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Alcoholics Unity Hall Anonymous |
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Here are the steps we took: 7) Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. That is what the authors of the Big Book and millions before you did. To personalize the step for your study and action in the here and now, however, you may wish to rephrase it as: STEP SEVEN. Humbly ask God to remove your shortcomings. READING FOR STEP SEVEN
You may also wish to use our Step Seven Work Sheet. The 12 & 12 dwells on the word, "humility" to some length. Here's what the dictionary says:
The way we have come to look at humility is that it is a virtue, one of the principles that AA teaches us to live. The definition we have adopted pictures us as standing naked before God, without pretense nor reservation. It means hiding nothing, being our real selves, both good and bad. A good synonym for humility is honesty. Mother Theresa obviously knew precisely what humility means when she said:
In the context of Step 7, then, we find that our taking of Steps
4, 5, and 6 has prepared us to know much of who and what we are. It is our real
essence, then, that stands before its Creator with the prayer that its
shortcomings be removed. (The expressions exact nature of our wrongs
(step 5), defects of character (step 6), and shortcomings (step 7)
are to be used interchangeably, according to Bill Wilson.) But, just what does get removed? Does God remove defects that we don't know about? If He did, then steps 4 and 5 might be unnecessary. You have been instructed to go to a great deal of trouble to bring to the surface your defects of character. Knowing of our defects is only a precursor to becoming willing to stop hanging onto them in step six. We don't think this effort is all make-work. The Higher Power we have come to know does not intrude into our lives without invitation. He only responds to step seven prayers that are very specific. He wants us to understand which qualities of character are desirable and which are not (within the context of His scheme of things). He wants us to know ourselves well enough to know which character attributes we have and which are missing. Therefore, we believe that there is no catch-all we can invoke that just says, "clean us up". The point is that we are to ask
God to displace our own character with the character He chooses us to have. Most of us take Steps Six and Seven every day. The process of
letting go and letting God is not instantaneous. We whittle away at the old
self, often painfully, until His magnificent configuration slowly emerges.
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