PASTOR’S PEN
12 steps for New Year's resolutions
LEVERIDGE

The 12 Step Program is one of God's gifts to us that helps us to meet the demands of our lives.

Try using this process in dealing with hope and resolutions for the New Year.

Step 1: Admit being powerless over fulfilling New Year's resolutions.

Step 2: Have faith that God or some other power greater than myself could help me make these needed changes.

Step 3: Make a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand him.

Step 4: Make a searching moral assessment of my part in causing these needs for change.

Step 5: Admit to God, to myself and to another human being my part in causing the need for change for which my resolution calls.

Step 6: Become ready and have faith that God can and will remove

resolutions

all my defects of character.

Step 7; Ask God as I understand Him to remove my weaknesses.

Step 8: Make a list of all whom I might have hurt and became willing to make amends to them.

Step 9: Make direct amends wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Step 10: Continue to assess my progress and when I come up short be willing to promptly admit and do something to correct it.

Step 11: Seek through prayer and meditation to improve my relationship with God, praying only for his will and the power to carry that out.

Step 12: Use the spiritual awakening that comes from participating in these steps, to carry its good news to others and to practice these principles in all my affairs.

As one who tries to apply these principles in my life, I know they work.

Father Al Leveridge is vicar at Trinity by-the-Sea Episcopal Church.