In turning my will and my life over to the care of God (as I understood Him) isn’t always an easy thing to do. I keep taking back control - or did I never fully give it up to begin with?
I suffer from a spiritual malady that only a spiritual experience can grant me a daily reprieve based soley on my constant effort to enlarge uppon my spiritual life. Half measures avail me nothing. I cannot get sober on yesterdays work, no more than I can get a full stomache on yesterdays meal.
At meetings, the 9th step promises usually get read: If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.
No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
That feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear.
We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
Self-seeking will slip away.
Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.
3rd ed. Big Book pg. 83 & 84
These promises are unfortunetly mistaken for promises for everyone who simply enters the room and puts down the drink. This is a fatal mistake for some, for others it is a long drawn out living hell as they wander the halls of AA meetings as if waiting in pergatory, to have sobriety rub off on them by some stoke of a miracle. The truth for all of us is that “Faith without works is dead”, meaning, you need to get together with someone who has had this experience, and have them take you through the the steps outlined in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous to have your own experience and fully see the promises come true in your life.
The worksheets were created by using the precise instructions in the Big Book to make taking the Fourth Step as easy and simple as possible. All page numbers in this Fourth Step Inventory Workshop, refer to the third edition of the book - Alcoholics Anonymous. If you are using the fourth edition — make sure you are on the correct page.
In doing the 12 stps in your life it’s extremely improtant to ask yourself specific significant questions regarding how the steps apply to you in your life and where you are meeting them today in your life. These questions will help to challenge you to get more out of your efforts and in your lif.
For those who are unwilling and just want to chill, I save my matches for them and continually remind them that alcohol will one day show them it’s insidious strength and their ultimate powerlessness. I’ve seen it happen more than I care to say, both in myself, and in the lives of other AA’s, to tune of one niter’s to 2-3 month runs the ended with death to AA’s 25, 34 and 54 years old. I cried. Every time. Because that is me dying each time.