt. But changed I was—somewhere on the inside something was different. Even the pan of brownies couldn’t deter it. It was going to be years later before I read President Benson’s words: “God changes men from the inside out” (Ensign, July 1989, p.4). That day I was living his words.

The next morning came, and it was the proverbial first day of the rest of my life. I walked into my first Overeaters Anonymous (OA) meeting that day and was introduced to a program based on twelve simple steps of recovery. I was praying constantly about this strange new world I had entered. People were mentioning the word “God,” and not all of them were LDS. I began to feel anxious. Maybe I was in some sort of danger here. Then I remembered I had been endowed with the gift of the Holy Ghost, and it could teach me the truth of all things (Moroni 10:5); that Moroni had assured me if anything taught me to do good and to love God and to serve God, then it was of God (Moroni 7:13); that the 13th Article of Faith declared my religion to include seeking after “anything virtuous, lovely, of good report or praiseworthy;” that Christ Himself, through the Prophet Joseph Smith, charged me to seek wisdom out of the best books (D&C 88:118); that Brigham Young had once declared that we, as Latter-day Saints, could claim truth no matter where we might find it and should not be afraid to seek it anywhere (Journal of Discourses, 13:335). Still I felt concerned. After all, maybe having all these things come to my remembrance as I sat there in that first meeting was a ploy of the adversary to get me into some kind of cult or something. Maybe I should get up and leave!

Fortunately, God had other ideas. He had me stay long enough to buy an Alcoholics Anonymous “Big Book,” the basic text for every Twelve Step group. There are many such groups, and for good reason—they work. I took that “Big Book” home, and began to read. As I read I found how true it is that God is no respecter of persons. I read of Bill Wilson (the founder of AA) and his desperate need for a power greater than himself to solve a problem that he could not solve alone. I heard and felt echoes of Joseph Smith’s own deep need which had been answered for him when he read James 1:5. It was as if I were hearing the scripture for the first time, caught between a prophet’s witness on the one hand and a derelict alcoholic’s on the other.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to ALL men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. (James 1:5–6; emphasis added)

“Nothing wavering”—at about the same moment those memorized words passed through my mind, I found myself reading these words on page 13 of the AA text: There I humbly offered myself to God, as I then understood Him, to do with me as he would. I placed myself unreservedly under His care and direction (Italics added). And then the next sentence wrung out my heart as it echoed the very words of LDS scriptures:

I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing; that without Him I was lost. (AA “Big Book,” p. 13)

I had to turn back to the title of the little book in my hands to make sure I wasn’t reading Mosiah 4:11, Alma 26:12 or Moses 1:10. No. This was the AA “Big Book,” and these were the words of Bill Wilson.

I stayed and read and listened. Gradually I began to realize why this program had such a high success rate in its early years. It is totally focused on turning us to God and developing our relationship with Him. (See Moroni 7:13 again.)

And what have I found in my years of involvement in Twelve Step program since then? Well, first I found that the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions reflected twentyfour of the most basic “true principles” ever captured and arranged into a program of action to overcome destructive behaviors. At every meeting I attend, I watch people beginning to recognize their absolute need for and their own nothingness without God. I see them learn to relax their stranglehold on life and on others they’ve tried to control. I watch them come to trust God. This trust gives them the courage to tackle a fine-tooth comb repentance process for themselves. As I watch this inner cleansing and heart-deep change, accompanied by changes in attitude and behavior, Joseph Smith’s words go through my mind: “I teach them correct principles and they govern themselves.”

Second, I have found and joined a fellowship of good people, people who have come to know, as I have, that:

Crushed by a self-imposed crisis that we could not postpone [any longer], we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything [to us] or else He is nothing. (AA “Big Book”, p. 53)

It’s been good for me to realize that while we as Latter-day Saints do have a corner on priesthood authority and sealing ordinances, we don’t have a corner on God’s love or truth.

Third, I have lost 140 pounds and have maintained that weight loss for over ten years, through several of the most devastating events life could bring my way, including the death of my oldest daughter. I know that the ability to live in these terrifying last days began when I finally accepted counsel like this: “You [are] 100% hopeless, apart from divine help.” (AA “Big Book,” p. 43) Needless to say, years later, when I heard President Benson’s words—“If you will put God first in your life, everything else will either fall into its proper place or drop out of your life entirely” (Ensign, May 1988, p.4)—I could only smile and nod as I thought of those 140 pounds. And the greatest blessing of all is that I know that I didn’t do this alone. I know it was by the grace of God that He lifted my broken and bleeding soul from the bedroom floor that day and led me to a program that would turn my face to Him and not teach me self-mastery or self-sufficiency or that I just had to do more. Instead, it taught me that what I have to do is believe more, ask more and receive more.

— Colleen H.
Fall 1991

PREFACE: REVISED EDITION

In 1981, I discovered I was an addict. Though I had never used alcohol or illegal drugs, I came to realize that I was indeed an addict in every sense of the word when I read Alcoholics Anonymous (also called the “Big Book”) and the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous.

As I read this literature from Alcoholics Anonymous, I found myself identifying with every nuance, every turn and twist of Bill W.’s story. I could relate to Dr. Bob’s experience and to the experiences of most of the other faltering mortals who contributed their stories to the volume from which the AA fellowship took its name. The shocking revelation was that while I could so closely identify with the stories of these addicts, I was also a “tee-totaling, card-carrying” member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I attended church every Sunday, sat on the second row in the chapel with my “quiver–full” of children and equally “faithful” spouse. We each held several callings in our ward. We bought food storage, attended “Know Your Religion” lectures, went to BYU Education Week for our annual vacation, practiced as little birth control as we could,… My list could go on and on to the point of exhaustion. Suffice it to say, being good Latter-day Saints kept us so busy we had no time to admit or contemplate the reality that there was a dark and shameful side to our publically exemplary life. Satan has a powerful tool to use against good people. It is distraction. He would have good people fill life with “good things” so there is no room for the essential ones. Have you unconsciously been caught in that trap? (Richard G. Scott, “First Things First,” Ensign, May 2001, 6) Distracted from what? From those portions of practicing our religion that bring personal spiritual experiences. We were too busy, too distracted, to acknowledge or participate in personal revelation, personal insight, honesty, wisdom and honor of the truth.

And so, in July of 1981, I read Alcoholics Anonymous for the first time and realized I was as self-destructive with my “socially acceptable” behaviors as these first AA members were with alcohol. I saw, also, that although my life was filled to the brim with external religious behaviors, I had never experienced the coming of God into my heart and mind — at least, not to the extent necessary for Him to relieve me of the “desire” or disposition to “do evil.”

For the first time, I saw my self-defeating behaviors as “evil.” In fact, these behaviors were not just self-defeating. They were self-destructive. They were robbing me of serenity, and at times it seemed my very sanity was slipping away also. How did I try to save myself, my serenity, my sanity? Like a true addict, I turned deeper into the very behaviors which created the crisis to begin with. I would eat. I would rage and scream. I would spend money or participate in any number of other “socially acceptable” but self-destructive behaviors, knowing full-well I was destroying myself and my family around me. I lived a cycle of addiction just as surely as Bill W., Dr. Bob, and all of the other addicts described in Alcoholics Anonymous.

By 1983, I had achieved two years of abstinence and some recovery. True to my former idea of success, however, I had focused on the outward behaviors and subsequent appearance of being better. I attended lots of meetings. I gave lots of service in Overeaters Anonymous. I remained abstinent—often hanging on with white knuckles to the support and example of others. I lost over 150 lbs. I looked like a new woman, acted like a new woman and tried to feel like a new woman, ignoring the fact that on the “feeling” level, deep inside, things weren’t much different. The whirlwind of being thin and admired was pretty heady stuff. Addiction revisited.

The following three years I learned about relapse by doing it. It wasn’t fun and it wasn’t pretty, but it did serve to convince me that I wanted and needed more. Looking “sober” wasn’t enough. I wanted to feel sober, to be sober “on the inside.” I gained back 80 lbs. while trying some “controlled eating” programs (diet plans). They obviously weren’t the answer. When I finally “cracked the books” again in 1985 and began to study the AA literature, I opened the scriptures along with them. Eventually, I read and worked through the powerful workbook, The Twelve Steps: A Way Out and became aware of its companion book, The Twelve Steps: A Spiritual Journey which incorporated verses from the Old and New Testament. (Both workbooks are published by RPI Publishing, Inc: San Diego, CA.) As I began to apply the Twelve Steps to my life, everything changed. But this time, the change wasn’t about behaviors or appearances; it was about changing my inner life, my spiritual being.

Over the next four years, I listened to the testimony of the prophet at that time, President Ezra Taft Benson. Over and over again, he stressed the gift of the Book of Mormon, calling it the most perfect book ever written, containing the power to bring us closer to God than any other book. He pled with us to sup from its pages daily. He chastened us with the truth that as a people we were under the condemnation of “vanity and disbelief”—the only solution to which was reading the Book of Mormon and living by its precepts.

I believed our prophet. I heard and took his counsel personally, as a single member of the “us” and the “we” of the church. I began a personal study of the Book of Mormon and was staggered at how perfectly its “precepts”harmonized with the “precepts,” or principles in each of the Twelve Steps. I began marking and color-coding my scriptures, particularly the Book of Mormon, for each of these twelve powerfully true principles.

By 1989, addiction in several terrible forms had eaten away the heart of my family’s potential for safety and salvation. Sexual addiction, drug abuse, alcohol and the lies so many members of my family told to hide these choices took all the light and hope and strength out of our midst. Finally, the ultimate horror of every mother struck. One of my children died in an alcohol related accident.

Over the next two years, “after shocks” continued to ravage what was left of our family unit, as child after child began to exhibit behaviors typical of survivors of the worst forms of abuse. The facade of “just fine” Sunday appearances began to crumble. By 1991, with the witness of the Spirit of Truth in personal revelation and the painful, but honest approbation of my bishop, I fled the horrifying abusiveness of my marriage by filing for divorce. I felt numb. Marriage, home and family was everything to me. I felt abandoned and alone… except for the unwavering witness that Christ lived and loved me and would never leave me.

In the midst of all this personal trauma, I clung to the Book of Mormon and used the Twelve Step model to sort out its precepts. Conversely, I used the Book of Mormon to magnify the concepts in the Steps with the glorious power of the Restoration. A vision began to dawn in my heart: how wonderful it would be if other members of the Church could understand the Twelve Steps as a powerful guide to study of the principles of the Gospel! I began to pray for an opportunity to share this idea.

I became a member of the Church in the early 1960’s and brought so much addictive and compulsive bondage with me, right through the waters of baptism. I could only imagine how much more of a struggle to break the bondage of all kinds of addictions, new converts, today, had to face. And then there were the “active” families, like my own—only one generation removed from unacknowledged addictive tendencies— whose lives were being undermined by addiction in one form or another. Maybe, if a study guide could be provided that combined the Twelve Step model of recovery with the power of the Book of Mormon and the restoration of the Gospel, other men and women, couples, and families could be spared the terrible end my first marriage suffered. I wanted to share my knowledge that the Savior’s living reality and power was enough to sustain us and save us, even from these terrible developments of the last days.

I began to think of the Twelve Step workbooks mentioned earlier. What if a book similar to those could be composed, with suggested readings and thought provoking questions to guide the readers reflections. Using outlines of discussions I had led on each of the “twelve true principles” in the Steps as reflected in the teachings of the Restored Gospel, I was able to finish the original draft of He Did Deliver Me from Bondage in a matter of weeks. For the next year or so, I spent a lot of time at the local copy shop reproducing the manuscript in 10’s, 20’s, and then 50’s. Then, in 1991, a wonderful benefactor offered to pay the cost of actual publication of the book. From that point its readership has continued to grow exponentially with virtually no “marketing.” It has definitely been a pathway of “attraction,” not “promotion.” I have received a constant flow of letters and phone calls filled with deeply moving endorsement of the book’s positive effect in the lives of LDS members struggling with addiction in their own lives or in the lives of loved ones. I watched in awe as my prayers to the Father were answered. Others were being helped to understand addiction’s subtle and spiritually deadly grip. They were being taught a practical application of true principles that were proving to be addiction’s antidote. Still, I didn’t know the extent Heavenly Father intended to answer my plea.

In the fall of 1995 I received a phone call from what was then known as LDS Social Services. They had been introduced to He Did Deliver Me from Bondage and felt it might be an asset to the newly formed substance abuse recovery group pilot program. Would I be willing to allow it to be used in that setting? I was in tears as I beheld in awe how far the Lord intended to take His answer to my prayers.

Since 1995, LDS Social Services has become LDS Family Services, and the pilot program has become the Substance Abuse Recovery Services (SARS) program and has been approved for use throughout the Church. I have to admit I feel like the inspired Twelve Step recovery model has now found a most appropriate home in the LDS community. It is my constant prayer that whoever receives a copy of this study guide will let it lead him or her to the truth that Heavenly Father and the Savior are very real and very interested in each of us personally. With Their living reality in our minds and hearts—in our lives—we can be led out of the bondage of addiction and blessed to survive the terrible sorrow of these last days. I bear testimony that if we truly desire to repent, there is no sin so great—whether it be committed by ourselves or has been committed against us—that the Savior Jesus Christ, through power from His Father, cannot heal. I testify of this humbly and in the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

— Colleen H.
January 2002

But behold, he did deliver them because they did humble themselves before him; and because they cried mightily unto him he did deliver them out of bondage; and thus doth the Lord work with his power in all cases among the children of men, extending the arm of mercy towards them that put their trust in him. —Mosiah 29:20