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bluidkiti · 08-14-2013, 11:34 AM

STEP 3

I humbly offered myself to God, as I then understood Him, to do with me as He would. I placed myself unreservedly under His care and direction. I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing; that without Him I was lost. (Bill’s Story, 13: 2)

Heard in a meeting: “The problem is Me! The solution is Beyond Me! And the program of action is Let It!”
"Is the stone heavy? Put it down and rest."

The central affirmative action in Step 3 is a decision. We become willing to take action to do something different. We stop exhausting ourselves as if we were in charge of making things happen in this world. We loosen our grip on our fearful sense of self. We were never meant to do it alone.
We are asked to turn our will and lives over to the care of what we do not understand. Yet we may define our own conception of this power, as we may for our own understandings of other spiritual expressions and spiritual terms. (47: 1) By working Step 3 we are allowing an unsuspected inner resource (567-568) to care for us, not control us or conduct our lives for us. We are not giving anything away; we are not struggling to become something we are not. We are learning to cooperate with what we always were. We are complete and whole as we are; the stuff we mixed in was to survive.
We may discover that we are very sure what God is not for us, but not what God is, and that is fine. Working Step 3 will help us discover what works best for us. We are aligning ourselves with a Spirit of the Universe (46: 2) – one with our own best and highest nature. Spirituality is our tool based on personal experience, which gets better the more we experiment with it and use it. Step 3 reflects a spiritual progression through practice from hope to faith to trust. We begin to experience the distinction between self-sufficiency and “God-sufficiency.” (52: 4-53: 0) The decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of a higher power of our own understanding is one we may make each day, one day at a time.
The authors of the Big Book call Step 3 the keystone (62: 3) to the wonderfully effective spiritual structure (47: 2) of a spiritual awakening that is being built by the discipline of the practice of the 12 Steps within the fellowship. How do we work Step 3? We do it by working Steps 4 – 12.

http://www.stepsbybigbook.net/

08-14-2013, 11:34 AM	#12
bluidkiti Administrator Join Date: Aug 2013 Posts: 70,587	STEP 3 I humbly offered myself to God, as I then understood Him, to do with me as He would. I placed myself unreservedly under His care and direction. I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing; that without Him I was lost. (Bill’s Story, 13: 2) Heard in a meeting: “The problem is Me! The solution is Beyond Me! And the program of action is Let It!” "Is the stone heavy? Put it down and rest." The central affirmative action in Step 3 is a decision. We become willing to take action to do something different. We stop exhausting ourselves as if we were in charge of making things happen in this world. We loosen our grip on our fearful sense of self. We were never meant to do it alone. We are asked to turn our will and lives over to the care of what we do not understand. Yet we may define our own conception of this power, as we may for our own understandings of other spiritual expressions and spiritual terms. (47: 1) By working Step 3 we are allowing an unsuspected inner resource (567-568) to care for us, not control us or conduct our lives for us. We are not giving anything away; we are not struggling to become something we are not. We are learning to cooperate with what we always were. We are complete and whole as we are; the stuff we mixed in was to survive. We may discover that we are very sure what God is not for us, but not what God is, and that is fine. Working Step 3 will help us discover what works best for us. We are aligning ourselves with a Spirit of the Universe (46: 2) – one with our own best and highest nature. Spirituality is our tool based on personal experience, which gets better the more we experiment with it and use it. Step 3 reflects a spiritual progression through practice from hope to faith to trust. We begin to experience the distinction between self-sufficiency and “God-sufficiency.” (52: 4-53: 0) The decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of a higher power of our own understanding is one we may make each day, one day at a time. The authors of the Big Book call Step 3 the keystone (62: 3) to the wonderfully effective spiritual structure (47: 2) of a spiritual awakening that is being built by the discipline of the practice of the 12 Steps within the fellowship. How do we work Step 3? We do it by working Steps 4 – 12. http://www.stepsbybigbook.net/ __________________ "No matter what you have done up to this moment, you get 24 brand-new hours to spend every single day." --Brian Tracy AA gives us an opportunity to recreate ourselves, with God's help, one day at a time. --Rufus K. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. --Franklin D. Roosevelt We stay sober and clean together - one day at a time! God says that each of us is worth loving.