Step 3
“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over
to the care of God as we understood Him.”
Practicing Step Three is like the
opening of a door which to all appearances is still closed and locked. All we need is a key, and the decision to
swing the door open. There is only one
key, and it is called willingness. In
the first two steps we were engaged in reflection. We saw that we were powerless over alcohol,
but we also perceived that faith of some kind, if only in A.A. itself, is
possible to anyone. These conclusions did not require action; they required
only acceptance.
Like all the remaining Steps, Step
Three calls for affirmative action, for it is only by action that we can cut
away the self-will which has always blocked the entry of God. The effectiveness of the whole A.A. program
will rest upon how well and earnestly we have tried to come to “a decision to
turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”
When World War II broke out, this
spiritual principle had its first major test.
A.A.’s entered the services and were scattered all over the world. Would they be able to take discipline, stand
up under fire, and endure the monotony and misery of war? Would the kind of dependence they had learned
in A.A. carry them through? Well, it
did. They had even fewer alcoholic
lapses or emotional binges than A.A.’s safe at home did. They were just as capable of endurance and
valor as any other soldiers. Whether in
Alaska or on the Salerno beachhead, their dependence upon a Higher Power
worked. And far from being a weakness,
this dependence was their chief source of strength.
It is when we try to make our will
conform to God’s that we begin to use it rightly. To all of us, this was a most wonderful
revelation. Our whole trouble had been the misuse of will power. We had tried to bombard our problems with it
instead of attempting to bring it into agreement with God’s intention for us.
To make this increasingly possible is
the purpose of A.A.’s Twelve Steps, and Step Three opens the door.
Once we have come into agreement
with these ideas, it is really easy to begin the practice of Step Three. In all times of emotional disturbance or
indecision, we can pause, ask for quiet, and in the stillness simply say: “God grant me the serenity to accept the
things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know
the difference. Thy will, not mine, be
done.”