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As a reminder, step 11 is:

I sought through prayer and meditation to improve my contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out. Well that was quick

So, today I want to talk about the part of the 11th step that I’ve underlined. The first part of this step is about using prayer and/or meditation in order to dis cover what God’s will is for us. I mentioned, in the first part of this step, that over the years in which I’ve been taking these steps as a way of life, my prayer is not active, so to speak, but more of an act of listening. In this framework, I have learned that setting a specific time for my prayer is not necessary. The relationship that I have with God is both ongoing and constant. I don’t know how many times I connect my thought of God’s will in my day-to-day life. (Maybe I should have a clicker in my pocket and use it every time I think of God during the day.) Oh well, I would probably forget at the time.

I do, however, talk to and listen for God quite a bit. As I said before, most of my talking to God is not what we would call traditional prayer. It is 99.9% thanking God for something or another that I realize God gave me the power to do. This is where the part of the 11th step comes in, the power to carry that out. Exactly where do we get this power from? Usually unbeknown to us, we have never been without this power. Fortunately, I am reminded of this power that is given to me by God in the 2nd step. This is: I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. Notice it doesn’t say I’ll get this power after I do “X” amount of steps, nor does it say after the “X” step. It doesn’t say those things because each and every one of us has had the power available to us forever. It is not a question of getting the power. What I needed to do was to become aware of the power.

Once again, this step is not say that we should ask God to give us the power. The step asks us to remember that we have this knowledge of all of the gifts that God has given us. The problem is that I humanity is so strong that it overrides or overshadows these gifts. We think that our humanity is the most important thing that we have to work with. This is wrong. The most important thing I have to work with is my spirit and the fact that God dwells within me, within you, yes, within everyone.