All the steps require humility, but step 7 requires it most explicitly. Humility comes from knowing about God and recognising His greatness, venerating Him, loving Him and being in awe of Him; and it comes from knowing about oneself and one’s own faults, and weaknesses. God gives this characteristic to those who struggle to become close to Him through deeds of piety and righteousness.
Dear Readers,
Please find below Step 7 to recovery. I apologize for the delay. The following step focuses on humility. The very core of being Muslims is being humble. The word “Muslim” itself means to submit oneself in ultimate humbleness to Allah. In prayer, Muslims prostrate themselves to the ground, acknowledging human beings’ lowliness and humility before Almighty Allah.
Call on your Lord with humility and in private, for Allah loves not those who transgress beyond bounds. Do not mischief on the earth, after it has been set in order, but call on Him with fear and longing in your hearts, for the Mercy of Allah is always near to those who do good.
(Al-Araf 7:55-56)
Successful indeed are the believers, those who humble themselves in their prayers…
(Al-Muminoon 23:1-2)
Has not the time arrived for the believers that their hearts in all humility should engage in the remembrance of Allah and of the Truth which has been revealed to them… (Al-Hadid 57:16)
Step Seven: Humbly ask Allah to remove all your shortcomings.
Mother Theresa said: “If you are humble, nothing can touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know who you are.”
2 Different EDA Members’ Step Seven Experiences
“Step Seven was really a turning point for me in my ability to trust my Higher Power and the Program of recovery. Until then I was mostly trying to stay straight and keep my act together one day at a time. All of a sudden I really wanted to change a lot more… to work at bringing myself into a more harmonious relationship with the world. To find out what this talk of serenity was all about.”
“For me, Step Seven involved considerable risk taking. I was now trying to do new things, in new ways. It took practice to learn to reach out at meetings and develop new friendships. I took a big risk when I accepted a service position in my Home Group. It took a lot of faith and help from my Higher Power to do these things… to not just say no automatically.”“Step Seven really reminded me I have to continue asking for help and feedback, because it usually takes a lot of time to make these changes and it’s easy to revert back to our old coping strategies.”“Step Seven starts with the word ‘Humbly’ so we can gather that humility is an important key to this Step. Humility is just about the exact opposite of humiliation. It is a sense of our very humanness; a realistic acceptance of our strengths and weaknesses. We have been developing a more realistic acceptance of ourselves by working the first six Steps. Here’s where I think humility really pays off. We get better on two levels. We can take all the Steps and do our best to use all the tools and assets we have, but those deeper changes happenin God’s own time and manner. So when I say humility, I mean that we do what we can as best we can and the rest is up to our Higher Power.”“Humility is the result of knowing that God is the doer, not me. In the light of this awareness, how can I take pride in my accomplishments? I am an instrument and any work I seem to be doing is being done by God, through me. I ask God on a daily basis to remove my shortcomings, in order that I may more freely go about my life with an attitude of love and service.”
Step Seven Exercises
Your own conception:
“When you’re out of ideas, that’s when faith comes in. Let Allah show you the way.” – Wael Abdelgawad