The Powerful, but Under-Achieving Pray Posture of Step 11

My Christian friends sometimes question the completeness of the eleventh step. “My grandmother has cancer! Does the eleventh step prevent me from praying for her?” No. It doesn’t. Pray away for grandma!

The eleventh step is quite specific; it is not intended to limit our prayers. It suggests (for the purpose of our recovery journey) that we keep two objectives in mind:

1. One goal is to improve our conscious contact with God (as we understand him).

2. We pray ONLY for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

I have discovered that this step appears fairly straight forward until I try to practice it every single day of my life.

My first stumbling block with the 11th Step came from a total lack of understanding about prayer as a practice that is not trying to get God’s attention, meet my demands or mitigate my disasters. Or pray from grandma. Somewhere stuffed in the back of a closet is a box full of prayer notebooks from my early, pre-recovery days as a baby Christian. They are filled with requests and bargains and pleas and demands.

Between my multiple meetings a week at church, worship, Sunday School, small group and missionary work, I really didn’t have much time to think, much less sit. But I sure found time to ask. The Eleventh Step was a relief. I could give up and give in to this nagging knowing that haunted me during my brief moments when I was not performing for Jesus. I could keep it simple. God was NOT waiting on me to get up at 4 a.m. every day to tell him what to do with his time. And as I worked my program I had less need for desperate bargains for God to get me out of my messes.

Have you also wondered about the purpose of prayer?

Have you wondered what God does with all our pleas?

Again, stay tuned. I cannot answer those questions, but I can suggest some ways to shift our own prayer life!