"And the people began to go astray after the daughters of Moab"—Numbers 25:1.

The name of this week's Torah reading, Balak, refers to the name of the Moabite king who reigned prior to the Israelites' entry into the Land of Israel. Daunted by the divine protection enjoyed by the nation of Israel, Balak sought the advice of the wicked prophet, Balaam, to aid him in devising a plan to thwart Israel. After several unsuccessful attempts to curse the Israelites, Balaam told Balak, "Come, I will advise you..." (Numbers 24:14). Our sages explain that Balaam advised Balak that no strategy would be effective against the Israelites so long as they were connected to G‑d, but that if one could lure them to turn away from G‑d, then they would become vulnerable to their enemies.

Balak and Balaam thus devised an elaborate scheme which called for the Moabite and Midianite women to entice the Israelites. They successfully seduced many Israelite men and even led them to worship idols. They thereby separated themselves from G‑d and forfeited their divine protection as Balaam had predicted. It seems that Balaam knew what many of us have learned in recovery—that it is the pursuit of gratifying our most basic instincts that disrupts our natural connectedness with G‑d.

Whenever we choose to selfishly pursue any kind of instinctive drive, we separate ourselves from G‑dIt is particularly interesting that Balaam specifically chose this specific form of gratification as the lure. It is a desire and instinct that draws us into self-will and away from the will of G‑d; no instinct is more powerful or more deeply rooted than our physical, emotional, and mental drive for sexual gratification. This drive touches upon almost everything that is dear to our ego—self-esteem, the desire to be accepted, emotional security and so on.

But one ought not derive a puritanical message from this story—that intercourse is evil and provokes divine wrath. To do so would be to miss the point entirely. The point is that whenever we choose to selfishly pursue any kind of instinctive drive, we separate ourselves from G‑d. The sex urge, as it were, just happens to be one of those things – or perhaps the thing – that exemplifies the potential of our own will to disrupt order and harmony in our lives. Recovery helps us to subordinate our instincts to G‑d's will and allow them to take their proper place in our lives.

Giving our life and our will over to the care of G‑d, as our program suggests, can be frightening. We worry that perhaps G‑d won't take care of us exactly as we would like Him to. In building our case for self-will, we may even point to all the problems we have even in sobriety. Many of us may even argue that G‑d has at one time or another 'turned His back' on us.

But our reading this week tells us that precisely the opposite is true. If we find that G‑d is absent from our lives, we should ask ourselves where it was that we turned our back on Him and not the other way around. Did we make a decision somewhere along the line to take care of ourselves rather than to let G‑d do the job? Did we feel that if we left things up to G‑d, He wouldn't do exactly what we wanted? If we look honestly at ourselves and the choices we have made, we will see that it is we who rashly chose to part ways with Him if only to be free for a while to run after more of what we want.

Fortunately, however, it is our very problem that holds for us a solution. Nothing but our own will can upset the natural state of G‑d's constant care for us and it is the surrender of our will to His that restores the natural order, allowing G‑d to determine what is best for us so that we may always receive the help and care that we need.