Steps and Principles
to Recovery

In the end, everyone must have their own program of "recovery." But going at it alone may not be wise:

Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counsellors they are established.
Proverbs 15:22

This web site collects counsel from many different sources. We have distilled them into three basic categories:

1. Believe in God as the Bible describes Him: Sovereign, Personal, and Loving
2. Cease your senseless quest to be your own god, which is rebellion against the true God. Put to death that old nature. Clear away the wreckage of your past attempts to be as god.
3. Begin a lifetime commitment to meditate on God's Law.

Here are the same steps, with a little more detail, as recommended by Alcoholics Anonymous. Links take you to specific parts of the Vine & Fig Tree program:

The 12 Steps

Step 1. We admitted we were powerless over [our sins] -- that our lives had become unmanageable.

Step 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Step 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Step 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Step 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Step 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Step 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Step 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Step 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Step 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Step 11. 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.

Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to [other sinners], and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Links to the steps

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