Your First Step to Celebrate Recovery: How God Can Heal Your Life

You’ve undoubtedly heard the expression “time heals all wounds.” Unfortunately, it isn’t true. As many pastors and counselors know, people still carry hurts from thirty or forty years ago. The truth is, time often makes things worse. Wounds that are left untended fester and spread infection throughout your entire body. Time only extends the pain if the problem isn’t dealt with.

Your First Step to Celebrate Recovery introduces you to a biblical and balanced program that has helped nearly a million people overcome their hurts, hang-ups, and habits. Based on the actual words of Jesus found in the Sermon on the Mount rather than psychological theory, the Celebrate Recovery program has helped people for over 20 years to grow toward full Christ-like maturity.

Author and founder John Baker tells the true story of how Celebrate Recovery became one of the largest Christ-centered recovery programs in history. Baker will help you discover how God’s love, truth, grace and forgiveness can bring healing into your life.

John Baker is the founder of Celebrate Recovery®, a ministry started at Saddleback Church. It is estimated that over the last 25 years more than 3.5 million people have gone through this Christ-centered recovery program. There are currently over 27,000 churches that have weekly Celebrate Recovery meetings.

John has been on staff since Celebrate Recovery started. He has served as the Pastor of Membership, the Pastor of Ministries, and is currently the Pastor of Saddleback Church’s Signature Ministries. He is also serving as one of the nine Elder Pastors at Saddleback. John is a nationally known speaker and trainer in helping churches start Celebrate Recovery ministries.

John’s writing accomplishments include Celebrate Recovery’s The Journey Begins Curriculum, Life’s Healing Choices, the Celebrate Recovery Study Bible (general editor), and The Landing and Celebration Place (coauthor). John’s newest books are Your First Step to Celebrate Recovery and The Celebrate Recovery Devotional (coauthor).

John and his wife Cheryl, the cofounder of Celebrate Recovery, have been married for more than four decades and have served together in Celebrate Recovery since the beginning. They have two adult children, Laura and Johnny, and five grandchildren.