The Third Step

Posted on February 13, 2026, tagged as Addiction Recovery, Alcoholics Anonymous, Religion, Twelve Steps

“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”

The Third Step of twelve in the Twelve-Step Program is clearly the highest risk step one must take. The risk is only slightly mitigated by having the privilege of relating to “God as we understand Him,” because so few of use have a clear sense of who or what God is. Moreover, we are at a place in our lives where we have little faith or trust in ourselves, let alone anyone else. Here are some thoughts that might help one understand and find a way to get this task done.

First, let’s focus on the action in this step. It looks at first glance that the action involves some heavy lifting …. the turning over of our will and our lives. Many of us have struggled with this mightily. Some of us even think we have succeeded until the next day when we have it all back again. No, the action is simply that of making a decision. While this decision may be difficult, it certainly does not involve the grunting and groaning that it at first seems to demand. And it seems to be possible to do, when we meet with sponsors and others in the program who seem to have made this decision without placing themselves unduly in harm’s way.

What about the idea of “our will and our lives?” It can seem that too much is being asked of us. We need to remember that we have come to the point of believing that there is little of worth and value remaining in our lives because of our self-destructive addictive behavior. Still, it does help us to understand what is being referred to as our will and our lives. I suggest that we think about this as our sense of purpose, because human life has little meaning without a sense of purpose.

Many of us have lost our direction in life, and whatever sense of purpose we had has become lost. At our bottom we are clear that we are far from what we would like to be, while wondering who or what we are supposed to be. A clue here is that most of us see a purpose in our lives, at least in part, is to help others, to make the world a better place. This thought can give the third step some focus and direction.

Another helpful thing to realize is that on the heroic journey of recovery, all we have is the present moment. This is not a step to take and move on to something else. Like the first and second steps, it must be taken daily, and the earlier in the day the better. Also, it is important to realize that one can’t do this alone. We need the company and encouragement of others who are walking this path including those who started before us and have much experience to share with us.

All spiritual traditions encourage the newcomer to have a spiritual mentor, a person who can act as a guide on the path. On this spiritual journey of recovery, we find a sponsor to help us along the way, and we also can benefit from the wisdom of others we encounter at the meetings.

Finally, take note that the step says to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understand Him. This suggests that if we make this decision, our higher power will care for our will and our lives, not only care for us well, but much better than we have done ourselves.