A reflection on a recent evening with Celebrate Recovery — and what happens when two communities discover they’ve been speaking the same language.
When Skip Koshak invited me to speak at Celebrate Recovery, he asked if there was a worship song I’d like sung before I shared. God picked it for me: Spirit of the Living God, by Vertical Worship.
It’s a fairly new song to me — but from the moment I heard it, I couldn’t wait to sing it with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who are on a truth-seeking journey, just as I am. The lyrics speak of hungering to hear God’s voice, wanting to know Him more and more, hanging on His every word. From the very first stanza, something settled in the room. I sensed a kindred spirit among us as we worshipped together — knowing that every person there carried the same longing: God, show up. Not in a general, theological sense. Personally. In the specific places where I’m still stuck.
And then came the bridge: “When You do what only You can do — it changes us. It changes what we see and what we seek.”
That is what I came to talk about. And what I didn’t know yet was that before the evening was over, Skip himself would become the most powerful illustration of exactly that.
The Question Nobody Talks About
Because here’s what I’ve come to understand after years of walking with Jesus and years of sitting with people in their pain — most of us believe God can change us, or we at least have hope that He can. That’s not usually the question.
The question is how.
How does He actually get into those deep places? The ones that don’t respond to trying harder, praying more, or white-knuckling through another week?
I told them about the gap — the one James calls being double-minded. Knowing something in your head while believing something entirely different in your heart. I lived in that gap for a long time. Decades, actually. And I didn’t even realize there was a name for it. I just thought something was wrong with me.
Honoring What CR Is Already Doing
Before I said a word about Transformation Prayer Ministry, I wanted to honor what Celebrate Recovery is already doing — because these 12 Steps are a gift.
Step 1 — admitting we’re powerless — is the moment we stop pretending we can manage what was never ours to manage. It’s radical honesty. It acknowledges our need for God.
And Step 2 — believing that God can restore us to wholeness — that’s not just sobriety. Not just better behavior. Wholeness. I like to call that having God’s perspective, which results in transformation.
Here’s what I told them that night, and I’ll say it here too: I think a lot of us have quietly settled for something less than that. We’ve gotten better. We’ve gotten cleaner. But there are still rooms inside us we haven’t been able to let God into yet — not because we don’t want to, but because we don’t know how.
What I came to share was something that helped me find those rooms.
It Started With a Banner on a Wall
My church in Baton Rouge had a banner with Galatians 5:1: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” One ordinary Sunday I read those words and just… broke down. Not watery eyes — uncontrollable, ugly crying. Right there in my seat.
And I was confused by my own tears. Because I was sitting under incredible teaching every week. I knew who I was in Christ. I was even teaching it to children as the Children’s Director.
And yet my experience felt like chains draped around me.
That day in church I gave God permission to expose me. Because I didn’t just want to know the truth — I wanted to experience it.
About two weeks later, God brought a type of structured prayer into my life that I didn’t know I needed. And meeting Jesus using that prayer known as Transformation Prayer Ministry changed everything.
The Check Engine Light
Here is the core idea behind Transformation Prayer Ministry — TPM for short.
Our behaviors, our habits, our hang-ups? They’re not the root problem. They’re symptoms. Underneath every pattern that keeps us stuck is a lie-based belief — something we were persuaded to believe is true through an experience, often in a moment of pain. And we’ve been living from that belief ever since, treating it as if it were fact.
You know the check engine light on your dashboard? When it comes on, you don’t tape over it and keep driving. That light is telling you something is happening under the hood that needs attention.
TPM teaches us to think about our negative emotions the same way. That anxiety that won’t quit. That anger that flares up faster than you can explain. That hollow feeling that creeps in on even a good day. Those aren’t enemies to manage. They’re invitations.
They’re indicators that there’s a lie underneath — one that God wants to get to.
Here’s how I framed it that night: the 12 Steps will bring you to the door of that belief. Steps 4 and 5 — that searching and fearless moral inventory — that’s you finding the door. TPM is what happens when you open it and invite Jesus in.
And this is important: TPM doesn’t do the work. We are not the healers. We are not even trying to be. When the Holy Spirit persuades us of the truth and His perspective — the lie no longer feels true. Mind-renewal has taken place. And where the mind is renewed, transformation follows. Every time. That’s His work, not ours. And that transformation feels a lot like healing.
What This Actually Looks Like
I shared some personal stories that evening — including one you may have already read here on the blog. (If you haven’t, the gondola story is right here — it’s worth three minutes of your time.)
What I hadn’t shared publicly before that night is this: just days before I stood in that CR room, God gave me a second layer of that same story I hadn’t seen before. The belief wasn’t just “I am completely alone.” It went deeper — all the way to “I will always be alone.” That’s not loneliness. That’s hopelessness. And He met me there too.
That is what TPM as a lifestyle looks like. Not a one-time breakthrough — a continuing conversation with the God who keeps going deeper.
You don’t have to wait for a retreat or a crisis or a gondola. Your negative emotions are already the invitation. They’ve been there. The question is whether we’ll keep taping over the check engine light — managing our emotions, numbing them, white-knuckling past them — or whether we’ll follow them to what God wants to show us.
Step 11 says we “sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God.” A TPM prayer session is one of the most intentional ways I know to do exactly that — not just talking at God, but getting quiet enough to actually hear Him speak into the specific belief that’s been keeping you stuck.
Two Ministries. One Mission.
What I saw in that CR room — and what I see every week at Serenity Retreat — is the same longing. The same honest acknowledgment that we cannot fix ourselves. The same posture of surrender toward the One who can.
Here’s what I love about these two ministries together: CR does the courageous work of getting honest — naming the patterns, the wounds, the places where life has come unraveled. And TPM is what happens next. It’s a structured way to bring exactly what that honesty surfaces directly to God in prayer and let Him do what only He can do.
Neither ministry puts itself in the role of doing the transformation. Both are clear: only God can do this. CR’s Twelve Steps are a framework for surrender — for getting ourselves out of the way so God can move. TPM is a lifestyle of doing the same thing, one belief at a time, in the quiet of a prayer session.
Different structures. The same DNA.
A Long Time Coming
Skip had been telling me for years that CR and TPM complement each other. For years, I listened — and for years, I hadn’t acted on it. It was his persistence that finally moved me, and I am so grateful he didn’t give up. That evening at Celebrate Recovery wasn’t a spontaneous invitation. It was the fruit of one man’s long conviction that more people needed to know what was available to them — and his willingness to dedicate hours to both ministries to make that happen. Skip’s heart is simply this: he wants more and more people walking in God’s full truth and perspective. And he is putting in the work to see it happen.
So when I stood up to speak that night, I wanted to close with a story that showed exactly what that kind of freedom looks like from the inside. Skip and his wife Pam had graciously allowed their story to be included in my book, Raising Truth Seekers — and it was their testimony I chose to share in that room.
Not long ago, Skip was a man on the defensive. He carried a deep belief that he had to protect himself — that his wife wasn’t truly for him, wasn’t capable of putting his interests first. His wife carried her own weight too. She believed she had to become something before she could lower her guard. Trust had eroded. Arguments were common. Their ability to navigate life as partners — and as parents — had started to disappear.
His wife found TPM first. As Skip watched what began to happen in her, he decided to pursue it himself. And as the Holy Spirit began revealing truth in the places where false belief had taken hold, something extraordinary happened in their marriage.
Here’s how Skip describes himself now: “I am now more tenderly present, more willing to connect deeply, and more trusting in God to protect me.”
I couldn’t have planned a more fitting ending to the evening: the man who invited me to speak, whose own transformation was the closing story, sitting right there in the room to hear it.
What Skip Has Always Known
Skip has watched both of these ministries long enough to see what they share at the core. Here is how he describes it:
“I have long believed that TPM is a great complementary tool with the Twelve Steps. I am grateful that Barb was able to provide an overview of TPM and indeed, of Serenity Retreat, in order to raise awareness of the tool and the ministry in the Celebrate Recovery community.”
And then he said this — and I think it’s the clearest summary I’ve heard of what both of these ministries are really after:
“Both ministries are committed to digging deeply, exposing lies and inviting the only One Who can bring Truth, the Holy Spirit. I look forward to further exploring opportunities for these ministries to collaborate in God’s effort to liberate and transform His people.”
Liberate and transform His people. That’s the goal. Not of TPM alone. Not of CR alone. That’s the goal of the Kingdom — and God, in His kindness, uses more than one path to get us there.
Could This Be for You?
If you’re part of a Celebrate Recovery community — or any recovery ministry — and something in this post has stirred something in you, I want you to know there’s a next step available.
A TPM prayer session isn’t counseling. It isn’t a program. It’s simply a structured space to bring what you’ve been carrying to the Lord and let Him speak into it. Our prayer ministers at Serenity Retreat would love to walk alongside you.
And if you’re new here and wondering whether any of this is for you — you don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to be willing to let God into one room.
We go where we’re invited. If you’d like Serenity Retreat to come and share about TPM with your organization or ministry community — just like we did with Celebrate Recovery — we’d love that conversation.
Schedule a prayer session — https://serenityretreat.com/book/
Learn more about TPM — https://serenityretreat.com/training/tpm101/
Invite us to speak — [email protected]
