Alcohol & Health
Treatment
Helping Alcoholics
Medically Reviewed by Annamarie Coy, BA, ICPR, MATS
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“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over the care of God as we understood Him.”
In step 2, you learned and accepted that your life is unmanageable and you have no control over restoring sanity. The third of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) asks you to acknowledge the higher power you noted in step 2 and ask for its help.
Step 3 is about giving up the power struggle and turning your will over to a higher power. In this step, you open yourself to faith, hope, and trust and feel serenity. It’s about getting out of your own way and allowing your higher power to begin helping you.
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The third step is about making a decision about your higher power. It requires you to look at how your commitment to yourself and your spirituality can help you on your road to recovery.
Additionally, step 3 helps you understand how acting on your impulses have left a path of destruction behind you. This step allows you to see how the way you were living caused you to lose touch with your higher power. It also helps you understand and regain that connection.
In step 3 of AA’s 12 step program, you focus on learning about your higher power’s will. You turn your life over to your higher power and turn away from your own will.
One of AA participants' most powerful tools in this step is the Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr. The Serenity Prayer states:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
This prayer helps AA participants accept the serenity that comes with understanding that you cannot control other people but can control your reaction to a situation.
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In addition to the Serenity Prayer, step 3 includes a prayer of its own. The Third Step Prayer is as follows:
“God, I offer myself to Thee-
To build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt.
Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will.
Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power,
Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!”
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No. Many AA participants consider themselves agnostic or atheistic. Participants in AA are not required to accept anyone else’s definition or concept of God.
The first three steps of AA’s 12-step program focus on a higher power. Sometimes, the spiritual aspects of AA make people uncomfortable. However, it’s important to note that “higher power” doesn’t need to mean a specific god.
Some call their higher power God, while others call it “the universe,” “a force,” or simply a “higher power.” You are free to create your own idea of a higher power.
An essential part of working through step 3 is discovering the benefits of open-mindedness. You must open your mind to the possibility of a higher power. However, you must also accept that not everyone’s definition of a higher power must match your own.
Part of addiction recovery is accepting that spirituality is expansive and all-inclusive. It is also a necessary part of living a sober life.
How do you put the wisdom of step 3 into practice? Here are some tips for manifesting step 3:
There are several questions you can ask yourself that will help you work through step 3, including:
Once you have completed step 3, it’s time to move on to step 4. Step 4 dives deeper into who you are and prompts you to acknowledge your character flaws to take inventory of yourself. The purpose of step 4 is to evaluate your person to improve your relationship with yourself.
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