STEP 6
Willingness
“Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.”
At this point, clients admit they are ready to allow their higher power to take away the wrongs they admitted in step 4. The spiritual principle behind this step is willingness.
A SOZO Client’s Point of View:
“Both my counselor and A.A. sponsor told me that step six was where I was supposed to get ready to ask God to remove my defects of character. Never before had I ever been challenged to “get ready” to ask God for anything. With my sponsor’s help, I was able to go through my 4th and 5th steps and pull out all those personality and behavior traits of mine that in the past were pretty undesirable, if not downright terrible. Here was my chance to ask God to remove these things. I found that I needed to read, and re-read my bible and A.A. literature to better understand what went into “getting ready”. This was the place where I understood, for the first time in my life, what the idea of God’s will for me was. Before this, I never realized that God might have a will for me. A plan for me. A love for me. I found that asking God to remake my personality, my mindset, my view of everything in the world is truly a life-changing event. It’s a huge challenge never before attempted. For me to approach God with this request, I knew that I had to change dramatically. But, how to change? And, change what? And, then I heard in an A.A. step meeting on step 6, “humility is the key to willingness”. That was it. I had never understood humility. I never realized that to become humble is to become teachable. After about a month of praying about it, I became a lot more humble than I had ever been and was now “ready”, or willing to ask God to remove my shortcomings”.
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.