Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable. Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable? Can He now take them all, everyone? If we still cling to something we will not let go, we ask God to help us be willing.
A.A. Big Book, p. 76
When we tried to clean ourselves up with our own power and “discipline” we kept ourselves agitated, confused, in denial, and worn out, and we were in almost constant emotional pain. We were like the man who tore the scab off his arm every morning to see if his wound had healed.
But it was in doing the sixth Step that I saw why I had become so exhausted. I’d been trying to do God’s part in the spiritual growth and healing process. In the program I was told that my part was “being entirely ready”, being ready to let God be the controller and life-changer of myself and others. When I did that, my sponsor said, I would see how God’s power is released to flow through our lives to clean them only when we quit trying to control the how and when he is to use that power… At first this sounded like a call to complacency – until I got into Step Seven. This attitude of readiness to let God reach into our lives and uncover and remove the things that make us spiritually and emotionally sick is paradoxically the doorway to active and effective change of specific lifelong habits and sins. But it means turning loose of our control-even of our healing.
A Hunger for Healing, p. 112-113
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