There seems to be quite a trend in meetings at the moment for people to share about handing their will and their life over to the care of God. They usually go on to describe how, even though they ‘hand over’ in the morning, they have generally ‘taken it back’ by the afternoon. This is not what Step 3 says and it has a very different meaning.

Step 3 says ‘Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him’. The actions of ‘turning over’ and ‘handing over’ are very different.

In a relay race when the baton is handed over to the next runner, the giver takes no further part in the race, has no more responsibility; the person with the baton has it all. It is the same when we ‘hand over’ to God, handing over means giving Him all responsibility for our lives. We are responsible for our lives – God doesn’t want to be. The problem with that is that if things don’t work out the way we hoped we usually blame God.

If we operate on the understanding that we are ‘handing things over’ to God then we are passing them on, giving them up. It is then very easy for us to ‘take it back’ again and run on self-will. If we think about ‘handing over’ rather than ‘turning over’ there is no point in having or doing Step 11 because if we have ‘handed things over’ to God, we don’t need to know what His will is for us.

In card games, if a card is face down we turn it over to reveal what is already there and it is the same with Step 3.
Step 3 is turning our will and our life over to the care of God; it is preparation for Steps 4 & 5. We make a decision to turn our life over to the care of God, this is not about our life to come, this is about our life already lived, the one we lived based on self-will. We turn it over and allow the light of God to illuminate that past life so that we can be searching and fearless in Step 4 because God has all of the pain, anger, resentment and fear in his care, it’s what we asked for! Knowing that all of that is in His care we can progress to Step 5 and to own all that He has revealed to us when we turned our life over to Him.

When we turned over our will, we gave Him the opportunity to show us how our will has led us into pain and suffering, the patterns of destructive behaviour; preparation for Step 6 & 7. We then have no problem being ready for Him to remove our defects and so we ask Him to do just that.

It follows that we will have no fear about moving on to Steps 8 & 9 because we know He has our past life in His care. It will be OK!

Step 3 is not something that I need to do every morning but Step 11 is, because it is about my present life and my life to come that day.
In practising Step 11 on a daily basis I do all that I need to do for God to direct my thinking. I ask for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry it out. It is that simple. If He gives me the power to carry out His will I have all that I need. There is nothing for me to ‘take back’; I either decide to do His will or I decide to do my will the choice is stark and simple. My willingness will fluctuate during the day but I have the assurance that He not only has given me the knowledge of His will for me but that crucially, He has given me the power to carry it out. Therefore we can begin to live a life based on assurance and strength from our Higher Power, rather than on fear.