12 Step Prayers: 3rd, 7th and 11th Step Prayer Text

The step prayers are three short prayers that people in Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step programs say when they work Steps Three, Seven and Eleven. The 3rd Step Prayer is on page 63 of the Big Book, the 7th Step Prayer is on page 76, and the 11th Step Prayer is the one most people know as the Prayer of St. Francis.

All three are printed in full below, with what each line is asking for. Each takes under a minute to say, which is why they fit in a parked car or in the half minute before you get out of bed.

The Serenity Prayer belongs to no particular step, so it has its own page with the short and long versions.

What are the 12 step prayers?

Only two of the twelve steps come with a prayer written out in the Big Book, the 1939 book Alcoholics Anonymous. Step Eleven got its prayer later, in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (1953).

• 3rd Step Prayer: Big Book, page 63. A prayer of surrender.
• 7th Step Prayer: Big Book, page 76. A prayer of humility.
• 11th Step Prayer: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 99. A prayer for direction.

You will find prayers for the other nine steps online. Most were assembled afterwards from sentences in the Big Book and given a title, and they are not what a sponsor means when she asks, “Have you said your Third Step Prayer today?”

The 3rd Step Prayer

Step Three reads: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” The Third Step Prayer puts that decision into a single breath.

God, I offer myself to Thee—to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!

Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 63

The first sentence hands over the builder’s job. God does the building, and you are the material.

The second names the problem as “the bondage of self.” Alcohol is never mentioned, which is one reason the prayer has travelled so easily to other fellowships.

The third sentence is the surprising one. It asks for difficulties to be taken away so that people who are still struggling can see what happened. The request is for a story worth telling someone else.

The Big Book is relaxed about the exact words. Straight after the prayer it says, “The wording was, of course, quite optional so long as we expressed the idea, voicing it without reservation.”

The 7th Step Prayer

Four steps later the tone changes. Step Seven is one line, “Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings,” and its prayer comes after the long inventory of Steps Four to Six, when a person knows those shortcomings by name.

My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen.

Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 76

“All of me, good and bad” is the phrase people remember. The bad is offered without excuses, and the good is offered too, including the strengths a person has been spending mostly on himself.

Look closely at what is asked to be removed: the prayer does not say every defect. It says every defect “which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows,” so the measure is whether you can be of use to somebody.

Then comes “as I go out from here.” This is a prayer for the doorway, said on the way to the amends of Steps Eight and Nine.

Of the two Big Book prayers, I think this is the harder one. The Third hands over a future nobody could see anyway, while the Seventh hands over habits you know well and may still be fond of.

Why the 3rd and 7th Step Prayers are said together

That difference is why the two are paired. Many people say the 3rd and 7th Step Prayer back to back every morning, years after they first worked the steps.

Together they take about forty seconds. The Third gives God the plan for the day, and the Seventh gives God the person who has to carry it out.

Step Three is also a decision, and decisions wear off by lunchtime. Saying both prayers each morning renews one that was first made long ago, in someone’s living room.

The 11th Step Prayer

Mornings and evenings are also the territory of Step Eleven: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”

The Big Book gives no single prayer for this step. On pages 86 to 88 it gives a routine: at night “we constructively review our day,” on waking “we ask God to direct our thinking,” and when “agitated or doubtful” we pause and “ask for the right thought or action.”

The prayer arrived in 1953, when Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions printed a version of the Peace Prayer beginning “Lord, make me a channel of thy peace.” AA members have called it the 11th Step Prayer ever since. This is the traditional wording:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

It is usually credited to St. Francis of Assisi, who died in 1226. The earliest known copy is far younger: it appeared anonymously in a small French Catholic magazine, La Clochette, in December 1912.

The second half is where it meets Step Eleven. Most of us pray to be consoled, understood and loved, and this prayer asks for the chance to do those things for somebody else.

9 Bible verses behind the step prayers

The Big Book rarely quotes chapter and verse, yet its prayers lean on Scripture throughout. Here are nine verses, three for each prayer, in the King James Version.

For the 3rd Step Prayer

1. Proverbs 3:5-6. “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Step Three in two sentences: stop leaning on your own reading of things and let God set the direction.

2. Luke 22:42. “Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” In Gethsemane Jesus asks for the cup to be removed and surrenders in the same breath, and the Third Step Prayer has that shape.

3. Romans 12:1. “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” “I offer myself to Thee” is Paul’s living sacrifice in plainer words.

For the 7th Step Prayer

4. Psalm 51:10. “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” David asks God to make him a new heart, having given up on scrubbing the old one clean himself.

5. 1 John 1:9. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Confession first, cleansing second, the same order as the steps.

6. James 4:10. “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.” “Humbly” is the first word of Step Seven, and James adds the promise that the humbled are not left on the floor.

For the 11th Step Prayer

7. Psalm 143:8. “Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; for in thee do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk.” A morning prayer for direction, far older than the Big Book’s advice for the hour of waking.

8. Psalm 19:14. “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.” Prayer and meditation stand side by side here, as they do in the step.

9. Matthew 6:10. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” The Big Book suggests saying “Thy will be done” many times a day, a line borrowed from the Lord’s Prayer.

How to pray the step prayers one day at a time

Knowing the texts is the easy part. The habit takes longer, and most people build it in pieces.

• Start with the morning. Say the Third and Seventh Step Prayers before you pick up your phone, or pair them with the first coffee. More ideas are in morning prayers to start your day.
• Carry one line into the day. “Relieve me of the bondage of self” is seven words and fits in an elevator ride. If you want the whole prayer by heart, the method in how to memorize Bible verses works here too.
• Close the day with the review. Step Eleven’s night questions are blunt: “Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology?” Answer them, then pray the 11th Step Prayer.
• Give meditation its half. Five quiet minutes with one verse is enough to begin, and how to meditate on God’s Word walks through it.

The night review is where a lot of people stall, usually because they are too tired to think in sentences.

Listening can carry you through that part. The Still app reads Scripture and short prayers aloud, slowly, so a worn-out mind has something to follow once the day’s inventory is done. Download Still on the App Store.

Still choosing an app for daily prayer? Our comparison of the best Christian prayer apps says plainly what each one is good at.

A word on getting help

The people who wrote these prayers had tried praying alone and found it was not enough. Every step assumes company: a meeting, a sponsor, someone who has been where you are.

If you or someone close to you is struggling with alcohol or drugs, the SAMHSA National Helpline is free, confidential and open around the clock in the United States. You can also find an AA meeting near you. Making that call is a Third Step in miniature.

Frequently asked questions

What page are the 3rd and 7th Step Prayers on? The 3rd Step Prayer is on page 63 of the Big Book and begins, “God, I offer myself to Thee.” The 7th Step Prayer is on page 76 and begins, “My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad.”

What is the 11th Step Prayer? It is the Peace Prayer, often called the Prayer of St. Francis. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions prints a version of it on page 99, in the chapter on Step Eleven.

Do I have to say the step prayers word for word? No. The Big Book calls the wording of the Third Step Prayer “quite optional” and introduces the Seventh with “we say something like this.” Most people learn the original first and loosen it once they know what they are changing.

Are the step prayers Christian? Their language is the church English of 1939 and their ideas run close to Scripture, as the nine verses above show. AA itself is tied to no church, and the steps speak of God “as we understood Him,” so people of many faiths pray them.

Conclusion: three step prayers, one day at a time

Put the three side by side and one thing stands out: none of them mentions drinking. The 3rd Step Prayer asks to be freed from self, the 7th Step Prayer asks to be made useful, and the 11th Step Prayer asks to be sent toward other people.

That may be why the 12 step prayers outlast the crisis that first brings someone to them. People are still saying them at thirty years sober, and in rooms that have nothing to do with alcohol.

Say the Third and the Seventh tomorrow morning, before the day has started asking for things. Tomorrow is the only day they were written for.