We know what we need to know about God for today. Yet, we know there is some Power great than ourselves that’s helping us in recovery. Is God called Jesus, Buddha, the Great Spirit? Perhaps we’ve chosen a name for our Higher Power, or maybe we haven’t. Why do bad things happen if God is good? Does God punish people? No matter how much we believe about God, there are always questions. Sometimes we have more questions than answers. ![]() Most of us have many questions about a Higher Power. I don’t believe in the life afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear. I will remind myself that if I want something badly enough, willingness is the key to action and to success. I’ll try to be honest today about what I really want. The key to constructive change in our lives is willingness, and that applies to other matters as well as to alcohol. We may brood over lost opportunities, but be unwilling to take advantage of the opportunities we have now. For example, we may dislike the unpleasant coughing and risks of smoking, but lack the willingness to quit. We often have to put up with unpleasant conditions simply because we do not want to change them badly enough. This is the key to other achievements and to the overcoming of problems besides alcohol. The pioneers of AA suggested that getting sober required being willing to go to any lengths. This same willingness, so vital to finding sobriety, is also applicable in other areas of our lives. It also requires our willingness to take the actions necessary for success. More important, progress often depends on our willingness to give up what stands in our way. Things can happen if we are willing to let them happen. Therefore, we must rely on other agencies, on outside friends and their willingness to supply great amounts of money and effort.Īlthough willpower alone does not work in overcoming alcoholism, there is a place for the will, or willingness, in the search for a happy sobriety. as such cannot, and should not, get directly into this field. Individually, we A.A.’s can help, but A.A. Now who is going to do all this education? Obviously, it is both a community job and a job for specialists. Heretofore, much of this education has attacked the immortality of drinking rather than the illness of alcoholism. This means factual education, properly presented. From cradle to grave, the drunk and the potential alcoholic will have to be completely surrounded by a true and deep understanding and by a continuous barrage of information. The answer to the problem of alcoholism seems to be in education–education in schoolrooms, in medical colleges, among clergymen and employers, in families, and in the public at large. I pray that I may trust God for the future. I pray that I may prepare myself for better things that God has in store for me. So prepare yourself for those better things to come. Life can be flooded through and through with joy and gladness. Now is the time for discipline and prayer. ![]() ![]() But you must prepare yourself so that you will be ready for the better things to come. God has things planned for you, far beyond what you can imagine now. ![]() God has a plan for your life and it will work out, if you try to do His will. Life is all a preparation for something better to come. We live it day by day, or more precisely, moment by moment – now. Our alcoholism is only kept in abeyance by daily living of the program. We must continually keep in mind that it is a program not to be measured in years, because we never fully reach our goals nor are we ever cured. The program of Alcoholics Anonymous involves a continuous striving for improvement. As I became a sober citizen in this world, I observed a rippling effect which, without any conscious effort on my part, reached any “related facility or outside enterprise,” without diverting me from my primary purpose of staying sober and helping other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. Later, I learned that concentrating on my own recovery was a full-time process. The grandiose thoughts of my drinking days returned. The great discovery of sobriety led me to feel the need to spread the “good news” to the world around me. So why shouldn’t we share our way of life with everyone? How natural that was, since most alcoholics are bankrupt idealists. Having learned to live so happily, we’d show everyone else how.
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