SBR: I can’t. God can. I think I’ll let him.

The Twelve Steps begin with an admission that we cannot manage life on our own. In Step Two we added to this foundation a belief that God could do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. These first two Steps have prepared us to make an important decision. The first three Steps have often been summarized in three simple statements: “I can’t. God can. I think I’ll let him.” Step Three encourages us to make a decision to turn our lives over to God’s care:

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over

to the care of God as we understood Him.

Most of us know intellectually that God can care for us a lot better than we can care for ourselves. But we may be afraid to trust God to care for us. We may have trusted other people who turned out to be untrustworthy. As a result, we might not expect any caregiver–even God–to be kind or helpful. Even though we may know that God is grace-full and loving, we may experience fear when we start to make the decision suggested by Step Three.
Making a decision is all that is required of us in Step Three. It is similar to planning a vacation. First we decide to go on a vacation, then we start making plans for the vacation, and then we actually take the vacation. The decision is a very important part of the process–but it is not the whole process. In Step Three we are only making a decision. We don’t need to trust God completely and totally for the rest of our lives in order to do Step Three. We start by making a decision to turn our wills and lives over to God’s care today. It is a decision we will need to make one day at a time for the rest of our lives. Each day that we choose to entrust our lives to God’s care, our trust in God’s wisdom and love will grow.

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