twelve steps

The devotions these last few days (from the psalms) have reminded me of the desperate struggle we often find ourselves in, and our desperate need for God’s help. As Gary Haugen reminded me at the Leadership Summit last week, our daily disciplines (Bible reading, prayer) need to become daily desperations, where we cannot help but seek and rely on God’s help. This made me think of the 12 Steps of A.A. Read them over, and substitute your own need/struggle in place of alcohol, if that is not your particular concern. Then consider how following these steps might be important for you.

Twelve Steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Any comments? Do these steps seem helpful to you? Do they seem to parallel what the Bible says we ought to do?