Step 7: Humbly Asking

Step 7 says: "Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings." That is the whole Step as the Big Book lists it on page 59, and it may be the shortest piece of work in the book. By the time we reach it we have written an inventory in Step 4, admitted the exact nature of our wrongs to God, to ourselves, and to another person in Step 5, and become entirely ready in Step 6 to have God remove what we found. Step 7 is simply where we ask. It occupies a single paragraph on page 76 of the chapter Into Action, and most of that paragraph is a prayer.

What Step 7 Means in Big Book Terms

Our shortcomings are not a mystery by this point. They are the specific things our inventory turned up: resentment, which the Big Book calls the number one offender (page 64), along with fear, dishonesty, and selfish demands on the people around us. The book has already named the taproot: "Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles" (page 62). Steps 6 and 7 share page 76 for a reason. Step 6 asks a readiness question: "Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable?" (page 76). Step 7 is what we do the moment the answer is yes. Notice who does the removing. We do not grit our teeth and self-improve. Having proved to ourselves in Step 1 that willpower could not solve our drinking, we do not expect it to solve our character either. We ask God, as we understand Him, to do for us what we could not do for ourselves.

How the Big Book Tells Us to Take the Step

The instruction on page 76 is disarmingly simple. "When ready, we say something like this" (page 76), the book tells us, and then gives the Seventh Step Prayer. We begin, "My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad" (page 76). We ask Him to remove "every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows" (page 76). We finish, "Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding" (page 76). Then comes the quiet closing line: "We have then completed Step Seven" (page 76). No ceremony, no waiting period, no committee approval.

Two details in that prayer carry the whole meaning of the word humbly. First, we offer God all of ourselves, good and bad. Humility here is not groveling; it is honesty about our actual size, the same honesty we practiced in our inventory. Second, the measuring stick is usefulness. We do not ask to be made comfortable, admired, or flawless. We ask to have removed whatever blocks us from being useful to God and the people around us. That one word quietly reorders our ambitions. Notice also that the book says we pray something like this. The words are a pattern, not a magic formula. What matters is that we mean them.

What Changes, and the Fear We Bring to This Step

What changes first is direction. The prayer asks for strength to go out and do God's bidding, and the very next sentence on page 76 turns to action, reminding us that "Faith without works is dead" (page 76) and pointing straight at Steps 8 and 9. Step 7 is the hinge between the housecleaning we did on paper and the amends we now make in person. The removal of our defects then shows up in daily living rather than in a single lightning bolt. Page 84 shows the Step becoming a reflex. As we keep watching for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear, "When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them" (page 84). We asked once on page 76; we keep asking for the rest of our lives, and we find that the asking works.

Here is the honest part. Many of us fear this Step for two opposite reasons. Some of us secretly suspect our defects are our personality, and that if God removed them there would be nothing left, no edge, no humor, no drive. Others of us pray the prayer, catch ourselves resentful again by Thursday, and quietly conclude the Step failed. The Big Book answers both fears the same way. "We are not saints" (page 60), it says plainly, and "We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection" (page 60). God does not remove our personhood; He removes what blocks it. And He does not seem to remove in one transaction what we are still half enjoying. Our part is willingness and asking. His part is the removing, on His schedule, usually in the measure that we walk into the action Steps that follow.

Which is exactly where the book sends us next. Step 8 asks us to make a list of all persons we had harmed and become willing to make amends to them all, and page 76 tells us the list is already in our hands: "We made it when we took inventory" (page 76). Humbly asked, we go out from here with work to do.