STEP 12
Service
“Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”
This final step encourages people in recovery to help others in their recovery as well. It’s common for recovering clients to go on to sponsor others once they themselves have completed the 12 steps. By giving away the gift of recovery, they are better able to keep it themselves. The spiritual principles behind this step are love and service.
A SOZO Client’s Point of View:
“Since becoming involved with spiritual recovery at SOZO, I had always appreciated thinking of Jesus as a “servant leader”. I respected managers in business who saw their roles as being of service to those they supervised. So, the concept of service was not new to me. However, until I reached SOZO, I never thought of service as the “love of my fellow man”. It struck me that, if I had never been of any real service to others, that might suggest that I didn’t love people as Jesus would want me to love others. I thought about my life and realized that there was a huge difference in my thinking and behaviors before taking the steps and after taking them.” Thinking about my life before recovery caused a chill to come over me. It was the harsh realization of how empty my life once was.
Had I not come to know God as I now knew him, this harsh awareness might have stopped me dead in my tracks. But I had come to believe that, with Christ, all things were possible. And that meant that even I, who never really knew how to love with deep intimacy and sincerity, could learn how to open my heart to others as never before.
For years I had heard the saying, “God will not bring you to it if he can’t bring you through it.” Suddenly I saw that these 12 steps represent the means by which God will bring me through it! And practicing these principles in all my affairs and being of service to others is the fuel that keeps this spiritual engine running.
Filled with hope and anticipation, I eagerly went again to the table of contents to look at step 12.
It read: “joy of living is the theme of the twelfth step. Action is the keyword. Giving that asks no reward. Love that has no price tag. What is spiritual awakening? A new state of consciousness and being is received as a gift. Readiness to receive a gift lies in the practice of the twelve steps. The magnificent reality. Rewards of helping other alcoholics. Kinds of twelfth step work. Problems of twelfth step work. What about the practice of these principles in all our affairs? Monotony, pain, and calamity turned to good use by the practice of steps. Difficulties of practice. “two-stepping”. Switch to “twelve stepping” and demonstrations of faith. Growing spiritually is the answer to our problems. Placing spiritual growth first. Domination and overdependence. Putting our lives on a give-and-take basis. Dependence upon God necessary to recovery of alcoholics. “practicing these principles in all our affairs.”: domestic relations in A.A. outlook upon material matters changes. So do feelings about personal importance. Instincts restored to true purpose. Understanding is key to right attitudes, right action is key to good living. “
If I had to choose one single piece of recovery literature to take on a journey, it would be the above paragraph.
Of course, since coming to SOZO, I’d also like to take my bible”.
What Step 12 Actually Says
Step 12 reads: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”
The awakening comes as a result of the steps. A man does not have to arrive at Step 12 already changed. The change happens along the way, through the admission and the inventory and the amends. By the time he reaches the twelfth step, something has usually shifted in him, whether he planned it or not.
“We tried to carry this message” asks for effort. No man can make another man sober, and the step never asks him to. His job is to show up and tell the truth about what happened to him, and to leave the results in God’s hands.
“To practice these principles in all our affairs” reaches every part of his life. The honesty he learned in his inventory belongs in his marriage and on his invoices. It belongs in the talk with his boss that he has put off. Sobriety becomes a way of living the whole day.
What a Spiritual Awakening Actually Looks Like
Many men picture lightning, with a voice or a single night that divides life into before and after. A few men get that. Most get the slower kind, which the Big Book describes as an education. It comes so gradually that the man is often the last to notice. The people around him notice first, and the evidence is ordinary:
- He sleeps through the night and wakes without dread.
- He tells the truth when a lie would be easier.
- He prays because he wants to, a habit he built in Step 11.
- His family stops bracing around him. His wife finishes a sentence without checking his face first, and his kids climb on him again.
If a man has worked the steps honestly, the awakening has been happening the whole time. Step 12 gives it a name and asks him to put it to use.
Carrying the Message: Service as Medicine
This part of Step 12 surprises many men, because helping another man protects his own sobriety. When he sits with a man three days sober who is shaking and ashamed, he remembers where he came from. Gratitude becomes a fact again. Ask men with years of sobriety what carried them through their hardest stretches, and most will tell you about the men they were helping at the time.
Carrying the message rarely looks dramatic. A man makes coffee before a meeting, or he gives a ride to a man who lost his license. He answers the phone late at night and mostly listens. In time, many men become sponsors. None of it takes eloquence. The 12-step method has run on the same engine since 1935, with one man who has recovered talking honestly with one who has not yet.
In a men-only program this starts early. A man eight months into recovery shows the man on day two where everything is and what to expect, and it helps both of them. You can see that rhythm in a day at SOZO, where men further along help the men who are just arriving.
Full Circle: The Man From Step 1
The steps begin with a man admitting to another man that he is powerless over alcohol or drugs. They end with that same man across the table from someone new, hearing the same admission from the other side. He still takes his daily inventory and still calls his sponsor, and he has become the proof he once needed to see that a man can be restored. Our page on Step 1 shows where that road begins.
Questions people ask
What are the spiritual principles of step 12?
The spiritual principles behind Step 12 are love and service. A man who has worked the steps helps other men in recovery, and that help protects his own sobriety.
What does practice these principles in all our affairs mean?
The honesty a man learned in his inventory now guides his marriage and his work. Recovery becomes the way he lives every hour of the day.
What is step 12 in AA?
Step 12 is the last of the twelve steps. After a spiritual awakening, a man carries the message to men who still struggle, and many men go on to sponsor others.
Starting takes one phone call. Our admissions team listens on the first call and helps your family find the right level of care. Call SOZO Recovery Center at 501-984-5317.
PRINCIPLED RECOVERY SERIES – 12 STEPS TO SPIRITUAL AWARENESS
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) defines the 12 Steps as “a set of principles, spiritual in nature, when practiced as a way of life, that can expel the obsession to drink (or use drugs) and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole.”
The 12 steps are a process of getting honest with yourself, cleaning up the wreckage of your past, and learning how to live your life in a better, more meaningful & principled way. Based on the idea of God as each individual understands him, the 12 steps are generally spiritual in nature.
In this article series, we examine each of the 12 step principles from a SOZO client’s perspective, as they journey through the twelve steps. Through direct survey feedback, we’ll join various clients and their growing awareness of the spiritual principles behind each step in this series of articles.
Read next: 12 Step Recovery for Men: The Faith-Based Practice Behind Lasting Sobriety