Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Step 7: Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.
Willingness: the quality or state of being prepared to do something; readiness
Humility: the quality of having a modest or low view of one’s importance.
These notes are from recovery in AA and/or related 12 step programs.
Readers are encouraged to click external links for more detail.
We hope you find them helpful.
Love in fellowship.
Part of applying Steps Six and Seven to our lives, is to take a look at simple behaviors that are keeping us uncomfortable and unbalanced in our recovery.
Problems may seem minor but they point to where we’re stuck in our process of recovery. Over time, they pose risks to, rather than support of, our health and serenity. –If You Want What We Have/Joan Larkin | More…
Trying to be perfect get us into trouble.
Trying to be perfect means we’re trying to control things.
We need to practice being human.
Humans aren’t perfect.
In Steps Six and Seven, we face our human limits and our shortcomings.
We then start the lifelong job of letting them go.
To accept our human limits leads us to our Higher Power. We see how we need a guide in life. Our Higher Power makes a perfect guide. –Keep It Simple | More…
Steps six and seven ask you to surrender yourself, as a human being, to acknowledge your wonderful imperfections, and to ask God to help you improve.
Steps six and seven make use think about the different stages of surrender, when working through “The Twelve Steps” as outlined below.
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
The personal surrendering of our true self, our faults, and our weaknesses, is a significant step in building true character, personal values, and strengths. –Promises | More…
In the Sixth and Seventh Steps of the program, we become willing, to let go of our defects of character – that are blocking us from the joy that is ours.
Then we ask God to take them from us. Isn’t that simple?
We don’t have to contort ourselves to make ourselves change.
We don’t have to force change.
For once, we don’t have to “do it ourselves.”
All we have to do is strive for an attitude of willingness and humility. All we have to do is ask God for what we want and need, and then trust God to do for us that which we cannot do and do not have to do for ourselves. –The Language of Letting Go/Melody Beattie | More…
Nowhere in the Sixth or Seventh Steps does it say we can learn to control our defects of character. In fact, the more attention we focus on them, the more firmly entrenched they will become in our lives.
It takes humility to recognize that we can’t control our defects any more than we can control our addiction. We can’t remove our own defects; we can only ask a loving God to remove them. –Just For Today | More…
In Step Six, we got ready to give up our shortcomings.
In Step Seven, we ask God to remove them.
There is one catch. We humbly ask God to remove them. Being humble means we remember who we are: human beings who need God’s help. Being humble is not a weakness, but a true strength. –Keep It Simple | More…
MORNING HELPERS 