What is handing our will over to God? (Step 3)

Before I was in recovery, I didn’t know what trusting God meant. I’d hear irritating suggestions from people such as ‘you need to have more faith’ and ‘God will give you the desires of your heart’, which seemed to dismiss my feelings and imply that I was doing something wrong. Well in some ways they were right, but what they didn’t tell me is that the root of all of this – and the serenity of 12 step programs – comes from trusting God.

I’m not sure I really knew what trust was in any case. Significant others had rarely been trustworthy in my life, and I’d not let friends in deep enough to trust them. The men I’d chosen to be romantically involved with were deeply troubled and certainly not trustworthy. I spent my whole life hiding my real self from others and depending on my own abilities for all my needs. This hadn’t got me very far, but I felt a lot safer. And as I chose not to respect myself and got hurt, my ability to trust lessened and lessened.

When I became a Christian the challenge was about believing whether or not God is there or not, and whether what it says in the Bible is true. This is important stuff, but rarely did I let the implications of what I believed affect my day to day life. OK so I started to try and not have sex with people and behave a bit nicer. However this didn’t really work as I still did these things despite my best efforts. I was a lot happier and felt I had meaning and direction in my life. But the fundamentals were not there, and my relationship with God was pretty superficial.

What changed was hitting rock bottom in a disastrous romantic relationship and coming into 12 step recovery. Finally I realised that I couldn’t go on as I was – it wasn’t getting better. I’d tried to make things right on my own steam, and failed. I became open and willing, and honest to people about the craziness in my head for the first time in my life.

When I got to step 3 I thought that I knew all about this. I knew about doing God’s will. There’s lots about it in the Bible. But in reality, I knew nothing. The starting point was making a decision to do God’s will, as the step says, and then daily praying for God’s will to be done and also the willingness to do this.

Step 3 for me is not worrying, but trusting that God will work in each part of my life and letting Him get on with it. It’s about wanting to do His will more than my own. It’s about letting go of all my hopes and dreams and instead asking God what He hopes and dreams for me. It’s about trust.

In the next couple of days, I’m gonna do some posts with some practical examples of what handing my will over to God was like for me. Before recovery, I couldn’t really comprehend what letting someone else care for me was all about. I am helped with practical examples of these kinds of abstract concepts, so I hope these will help you too.