Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Change begins with an admission of the fact that we are powerless to change ourselves. Nothing truly positive can happen in our lives until we admit our powerlessness to produce it. There is no solution in this step, just a reorienting of ones approach to life, and it usually begins with something cataclysmic — something big enough to get our attention. (After that, though, it becomes a part of us — but that will come later.)
This step is a celebration of weakness and failure. It is very rarely realized and very much against our natural bent. This is why we need a whole step to get it down, because it is so hard to do.
This is also something we can’t just understand conceptually, we have to experience it in some way. We have to fail, or lose, or fall, or sin, or be humiliated in some real way.
I have a song with the chorus:
All fall down, pieces on the ground
All fall down, pieces on the ground
That’s it. That’s all. We don’t go anywhere next. It’s a celebration. It’s a whole step. It’s the only way our lives can be reoriented properly to ourselves, to others, and mostly, to God. You can’t manufacture any of this; you can only realize it when it is happening and embrace it for what it is: your downfall. It’s a joyous occasion because God’s hand is all over it.
Some call it brokenness. Many think it’s the end when it’s just the beginning.
Paul puts it this way: “Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves…” (2 Corinthians 3:5). Nothing from us. God does not need our good works. He does not need our efforts on His behalf. Our religion is useless. As Jesus once said, “You cannot make one hair on your head white or black.”
For further thought and/or discussion:
Why do you think this is so hard to embrace?
Is there any failure, loss or sin in your life you can cerebrate?
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