Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

STEP ELEVEN

great or small. He may have forgotten the possibility that
his own wishful thinking and the human tendency to ratio-
nalize have distorted his so-called guidance. With the best
of intentions, he tends to force his own will into all sorts
of situations and problems with the comfortable assurance
that he is acting under God's specific direction. Under such
an illusion, he can of course create great havoc without in
the least intending it.

We also fall into another similar temptation. We form
ideas as to what we think God's will is for other people. We
say to ourselves, "This one ought to be cured of his fatal
malady," or "That one ought to be relieved of his emotional
pain," and we pray for these specific things. Such prayers,
of course, are fundamentally good acts, but often they are
based upon a supposition that we know God's will for the
person for whom we pray. This means that side by side
with an earnest prayer there can be a certain amount of
presumption and conceit in us. It is A.A.'s experience that
particularly in these cases we ought to pray that God's will,
whatever it is, be done for others as well as for ourselves.

In A.A. we have found that the actual good results of
prayer are beyond question. They are matters of knowl-
edge and experience. All those who have persisted have
found strength not ordinarily their own. They have found
wisdom beyond their usual capability. And they have in-
creasingly found a peace of mind which can stand firm in
the face of difficult circumstances.

We discover that we do receive guidance for our lives to
just about the extent that we stop making demands upon
God to give it to us on order and on our terms. Almost