Step 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
My son, my son, why are you striving
You can’t add one thing to what’s been done for you
I did it all while I was dying
Rest in your faith, my peace will come to you
– Keith Green
Here’s where you give up and find out that was what you were supposed to do all along. The thing you were trying so hard to avoid was the thing that would take you to where you want to be. At the bottom of the pit of failure is the doorway to grace and peace.
Spiritual growth runs counter to human nature. That’s why it takes so long for us to come to what should be a simple conclusion: We don’t have what it takes for life without God. But we want to be adequate. We want to solve the riddle. We want to scale heights. We want to achieve. All well and good, except that we cannot.
Hope is disguised in the failure. Access to God is through the basement. Around here we call this the new covenant — everything from God and nothing from us. It’s just that “nothing from us” part that gives us trouble. We often have to try everything before we come to nothing.
About now some of you may be thinking, “Aren’t we kidding ourselves that the AA Twelve Steps could apply to those of us who are not alcoholics? Aren’t the twelve steps for those who have hit bottom — whose lives and relationships are in shambles and they can barely get themselves in the door for the meeting?” Well, I don’t think that describes everybody at an AA meeting, because you don’t have to hit bottom to know you’re a failure. Actually, the next step, Step 4, should apply here. Who, after taking a complete moral inventory of their life, is going to come off looking like they can skip that step? Me, I’m not looking forward to finding out what Step 4 is going to show me — the denials, the excuses, the rationalizations, the procrastinations, the sins, the cover-up, etc.. We’ve all got enough garbage to qualify for waste management.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Right now, I want us to all know that we can trust God with our lives. Stop trying to do it yourself and turn your will and your life over to God — even God as we understand Him — because we are coming to understand Him more every day.
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