Step Eleven

[bluidkiti]

About Step 11

"As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day 'Thy will be done.' We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity or foolish decisions. We become much more efficient. We do not tire as easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves." [Anonymous, Big Book, AA World Services, 1939]

"Those of us who have come to make regular use of prayer would no more do without it than we would refuse air, food or sunshine. And for the same reason. When we refuse air, light, or food, the body suffers. And when we turn away from meditation and prayer, we likewise deprive our minds, our emotions, and our intuitions of vitally needed support. As the body can fail its purpose for lack of nourishment, so can the soul." [Anonymous, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, A.A. World Services]

"A daily regimen of prayer and meditation makes it clear that relief from pain of the past is just a day-to-day reprieve - we must relentlessly pursue recovery on a daily basis. . . Spiritual growth and development occur slowly and only through discipline. The best example of the discipline of prayer is that of Jesus as He prayed frequently to know His Father's will. In the Lord's Prayer, the singularly most important element is 'Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven' " [Anonymous, The Twelve Steps for Christians, RPI Publications
Step 11: Related Biblical Themes

Step 11 makes it very clear that even when we have gotten this far - which may sometimes feel like a lifetime away from Step One - it is still possible to improve our relationship with God. We are not done yet. We have not been transformed into some kind of grand spiritual master. No dazzling enlightenment has eliminated our need for further spiritual growth. Step Eleven makes it clear that the Twelve Steps are just the beginning of the spiritual life. You can work on Step Eleven for a lifetime! Call it discipleship if you find that language to be more comfortable but the words are not the important thing here. Step Eleven encourages us to use the spiritual disciplines of prayer and meditation to seek improvement in our relationship with God.

* Prayer Many of us prayed a lot when we were acting out our addictions. Those prayers didn't seem to be very helpful. Of course, as we look back on them, our prayers may now seem a little strange. I remember one person telling me that they prayed desperately that God would deliver them from alcoholism so that they could continue to drink! That illustrates well the problem many of us have had with prayer. We have used prayer as a way to manipulate God into doing what we want. Many of us are indebted to the Twelve Steps for teaching us an entirely new approach to prayer.

If your experience with prayer has focused largely on petitionary prayer (making requests of God) then you probably were taught to pray like this: make a list of the concerns you have, the people you care about, what they need, what needs to be done, and then bring this list to God's attention and request that God be actively involved in responding to the list you have made. The pattern is: I control the agenda, God responds to my agenda. This is very different from the kind of prayer encouraged in this Step. Notice that the prayer encouraged in Step Eleven is specifically limited to asking for the knowledge of God's will and the power to carry out it out. This completely reverses the pattern: God controls the agenda, I ask for the power to be involved in carrying out God's agenda. The problem with typical approaches to petitionary prayer is that they assume that we are wise enough to come up with an agenda for God to carry out. This reverses appropriate roles - and it is very dangerous for people already susceptible to grandiosity! The purpose of prayer in Step Eleven is to help us remember that God is God and that God's agenda is worth seeking and following.

* Meditation Meditation is not some New Age spiritual practice recently invented in a hot tub in California. It is a spiritual discipline with a very long and rich history in the Christian and Jewish tradition (see for example: Psalm 1:1-2, Psalm 63:6, Psalm 19:14). It is important to remember that the work we have done (and are doing) in Step Ten provides the context in which we do Step Eleven. Meditation is not some exercise in metaphysical speculation - it is in the context of continuing to take inventory, doing confession and making amends that we seek conscious contact with God. We seek contact with God as we do the hard work of recovery. The specific meditative practices that work for each of us may vary widely. For some of us just the discipline of being quiet and listening can bring great gains. Life can be full of distractions, meditation helps us to pay attention. Others find it helpful to have a specific focus for meditation - a text of Scripture, an image of God, a saying of Jesus. Still others find it helpful to make room for creative exercises that engage our imagination as part of meditation - like putting ourselves into the story of the prodigal son and thinking, feeling, seeing the Father approach us.

It is probably worth emphasizing that the practice of meditation is not just an attempt to listen to our "inner voices." Expect your inner voice to say things like "this would be easier if we had an occasional drink." Not very helpful! The whole point of this kind of meditation is to refocus the center of our lives outside of our grandiose egos. Meditation is not just to help us get in touch with ourselves. It is to help us get in touch with God and with his will for our lives.

* Conscious contact The expression "conscious contact" may need some explanation. Many of us can look back on our relationship with God and see the effect of many unconscious factors. Suppose, for example, that we believe God to be a loving and kind God but, in spite of this conviction about the character of God, we find ourselves experiencing fear when we are aware of God's presence. This disconnection between our convictions about God and our experience of God can be very confusing and distressing. Almost certainly there are unconscious dynamics involved. It is possible, for example, that even though we believe God to be loving, we nevertheless respond to God based on our experiences with other authority figures in our lives. Part of the goal of Step Eleven is to sort out these unconscious connections and to build a new fully conscious relationship with God that is untainted by the trauma we may have experienced in other relationships.
http://www.christianrecovery.com/tfr/dox/stepeleven.htm

[bluidkiti]

Step 11- Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as revealed in the Bible, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

James 4:8a (NLT) Draw close to God, and God will draw close to you.

Step Eleven is an “action” step. It is asking us to do two disciplines, to pray and to meditate. Now when I first read this step, I was really concerned about praying only for the knowledge of His will. But as I meditated (no pun intended) on this step, it began to come alive for me.

One of the main goals of the Twelve Steps is to move us away from playing God - and instead allowing God to be God in our lives. We do this by becoming aware of walls between us and God in Steps 1-9; now in Step 11, we are going to draw closer to God through prayer and meditation.

For the past three years, I have helped out a man who has been mostly homeless and without a job. I prayed and prayed for “Kenny.” God get him a job, God do this, God do that. Now here is the radical truth for me, which I finally realized: When God did not answer my prayers about Kenny as I wanted Him to, I then “played God.” I took matters into my own hands. He would come by the office needing money, and I would give it to him. But about six months ago, I decided that perhaps it was not my place to just keep giving Kenny money. His promises to me of a job never panned out. So, I simply said, "ok God, you take him." Just two days ago, Kenny called me to tell me that he finally got a job! Well, I was hampering God’s will by “playing God.” As long as I gave Kenny money, he did not need to look very hard for a job. In the term I hear often from members of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), I was "enabling" Kenny to not work. Once I got out of God’s way, He could work.

I believe that often times when prayers are not answered to our liking or in our time frame, we tend to answer them ourselves. This step, in telling us to pray only for the knowledge of God’s will, removes me out of the danger zone of wanting to push God aside. It puts me in the role that I need to live out -- the role of God’s child, rather than God Himself.

Is it okay to pray for people and other matters? Of course it is okay! Jesus prayed, in the verse below, for the suffering of the cross to be removed from Him. BUT notice He states, "YOUR will, not mine."

Luke 22:42 (NLT) Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will, not mine.

Below are four reasons to pray:

The first and most obvious reason to pray is God's command that we do so. Prayer is an act of obedience, on our part, toward God.

Matthew 26:41 (NIV) Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.

Matthew 6:6 (NIV) But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Notice Jesus did not say "if you pray" or "when you feel like praying." He said "when you pray;" He expects us to pray.

Secondly, God knows everything, yet His general will allows for flexibility in our involvement in carrying out His work. For example, while He may have chosen me to play a role in leading someone to Christ, He allows me to make the choice of accepting or turning down the opportunity. If I choose not to, then I lose the blessing of being a part of God's plan, but this person will still be saved. Someone else will be part of the process, in my place. God wants us to be participants in His plans, not just observers.

Ephesians 1:3-5 (LB) How we praise God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every blessing in heaven because we belong to Christ.

Long ago, even before He made the world, God chose us to be His very own, through what Christ would do for us. He decided then, to make us holy in His eyes, without a single fault-we who stand before Him covered with His love. His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into His own family, by sending Jesus Christ to die for us. And He did this because He wanted to! Even before the beginning of time, God started dealing with us. What an awesome fact to grasp! He has a plan for His children, and we can be a part of it via our prayers.

Thirdly, prayer is an act of submission, on our part, to God. We are not submissive by nature. Many men that I speak with have trouble getting down on their knees and praying to God, because they don't feel in control, or somehow believe it is unmanly. But submission to God is a key to the Christian life and fulfilling His perfect plans for us.

Finally, prayer is about our communion and fellowship with God. Through prayer, we grow closer to Him and become more concerned about seeking His will, than about receiving our answers.

1 John 1:3-4 (NIV) We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.

Acts 2:42 (NIV) They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

The second part of Step 11 is to meditate. Praying is us talking to God, while meditation is us trying to listen to God. We simply ask God for His will; then we are to be quiet, to be still and to listen. This is a very tough discipline that takes a great amount of time, to fully conquer the distractions in our lives, in order to be still.

I recommend reading a passage in the Bible or a short devotional, and then praying to God for the meaning of this for your life and how it is in His will. There are real misunderstandings regarding meditation. We too often think we must produce something during meditation, which is not necessarily so. Meditation is the time we take -- blank time -- to rest our heads and hearts in quietness, so that during the rest of the day, we are more efficient and effective in hearing the Lord and doing His will. God does not have to "speak" to us during meditation in order for meditation to be effective. Rest. That's the key.

Now, don’t beat yourself up, and don’t go and try to pray and meditate for an hour, the first time. Start by trying just five minutes; then work up to more time. I find that writing my prayers out keeps me from being distracted. I also have found that having a quiet place, and praying at the same time each day, keep me in touch with God. Whatever works for you, then do it.

Father, help us in our prayers to You, not only to talk to You, but to listen to Your will for us. Give us the strength and courage not to do Your part, but rather help us to understand our roles in life. Your will be done. In Christ’s name, Amen.
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/wolfpa...2Steps-11.html

[bluidkiti]

11. Sought through prayer and meditation on God's word to increase our Fellowship with Him, praying continually for the knowledge of His will for us and the power of His might to accomplish it.
My son, pay attention to what I say; listen closely to my words. Do not let them out of your sight; keep them within your heart; for they are life to those who find them and health to a man's whole body. (Prov 4:20–22) Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. (Math 7:7,8) Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. (1 The 5:16-18)

Study: Eph 3:14-19; Psl 1:1-3; Psl 40:8,119:10-11, 143:10; Math 12:50; Math 6:5-13, 7:7-8; John 16:23-24; Acts 1:14, 4:29-31; 2 Cor 10:4-5; Math 18:18-20; Eph 6:18; Math 26:41; 1 The 5:16-18.
http://www.alcoholicsforchrist.com/sa.htm