Rev. Dr. Paul Bradley

Step Five: "Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs."

Psalm 139:23 offers this prayer: "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts." Having done a searching and fearless moral inventory in Step Four, it is...

Step Four: Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Scripture references: Philippians 2:6-11, Luke 12:2-3 Lamentations 3:40, Revelation 2:5.

When we begin recovering from addictive substances and behaviors and join our first 12-step recovery program, many of us are put...

Step Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Scripture: Proverbs 16:2-3, Luke 12:2, James 4: 6-10, Revelation 2:5.

In the meeting rooms of Twelve Step recovery, we often hear about the "threefold" nature of the disease of addiction and...

"Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God." --Step Three

In the Third Step, we make "a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God." In the book...

"Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." --Step Two

"The dark night of the soul" -- so the Christian mystic St. John of the Cross described a crisis of the spirit. In my heart, when I was deep in the grip of addictions,...

Step One: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol [drugs, compulsive sexual behavior, spending, food, gambling, codependence, unhealthy relationships], that our lives had become unmanageable.

Scripture references: 2 Corinthians 12:5-10, Romans 7:19, Proverbs 14:12

In his Second letter to the Corinthians (12:9), the Apostle Paul tells us that "power...

It begins and ends with gratitude. For me, gratitude arrived when I had been sober for less than two years. It was Thanksgiving Day. The weekend before, I spent a long afternoon with my sponsor, the late Bob Roche, doing my Fifth Step. In the Twelve Steps of recovery, after...