If you have read much on this blog, you already know how I answer this. I think that God changes our desires. I think that God helps us to want the things that He wants. As an addict, you don’t want what God wants. As a recovering addict, you begin to.

Remember Moroni chapter 7, where we are told that a gift given grudgingly has the same effect as the gift not given. Why is that? Because the gift given grudgingly accomplishes the goal sought and that is all. Such gifts are given in order to get us something; in fact, they are not gifts at all, instead we look at them as down payments on future investments. Sometimes they are viewed simply as the price to be paid in order to achieve some other goal.

There is a difference between a gift and a price. One is given freely, out of love for the person to whom it is given. Prices are paid in order to oblige others to us. If you give a gift because you know you will get it back or will get something better in return, that is no gift.

Of course, this is difficult in relationship with God. As King Benjamin makes clear, God has given us everything that we have and when we choose to give him something, he gives us something back. We will forever be unprofitable servants. However, there is, in the words of Elder Neal A. Maxwell, one thing that we can freely give God, the only thing that is truly ours. We can give God our will, our agency.

What does that mean exactly? One thing I don’t think it means is becoming robots. God doesn’t need robots. So, since giving him our will is something that is required for both discipleship and recovery, it seems pretty important to consider what it means.

I would suggest that giving our will to God consists, in large part, in taking that “What Would Jesus Do?” question very seriously. If we ask God what he would like us to do on a daily basis, He will tell us. After all, aren’t we supposed to counsel with the Lord in all our doings? God wants to be involved in our lives. Turning our will over to him is mostly the process of inviting Him in.

That said, there is something else involved. As you know, I really believe that God can change the desires of our hearts. What is our will, if not the desires of our hearts? As we allow Him to influence our will, he can change it. As he changes it, we will lose the desire to act out in addiction and we will gain the desire to seek His will in sanity. That is what recovery is all about. God and sanity. What else could you want?

Well, based on my experience, I am not sure that you know this obvious point. I used to think keeping the commandments was about not smoking, not drinking, paying tithing, attending church, reading scriptures, praying and fasting, going to the temple, and so forth. While these are things that are involved, they are beside the point. Face it, you don’t have enough time or enough willpower to keep all the commandments all the time. It is an impossible task and, I think, one that God doesn’t expect us to actually accomplish.

So, if keeping the commandments doesn’t strictly mean doing every little thing, what does it mean? I suggest that it means, first and foremost, to do the most important things. The most important thing that you can do in this life is repent. That is a fact regardless of whether or not you are an addict. Repentance is the process by which we work with God to become more like him in this life and in the next.

Furthermore, God wants us to do it. He sent his Son so that we may repent. If we repent, we can return to Him. Like any good father, God just wants his children home.

You may think that you have repented up to this point, but, if you are an addict, it has never taken. The reason it hasn’t is because, in my experience, you never really wanted to keep the commandments. You wanted the benefits of keeping the commandments (feeling of self-worth, temple worthiness, opportunities to serve in callings, etc), but you didn’t want to keep the commandments for their own sake, simply as an expression of love and trust in God.

This is important to understand. Although we don’t like to think of them this way, many commandments are arbitrary. Why, for example, should baptism be necessary? Why doesn’t any dip in any pool count as a baptism? Why must it be done in certain ways under certain authority? Why must it be repeated if the name or the prayer is messed up (after all, God surely knows who is getting baptised and what the words of the prayer are)? The acts and the words are sometimes not important in and of themselves; instead, it is the reason we do them. Shouldn’t we keep the commandments simply because God asked us to and it is a way (perhaps the absolute best way) to show our love for him? While we may initially keep the commandments because of what they bring us (membership, social acceptance, and so forth), if this remains the focus of our commandment keeping, it will always be shallow and we will always be prone to addiction.

So something deeper must change: our will. This is why step 3 encourages us to turn our life and our will over to God. That said, as a start, we must try our best to keep the commandments. God doesn’t expect more from us than we can give and, as addicts, we may not be able to keep all the commandments all the time (making us remarkably like everyone else). However, we can today decide to be perfect in one commandment: repenting. When we fall, which we will, it is God’s will that we turn to Him for comfort, forgiveness, strength to endure, and strength to change. We can approach Him for this no matter where we are at, no matter how good we are at keeping other commandments. Go to Him and He will slowly, steadily, bless you with what you need to change. Then keeping the commandments will take care of itself.

The thing is, when I read that, I realized that not giving in to my addiction felt like holding my breath. I could do it for a long time, but I really wanted that air. Now, it wasn’t (and isn’t) air. It is more like nicotine or tar or chlorine. It will kill you (and me). But I wanted it so bad that even when I was being good, I thought of it as a sacrifice, as going without. It was like I thought that in a perfect world I could look at p~rn, but in this mortal one I can’t. Sometimes, I would tell myself that I needed to fast from my sin as a show of devotion to God. Repenting isn’t fasting; you’re not giving up anything that you need. This attitude is a clear case of mistaking evil for good and good for evil.

So, getting back to the decision, the decision you need to make is not to give up your addiction. Instead, the decision you need to make is to give up your love of your addiction. You need to give up wanting it, even when you aren’t doing it. You need to give up feeling like a martyr because you are sacrificing your desires. You need to give up a life built entirely around managing this one sin. You need to give up your love of your addiction.

The problem being, of course, that you can not do this. You can not change your desires. Humans simply are not equipped to do this. But God is. And you have to trust him to do it.

In Alma 32:27 we read the following:

But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.

I used to think that this was written for the weak people. It is. I just realized I was one of them. I am at a point where I can do little more than desire to believe. As an addict, it is a struggle to desire to do right. It shouldn’t be, but it is. This is where I am. And the promise here, is that if I desire this desire (the desire to believe) then I will be blessed with it. And if I desire to believe, then I can, because it is expedient to God that I believe. And if I believe, then I will be blessed with further desires: to plant the word, to keep faith, to prayer, to obey. It is all based on our desires, which are an expression of our will. And what God asks is that we give him our whole will.

That is a sacrifice, but it is the right kind. The kind that frees you from sin and addiction.

Made the decision to reconcile ourselves to the will of God, offer our whole souls as an offering unto Him, and trust Him in all things forever. (2 Nephi 10:24; Omni 1:26; Mosiah 3:19; 2 Nephi 4:34)

Step 3 is perhaps the most important of the steps. It is the first step that really gives you a good idea of the commitment involved in recovery. This is of course problematic as, being an addict, commitments are not things that you are used to taking seriously.

Step 3 asks us to commit ourselves wholly to God, to actively seek to do his will. It’s time to accept a hard fact’ you are bad at seeking and doing the Lord’s will. You may fulfill all your callings faithfully; you may never miss a meeting or a Family Home Evening; you may be a stellar example to your friends and neighbors. Nonetheless, if you are acting out in addiction, you are not seeking and doing God’s will. He doesn’t want you to act out.

Step 3 is really the first action step. In step 1 you became aware that your own will, efforts, and power were inadequate. In step 2 you came to believe that God could and would change you (if both of those ideas sound weird to you, go back through steps 1 & 2 again. Lather, rinse, repeat). Now you need to do something with that knowledge. You need to trust God and let him lead you.

That is a scary thing to do.  What Step 3 asks you to do is to turn your whole life over to God.  Most addicts operate under the assumption that God gave us the addiction.  So why would we want to turn our life over to someone who screwed us up so bad.  We’ll get to the source of the addiction later on, but think of it this way: if God gave it, he can take it back.  The only limits on God’s power over usare those we place.  He’ll do anything we ask Him to (fathers and sons, fishes and stones).

I particularly like the AA version of step 3.  You turn your will and your life over to “God as you understand him“.  I love that.  There is an AA saying that, “If the God you have isn’t working for you, fire Him and get a new one”.  Step 3 asks us to not only trust God, but to figure out who he is (making us repeat steps 1 and 2 in the process).  You cannot really do step 3 until you have gone through step 2.

In any case, this step requires listening to God and doing what he says.  Yeah, that’s right.  You are going to be expected to do the very thing that God asks everyone to do, whether or not they are addicts.  So, get ready for some special treatment as we go through step 3.

“Why bother” is a powerful deterrent to recovery. In particular, since 12 step programs ask you to turn to a higher power, which is usually interpreted as God, many long-term addicts seem to believe that they are twice doomed. First, because they won’t leave their addiction. Second, because God won’t be able to stand their presence.

How do you counter “why bother?” You can’t, really. Once somewhere has hit that point, it is up to them to get out. The best you can offer is a testimony. So…

I know God loves you. I know that He wants you back. I know this because He wants me back and, for a long time, I was convinced I was a big-time sinner. I also knew that I would never stop.

God has changed me. He is changing me as I type these words. He is changing me as you read them. He is doing it because I want Him to, which wasn’t really true until fairly recently.

If God loves me and wants me back, then there is no reason to suspect that he wouldn’t want you back. Some may say that my sins were not great (I never commited adultery or murder, for instance). However, they were great enough. I wasn’t going to give them up. I was going to turn back to them again and again, over and over, for the rest of my life. I refused to lay them on the altar. I was rebellious. I was unrepentent. Though the sins may not have been great, my refusal to accept the Atonement was. It was sufficient to damn me as efficiently as any greater sin. That was my reality.

If your reality sounds similar, know that God is bringing me back. Whatever progress I have made or am making is directly attributable to a renewal of his influence in my life. God loves me. I am more sure of that than I am of anything else. Even though I have been, in my mind, the vilest of sinners, God loves me and wants me back. In order to get me back, He is willing to forgive all my sins. He is willing to take all my irredeemable desires. All I have to do is ask and abide in His answer.

Once again, if God loves me and wants me back, then there is no reason that he wouldn’t want you back. There is nothing special about me. I am not likely to be called to positions of important ecclesiastical, political, social, or economic power. I am really quite the nobody. If God is spending time and energy on getting me back, he will spend in on you. Because he loves you.

Here is the passage to drive this point home:

10 Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God;

11 For, behold, the Lord your Redeemer suffered death in the flesh; wherefore he suffered the pain of all men, that all men might repent and come unto him.

12 And he hath risen again from the dead, that he might bring all men unto him, on conditions of repentance.

13 And how great is his joy in the soul that repenteth! (Doctrine and Covenants 18:10 – 13)

Though we stray, though we harm Him in sin, though we are unstable, though we are human, he died to make us whole and he loves it when we humbly turn to Him. Why not make a perfect God a little happier today? I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Step 2: Come to believe that the power of God can restore you to complete spiritual health

There are a couple of important verses in Alma 5. They are immanently familiar to you, I am sure, because Janice Kapp Perry has written a couple songs based around them. I am just started to get a handle on their meaning, so please allow me to share what I have discovered.

And now behold, I ask of you, my brethren of the church, have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts? (Alma 5:14)

Now, the important thing to realize here is that he is asking if we have become converted. The question we should ask is: converted to what? We often talk about the importance of conversion, but we don’t often talk about what that means. Usually, we treat it as meaning something along the lines of “really believing a lot”. Unsurprisingly, this is not that useful a term used under those conditions. It makes conversion something that is forever out of our reach, something always unattainable because we always must believe a little more. That is addicted thought, by the way. Anytime you put off something good today because you believe that you need to become worthy of it first, that is your inner addict speaking (I am not saying that voice isn’t sometimes right, but I am saying that it might be wrong more often than you think).

In any case, God wants us to become converted. But how and to what/whom? Let’s skip ahead a few chapters to chapter 32. Here we read:

27 But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.

28 Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.(Alma 32:27 – 28)

I know that this is very basic, scripture mastery type stuff. The problem with the scripture mastery program is that it makes the amazing seem mundane and you stop really thinking about what these verses are saying. Remember, both chapters 5 and 32 were written by Alma, who wrestled with sins as dark as yours. He has some knowledge of where you are coming from and how to get out.

In any case, Alma here asks us to actually keep the commandments. Take a “word” (chastity, honesty, fidelity, loyalty, and so forth) and actually try to live up to it. You will probably not do so well at it (you are an addict, after all and virtue has not been garnishing your thoughts), but try it as much as you can and see what happens. Do things go a bit better? Do you find your capacity to do good increasing, even if only microscopically? Do you find your desire to do good increasing? Try it with another “word” or keep trying with the same one. The promise is that eventually your faith in doing this will transform into knowledge. It will stop being an experiment and start being a certainty. It is around there that you start becoming a convert (although you could argue that you became one when you seriously began this experiment).

So, we are converted to and by God’s word. By following it, we become better people and better Christians. But what do we mean by that? It can’t just be the knowledge of commandments, because I knew about the commandments every time I sinned. It can’t just be our capacity to do good, because I knew that it was possible for me to not indulge in sin (I did it quite a bit of the time). The problem is that sometimes, I really wanted to sin. When I really wanted to sin, no amount of commandmental knowledge or personal fortitude could ultimately fight that. So, what is the use of becoming converted, if the second I want to sin again, I will. Doesn’t that just make it worse?

Well, once again, I have to ask what it means to convert. To an electrician, it means to change one type of electrical current to another. In the markets, it means changing the nature of your investments. Change is a necessary part of conversion, a change in something’s nature. So what changes when people are converted? Read on:

1 AND now, it came to pass that when king Benjamin had thus spoken to his people, he sent among them, desiring to know of his people if they believed the words which he had spoken unto them.

2 And they all cried with one voice, saying: Yea, we believe all the words which thou hast spoken unto us; and also, we know of their surety and truth, because of the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually. (Mosiah 5:1 – 2)

You may say that the above is well and good for the people of King Benjamin, but they weren’t going through what you were going through. If you say that, you are missing the point. What did God do to these people? What did He convert? Their desire. He took away their desire for sin, if just for a moment. God changes desire and our nature changes when God changes what we want. I once heard an alcoholic say that doing the 12 steps had to mean the end of alcoholism, because it became impossible to have fun drinking anymore. It was drinking that changed; the alcoholic simply didn’t want the things that drink provided anymore (or, at least, not as passionately as he used to). This is what God does: He changes our desires and we change as a result.

Now, are we to take this to mean that King Benjamin’s people never sinned again and never wanted to? No, we don’t take it that way, because we are not stupid. People are literally built to sin. However, let’s return to Alma’s speech in Alma 5:

And now behold, I say unto you, my brethren, if ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now? (Alma 5:26)

Conversion is having a change of desires, the most important of which is to gain the desire to continue in conversion. For most of my life, I would get myself to a point where I could “feel to sing the song of redeeming love”. Even an addict like me has felt mighty changes, moments when I had no more disposition to do evil, but good continually. However, I always assumed that acheiving those moments was all I had to do. The truth is that we can and we must abide in those moments. Maintaining our conversion, becoming able to always sing the song of redeeming love, these are the true definition of enduring to the end and becoming converted. God will change us by giving us the desire to become changed.

Step 2: Come to believe that the power of God can restore you to complete spiritual health

I like the way that the second step is worded in the manual because it reminds the reader of something important: God has power. Most LDS addicts accept that God, in theory, is loving. We’ve felt the Spirit. We sat through Primary, Young Womens, and Young Mens. We understand the concept of God’s love.

The problem is that we may have a hard time believing that He loves us. Why? Well, we’ve hurt His Son, Jesus Christ, by our excessive sinning. We’ve turned our back on Him. We have done things that can only mean that our eternal salvation is in jeopardy. Therefore, He probably doesn’t think too highly of us anymore.

Now, I won’t deny that God may, on occasion (or often), be disappointed with our decisions. He doesn’t want us to sin. However, sometimes we mistake His motivation in this. God doesn’t want us to sin because He wants us back and sin makes it harder for us to return. Sometimes people think that there is a grand, eternal ledger, with surpluses and deficits in it, that God has to balance in order to keep the universe working or something. But God is our great, eternal Bookkeeper. He is our Heavenly Father. His motivation is that He wants us back. Each and Every one of us. No true father abandons his children or turns his back on them. Neither does God.

Getting back to power, this is a sticking point for a lot of us. Sure, God is all-powerful. We hear that all the time in church. However, we have prayed. A lot. An awful lot. Our prayers have been ineffective. Maybe God can’t or doesn’t want to help us out with this.

Hopefully, I’ve dealt with God’s lack of desire a couple of paragraphs ago (go back and read it again if necessary). Regarding his lack of power, consider the God that we profess belief in. He has divided the Red Sea, moved mountains, raised people from the dead, and fed thousands with only a few loaves of bread. He created the earth and the heavens. He is our source, our Father, our Alpha and Omega. Fine, you may say, but what does any of that have to do with me. I don’t need a mountain moved; I need to be free of my addiction.

One of the things that we expressly teach in the church is that God has the power to remove our stumblingblocks, that God has the power to remove us from bondage. The story of the people of Limhi is instructive here. Being surrounded by the Lamanites, the Limhiites decided to fight their way out of bondage. They tried their hardest, but their strength was insufficient and they were beaten back. They tried a second time and were beaten back again. They tried a third time, inspired by the cries of the widows and orphans in their midst. Once again they were defeated. At this point, after all their trying, they turned to the Lord. They humbled themselves and relied on His mercy and strength. Before long, Ammon and his brethren arrived and the people of Limhi were freed from their physical bondage. They were, at that point, already free spiritually.

Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps the problem isn’t that God can’t help you, but that rather you are asking for the wrong thing? The scriptures have far more examples of God placing stumbling blocks than they have of him removing them. He expressly says that he gave us weaknesses so that we would be humble. The people of Limhi weren’t released from bondage immediately. When they first struggled against it, it was actually increased. It was only when they accepted that they had no other hope, that no force could save them except for God, that they began to feel freedom. His grace is sufficient for all those who humble themselves before him. Maybe the problem isn’t that God isn’t able to help. Maybe it is that in our pride we aren’t yet able to let him.