Step 11 states: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. How simple can this get, huh? To pray ONLY for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. To me, this does not sound like a long list of cares and problems to discuss with our Higher Power. Only asking for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry it out. Notice, this does not mean a bedsheet of people, places, and things to pray for so that we many times fall asleep before finishing our nightly prayers.
If I know His will for me, EVERYTHING ELSE just falls into place. Maybe we should start out answering the question of Just how do we pray? Emmet Fox says that every thought is a prayer. This sounds like we have been praying for a long time and not knowing it. When we desire someone or something and think about it, it is a form of prayer. When we wish a situation to be different than it is, this is a form of prayer. So prayers are something that we have always done, whether or not we seek Holy intervention.
Now, Step 11 is asking us to continue asking but now to add thoughts of Holy assistance. Also, since we are wondering how to realistically do this when we pray, I suggest that we keep thinking these thoughts. Only adding our Higher Power to them as if we were talking to another person who is our friend. Just straight thoughts. No need to be concerned with sentence structure or using old biblical terminology. Just talking with our new friend!
Don’t overthink or complicate your prayers. This is a very simple program for very complicated folks. It has worked and continues to work for me. Because of this, my life is not complicated any more. I am truly Happy, Joyous, and Free! You can be, too, if you work your program to the best of your ability 24/7/365. Don’t think your way out of it – JUST DO IT!!! You now have choices. There is no need to overcomplicate this. To pray is not brain surgery! Do you choose to be miserable or do you choose to be Happy, Joyous, and Free? The choice is yours and nobody else’s. Choose wisely! God bless you!
Please let us know what you think. We can be reached at Spiritualityandrecovery@gmail.com or 810-965-6140 usually within hours and many times instantly.
Our AA Zoom meeting is every Monday through Friday, 3:00 PM EST. Meeting ID is 6035280704. Password 399778. It is simple to locate the blogs and Facebook pages. Simply search #spiritualityandrecovery For the podcasts, just go to https://anchor.fm/james-b-boylan On iPhone say “Hey Siri, Play the podcast Spiritualityandrecovery.” Or, on Android “Hey, Google. Play the Jim Boylan podcast.”
