((James 4:10) Humble yourself before the Lord, and He will lift you up.)

Step 7. Spiritual Principle: HUMILITY

Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

((I John 1:9)If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.)I group these two steps together because they are so closely related. These steps may sound self-explanatory, but being entirely ready to have God remove all your character defects and humbly asking Him to remove our shortcomings can be difficult. Especially if you don't trust Him, can't humble yourself to receive the truth about your faults, or aren't ready to give Him full control to be in charge of changing you. Plus we need Him to show us those character defects to change in those areas and He is the only one who really knows every area of our heart, thoughts, emotions, and life's history to be able to do that. You may also need an emotional healing to trust in someone else's control again, and require a progressive learning to trust God again to overcome old emotional roots of distrust toward authority figures, including and especially God. We have all been hurt by the effects of evil in the world, and some of us have mistakenly blamed God for the bad things that have happened to us, or to those we love. You might say "Well, God let it happen, and that's why I am mad at Him". Humans are all given a choice to either choose evil or good in life, and oftentimes they choose evil, and many people get hurt by those evil choices. It is best that we be honest about our feelings about God and our distrust of authority because those beliefs are there whether you acknowledge them or not, and they affect our lives whether we realize it or not. We must trust God to let Him help us to change.

So restoring your trust in God is critical to completing steps six and seven, because without it, there is no way you can be entirely ready to have God remove all your defects of character or humbly ask Him to remove your shortcomings. The reason we end up stuck with all of our negative character and personality defects and shortcomings, is because we keep trying to fix them ourselves. We sit there like a little kid trying to untie a huge, tangled, tight knot in our shoelaces (our addiction), while the parent (God) stands there waiting to help us, but we keep saying, "No, I'll get" and we just keep waving Him away. When we get frustrated enough with that knot, we may finally in tears and exasperation ask him to help us. But then when it looks like we have made a little bit of progress, we push Him away again and resume our selfish struggle to untie our untieable knot of addiction. God is just waiting for you to finally understand from your heart that you cannot beat your addiction on your own and He wants you to surrender unconditionally to His leadership over your life today, so that He can help you to change.

Most character defects come from lies that we have believed as children about ourselves, others, and God. We develop deep roots of fear and selfishness because of these lies, and we try to meet all our own needs in life because of them. The problem is, God created us to need His and others help to make it successfully through life. When God takes you back to that original root lie ("I can only trust in myself to protect myself and meet my own needs"), then He can deal with the fruit of what that lie is producing on the tree of your life (the character defects). He does this by helping you to not only understand the lie that is working in you, but He replaces that lie with the truth of His creation (i. e. He created you, and He promises to protect you and to meet your needs if you will let Him). Harm and damage are caused in our life from evil that is committed either by us, or to us, directly or indirectly. It is never God's fault so we are wrong to be mad at God, distrust Him, blame Him, or to hold grudges against Him because of the bad things that have happened to us. Satan may have meant what happened to you for evil, but God can use it to produce good in your life if you let Him. God wants to turn your mess into a message that can help others.

Some of your character defects may include,

When we humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings what does that really mean? Humility is not just someone with low self-esteem who grovels codependently to every criticism that comes along. True humility is just knowing the truth about who God really is, and who you really are, and then accepting it from the heart. Acceptance of your shortcomings not only requires conviction and revelation about your true self from the Holy Spirit, but it is also a decision to let go of the lies we have believed about ourselves that don't match up to His truth. Some people think that they are better than they really are, and some think they are worse than they really are. We must see ourselves in truth as God sees us in order to be able to leave the dark room of delusion we live in while practicing an addiction, and to walk into His light. Shortcomings are just ways that we fail and come up short in life from the regular standards and expectations God places upon us as humans. Running to an addiction in place of God is a shortcoming because we need to run to the answer and not to just another problem to try to fix our problems. Trust God to help you when you ask with a sincere and humble heart.

Here is a prayer to pray if you need it.

"Dear God, I ask you to forgive me for not trusting you in life, and for resorting to negative sinful behaviors to try to cheat at life to have things go my way. I humbly ask you oh God, to show me clearly what all of my character defects and shortcomings are, how they got there, and each person that I have harmed because of them. I surrender to you completely and unconditionally this day Jesus and I ask you to be Lord of all my life. Please help me to change all these character defects and shortcomings that you reveal to me, into proper behaviors that glorify you and that help, serve, and honor all of my fellow humans. Thank you this day God for helping me and changing me; I give up complete control of my life completely to you this day God. In Jesus name I pray, amen."

Some scriptures to help you.