"I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be witholden from thee . . . I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhore myself, and repent in dust and ashes . . . And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had had before." (Job 42:10)
When I was new in AA, I was told to pray, in the morning, for a sober day. I did, sporadically, and stayed sober, both on the days I thus prayed and on the days I did not. I no longer pray for a sober day, however.
"We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control." (30:3, 'Alcoholics Anonymous')
I do not believe that whether I stay sober depends on whether or not I ask for a sober day. This would mean that God is hovering over the Big Red Button of Relapse, closely monitoring my prayers for the right formula, rewarding compliance and punishing failure. If this were true, God would not be God; God would be my puppet; I pull the strings, and God obeys; I pray in the right way, submit the right petition, God keeps me sober; I do not, God does not.
I know, today, I have no control over whether or not I stay sober, and I certainly cannot bargain with or manipulate God into doing my will—staying sober—even if I am certain that that is God's will, too.
And there is the crux—if I am sober today, it is because God has already shamelessly pulled rank and decided I am not to drink. If I wake up sober, without relapsing the night before, I have already been kept safe, with or without my knowledge, with or without my permission, with or without my acknowledgement.
Either God has all power or He does not; either God is everything or God is nothing; God either is, or He isn't. (cf. 53:2).
My job (pardon the pun) is to wake up to what already is—not to hang around for the miracle to happen but to acknowledge the miracle that has already taken place. I spent years unable to get through the day without getting slaughtered on alcohol. And yet, for 16 years and 11 months, I have not drunk.
To ask God to keep me sober would be to deny the miracle that has already been wrought. It is done. This is the seeing. It would be like a person who has been shipwrecked and who has been washed up on shore praying to be saved from the shipwreck or to remain on the shore.
Anyone shipwrecked and washed up on shore needs to get away from the ocean as fast as possible, or a rogue wave will catch him and wash him back out to sea. I cannot petition God directly to prevent that from happening; what I can do is ask God to give me the grace to take actions that will take me further inland into His country, into real safety. I need to ask, but the power and direction will come from Him.
The abhorrence of self is not the self-abasement of inferiority to other men—that 'low self-worth' has always had much more to do with recognition of my failure to achieve or maintain a superior status over others. No, the abhorrence of self that needs to be fostered is the abhorrence of the ocean in which I was shipwrecked, the waves of ego which determined my course, the winds of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity that my ship was forced to submit to and which ultimately brought my downfall. For a time, all went well, but the elemental forces of the ego will always destroy me. And this I started to realise when I was on the shore: the two-fold admission of my own failure at life plus the miracle of restoration by a power greater than myself.
In the past, I have missed the point: I thought my sobriety was an end in itself. Of course, anything that benefits me, I will see as an end in itself! If I concede that God struck me sober, I have to ask 'why?' In the land on which I am shipwrecked, there is work to do. God's country extends endlessly, and He has no hands but ours. It was never about me; it was never about the ocean and the shipwreck; it was always about the work that needed to be done by me, through me, in the country inhabited by His kids.
I do indeed thank God for getting me sober in the first place and showering me with grace on a daily basis since then.
The question, when I rise in the morning, is not whether God will keep me sober but what God wants me to do NOW I am sober.
I do not even say, on a routine, daily basis, grand dramatic prayers asking God to take my life, to take all that is good and bad in me and transform it (Steps Three and Seven). To me, these are reserved for pivotal points, for junctions, for the moments of true surrender—which usually follow a re-enactment of the whole self-will-run-riot escapade followed by a further shipwreck and miraculous rescue. I will also share in others' praying of these prayers at their pivotal moments.
If God really is my employer, I would feel a little foolish turning up at work every day, grandly declaring my allegiance, my commitment to God in that capacity. Whilst I am obsequiously bowing and scraping, offering the great gift of my whole life—I'm the type of alcoholic who relishes the dramatic—I imagine God with a long to-do list, wondering, patiently, when I am going to be done, so we can get down to business and He can give me my chores today, starting with washing a few cups and emptying the bins.
A great danger for me is to decide that, now I have accomplished the florid daily gesture of turning my life over to God (as though, the last time I did that, he did not take it), I can get on with the day, doing precisely what I had already planned to do before I prayed my theatrical Thee–Thou prayer, as though this great offering absolves me of any responsibility for the detail. After all, I've done so well to turn over my whole, life; the detail will take care of itself!
I need to pray not for sobriety itself but for the knowledge and power to do something with it. I need to pray, once I have been saved, for the salvation of others and for knowledge of my role—if any—as an instrument of God in that salvation. I need to pray for inspiration (in my spirit), an intuitive thought (in my mind), or a decision (a commitment to action) (cf. 86:3) concerning each specific matter (69:3).
In practice, this is almost invariably banal, humdrum, and at times frustrating (because I pray and sometimes nothing comes—at least, then and there). It is also humbling, because without Him I am lost, even—perhaps especially—in the detail.
But it is through asking for—and receiving—specific guidance in tiny daily matters that I have been granted freedom, happiness, and plenty.