Faith-Empowered Bible Verses That Can Help Support Recovery and Life Transformation
Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
James 4:10 – Recovery; Humility is the Way
10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.
When this step was titled, the word “humbly” was made very prominent. Because the group that started all of this spent much time studying the Book of James, it is not hard to imagine why. In James 4:6, we are told that God gives resistance to those who are not humble but gives grace to those who are.
Here we are invited to another piece of the equation. If we humble ourselves, He will lift us. When you look at the passages immediately preceding this, it is clear that the context is similar to the experience we have working on the steps.
Step Seven is Not Only a Humble Ask, but also a Sacred Vow, a Major Commitment!
In Step Six, we discussed the commitment we are going before the Lord with and how serious Step Seven is. Step Seven is a significant step in relating to God and a major commitment on our part. A sacred vow that we will have to keep.
This is a step of humility with the faith that God will lift us from whatever “low” or “lows” we have hit in our lives. We are going before the creator of all with a new knowledge of how far we are from who He wanted us to be. We were full of pride and distancing ourselves from Him. Our selfishness kept us from His power and desire to lift us out of our mess.
As we were starting the Fourth Step in the Alcoholics Anonymous book, we learned:
Whatever our protestations, are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, or our self-pity?
Selfishness – self-centeredness! That we think is the root of our troubles.
Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 62
Well, when you look at how distant the relationship gets with God when we are self-centered, according to James 4:6, God is in a position of resisting us when we are prideful and self-centered.
1 Peter 5:6 – Humbly Seek God for a Sober Spirit
6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you at the proper time, 7 having cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares about you. 8 Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9]So resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brothers and sisters who are in the world. 10 After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 11 To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Here that “humbling ourselves before God” is noted as gaining access to the access of His “mighty hand” that will lift us “at the proper time.” The “at the proper time” idea is added to the concept mentioned in the passage from James.
One challenge that most of us suffer from in recovery is the curse of impatience. We want to magically get better in an instant. What that translates to is that we envision God obeying our demand to fix us when and how we want so we can go away and go on with our lives of happiness.
That is not the humility we have been thinking of. That is the “selfishness – Self-centeredness” described as the “root of our trouble” in the Alcoholics Anonymous book. He will do what He wants, when He wants, how He wants, taking as long as He desires. It’s not that God cannot fix a person instantly; there are legitimate cases where that does happen. It is the fact that He does not respond well to such a lack of humility, and the process of time tends to be a better learning tool for people than the instant giving in to our demands.
…Having cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares about you. Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour
Later in verse ten, we encounter the words “After you have suffered for a little while…” and if you put that into the context of our recovery process, it describes the process of changing how we are experiencing life and the filter we view everything through.
There are many ways a person can interpret the words “Be of sober Spirit…” but all of them involve a clear mind which is the opposite of a mind fogged by addictions of all kinds, including alcoholism and substance abuse. With that essential understanding, any not sober mind is implied as one open to evil manipulations or attacks. This evil (such as relapse) roams around like a starving lion looking for people like us to devour our lives entirely.
Psalm 51:17 – When Bringing my Recovery to God, Will He Despise My Request?
17The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, God, You will not despise.
This ties the humility of the other passages to the ideas we have dredged up in the work we have done so far. Our inventory is a long list of reasons we should have a broken spirit. This idea of a broken spirit can be a great place of potential when used to fuel the humility that we use to go before God, but if not dealt with can be the voice of self-condemnation that that wandering, hungry lion will use to devour you.
A Broken and Contrite Heart is Either Great Potential or a Great Destroyer
This is why we bring all of that to God and take action to repair those things in later steps with the strength and drive God empowers us with.
That humility is the driver of this process and the access point to the power to go through it and endure it.
Psalm 25:9-12 – Recovery Praying: “Forgive my wrongdoing, for it is great.”
9 He leads the humble in justice, And He teaches the humble His way. 10 All the paths of the Lord are faithfulness and truth To those who comply with His covenant and His testimonies. 11 For the sake of Your name, Lord, Forgive my wrongdoing, for it is great. 12 Who is the person who fears the Lord? He will instruct him in the way he should choose.
In this prayer, Step Seven is simply the words, “Forgive my wrongdoing, for it is great.” But it is not the words that are the focus; it is the heart behind the words. The reality of how terrible that individual’s wrongdoings are from the perspective of God. So impassioned are these feelings that fearing the Lord is described in the following sentence.
In Step Seven, it is Not the Words That Are the Focus, it is the Heart Behind the Words!
Humility is still the key to accessing any of this. Those with the humility mentioned as needed to approach God are led to justice and taught how God would like them to live.
The components of this passage that are the part we have to do are:
- Have humility
- Ask God from our hearts to forgive our wrongdoing for His name’s sake.
- Ask in humility (for the sake of His name, not just so that we can be happier or better)
- Change and turn from our own ways (“who comply with His covenant and His testimonies”)
- Fear the Lord in true humility
- Listen to and live out the instruction of the Lord and the path He outlines
With our sincere, humble ask, according to this passage:
- He forgives us
- He leads us
- He teaches us
- He shows us the path to follow
- He instructs us
Then, after Step Seven…
Philippians 4:12-14 – Recovery: Enduring a Journey of Struggle and Wilderness to Get to the Promise
12 I know how to get along with little, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. 13 I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. 14 Nevertheless, you have done well to share with me in my difficulty.
A part of the Seventh Step prayer is a commitment to whatever God says is our path and whatever we must endure while still living as he would have us live. This is a commitment to godliness no matter what happens to us or around us.
This is spoken of here specifically through “Him who strengthens me.” This is done by people relying on closeness to God by God’s power.
In the factual context of this passage, Paul is thanking the Church at Philippi for supporting him and sharing in his struggle. This is an essential note for what comes next in the path of each of our recovery Journeys. We need recovery and faith communities to support us and share our struggles.
Step Seven is a Commitment to Godliness no Matter what Happens to Us or Around Us.
That is also a part of the actions that come after the praying of Step Seven. It is fantastic if that can all be one group of people, but there may be multiple groups of people in your world, but we each need some recovery community and faith community.
With all that as a backdrop, if you can answer “yes” to everything described here and in the article about Step Six, you are ready for Step Seven.
Here is the prayer outlined in the Alcoholics Anonymous book:
The Step Seven Prayer: Humbly for the Sake of His Name Pray…
Referring back to the simple prayer in Psalm 25:11, “For the sake of Your name, Lord, Forgive my wrongdoing, for it is great.” Proceed to:
When ready, we say something like this: “My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here to do your bidding. Amen.” We have then completed Step Seven.
Now we need more action, without which we find that “Faith without works is dead.”
Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 76
For the sake of Your name, Lord, Forgive my wrongdoing, for it is great
One response to “The Bible and Recovery: Divine Guidance Through Bible Verses for Finding Sobriety and Healing… (part 11: Step 7)”
[…] The Bible and Recovery: Divine Guidance Through Bible Verses for Finding Sobriety and Healing… (pa… […]