I love the smells and sounds of spring: spring rain, cut grass and people rooting for or playing one of the many spring summer sports. However, I also remember the pain of one fateful night. You see, I loved to play softball. It was always a blast but I’m competitive. On this night, I tried to stretch a single into a double and when I slid into second base. I broke my ankle. It was painful but not as painful as the rehab. I hated it. The exercise and the time it took. I complained on occasion about the length of recovery and the fact that I felt some discomfort at times. After a while, the therapist actually told me, “If you start doing the exercises as prescribed, you won’t feel the pain anymore.” So I thought I’d give it a try. It worked and the pain totally disappeared. I think fully getting this step requires the same kind of submission. I can seek the doctor’s advice and ignore the treatment OR I can turn my will and life over to Jesus and do what has been laid before me. Once I’ve really committed to this, I begin to have a new life unlike any I’ve ever known before.
The step begins...
• Made a decision. The action of this step is to make a decision. Actually turning our lives over to God is a long process and the rest of the Steps provide some helpful tools for doing this. But that is not what Step Three is about. Step Three is decision time. You may not yet have a clue about how to implement the decision. But if you know that you can't do what needs to be done, and you have come to believe that God could do what needs to be done, then Step Three is the decision to let God give it a try.
"I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him." Deuteronomy 30:19
• To turn. The word 'surrender' often comes up in connection with Step Three. This can be a helpful way to describe what this Step is like. It is a decision to give up on our own will and to surrender our will to a higher Power. The danger of using the word 'surrender' is that we usually use this word in a military context - we surrender to an enemy. But that's not what happens in Step Three - we surrender to a loving and grace-full God whose power is available to help us, not hurt us. There are lots of other ways in which the Bible pictures our need to 'turn.' Repentance is a turning away from sin towards God. Jesus captured the heart of Step Three when he said "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." [Matthew 10:39] Some of the biblical pictures of 'turning' might sound like bad news (surrendering, submitting, losing) but the Bible consistently pictures it as a relief. When we have exhausted ourselves trying to carry our own burdens, God invites us to turn the burdens over to Him.
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
Matthew 11:28
and
"Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord". Acts 3:19
• our will and our lives By the time most of us get to Step Three it is very clear that recovery will involve a major restructuring of our lives. We have been turning our lives over to alcohol, or to drugs, or to food, or to work or to whatever - we have made decision after decision to turn our lives over to things that did not satisfy. In Step Three we make a decision to turn our broken wills and our broken lives over to God in the hope that God will be able to do a better job of managing our lives than we have. The other key word is “our.”
"Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground." Psalm 143:10
• over to the care of God
o We are saying that God cares for each one us. That God would never do anything to harm one whom he loves. The scripture says: Would a father hand his child a scorpion when he asks for a fish? Your heavenly father loves you. But don’t confuse love with getting everything you want or not having to pay the consequences of your actions. Love means giving without strings however it doesn’t mean you get everything you want.
• As we understood him.
Some Christians find this phrase to be the most problematic in the Twelve Steps. Some 'Christianized' versions of the Twelve Steps delete "as we understood him" or change it to read "through Jesus Christ." This may be helpful to people whose faith is already informed by biblical revelation. It is important to remember, however, that this Step is not intended to be anything but a theological kindergarten. The expression "as we understood him" is not here to suggest that our subjective understanding of God can be trusted. Far from it! Most of us arrive at this Step with incredibly distorted images of God. The point of this phrase is to introduce some theological humility to the process. It is an acknowledgment that our understanding may be misguided. We may have the wrong idea about God. This can be just as true for those of us who affirm that Jesus is our Higher Power as it is for someone who has picked a doorknob as their Higher Power. We all have a lot to learn! http://www.christianrecovery.com/tfr/dox/stepthree.htm
However, I will say this that Jesus does provide us an interesting example of surrender. I find it terribly encouraging that Jesus, the son of God, continued to seek and extol God’s guidance or will until the very end of his ministry. It was Jesus who said in John 6:38, “ I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.” And if that were not enough, in the heat of His final moments on earth as He knew the disciple who would be betray him was coming, He called to God, “If though art willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not my will, but thine be done.” Jesus was surrendering even to death because He knew there was a payoff. We’ve been doing a sermon series on Sunday morning entitled, BIBLE PROMISES. In it, I have been sharing that the bible is not some foreign rule book but it should be a book of encouragement because it provides words from God we can use today. This is also the case with surrender. If we chose to surrender our addictions and our lives, the bible says, “And peter said, “behold, we have left our own homes, and followed you.” And He said to them, “truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who shall not receive many times as much at this time and in this age to come, eternal life.” (Luke 18:28-30)
This is reason step three is so important. As we turn our will and lives over, Jesus provides each one of us an opportunity to receive a life beyond our wildest dreams. Please note I did not say the life of your dreams but a life beyond what you can imagine.
If you would like to know a little more about the author: https://communitycenter.life/rev-robert-butler-info
