Turn your life over to your higher power by letting someone else show you the way
Step 3: We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be loyal to the one and have contempt for the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
~ Matthew 6:24, CEB
There are a bunch of different concepts we could explore in step 3. We could talk about:
Making a decision
Turning over our lives and will
The care of God
The nature of understanding God (and maybe how our evolving relationship with God impacts how we understand)
All of those seem important to me. And yet- an entirely different idea springs to mind that I’m going to write about today and I’m not entirely sure it makes sense. As I was trying to decide what to focus on this week, the verses above eventually sprang to mind (after an hour of just hoping I’d have an idea and getting nothing much done).
Well- okay- let’s be totally honest- I Googled “step 3 and bible verses” and went through dozens of results trying to find something that felt relevant to me. This verse was buried in a much larger passage in a blog post and I couldn’t really make heads or tails of what the passage or the blog post had to do with step 3. You may experience something similar reading this post- time will tell.
As I have done with steps 1 and 2, I spent some time reflecting on the essence of step 3. It seems to be something like: we’re making a conscious effort to place something other than ourselves in charge of our lives. That’s pretty complex work. It means trusting that something outside of ourselves is worthy of being in charge of our lives. It means we’re unlikely to solve our problems on our own without some guidance (looking back at steps 1 and 2). And, here’s the part that might be a stretch, I believe it means that our higher power is not only going to care for us but provide us with the path forward (remembering that our higher power is going to restore us to sanity) as a result of turning our lives over.
So what does this have to do with having two masters?
My thought is: it matters who (or what) we serve or turn our lives over to. It’s important to choose wisely or we might end up in a situation where we’re confused about who (or what) we serve. If that happens, we may end up in conflict with ourselves or others. In this example, pursuing wealth may put us at odds with God. But it’s just as easy to imagine this applying to sobriety. Perhaps we might be tempted to pursue Pleasure and Sobriety simultaneously. Those are two gods who might be tough to serve at the same time.
Or- to get even more complex- perhaps we are tempted to pursue Sobriety and God simultaneously. Is it possible that pursuing sobriety could put us at odds with God? Could it be that step 3 assumes following God (or a higher power) will ultimately lead to sobriety- but that sobriety itself should not become god. In other words- I believe the early steps lead us to believe sobriety is an outcome of doing the steps and not a higher power.
I don’t want us to overthink this. I believe the spirit of these verses reminds us that it is important, even crucial, to choose our life priorities carefully. It matters what path we’re on. And, as we think about the momentum of the 12 steps, it matters that we follow a proven path that has been walked by others who can offer us guidance on our spiritual journey.
This is the essence of the first 3 steps when taken as a whole. Our way of living has created problems we can’t ignore. We believe that change is possible (we can be restored to sanity) if we allow a higher power to guide us. And we decide to let that higher power take the wheel.
Letting our higher power take the wheel means that we do not let some other higher power take the wheel. We’re choosing one and only one higher power that can show us a proven path to provide us with focus and clarity as we try to reach our spiritual destination.
That’s what I want us to focus on today. I want us to focus on focus (whoops- used “focus” too many times) and clarity. Having two masters means confusion. It means not knowing what to prioritize or what to focus on and the consequence of that is we end up, at best, confused or, at worst, totally lost.
And that’s my question for you:
What do you think you should be focusing on in life right now given your unique spiritual journey?
Is there anyone or anything that can provide guidance to you with the path you’re on?
How might you “turn your life and will” over to the care of God?
Answering these questions is likely going to mean reaching out and asking others for support and guidance. If you can do that, you might be well on your way to practicing step 3 because you will be living as if you need a higher power to guide you by assuming that He is putting people in your life who can show you the way.
