The AA Twelve and Twelve tells us that "the whole emphasis of Step Seven is on humility." We first looked at humility in the Third Step when we made the decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. "The attainment of greater humility is the foundation principle of each of A.A.'s Twelve Steps. For without some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all. Nearly all A.A.'s have found, too, that unless they develop much more of this precious quality than may be required just for sobriety, they still haven't much chance of becoming truly happy. Without it, they cannot live to much useful purpose, or ,in adversity, be able to summon the faith that can meet any emergency."

Bill Wilson explains humility in this way,"As long as we placed self-reliance first, a genuine reliance upon a Higher Power was out of the question. That basic ingredient of all humility, a desire to seek and do God's will, was missing." Humility, we discover, is not something to be resisted, but something to be accepted, even embraced. " Our eyes begin to open to the immense values which have come straight out of painful ego-puncturing."

But the process, writes Bill Wilson, “was unbelievably painful. It was only by repeated humiliations that we were forced to learn something about humility.” As time went by, however, we realized that there was a more effective way to achieve it. “We saw we needn’t always be bludgeoned and beaten into humility. It could come quite as much from our voluntary reaching for it as it could from unremitting suffering. A great turning point in our lives came when we sought for humility as something we really wanted, rather than as something we must have.” The process, however, is not a quick one. “.....To gain a vision of humility as the avenue to true freedom of the human spirit, to be willing to work for humility as something to be desired for itself, takes most of us a long, long time.”

Taking the Third Step was a bold example of spiritual humility because it was a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. With the Seventh Step, we have an opportunity to put that decision into practice by asking God to do something specific for us: remove our defects of character. By asking God humbly to do so, we are saying, “Thy will, not mine, be done” in the timing and the manner of their removal..

Whether God will remove our defects instantly or slowly or ask us to labor mightily to remove them ourselves is up to God. We do not get to dictate the terms, conditions, or timetable by which the defects will be removed. Being humble is being open to the will of God however that will might be expressed. It is also recognizing that we are not able to remove these defects without God’s help.

They are too much for us acting alone.

The removal of some of our character defects and the reduction of others is a lifelong process.

Trust The Process Trust Yourself Trust God