Step Prayers

The prayers associated with Steps 3, 7, and 11 from the Big Book and the Twelve & Twelve.

Third Step Prayer

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

God, I offer myself to Thee — to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt.

Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will.

Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life.

May I do Thy will always!

Big Book, p. 63

Seventh Step Prayer

Step 7 — Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings

My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad.

I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows.

Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding.

Amen.

Big Book, p. 76

Eleventh Step Prayer

Step 11 — Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace —

that where there is hatred, I may bring love —
that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness —
that where there is discord, I may bring harmony —
that where there is error, I may bring truth —
that where there is doubt, I may bring faith —
that where there is despair, I may bring hope —
that where there are shadows, I may bring light —
that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted — to understand, than to be understood — to love, than to be loved.

For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.

Amen.

Saint Francis Prayer — Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 99