Working the 4th Step Together
February 22, 2006
Hearing Jesus words that we will love others as we love ourselves, we have been exploring our shame and guilt. One of the tools that we use as a community to do this exploring is the 12-Steps as they are expressed by Keith Miller in A Hunger for Healing. This week, I have asked our entire community to work the 4th Step together. The 4th Step - making a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Over the next few weeks, we are asking each of us to consider working a 4th Step. Here are some guidelines and worksheets that will help you. When youve completed the 4th Step, ask one of your leaders to work the 5th Step with you. A 5th Step is where you share what youve written down with God and with another person.
A Glossary of Terms
Self-esteem how I think about myself.
Pride how I think others view me.
Pocketbook basic desire for money, property, possessions, etc.
Personal relations our relationships with other people.
Emotional security general sense of emotional well-being
Sex relations basic drive for sexual intimacy
Ambitions our goals, plans and designs for the future. Ambition deals with the things that we want.
In examing our ambitions we notice that we have the following types:
o Emotional ambitions emotional security - our feelings.
o Material ambitions our pocketbook physical and financial well-being
o Social ambitions our place or position in the group. How others view us. What other people think about us.
o Sexual ambitions our desire for physical intimacy with another person.
Work the Fourth Step in Two Stages
Stage One set aside at least two hours to do stage one. Do it in one setting if you can. If not, do it as you have time. Get in a place where you will not be interrupted and spend a few minutes taking deep breathes and calming yourself. Tell some people in your community that you are about to begin stage one and ask them to pray for you.
Then, we you come to the time that you are ready to do stage one of the 4th Step, you pray before beginning. Ask God to give you courage to tell all of the truth. Ask God to protect you from Satans condemnation. Then, write down the answer to the following seven questions and share the answers with God and one other person.
1. In looking back over your life what memories are still painful, guilty, or dirty?
2. In what ways do you consider yourself an inadequate person?
3. Who do you resent and why? Be specific.
4. What do you conceive to be your defects of character as you see them today?
5. What is the nature of the ongoing problems you have with people close to you in human relations what seems to always happen when you have these things blow up.
6. In what way do you believe that God can help you with these problems?
7. In what way do you believe that God can change things?
Stage Two When you have completed stage one, ask one of the leadership team members for the worksheets that are required for stage 2. On these work sheets, write down simple, brief answers to all the questions. If you need additional work sheets, make your own copies. We suggest that you do one work sheet in a setting. Set aside one hour for each worksheet. Follow the same directions for prayer that are given above. When you have finished all four worksheets, contact one of your leaders and schedule a couple of hours to talk through all of your answers.
We will be discussing our experience in working a fourth step for the next several weeks. As we confess our sins, he will heal us. He promises that. (James 5:16). And as he heals us we will love ourselves more and be more able to love others