Revisiting Step Seven

Step Seven “Humbly asked God to Remove our Shortcomings”

This step as with step six is often glossed over, and brushed past. However again as in step six, and as with all the steps, it is an integral part of the 12 step program. All the 12 steps are equally important and vital for quality, lasting recovery, which brings you to a place of Happy, Joyous and Free. That is why it a “12 Step Program.” Let me put it this way, say you go to a party or a restaurant and you have the amazing dessert, that is just fantastic, you love it. So you get the recipe, now to create this exquisite dessert that you loved so much you follow the recipe, you don’t start changing the measurements and leaving out ingredients, because if you do your result will not be anything like the dessert you fell in love with. The 12 step program is the same it is the “precise “recipe for a recovery that brings you to a place of happy joyous and free, without ever having to use ever again. That being said let us proceed with step seven. Now all the steps prepare us for the next step, as the previous steps, if taken as written have guided you to this place. A place where you have become entirely ready, and have gained some measure of humility. Now the word is humility, not humiliation, these words are a thousand miles apart in definition. Humility is basically becoming right sized, no longer are an ego maniac, and no longer thinking you the worst person on earth. It is seeing ourselves for who we have truly become without the justifications, the lies, the good and bad, the fears and failures, the triumphant and the successes. You have seen that which needs to be discarded to become all you can. It is in this attitude you ask to be relieved of the troubling aspects of your character. And if the God of your understanding is akin to the God of my understanding, there will come situations in the future where certain conditions or situations will arise where you will get uncomfortable or catch yourself going down a path that is uncomfortable. The reason for this will be although the God of your understanding has removed the shortcoming, your God has also given you the power of choice. The uncomfortable feeling is showing you that he has done as requested, now is the time for you to follow that decision with action. This is where step seven is quite close to step three, they both require faith and trust in the God of your understanding, and they also require some action on your part.



How It Works
When ready, we say something like this: "My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen." We have then completed Step Seven.
-A.A. Big Book p.76



The Seventh Step is where we make the change in our attitude which permits us, with humility as our guide, to move out from ourselves toward others and toward God. The whole emphasis of Step Seven is on humility. It is really saying to us that we ought to be willing to try humility in seeking the removal of our shortcomings just as we did when we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, and came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. If that degree of humility could enable us to find the grace by which such a deadly obsession could be banished, then there must be hope of the same result respecting any other problem we could possibly have.
- Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 76


Taking Step Seven was for many of us the greatest act of authentic humility we have ever been asked to commit: to transfer control of our recovery to God...
...according to the Twelve and Twelve, humility is a clear recognition of who we are followed by a sincere attempt to become what we could be. That is, humility is seeing ourselves as we actually are, good and bad, strong and weak, and acting authentically on those truths. This is not a naieve attitude suggesting we have in some way already "arrived." It is a sincere attempt to state the positive truth that when we face the truth of our shortcomings and the fact that we are powerless to change and begin to let God take our defects away, we have entered the pathway of humility. For the reality is, only God can take away our Sin, our deeply entrenched addictions, and our lifelong character defects. It is on this pathway, where we humbly ask God to remove all these defects of character, that the tools of recovery bring the healing, happiness, adn security we have dreamed of. But once more it is only powerlessness and pain that can force us to take the seventh Step into humility.
- A Hunger for Healing, p. 116-117


Humility is as much a part of staying clean as food and water are to staying alive. As our addiction progressed, we devoted our energy toward satisfying our material desires. All other needs were beyond our reach. We always wanted gratification of our basic desires.
...The word humble applies because we approach this Power greater than ourselves to ask for the freedom to live without the limitations of our past ways. Many of us are willing to do it without reservations, on pure blind faith, because we are sick of what we have been doing and how we are feeling. Whatever works, we go all the way.
- Narcotics Anonymous Basic Text, Chapter 4/Step 7


We need humility for three reasons:
1. So that we can recognize the severity of our character defects. One aspect of our addictions is that we tend to deny and minimize the pain they inflict. Therefore as we try to assess our character defects, we may, unless we take a very humble approach, underestimate their severity.

2. So that we can acknowledge the limits of human power in addressing these character defects. We cannot do it on our own. We cannot do it by sheer willpower. We cannot do it by our own intellect and reasoning.

3. So that we can appreciate the enormity of God's power to transform lives.

... Although Step 7 is the shortest step in terms of wording and is perhaps the least discussed in recovery groups, it is probably the most potent of the twelve. It embodies the miracle of transformation as we turn over to God our broken, defective personalities in order that He might mold them into healthy, effective instruments of His will.

- Serenity, A Companion for Twelve Step Recovery, p. 54-55

Remember God does not create garbage