From the Realm website, here are the Step Three questions Fr. David has asked regarding surrendering our will to our higher power .

Summary points:

Step 3: Made a ________ to turn our will and our ______ over to the care of God as we understood Him.

The Son of Man has come to _______ and to save the ______.

In this step we break free of _______________ thought patterns and begin to practice the tenuous act of ________. There is no elaborate plan of__________.

“Half-________ availed us ______.” We need to make a clear-cut decision about who is in ________ from this point forward.

I. In traditional Twelve Step programs, the Third Step Prayer of AA is sometimes offered at this point in the journey: 

“God, I offer myself to Thee To build with me & 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 & Thy way of life. May I do Thy will always. Amen.”

A very similar prayer was written by Mother Siluana Vlad of blessed memory: 

” Come, O Lord, and do Yourself in me and with me what I have constantly tried to do without You or seeking to transform You into the servant of my desires that sunk me deeper in suffering and bewilderment! Come, O Lord! I give myself into Your hands that created me, and I pray to You: teach me to do Your will! I am ready to listen to You! Help my helplessness!”

II. Did you ever consider what is happening in the Divine Liturgy? We pray often, ‘Let us offer ourselves and one another and our whole life unto Christ our God— To You O Lord!’ The entire Liturgy is in fact properly understood as an offering of ourselves to God. Paradoxically, this offering culminates in our receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. If we come to Liturgy without receiving Him, it is likely because we have not come to Liturgy offering ourselves completely.

Each time we approach Holy Communion we are told, ‘In the fear of God, with faith (and love) draw near.’ Orthodox Christians traditionally prepare for this experience through a series of Pre-Communion Prayers said before the Liturgy. If we pray these with sincerity, we will find that we are affirming and re-affirming a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understand Him to be: good and loving. 

III. One of these prayers, attributed to St. John Chrysostom, and linked here, captures the spirit of Step 3.

• What are the some of the ways this prayer reflects God’s care for us?
• What does this prayer teach us about how we should approach God?
• The Third Step speaks of ‘God as we understand Him.’ How do our prayers reflect the Church’s understand of Who God is? How do we personally understand Him? Do the words of our prayers reflect our personal ideas?
• What concerns hold you back from trusting God with all your cares?

Last week we talked about what we believe about God. Have you come to believe that He can and will help you overcome the problem of sin in your life? Have you sought for Him who seeks you? Have you found the One who has found you? This week, think about the significant decisions you have made in your life. Did you consciously entrust your life and your decisions to anyone in those moments? Later this week, when you are ready and willing to make a decision for Christ, kneel down in prayer and offer Him your Third Step Prayer. You may wish to offer this prayer as part of your confession, or with someone to support you like a spouse or mentor. Even with someone listening over the phone so that you are not alone.

Each person’s prayer is their own, even if originally written by another. It might be something simple like the Lord’s Prayer, or The Jesus Prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,”) said with sincerity. The Pre-Communion Prayers of the Church also capture the essence of the Third Step and re-affirm our decision to be united with Christ. You may wish to use the Serenity Prayer, the Third Step Prayer, of Mother Siluana’s. Whatever form it takes, a true Third Step cannot be faked or forced. You have to truly make the decision. It’s between you and God. May He bless and encourage you!

—————————————————————————————— I came to this realization about a year ago. One of the things that I have suffered through is an insufferable pride, an ego that always wants to be the subject of attention from others, a desire to have all speak well of me and to admire me. I know this is a common problem for humanity, yet I never really understood how this affected my Christian life until I began to read the lives of the saints, those men and women who, through the practice of ascetic struggle, crushed their ego, and truly entered into a relationship with Christ based in humility and complete trust. I fancied myself a pretty good Christian, one who was trying to do what was right, but upon taking Step Four, I found that an honest evaluation of my life showed that every time I was in church “serving the Lord,” there was a large part of me that was looking for affirmation. It was a hard revelation for me to accept that all me “service to the Lord” had been nothing more than serving the ego needs developed from living in a dysfunctional family. As I see it, Step Three, and closely related Step Four, are about coming to recognize this and taking the steps from that point on to seek humility and complete trust in God, no matter what happens.

This surrender is an admission that life does not revolve around me and my desires/needs. That God alone is the center of my life and no longer myself. For anyone who has had a parent or parents who were cold, indifferent, abusive, or in any other manner not a good parent, it is all to easy to transfer to our loving heavenly Father those same characteristics, especially in certain denominations or sects which seem to delight in constantly warning people that A.) they are wretched sinners with whom God is not pleased and B.) because of A, God is gonna git them! This sort of religion makes trust all the more difficult. For a number of years, I sat under such preaching. It only reinforced my dysfunctional behavior, which in turn had a very negative effect upon my wife and children, one that I regret to this day.

I think that one of the most important things that a spiritual leader can do for others is to – while never excusing sin – make a broken person know that our Father is ever ready in love to forgive if we only humbly confess our failure, make amends when necessary, and seek to once again submit to Him, asking that He live His life through us. This goes to the heart of Step Three where it says “The Third Step speaks of ‘God as we understand Him.’ ” If the religion you embrace encourages an understanding of God as the next dysfunctional parent in your life, you will never get healed.¹

This is the heart of Orthodoxy, one that we sing of in the weekday Divine Liturgy when we chant, “O Son of God, wonderous in your saints . . .” It is God who is wonderous in our lives as we continually submit to Him. Like the saints, our complete surrender will allow Him to work His divine will through us, a will which in love has only our good in mind. When I read the inspiring stories of the saints, I see their whole lives as a struggle to achieve this complete submission in trust, even to the point of martyrdom if so called to it. It is a giving up of the ego driven need to control one’s own life, giving to God complete control of a life out of control, to do with as He pleases.

For a dysfunctional person, this is a terrifying step!

1. In my morning prayers I have begun asking God reveal Himself to be my true Father, to lead, guide, and direct my life as a father does for his child. I think this is a wise prayer for anyone who has suffered through a dysfunctional family with a distant, unemotional, or even abusive father. The most important thing a person from a dysfunctional family needs is to be loved and to know it. ↩︎