I remember growing up watching the old John Wayne war movies. He would always win the gun battle and make the others surrender. Giving up in our culture is a sign of being defeated. It says, \”I can\’t win and I give up.\”, a definite sign of weakness in our world. People who surrender \”don\’t have what it takes to succeed\”; they are the \”losers\”. With the super bowl coming up at this writing I can already picture the winners celebrating and the losing team sitting with their heads down, some even shedding tears. It is not a pretty picture. Given the stigma of giving up it is a wonder that in recovery from addiction, turning our will over to the care of God is a problem for some. But I would like you to explore this with me today to understand it in a new light perhaps, for some.

The 12 Step Program says, \”We made a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we have come to understand Him.\”

Consider this with me. The first part of it states we need to make a decision. Consider what that implies. We need to come to a place where we make the decision to surrender. To decide to surrender is not natural for us, so hang with me while we explore what it is and how it works. A decision is usually a choice, as some define it. Usually when we make a choice, information is vital. Where does that information come from to make this choice? Well, we just did a thorough step and realized that life under our control has not been working out too well. We have noted our powerless behaviors to our sponsor and detailed how our lives have become unmanageable. If we did this honest step, it is easy for us to recognize something is not right in our world.

With that realization, we turn to our Higher Power, for help. We came to believe a power greater than us can return us to sanity and we began to reach out to our Higher Power\’s. We came to believe that without His help we are lost and hopeless. Without something greater involved in our lives we were doomed to a life full of consequences that compound themselves daily. We were tired and desperate for help and realized we needed help. We couldn\’t take it anymore.

Read Doctor Bob\’s nightmare in the Big Book and you will see what I\’m talking about. So the step starts out with \”We made a decision…\”. In a moment of clarity we made the decision, the choice, to believe that we needed to surrender to a power greater than ourselves. We have already surrendered our lives to the care of our addiction and the results were pretty disastrous for most of us. We hoped that as we had that other drink \”it would be OK\” or \”it is all I need right now\”. We had faith in that drug and that it was the answer to our problems. It lied to us, didn\’t it?

In the next steps, we are just surrendering to a power that can deliver on His promises. We are choosing to surrender to a power with the same kind of faith and hope we directed to our drugs. You see, I don\’t believe we have a struggle with surrender as much as we think. We surrender to so many things. We surrender to the police, the judge, the spouse. Am I right? We are always giving in to something. The idea with this step is that now you are surrendering to a power that loves you more than you know, a power that wants your best, a power that can deliver on His promises, a power that will not judge you and cast you aside, a power Who wants the best for you in your life.

I love to read books on the U.S. civil war. I like to read the memoires of the soldiers and even their diaries they kept as they fought in the war. I remember a soldier from the south near the end of the war; he remarked that the first northern soldier he saw he was going to surrender. He decided to do so because he was tired and hungry and he knew the Northerners had food. You can tell they were getting tired as Grant and Sherman were after them without delay. They wanted the war to be over. They became willing to give up.

In recovery from addiction it is very similar. We give up because we are tired of the war, simply put. We stop fighting and give in to a God of our understanding. When we make the decision to surrender, we allow the God of our understanding to intervene in our lives. You give Him the permission to get involved. You are probably wondering why you need to give God permission. From my understanding, God does not force himself on us but when we give him that permission, with our surrender to Him, that\’s when He really gets involved in our lives. That is what He is waiting for. That decision unleashes the power of the universe in your life.

It might sound something like, \”God help me today, I can\’t do this without you.\” That is all He needs to hear from you. In making our decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God, we are admitting to Him and to ourselves that we are not a very good higher power unto ourselves. I\’ve told patients in our treatment facility, \”Surrendering to our higher power is like taking the keys to the Ferrari off the hook in the kitchen and getting in for a spin\”. We have such a powerful advocate in God that is rarely used because we are too busy running our own lives into the ditch. We ride around in jalopies while the Ferrari sits untouched.

Look at it like this, as we surrender, our efforts are combined with the power of God. As we surrender, His involvement in our lives empowers us to do better. As we surrender, He begins to handle the things in our lives that used to trip us up. As we surrender, He is allowed to change that thing in us that our addiction is feeding off of. As we surrender, we are set free. You have given in to your disease long enough, today make the choice to surrender to God and I promise you, you will get better results.

Visit www.valleyhope.org or www.valleyhope.org/drug-rehab-alcohol-rehab-aboutus.aspx.

Visit http://www.valleyhope.org or http://www.valleyhope.org/drug-rehab-alcohol-rehab-aboutus.aspx.

Author Bio: Visit www.valleyhope.org or www.valleyhope.org/drug-rehab-alcohol-rehab-aboutus.aspx.

Category: Wellness, Fitness and Diet
Keywords: addiction recovery, drug rehab, drug and alcohol treatment centers, Surrender, 12 Step Program