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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
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Big Book: |
Chapter 6, Into Action. Page 76, paragraph 2 |
|
12&12:< |
Step 7 |
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:
hu-mil-i-ty (hyue mil'i tee; often yue-) n.
1. the quality or state of being humble; modest opinion of one's own importance or rank; meekness. |
The root "hum" means earth as in humus and, humor. When the definition says that Humble means "lowly" it does not mean servile or inadequate. It means, simply, not exalted, as is the earth as opposed to heaven.
So, humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less.
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:
"If you are humble nothing can touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know who you are."
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.
Does God remove all our defects of character that we ask Him to? It seems not. Sometimes we think something
is a defect of character when it might be right for us, like a mole on our cheek. Maybe we haven't yet learned enough from our defects to really be ready to have them removed, even though we think we are.
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.
The principle of Step Seven is___________________.
| The Seventh Step Prayer |
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My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen. |