Step Three

Step Three:  "We made a decision to turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God".

"Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship" (Romans 12:1).

Turning our lives and wills over to the care of God means meeting God on his terms--not ours.  "Jesus doesn't beat us until we give up.  On the contrary, he took the punishment that we deserve.  Out of his undying love, he woos us to himself.  As Jesus humbles himself before us and washes our feet, he breaks our pride.  Through his acts of mcercy, he crushes our hard hearts and fills them with his love and compassion.  Once this happens, at the very core of our being, our abandoned shame base starts to heal." (Don Williams, Jesus and Addiction).  Jesus doesn't beat us into submission--he loves us into submission!  The Gospel IS NOT the frightening news that God is angry and that he is going to hurt us if we don't straighten up.  The Gospel IS the very good news that God loves us and that He has already made a way for us to be reconciled with Himself through the sacrifical death and victorious resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Step Three involves a conscious and heart-felt decision to trust God.

Don Williams writes, "I must confess that as a Church addict, becoming detached requires a lot of grace.  At times God has had to separate me physically from the Church--once when I resigned and once when I was fired.  At other times, he has worked on me through the Spirit by wedding my heart to himself in new ways, freeing me to love him once again.  Whatever the means, we must be separated from our addictive attachment to the Church so we can really love and care for the Christian community in freedom rather than with compulsion. . . . As the attachment to our addictions is broken, we will be free to deal healthily with the things that have bound us, including the Church."