Alcohol and Drug informational resource

Step Seven

HUMBLY ASKED HIM TO REMOVE OUR SHORTCOMINGS WHEN YOU ARE GOOD AND READY, NO, JUST WHEN READY The reading

  1. The A.A. Big Book that covers Step Seven  (page 76)
  2. Step Seven in the A.A. Twelve and Twelve (pages 70-76)

The questions

  1. What does it mean to humbly ask?
  2. What is Humility?
  3. What are Our shortcomings

The A.A. Twelve and Twelve tells us that the whole emphasis of Step Seven is on humility. We were humbled in Step One, by a more powerful foe. We were beaten into a state of reasonableness. We were powerless, our pain made us teachable. We had broken hearts and a contrite spirit. The attainment of greater humility is the foundation principle of each of A.A’s Twelve Steps. For without some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all. Nearly all A.A’s have found, too, that unless they develop much more of this precious quality than may be required just for sobriety, they still haven’t much chance of becoming truly happy .Without it, they cannot live to muchuseful purpose, or, in adversity, be able to summon the faith that can meet any emergency.

Humility was like underwear, essential, unless it shows, then it is indecent.

Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way. I might not be much, but I am all I think about each and every day.

Billy Wilson explains humility this way “As long as we placed self- first, a genuine reliance upon higher power was out of the question. That basic ingredient of all humility, a desire to seek and do God’s will, was missing.”  Humility, we discover, is not something to be resisted, but something to be accepted, even embraced. Our eyes begin to open to the immense values which have come straight out of painful ego-puncturing.

Bill W. writes ‘But the process was unbelievably painful. It was only by repeated humiliations that we were forced to learn something about humility. As time went by, we realized that there was a more effective way to achieve it. We saw we needn’t always had to be bludgeoned and beaten in humility. It could come quite as much from our voluntary reaching for it as it could from unremitting suffering. A great turning point in our lives came when we sought humility as something we really wanted, rather than something we must have.

There is no quick fix. To gain a vision of humility as the avenue to true freedom of the human spirit , to be willing to work for humility as something to be desired for it self, takes most of us a long, long, time.

When every man, women, and child  becomes your teacher, for so few the wise and so many the fool,  remaining teachable is the Seventh Step tool

Now this is not all; little children do have words given unto them many times, which confound the wise  and the learned.   Al  Ma

If at first you don’t succeed, try again on bended knees.

Humble pie is the bitter bite that gives the sweetest slice of life.

In the Third Step we humble ourselves spiritually by turning our will and our lives over to the care of God. In the Seventh step we put that decision into practice by asking God to do something specific for us: remove our defects of character. By asking God humbly to do so, we are saying, Thy will, not mine, be done in the timing and the manner of their removal.

Sometimes quickly, as in an instant; sometimes slowly, as in a life time, we have to work for it daily… For the time and tide of it, it is up to he who hung the moon (God).

The Seventh Step is applied daily, as with Step Three and Step Six. I think I see a pattern here.

TAKING THE SEVENTH STEP IS MORE THAN JUST A WALTZ ACROSS TEXAS

Ask your sponsee if he or she understands the word humility. When finished, ask them Are you now willing to ask God to remove your defects of character?

If the answer is yes, have your sponsee turn to page 76 of the A.A. Big Book and read aloud the Seventh Step prayer.

 

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

When you sponsee has recited the seventh Step prayer the Step has been taken, it’s applied daily and as such never completed.

[email protected]

Recent Posts

  •         By Bob k “Jack Alexander, Saturday Evening Post, was also one of the friends to whom Bill sent material. Of the Twelve Tradition essays, Alexander has this to say: ‘The only serious (in my view) defect is that you have treated the old Washingtonian Society too briefly; most people never heard […]

    more...

  •   A.A. has quietly acknowledged, primarily through one publication, that the early A.A. pioneers in Akron believed firmly that the answer to all their problems was in the Good Book, as they called the Bible. A.A. co-founder Dr. Bob said that all the basic ideas were taken from their study of the Good Book. And […]

    more...

  • Some people don’t know me and they don’t like me, some people get to know me and then they don’t like me, its none of my business what you think of me because you think so little of me anyway, if not in stature surely in time Now you are free to be your authentic […]

    more...

  • Happy Birthday Recovered Its all about the upholstery, the old stuffing has been replaced with the cushion of grace and a new skin that is scotch guarded with the humility of faith while the utility of the strong back to service is firmly put in place, this instead of ending up on the junk heap […]

    more...

  •   THE FICKLE FINGER OF FATE   Happiness is way over rated as it is dependent on the immediate external circumstance. I.E. I am happy because I just won the lottery, I am happy because she said yes,  I am happy because I just had purchased a new car, and just as quickly I am […]

    more...

  •     Sisyphus was a Titan that was cursed by the gods to roll a boulder everyday up the side of a mountain and at night it would roll back down to the bottom and for him to repeat the task again and again for all eternity. When the gods came to gloat at his […]

    more...

  •     Sitting at the edge of the lap pool I was appraising my physique once athletic and toned as it had boasted of  strength and  the glory of youth now reduced to a state of age and over indulgence, as it reminded me of the body of the laughing Buddha, this insight struck me […]

    more...

  •     Alcohol and drugs are equal opportunity destroyers. The disease takes no heed to your particular flavor of addiction labeling it as such is the much greater affliction. The divisions started with Bill Wilson’s “singleness of porpoise” which I believe dose not hold any water, then or now creating the indignation of the drunken […]

    more...

  •   Often times in the addiction recovery arena it is claimed that they have been saved by grace. Consider that according to Google (a thousand years hence the anthropologists will have concluded that as a society they all communed with an all knowing god named Google) that there are 140,000,000 drunks in the world. Accordingly to the […]

    more...

  •     Sisyphus was a Titan that was cursed by the gods to roll a boulder everyday up the side of a mountain and at night it would roll back down to the bottom and for him to repeat the task again and again for all eternity. When the gods came to gloat at his […]

    more...

Mission Statement

Our mission is to inform, inspire, and empower alcoholics anonymous sponsorship locally and internationally to be their very best --- both personally and spiritually.

I would like to acknowledge Hamilton B and his tireless work in the recovery community and his work "Twelve Step Sponsorship How it works" a Hazelton publication and his permission to use what ever was needed to make possible my ongoing sponsorship workshop and Step study and this website.