How can I let go and let God lead me to sobriety?
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anonymous Asks ...
I am kind of confused . I am an alcoholic and for the first time I am really trying to get sober. I know I need to let go and let god but if I let go I always just end up drinking and if I struggle against it it doesn’t feel like I am letting go and letting God do His work for me. How can I trust in God to lead me and fight against the path He seems to have me walk?
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Penny Bell Says ...
Letting go and letting God is easy to say, and has become a bit of a cliche. But what does it mean to you, when you try to do it? Bringing God or a Higher Power into the equation to assist us with our struggle for sobriety is exactly that - we make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him. It's a decision that then requires follow-through.
From the point of the decision, we move to step 4, which helps us to actually do what we have decided, that is, we make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, and having done that, we take the next step in handing our life over to God, which is to admit to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs (Step 5). and so on.
The Twelve Steps are twelve steps to letting go (We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable) and letting God (came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity - or reality), and it is a process. This process does not end at step 3, but rather begins there, at the point of decision. What you have decided is to be willing to take the rest of the steps, and I congratulate you on that.
Along the way you will find yourself challenged mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually, and part of your task is to continually invite God into your situation to help you, as you have already decided to do in Step 3.
If you are in a 12-step program, you are never alone in your life's challenges as, as well as God, you have a sponsor and other 12-step participants to help you. Looking at the journey another way, you are "letting go" of yourself, which has gotten in the way of your sobriety up until now, and "letting God" lead you instead, through the Twelve Steps.
