God’s Gifts, p.249
We see that the sun never sets upon A.A.’s Fellowship; that more than three hundred and fifty thousand of us have now recovered from our malady; that we have everywhere begun to transcend the formidable barriers of race, creed, and nationality. This assurance that so many of us have been able to meet our responsibilities for sobriety and for growth and effectiveness in the troubled world where we live, will surely fill us with the deepest joy and satisfaction.
But, as a people who have nearly always learned the hard way, we shall certainly not congratulate ourselves. We shall perceive these assets to be God’s gift, which have been in part matched by an increasing willingness on our part to find and do His will for us.
Grapevine, July 1965
Reduced to its simplest form, the only true worship is to love God, and the only way to demonstrate this love is to serve your fellow man.
We in AA show the extent of our moral growth in the extent of our service to others. It is the only true spiritual experience. The flash of light that some of us experience could be only the first ray of intelligence that finally penetrated the alcoholic fog and dazzled our minds.
The true spiritual experience is evidenced by a passion to do those things which delight the spirit. By their works shall ye know them.
Published by Hazelden
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God – Centeredness
“Gradually as we become more God-centered than self-centered, our despair turns to hope.”
~ Basic Text p. 92 ~
What a glorious thing to have hope! Before coming to Narcotics Anonymous, many of us lived lives of utter hopelessness. We believed we were destined to die from our disease.
Many members speak of being on a “pink cloud” their first months in the program. We’ve stopped using, made some friends, and life looks promising. Things are going great. Then reality sets in. Life is still life—we still lose jobs, our partners still leave us, friends still die, we still get sick. Abstinence is no guarantee that life will always go our way.
When the reality of life on its own terms sets in, we turn to our Higher Power and remember that life happens the way life happens. But no matter what occurs in our recovery we need not despair, for there is always hope. That hope lies in our relationship with our Higher Power.
This relationship, as expressed by the thought in our text, develops over time: “Gradually we become more God-centered.” As we rely more and more on the strength of our Higher Power, life’s struggles don’t have to drag us into the sea of despair. As we focus more on God, we focus less on ourselves.
Just for today: I will rely on my Higher Power. I will accept that, regardless of what happens, my Higher Power will provide me with the resources to live with it.
© 1991 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services Inc
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God is not a cosmic bellboy.
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick ~
We have to laugh when we look back at the times we treated God like our servant. Who did we think we were, ordering God to do something for us? But we got away with it. God even did some of the things we asked.
Now we know that our Higher Power is not a servant. As we work the Steps, we know we don’t give orders to our Higher Power. We don’t expect God to work miracles every time we’d like one. We’re asking our Higher Power to lead us. After all, who knows what is best for us—our Higher Power or us?
Our Higher Power has many wonderful gifts for us. Our Higher Power will show us goals, help us live in love and joy, and give us strength.
Prayer for the Day
Higher Power, show me ways to help others as You’ve helped me. I’m grateful that You love me and help me.
Action for the Day
Today, I’ll make a list of times my Higher Power has helped me out of trouble.
Copyright © 1988 by Hazelden Foundation
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EGO
E.G.O. = Edge God Out
Ego can be one tough customer. It generally fights this business of recovery and a Higher Power tooth and nail. It can cry like a baby and tell us how much care it needs. It can scream like a pouting teenager demanding that we leave it alone. It can romance us like a long-lost lover seducing us into sleep.
The ego can take on many disguises to get its own way. It wants no competition for affection. When we were caught up in our disease, the ego and the drugs and alcohol met up and made an unholy alliance against us. The disease told the ego what it wanted to hear, and the ego fed the disease its poison.
My ego must be cut down to size. This will help stop my disease from doing further damage to my life. My ego will never provide serenity, only endless demand. Only my Higher Power, the Program, and my friends can end this war within me.
©1990 by Anonymous. All rights reserved. Published by Hazelden®.
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I CAN’T . . . GOD CAN . . . I THINK I’LL LET GOD
GuidanceOne of the delusions that keep alcoholics in bondage is the belief in the power of the personal will. “I still think I’m strong enough to whip it,” alcoholics have declared defiantly, just before heading out for another debacle.Willpower has a role in recovery, but only in making a decision to turn the problem over to Higher Power. This sets in motion powerful forces that come to our assistance. We don’t know how and why this process works as it does. We do know that it has worked repeatedly for those who sincerely apply it in their lives.What’s needed to start the process is an admission of defeat, a willingness to seek a Higher Power, and at least enough open-mindedness to give it all a fair chance. The outcome can be very surprising.There’s also no need to be apologetic about our Higher Power after we’ve found sobriety. Nobody had a better plan, and we can remember that other severe problems can be handled in the same way.I’ll do my best today to solve every problem and meet every responsibility. If something is too much for me, I’ll turn it over in the same way I did my drinking problem.© 1996 by Hazelden Foundation
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~ Page 76 ~
Only God Is Unchanging
“Change is the characteristic of all growth. From drinking to sobriety, from dishonesty to honesty, from conflict to serenity, from hate to love, from childish dependence to adult responsibility—all this and infinitely more represent change for the better.
“Such changes are accomplished by a belief in and a practice of sound principles in favor of good ones that work. Even good principles can sometimes be displaced by the discovery of still better ones.
“Only God is unchanging; only He has all the truth there is.”
~ LETTER, 1966 ~
© 1967 by Alcoholics Anonymous ® World Services, Inc
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AS WE UNDERSTAND HIM
My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea . . . “Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?” That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last. It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning.
–ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 12
I remember the times I looked up into the sky and reflected on who started it all, and how. When I came to A.A., an understanding of some description of the spiritual dimension became a necessary adjunct to a stable sobriety. After reading a variety of versions, including the scientific, of a great explosion, I went for simplicity and made the God of my understanding the Great Power that made the explosion possible. With the vastness of the universe under His command, He would, no doubt, be able to guide my thinking and actions if I was prepared to accept His guidance. But I could not expect help if I turned my back on that help and went my own way. I became willing to believe and I have had 26 years of stable and satisfying sobriety.
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THE GOD IDEA
When we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the Spirit of the Universe, we had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work. But the God idea did.
~ ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 52 ~
Like a blind man gradually being restored to sight, I slowly groped my way to the Third Step. Having realized that only a Power greater than myself could rescue me from the hopeless abyss I was in, I knew that this was a Power that I had to grasp, and that it would be my anchor in the midst of a sea of woes. Even though my faith at that time was minuscule, it was big enough to make me see that it was time for me to discard my reliance on my prideful ego and replace it with the steadying strength that could only come from a Power far greater than myself.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc
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GOOD ORDERLY DIRECTION
It is when we try to make our will conform with 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 willpower. 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.
~ TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 40 ~
All I have to do is look back at my past to see where my self-will has led me. I just don’t know what’s best for me and I believe my Higher Power does. G.O.D., which I define as “Good Orderly Direction,” has never let me down, but I have let myself down quite often. Using my self-will in a situation usually has the same result as forcing the wrong piece into a jigsaw puzzle—exhaustion and frustration.
Step Three opens the door to the rest of the program. When I ask God for guidance I know that whatever happens is the best possible situation, things are exactly as they are supposed to be, even if they aren’t what I want or expect. God does do for me what I cannot do for myself, if I let Him.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc
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So many times we hear people say, “Don’t preach to me about God. He has no time for the likes of me.” It is hard for us alcoholics to conceive of a God, whom we have gone out of our way to alienate, who has time for the likes of us—yet we know that he does have time for us and has demonstrated this fact in hundreds of cases, just as though He had nothing else in the world to do.
Published by Hazelden
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THE GIVER OF OUR BREAD
People think of their supply as coming from certain investments, or from a business, or from an employer, perhaps; whereas these are merely the channels through which it comes, God being the Source. A particular channel is likely to change, because change is the cosmic law for manifestation. Stagnation is really death; but as long as you realize that the Source of your supply is the one unchangeable Spirit, all is well. The fading out of one channel will be but the signal for the opening of another.
In its inner and most important meaning, our daily bread signifies the realization of the Presence of God—an actual sense that God exist not merely in a nominal way, but as the great reality; we can rely upon Him to supply all that we need to have; teach us all the we need to know; and guide our steps so that we shall not make mistakes. This is Emanuel, or God with us.
But my God shall supply all you need . . . (Phillipians 4:19).
© 1931 by Emmet Fox
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I DON’T RUN THE SHOW
When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn’t. What was our choice to be?
~ ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 53
Today my choice is God. He is everything. For this I am truly grateful. When I think I am running the show I am blocking God from my life. I pray I can remember this when I allow myself to get caught up into self. The most important thing is that today I am willing to grow along spiritual lines, and that God is everything. When I was trying to quit drinking on my own, it never worked; with God and A.A., it is working. This seems to be a simple thought for a complicated alcoholic.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc
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When we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the Spirit of the Universe, we had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work. But the God idea did.
~We Agnostics, Page 52~
This Is Not a Test“We have found a loving, personal God to whom we can turn.”
~ Basic Text p. 27 Some of us come into recovery with the impression that life’s hardships are a series of cosmic tests designed to teach us something. This belief is readily apparent when something traumatic happens and we wail, “My Higher Power is testing me!” We’re convinced that it’s a test of our recovery when someone offers us drugs, or a test of our character when faced with a situation where we could do something unprincipled without getting caught. We may even think it’s a test of our faith when we’re in great pain over a tragedy in our lives.But a loving Higher Power doesn’t test our recovery, our character, or our faith. Life just happens, and sometimes it hurts. Many of us have lost love through no fault of our own. Some of us have lost all of our material wealth. A few of us have even grieved the loss of our own children. Life can be terribly painful at times, but the pain is not inflicted on us by our Higher Power. Rather, that Power is constantly by our sides, ready to carry us if we can’t walk by ourselves. There is no harm that life can do us that the God of our understanding can’t heal.Just for today: I will have faith that my Higher Power’s will for me is good, and that I am loved. I will seek my Higher Power’s help in times of need.© 1991 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services Inc
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Page 38
Pipeline to God“I am a firm believer in both guidance and prayer. But I am fully aware, and humble enough, I hope, to see there may be nothing infallible about my guidance.“The minute I figure I have got a perfectly clear pipeline to God, I have become egotistical enough to get into real trouble. Nobody can cause more needless grief than a power-driver who thinks he has got it straight from God.”~ 2. LETTER, 1950
© 1967 by Alcoholics Anonymous ® World Services, Inc
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For a brief moment, I had needed and wanted God. There had been a humble willingness to have Him with me—and He came.
~ Bill’s Story, Page 12
TURN WITHINDon’t wait about for God to act dramatically—because He probably won’t. When people expect a dramatic miracle from the outside, they are really hoping to change conditions without changing themselves; to get something for nothing, in fact, and that would be a violation of cosmic law.
Don’t wait for God to tell you what to do from the outside—He won’t
And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ (2 Thessalonians 3:5).© 1931 by Emmet Fox
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Created in God’s image, with the breath of God in my nostrils, my body the Temple of the Holy Ghost, called by the Christ a child of God, surely, I could walk with angels if I could only live up to my heritage.Man has fallen short of his goal mostly because he has not thought he could do it. He timidly denies his own divine origin; he fails to credit the existence of God in him.He is like the man who wants to fly but not so high that he can’t keep one foot on the ground. His eyes are fixed on the skies but his feet are planted solidly on the earth.
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WHEN FAITH IS MISSINGSometimes A.A. comes harder to those who have lost or rejected faith than to those who never had any faith at all, for they think they have tried faith and found it wanting. They have tried the way of faith and the way of no faith.
~ TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 28 I was so sure God had failed me that I became ultimately defiant, though I knew better, and plunged into a final drinking binge. My faith turned bitter and that was no coincidence. Those who once had great faith hit bottom harder. It took time to rekindle my faith, though I came to A.A. I was grateful intellectually to have survived such a great fall, but my heart felt callous. Still, I stuck with the A.A. program; the alternatives were too bleak! I kept coming back and gradually my faith was resurrected.Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc
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