The more I am in the program, the more I see that this is a God-centered program. I am not only powerless over lust, I am powerless over people, places and things. When I depend on them, sooner or later they will disappoint me.

The other day I learned that a person had been doing things just the opposite to what I thought he should. I didn’t like the idea and I felt resentful. I could see at that moment my “happiness” depended on what that person was doing. That I was “allowing” that person to control my life.

What could I do? I am powerless. I don’t have the strength on my own not to want to control. So I acknowledged my powerlessness. “Yes, I want to control that person.” “Yes, I want to change that person.” “Yes, my happiness, just now, seems to depend on what that person is doing.” Knowing that self-help books, knowledge, and self-will never helped me much, I asked God to come into my misconnection with that person and fill the void inside.

I was misconnecting with that person, using him to fill the void inside. I was making a god of that person. So I had to accept my lack of power, let go and let God inside. I asked God to come and fill the void inside. I am so grateful for this God-centered program. I can’t, but God can. I am seeing in me and in others who work the Steps in SA that the solution to my dependency is not to become “independent” but to become dependent on God. And God can do the things I cannot do for myself.

Sometimes when I am running the show, I dilute my program by trying to reduce it to what is humanly possible for me: the easier, softer way. I turn my program into a sort of “self-help” program. But doing that doesn’t work and at the end I have to turn to God and find the fulfillment I cannot find elsewhere. And thank God for that!

Yesterday I read in the Big Book: “Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously. But where and how were we to find this Power? Well, that’s exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem” (p. 45—italics mine). Have you read it?—its main object!