The 12 steps is a spiritual journey to 12 steps is about getting to know a higher power the people who wrote the steps understood that we had selfishness as the root of our problems and because of that selfishness, we needed a spiritual answer to our disease. And so it’s more about spirituality in the certain way of living in a certain lifestyle then it’s about not using alcohol or drugs it only mentions out.
Alcohol drugs or some sort of deviant Behavior once okay, and then the other eleven steps talks about the spiritual path. So it’s not just about overcoming something. It’s about becoming a certain kind of person and one of the things that the 12 Steps assumes is that we will be connected with a higher power and actually pray to that higher power actually pray. And so the the step 7 says humbly ask him to remove
Our shortcomings now, you can call it prayer. You can call it talking you can simply say you ask him but we humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings now. I don’t believe it’s about having long fancy words, you know, I come from a religious background where where I prayed I could pray for a whole hour and I would pray Lord thou all this the greatest Sovereign most merciful god god who rules the universe reached back in the nowhere.
Grabbed ahold of nothing in throughout everything. Oh, wow. Oh my God, and when I prayed like that, it seems like I just kept on using and I just kept on being addicted actually after I went to a couple of meetings. I heard a man say that he get up in the morning and he says God help me not to drink today and that night. He said God.
Thank you, and he was able to stop drinking with that simple prayer. As a matter of fact when I think about another big big book when they asked one master to teach them how to pray and many of us still say that prayer at the end of our meetings. He said Our Father who art in heaven Hallowed be thy name a prayer that you could say in the span of about 1 minute. It was not a long prayer. It was a simple prayer and
it reached the point of what the master wanted to say. He said pray in this manner. Well here we have a way that the big book is telling us to pray. It says pray humbly pray humbly. In other words recognize that you’re approaching a power greater than yourself and pray humbly again humility to me to me means accepting the truth about yourself accepting the really real the reality and not
Ding of God to do anything, but humbly asking God to remove our shortcomings. This is a prayer. This is a step that involves prayer and involves thinking involves humility and involves us coming to our higher power. Once again asking him to remove our shortcomings. Somebody said our shortcomings are the things that we do I’m not so sure there’s just the things that we do is probably some of the things that we think I’ll
Shortcomings are some of our top Elite Character defects all so those are our shortcomings. And again by reason of the fact that I am a human being that means that I have some limitations. I have some shortcomings. I do fall short and so do you and so what we’re doing is asking our higher power again to remove our shortcomings. So in a very humble way, I think this is an action step is telling us to take the action of prayer to ask God to remove.
Of those shortcomings those things that we do that are causing us trouble and are causing other people trouble and there are really not in line with the kind of person that we want to be and that we need to be we have a purpose for our life. We have a certain way that we want to be and I believe it’s an inline for instance. Some of us have the shortcoming of let’s say just being depressed. Now, of course, some people have a chemical imbalance in some people need medication, but
But even with that some of us have a habit of just thinking in depressive ways a habit of thinking in such a way that it causes our depression to linger on and we might even like thinking that way well here we come to ask our higher power to remove our shortcomings to remove the fact that we have that habit and to help us to develop better habits as I’ll higher power to remove our shortcomings. Now one of the things about step 7 as it says that we will
Humbly as a higher power to remove our shortcomings means that we’ll leave the timing up to our higher power. And again, we’re dealing with that tension where I said, we’re in partnership with our higher power easy does it but do it I have my pot that I need to do but at the same time I’m humbly asking him to remove a shortcoming. So it’s in his timing. I’m dependent and relying upon my higher power my God to remove my shortcoming. I’m not demanding that he remove it.
Right now poof and it be gone. I can’t do that. I’m humbly asking him to remove my shortcomings and the shortcoming itself may be the thing that drags me back to him even more often that causes me to be in conversation to be in meditation to be in a place of Reliance upon the higher power. So just this prayer itself shows my Reliance upon the higher power and it’s something that I think I mean a continually do on a continual basis as we move up to other steps just pray.
And being in conversation with my higher power asking my higher power to remove my shortcoming shows that I can’t remove it and I’m relying not demanding but relying upon the higher power to do it.