The OA Big Book Study in Winnipeg, MB, Canada

But you know what? There are also arguments good for the religious person,

and on page 55 we see that one pair, the two paragraphs that tell both the religious and the non religious person, the atheist, the agnostic and the deeply religious person, exactly what the problem is.

Actually, we were fooling ourselves, for deep down and every man, woman and child is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured, blocked off, obscured, blocked off by calamity, bad things happening, by pomp, a sense of self importance, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there. The next paragraph we finally saw. This faith in some kind of God

was a part of our makeup just as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Sometimes we have to search fearlessly, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. But he was there. He was much as much a fact as we were. We found the great reality deep down within us in the last analysis. It is only there that he may be found. It was so with us.

Deep down within us is the fundamental idea of God, whether it's a religious God or whether it's just things that are

the things that we believe in, whether they're ideas or some kind of living creature or living being or something

with some personality of some kind.

The problem is it's been blocked off from us

and we can't see it or feel it. And that's the answer to the religious person who has not found relief from the bondage of food. And that's what this program does. It get rid of the blocks that separate us from the God that's deep down within us. It reawakens our passion. Remember I talked about Frank Buckman finding a way to re awake the passion that he had for the God that he believed in.

All that happens here, and this is this wonderful description, is

when you do the steps, the blocks to that God are removed. And so from the heart goes the message of whatever your God is to your head and governs your head.

You have to get rid of the blocks. And as we'll see, that whole idea is carried forward. When we talk about step four, they talk about

just like the words, they talk about getting rid of things that block us from the sunlight of the Spirit. So we get rid of the blocks and God flows up. And that is a description to both the deeply religious person, to the atheist and agnostic. All that's going to happen is that the things that you deeply believe in will now become your passion,

and you won't be distant from them anymore. And when I look back at my life before 08, I will see that I believed in some things, but I knew I wasn't living according to them. I was living much more according to my own sense of what I wanted out of life. And that's true for the deeply religious people I've spoken to when they worked this program. Yeah, sure, they believed in God, but they weren't living the beliefs that they had. And what this does is help us live those beliefs and give us a guide for how to live according to what we believe in. So I don't

not having a God in the religious sense, because I have a spiritual wholeness. I have a direct connection as long as I keep working the steps between the God and my heart, the things I believe in, in my heart and my mind, and thus that direct connection. On a day-to-day basis, sometimes it's a little fuzzy, sometimes a little static. But on a day-to-day basis, as long as I keep that direct connection, I live a life that's sane.

Now, from a practical point of view, the effect of living a life that's sane

means that I look at food that I know is a problem for me that creates cravings and I say, why would I eat this stuff? It's poison. Now that's what I came in for. I get a much better thing. I get this 4th dimension of existence that the big book talks about, but I came in simply to get sane. And so by Shakespeare, Hamlet says by indirection, find direction out. I mean, I'm, I'm sort of I'm taking an end run around this problem. I want to stop eating compulsively and I and my answer turns out to be taking

right and finding God of some kind unless I find sort of a direct connection between what I believe in and who I am. Somehow I get sane and it just happens and we'll see that promise when we get to step nine later on today. The promises it just happens. We weren't looking for it. It just happens and that's the miracle of this program. So this chapter is a wake up call for everyone and when we get to working with others tomorrow we get

sponsoring and carrying the message. We'll see how tough the big book tells you to talk to the religious person who says I know about God. I know everything about God. I'm deeply religious. And the answer that you say, don't you say that first, Clearly it's not working. It clearly you're not working what you believe in, because otherwise you wouldn't have your problem. That's pretty tough talk. But I, I have said that I have a friend in this program who, well, she's not in this program anymore. She left the program. She joined a a religion which she,

although she's never asked her pastor, but she believes would be against the 12 step program. I personally don't believe it. I don't know any religion that would be against a tough step program because it brings you back to her, but she, she's afraid to ask

anyway. And she, she used to be in the program and, and, and she's gained weight

and she says, and I said to her once, I think your problem is that you've blocked God, the God you believe in, off from you. How did you know? She said, I said, it's in the big book. That's how I know. Clearly, if you hadn't blog God off from you,

you would not have a problem with your weight, you would not have a problem with your food, because you'd be saved.

And that's all it is. So whether you're deeply religious or whether you have no religion whatsoever, all this program does is connect you to what you believe in, your innermost beliefs. And if you want to call that God, as I'm willing to call it God, that's fine with me. I'm desperate enough to try anything by the time I come into this program. If someone has proven to me that I can't stop once I've started, and that I can't stop from starting again, so that on my own I'm absolutely doomed,

what else do I have to go to? I have nowhere else.

I know every other diet that I've ever been on doesn't work and I don't believe any other diet will work or any support program or anything. I won't stick on it. I know that. What have I got to look for? I'll try this little thin weed that's being held out to me and I'm going to leap across as I've left across many issues of faith before. So that's the chapter we agnostic and I hope you see why it is so important for both the non religious and the religious people to to read it.

Now we're on to Chapter 5. How it works.

I owe so much to Joe and Charlie, and one of the things I owe to them is the point that Chapter 5 is in fact chapter 5. That no matter what it's entitled, it is not the first chapter I should be reading. I should be reading from the beginning of the book and understanding the hopelessness of this illness before I get the directions for doing it.

Because only if I understand the hopelessness and if I understand the nature of the solution,

grab on to these principles, which are so foreign to me. They're so different from what I'm used to. They're asking me to do things that are really weird.

Now, many of you are. Some of you will know that

that before the book was printed, 400 copies of a of a draft were circulated for comments to members of a A at the time and as well to doctors and ministers, psychologists for their comments. And you can get a copy of this draft. You can get it on the Internet, you can buy a copy of it as well. I found on the Internet the original draft into which all the comments that were made were incorporated

that belong to Bill. It was bought for 100,000 bucks or something, probably more than that by a person who wants to put it online and they they put 3 pages online already with all the changes that were made. Some of the changes that were made were really significant and they were made all the way through the book where the book you draft originally said you should do this.

And a psychologist to Harry Tebow said never tell an alcoholic what he should do. Tell him what you did, tell him that it worked for you and then he'll he'll be LED into doing it

because it worked for you. So Bill made tons of changes where he changed you to we.

I'm not going to go into those changes, but I will circulate just for your interest, the three pages, what is the forward to the 1st edition and the other is how it works. The first couple pages that we'll be reading right now

and you'll see all of the changes that were made. It's really fascinating. I'll point out some of them as we read it.

Rarely have we seen the page 58. Rarely have we seen a person fail who is thoroughly followed our directions. Did you say followed our directions rather than our path?

Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, Usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. I mean, I've it's often been said that the smarter you are, the heart of the program is for you because you keep finding great rationalizations for not doing it. I was smarter. Maybe a wrong word. I think it would be a wrong word. The more intellectual you are, the more the more you're able to sort of think logically, the more you find rationalizations for not doing it. I don't think people,

intellectuals are necessarily smarter, but they're, they're, they love, they love playing mind games.

There are such unfortunates. They're not at fault. They seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those two suffer from grave emotional mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. So honesty is the key here. It's not whether you're suffering from a grave emotional disorders or not. It's whether you're capable of being honest and direct and following a simple program and not making it

complex, just following the directions.

Our stories disclosed in a general way what used to be like, what happened and what we're like now. If you decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you are ready to used to say follow directions.

At some of these we balked. We halted. We thought we could find an easier softer way.

Used to say we doubt it, but we we doubt if you can but we could not with all the earnestness of our command. We beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried hold to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go. Absolutely remember that we deal with alcohol and we always say we deal with food cutting, bathing and I would I would rather say we deal with our killer foods or our binge foods or something like that. We deal with those things that cause our cravings

cunning, baffling, powerful without help. It is too much for us, but there is one who has all power. That one is God made you find him now half measures availed us nothing. Eleven 12th measures avail us nothing. All 12 steps are important. We can't just stop at one step and well I've done that one. We stood at the turning point. It used to say throw yourself under his protection and care with complete abandoned. Very glad they changed that one

and then they had. Now we think you can take it. They got rid of that. I'm glad they did. Here are the steps. Here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery. You know, we hear the steps or suggestions.

No, the program is a suggestion. It's all or nothing here. It's not that each step is a suggestion. The program of recovery is suggested. Take it or leave it, but take it whole or leave it whole. I think that's important to point out. Now, I told you that the steps changed, and I want to go a little bit into the history of the steps before lunchtime.

If you turn in the 3rd edition to page 292 or in the 4th edition to page 263, you'll see an excerpt from

The Man Who Brought a A to Chicago

and he talks about going to Akron, OH where Doctor Bob Smith was. Will learn more about Doctor Bob Smith tomorrow

and he spends two or three weeks

with Doctor Bob.

Then he says the day before I was due to go back to Chicago, it was Doctor Bob's afternoon off.

He had me to the office and we spent three or four hours formally going through the six step program as it was at that time, three or four hours and we spend years some some of us

it's possible. As I said to you within weeks using these methods and I'll show you as we go through, but here were the six steps complete deflation. That's step one. We admitted we're parallel over food that our lives have become imaginable dependence and guidance from a higher power. That's step 11, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood, and praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.

Moral inventory. That step four made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Confessions. Step 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, into another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs. Restitution. That's step nine. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Continued work with other Alcoholics. Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive eaters and to practice these principles and all our affairs.

So the six steps that existed in the

35363738, we're one

459-1112.

Remember Abby said you get odds with yourself. Step 4, you get honest with another human being. Step five, you make amends. Step nine, you pray to God for guidance. Step 11, you help others without hope of reward. What did Bill add to that? Step one, powerlessness.

So you can see that the 1st 6 steps, the way they were originally, were basically Bill's description of the problem, or Doctor Silchar's description of the problem and the Oxford groups five steps to a spiritual solution and to continued spiritual solution. That's what they were,

and I can show I can read them in other respects, but I'm not sure it's that important. I've got three other versions of the 1st 6 steps, and they're all somewhat the same, but they're all step one, step four, step five, step nine, step 11, step 12. So Step 2, step three-step six, step seven, Step 8 and Step 10 did not exist

until Bill wrote them down one day. And here's his story about how he wrote them down.

This is found in the language of the heart.

I well remember the evening on which the 12 steps were written.

I was lying in bed, quite dejected and suffering from one of my imaginary ulcer attacks.

4 chapters of the book Alcoholics Anonymous have been roughed out and read in meetings at Akron and New York. We quickly found that everyone wanted to be an author. The hassles as to what should go into our new book were terrific. Terrific meaning bad. For example, someone at a purely psychological book which would draw an alcoholic without scaring them. We could tell them about the God business afterward. A few, led by our wonderful Southern friend Fitz M, wanted a fairly religious book, infused with some of the dogma we had picked up from the churches and missions which had tried to help us.

The lot of these arguments, the more I felt in the middle. It appeared I wasn't going to be the author at all. I was only going to be an umpire who would decide the contents of the book. This didn't mean, though, that there wasn't terrific meaning good enthusiasm for the undertaking. Every one of us was wildly excited. The possibility of getting our message before all those countless Alcoholics who still didn't know. Here Bill goes into dangling participles,

which as a grammarian, bothers me but shouldn't bother anyone else. Having arrived to Chapter 5, it seemed high time to state what our program really was. I remember right running over in my mind the word of mouth phrases. Then in current use, jotting these down, they added up to the six named above, the six that I gave to you. 14591112 Then came the idea that our program ought to be more accurately and clearly stated.

Distant readers would have to have a precise set of principles.

Knowing the Alcoholics ability to rationalize something airtight would have to be written. We couldn't let the reader wiggle out anywhere. Besides, a more complex statement would help in the chapters to come where we would need to show exactly how the recovery program ought to be worked. At length I began to write in a cheap yellow tablet. I split the word of mouth program up into smaller pieces, meanwhile enlarging its scope considerably. Uninspired as I felt, I was surprised that in a short time, perhaps half an hour,

I had set down certain principles which, on being counted, turned out to be 12 in number. And for some unaccountable reason, I'd move the idea of God into the second step right up front.

Besides, I named God very liberally throughout the other steps. And one of the steps I'd even suggested that the newcomer get down on his knees. I'll tell you what step that was. When this document was shown to our New York meeting, the protests were many and loud. Our agnostic friends didn't go at all for the idea of kneeling. Others said we were talking all together too much about God. And anyway, why should there be 12 steps and we had done five or six? Let's keep it simple, they said. This sort of heated discussion went on for days and nights. But out of it all, there came a tense strike for Alcoholics Anonymous.

Our agnostic contingency contingent, speared by Hank P and Jim B, finally convinced us that we must make it easier for people like themselves by using such terms as a higher power or God as we understand them. Those expressions, as we so well know today, have proved lifesavers for many an alcoholic. They've enabled thousands of us to make a beginning where none could have been made had we left the steps just as I originally wrote them.

Happily for us, there were no other changes in the original draft, and the number of steps still stood at 12.

Now there are only 6, right? Remember, we're back with Doctor Bob now. And this guy who brings Chicago, who brings away to Chicago. Listen to his description of the inventory. Doctor Bob led me through all these steps at the moral inventory. He brought up several of my bad personality traits or character defects, such as selfishness, concede, jealousy, carelessness, and tolerance. I'll temper sarcasm and resemblance. We went over these.

At great length,

Great Lake. This is step four and five and working out

restitution at great length. They went over these defects of character.

Then finally he asked me if I wanted these defects of character removed and I said yes. We both knelt at his desk and prayed, each of us asking to have these defects taken away. This picture is still vivid. If I live to be 100, it will always stand out in my mind. It was very impressive and I wish that every A A could have the benefit of this type of sponsorship today.

Doctor Bob was a very charismatic individual. He was like a St. People looked up to him and he was Bill considered Doctor Bob to be an absolute St. and and, and, and there will be many different examples of why that's the case. When Doctor Bob laid his hand on you, you were healed. When Doctor Bob said you've been an absolute idiot, you've been full of conceit and jealousy and self doubt and you've harmed people,

haven't you? You would look up at him and you'd say, yes, Doctor Bob, He would say you want to have those defects of character moved. Yes, talked about, Get on your knees and say a prayer and ask God to remove him. OK, Doctor Bach, All right,

You know, go out and make amends. I mean, it was that kind of incredible personality that Doctor Bob had that allowed this three or four hour session to be at great length with this kind of power. Bill was writing the steps for people who didn't have Doctor Bob's around. Hey, he didn't have Doctor Bob around. He didn't do the steps the same way that Doctor Bob did because he didn't have the same personality. So when Bill developed the 12 steps, he did them

with the lone alcoholic in mind.

The alcoholic who was not going to have a sponsor, was not going to have anyone to turn to, and who couldn't get have any wiggle room. That doesn't mean, however, that each step has to be given the same amount of emphasis. As a matter of fact, what we'll find is that in the big book,

steps 1/3 or four chapters, Step 2, two or three chapters, we agnostic build story a bit of there as a solution.

Step 4,

Step 5 and step 98 and nine constitute the bulk of the chapters that in which the the other steps are discussed. And step 12 at step 11 has a lengthy discussion and step 12 has a lengthy discussion, very lengthy discussion. And we'll find that step six and seven have one paragraph each. Step 3 is a prayer. That's all it is. We'll find that it's a decision and a prayer

and

Step 10 as a paragraph. Very important paragraph. It's paragraph.

And so we'll see that the big books emphasis is very different from the way that we normally treat the steps because we're used to the steps off the wall. We're used to reading the 12 steps. But if you look at the big book and you look at the history of the 12 steps, you'll see that the emphasis lies in the six steps that originally existed.

Well, step two was is given more emphasis only because it starts it off even though it didn't originally exist.

Now we'll go back then to page

59.

Here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery.

We admitted we're powerless over alcohol, that our lives have become unmanageable,

came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore society. That's a description of the past, not of the future. Step 2 doesn't require us to believe anything. It describes what our solution was. Step one is the problem. We're powerless. Step 2 is the solution. Power. We found a power. It's not a step you take. It's a step you understand. Oh, they found a power. I don't have that power. I better look for the power.

It's not a step that you have to take. You don't wait for God to come to you in Step 2,

made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care and you say and direction of God as we understood him.

And we'll find out that Step 3 this afternoon is only a decision. It's not anything else. It's not waiting for God to turn it. It's not waiting for God to take over our will in our lives.

May this searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. We're going to find as we study step four in the big Book that the inventory is completed at step nine. It doesn't stop at step four that the word inventory, even though it's only used in Step 4 as it's written on the wall, actually describes a process that ends in step nine. I'll show that to you this afternoon.

Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. It used to say we're entirely willing that God remove all these defects of character. Now it says, ready to have

humbly on our knees asked him to remove our sharp Cummings holding nothing back.

And they got rid of those absolute aspects to them, made a list, made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make complete amends to them all. Got rid of the word complete, made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Continue to take personal inventory. And when we were wrong, promptly admitted it sought through prayer, meditation to improve our contact with God. They added the word conscious contact with God,

and then they added the words as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us, the power to carry that out. And Step 12 used to say, having had a spiritual experience as the result of this course of action,

we tried this to carry this message to others, especially Alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Many of us exclaimed wooden order. I can't go through with it.

Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We're not Saints. The point is that we're willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down, our guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter, the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after, it used to say, have been designed to sell you 3 pertinent ideas. I'm glad they changed that.

Designed to make clear 3 pertinent ideas. A. That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives. B. That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. See that God could and would if he were sought. That's steps one and two in three points.

Then it used to say words like, if you're not convinced at this point, we read this book or throw it away.

And I almost wish it kept saying that because as we read in Working With Others, and I'll talk about that at length on Sunday,

the Big Book has a real, what we would now call tough love attitude towards the person who still suffers. It's basically take it or leave it. I'm not, I'm not enabling you. I'm not helping you. I'm here to help you work the steps and that's all. I'm not going to be your counselor, your therapist, your confessor, your friend. You want the steps, I'm here for you. But that's it. And you don't want the steps, please go somewhere else. Please leave because I don't have time for you. I have many other people who need what I have to offer.

And that's a very different way from the loving care and compassion that goes on in our program. And I'm not suggesting that that love and that compassion, that care shouldn't be there. I mean, it's, it's a wonderful thing. We're very isolated people with very low self esteem who come into this program really hurting. And I wouldn't want to get rid of that care and compassion. But there's also a room for a lot of toughness. And I want to talk about that, about how we carry the message tomorrow.

Anyway, if you're not convinced, reread this book or throw it away. Then it says being convinced we were at Step 3, which is that we decide to turn our will and our life over to God as we understand and understood them.

What do we mean by that? And what do we do now that question is what do we mean by turning our lives and will over to the care of God, Not what does it mean to make a decision? Not what does it mean to do step three? What is it that we are deciding to do? What's the end result of this decision and the action that we take? OK, because what is a decision? It's nothing if not followed by action. I can decide to give to be involved in big book study, but if I don't get

the Victoria Hospital, I'm never going to be at that big book study. I can decide to travel to Los Angeles, but if I don't buy a ticket, get on the airplane, I won't get there. Or however I get to Los Angeles, I won't get there.

And so the decision of step three is only a decision. It didn't exist before Bill created it and it only existed as a moment in time were Bill basically said either take it or leave it, make a decision or don't. But if you make a decision, here's the rest of the steps that you take to do them

to carry forth that decision.

So the question here is what do we mean by that? And what do we do what we mean by that? They're now going to describe in the next 3 pages about what we mean by turning our will and our life over to the care of God as we understand God. And I'm going to give it to you briefly because we're almost ready to break

that turning our, and I'm going to go into more detail though, but they talk 1st about turning our will over, and then they talk about turning our life over.

And when they talk about turning our will, they contrast turning our will over with what we're like. And they paint a picture of us that's not very rosy, even though we may have the best intentions in the world. And that is that we suffer from the problem that we want to be in charge of life and we're not.

And that is our basic problem. That is who we basically are. People who can't stand the thought that life is going on the way it is and who know exactly how it should be. And sometimes our motives are completely pure in that regard, and sometimes they're completely interdirected and self-directed, and sometimes they're a combination of that. But that's our problem, and we have to get rid of our will

and substitute for it the will of our higher power. Now for a a a more religious person, that's clear what it means. Follow the dictates of your sacred scriptures or of your of your

of your particular religious doctrine and faith. For someone like me, it means living a life devoted to truth, love, justice, and beauty. For people who choose the OA group as their higher power, it means living a life according to the the best ideas, the best concepts, the best conscience of the of the group. Whatever it means, it means living a life according to what we believe in rather than what we want.

And our whole passage in this book is going to be designed to point out to us the distinction between what we want and what we should accept

and what we should be. And the steps are going to tell us how to become that which we should be, which are people who follow according that dictates of our higher power, whatever that higher power is. It's incredibly beautiful and wonderful. And the process that's set out in the book, book of Steps 5, four to nine is so simple

and so easy. And I know in this room there are people who have used the, the, the, this method and are able to say here and now, right? A week, two weeks, 3 weeks, six weeks at the most, You're done. You do them over again, but you're done and you get the spiritual awakening and you learn how to make amends and you're recovered and it's absolutely wonderful. So, so that's what they discussed in the next little while. And I'm I'm going to

end with just a few jokes about decisions.

Many of you have heard these jokes, I know, but they bear telling. Three frogs are sitting on a log to make a decision to jump off the log. 5 minutes past how many frogs are left on the log? Well, you've all heard it before, or you think it's a trick.

My answer was when I first heard this. Three because the other frog would have jumped off too. You know, because frogs are like that. They jumped,

someone said. Some might say just two. One fog is left, the frog who didn't make a decision, and the answer is three are left because they only made a decision. They didn't jump.

A guy is sitting on his porch in flat, Kansas and a police car drives up this lonesome road and says, Cal, you got to get into this car. There's going to be a flash flood here. It's going to go past your the top of your house. You got to get in. No, I've made a decision to turn my will, my life over the care of God, as I understand God, I'm OK. Police car drives on. The flash flood comes. It's up to the second story. He's hanging out of the second story. A boat comes by

Cal get in the boat, it's going to get higher than your than your roof.

No, I've made a decision to my will in my life over the care of God. As I understand God.

What goes on? He's now on the top of his roof hanging on to his antenna, which I guess we won't know anything about it about a couple more months when they get rid of antennas. But anyway, he's hang on to his TV antenna. A helicopter comes by and drops a ladder. Get in, Cal. No, I made my decision. And he drowns and he goes to heaven and Saint Peter greets him

and he says, I don't want to talk to you, I want to talk to the big guy.

And he gets an audience with God. He says, God, where were you? And God says, I sent a police car, I sent a boat, and I sent a helicopter. What more do you want from

a guy has

a particular, pardon me,

he wanted to stay at home? Yeah. A guy has a particular charity that he believes in and he finds out that it has a cash fall problem and it's going to go broke and it's very important for him and he believes in it very much.

He's a very religious guy. He's never prayed for himself,

but he goes to his very modest room and he gets on his knees and he says, God, not for myself, but for this wonderful charity, we need to win the lottery. I need to win the lottery. And I give all my money to this charity and I don't, we, we don't need the $5,000,000 or the $10 million or whatever it is. We just need to two numbers, give us $100,000. So just two numbers. That's all we need. And I'm going to pray. I'm going to fast. I'm going to just bread and water. I'm going to pray for the next week. The lottery is on Saturday,

pray for the next week. 18 hours a day to give it. And he does this and he prays and prays and prays and Saturday comes and it's 3 hours on his knees and just three more hours. God, that's all I need. Just 100 members, just 100,000 asking for millions. It'll go right to the charity and it'll keep this charity alive.

And suddenly, this wonderfully sunny day, clouds begin to roll in from nowhere. Big dark black clouds, cute, you know, just completely obscuring the sun. The, the street lights go on because it's so dark. It's, it's just dark, black, dark. There's no light whatsoever

and suddenly a shaft of sunlight comes through a cloud through the curtains of his window right on to his face. A big shaft of light. And a frustrated voice says, buy a ticket.

A guy like Sergeant Snorkel falls off a Cliff and is hanging on to one twig that's on the edge of the Cliff. And he says, I've never prayed to God before, but if there is a God, please help me. And a voice says to him, I'm here, my son. What? What? I'm here, my son. Is that you, God? Yes, my son. Oh, oh, thank you. Thank you, God. What do I do? Let go of the twig.

Pardon me. Let go of the twig, my son.

Is there anyone else up there

that's a person who isn't willing to give up his will

like to the care of God? It's only a decision. I'll carry the theme through. We'll break now for about an hour and then we'll we'll come back and I'll do, I'll talk about step three and what it means in more detail to turn your will and your life over the care of God. I'll talk about what step three is. We'll do step three and I'll then go into the inventory process

and we will look at some forms to do step four that if you're not aware of them, will blow your mind by how simple they are. They're not the only way of doing Step 4, but they are very quick and powerful way of doing them. And we'll talk about recovery. I hope to finish Step 10 at least today, so I can devote most of my time tomorrow to Step 12. So thank you. We'll come back in an hour.