The Twelve Steps:
A Guide for Living Faithfully
This is the sixth in a series of
short essays by members of
the Faith Partners ministry at
House of Hope on the Twelve
Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous,
how they serve as the
basis for recovery from many addictions, and their
application to people of faith.
The Sixth Step of Alcoholics Anonymous Is: "We
were entirely ready to have God remove all these
defects of character"
“Without Me, you can do nothing." —John 15:5
It is striking that this step does not require us to
remove our defects of character. This is probably a
recognition of the fact that our own willpower, strength
and determination would be insufficient. We must look
to God to accomplish this task.
The step does, however, require that we be "entirely
ready" for God. This is not as easy as it may seem. For
many of us, our character defects are familiar, comforting—
they are so much a part of us that we don't want to
let some of them go.
The key here is willingness. We must be open to allow
God's grace into our hearts and minds to clean house.
And to become willing, we must do some preliminary
work, through prayer and conversations with God.
If pride, self-centeredness, and arrogance are our
character defects, we counter by acknowledging God's
generosity for all the blessings he has given us and
telling Him how grateful we are to Him for those blessings.
And we continue to express our gratitude to Him
on a daily basis.
If we are bedeviled by resentments, we ask God's
blessings on those we resent—even if at first we don't
mean it. We act as if we mean it (God knows we are trying,
at least) and keep on asking until we do mean it.
And then we continue to call on God for His blessings
on them.
If fear is our shortcoming, we ask God for the gift of
trust, that we become fully aware of His love for us and
His assurnce that all will ultimately be well.
We continue to do this preliminary work for these
and all our character defects by conversing with God.
After a while, as the spirit of gratitude, forgiveness and
trust grows within us, we find that we have indeed
become willing to allow God into our hearts to wrap up
all our character defects and take them away.
Larry Koll, Co-chair
House of Hope Faith Partners Ministry
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