The Third Step Prayer is a short prayer of surrender said when you work Step Three of a 12-step program, the step where you decide to turn your will and your life over to the care of God as you understand Him. AA’s version comes from the Big Book. NA uses a much shorter version, often said in the circle at the end of a meeting. Both carry the same message: I’ve been running my own life and it isn’t working, so take it, and teach me a different way to live.
What Is Step Three?
Step Three comes after two others. In Step One you admit you’re powerless over alcohol or drugs. In Step Two you come to believe that a power greater than yourself can restore you. Step Three is where you act on that belief. It’s a decision, not a feeling, and you don’t have to wait until you feel holy to make it.
The prayer turns that decision into words you can say out loud. The first time, many people say it on their knees with a sponsor. After that, a lot of them say it most mornings, sometimes before they’ve even made coffee.
The AA Third Step Prayer
AA’s version is a handful of sentences long and appears in the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, right after the discussion of Step Three. AA World Services holds the copyright, so we don’t reprint it here. You’ll find it in any copy of the Big Book, and it’s often posted on the wall at meetings. Paraphrased, it moves through four requests:
- It offers yourself to God, to be shaped and used however He sees fit.
- It asks to be freed from the “bondage of self” so you can do His will.
- It asks God to take away your difficulties, so that victory over them becomes a witness to others of His power and love.
- It closes by asking to do His will, always.
The Big Book suggests saying it with someone you trust, usually your sponsor.
The Third Step Prayer in NA
Narcotics Anonymous, which grew out of Los Angeles in the early 1950s, uses a far shorter Third Step Prayer. It’s just three brief lines, and many groups say it in the closing circle along with the Serenity Prayer. In plain terms, it hands over your will and your life, asks for guidance in your recovery and asks to be shown how to live. For the exact wording, check NA literature or ask your home group.
The difference in length tells you something. AA’s version reads like a full morning prayer. NA’s is short enough to say in a parking lot with your hands shaking. Plenty of people use both, depending on the day.
What the Third Step Prayer Means
1. Surrender to God
The prayer starts by giving yourself over. Almost everyone who’s lived with addiction knows the illusion of control: only two drinks, only on weekends, only the pills the doctor wrote. Surrender admits that the plan to manage it yourself has failed, and points somewhere better. For Christians it echoes Jesus in Gethsemane: “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42, KJV).
2. Freedom from the bondage of self
Addiction shrinks your world to one question. How do I get more? Everything else, the people you love included, gets arranged around the answer. The prayer asks God to break that loop so you can be useful to Him and to the people around you. People in recovery often say real change started there, the first time they caught themselves thinking about someone else’s needs before their own.
3. Help with your difficulties
The prayer asks God to take away your difficulties, and the reason it gives is striking. Easier days aren’t the point. Your recovery is meant to become evidence for someone who’s still suffering. Every person with a few years sober who stands up at a meeting and tells the truth is an answer to that line.
4. Doing His will every day
The last lines are about daily practice. You don’t finish Step Three. A bad day, a resentment, a craving out of nowhere: each one is a chance to make the decision again. Jesus told His followers to take up their cross “daily” (Luke 9:23, KJV), and the Third Step works the same way.
How the Third Step Prayer Helps in Treatment
In residential treatment, clients often pray it as part of a morning routine or say it together in group. It does a few practical things. It gives the newest person in the room words to say when they don’t have their own. It interrupts the “I’ve got this” thinking that drives so many relapses. And it takes less than a minute, which matters when you’re early in recovery and your attention span is shot.
It also ties clinical work to spiritual work. In therapy you learn your triggers and patterns. In the prayer you hand those patterns to God and ask for help with what you can’t change by insight alone.
If “God as you understand Him” makes you uneasy, you’re not disqualified. Lots of people start with a loose idea of a higher power and grow from there. For Christians, the prayer fits closely with what Scripture already says about surrender. Our posts on the 12 step program and the 12 steps in a Christian program go further.
Christian Rehab in Orange County
At Covenant Hills, our Christian staff brings clinical, medical and pastoral training to the same treatment plan. Clients in the faith-based track work a Christian 12-step program with prayer and Scripture alongside evidence-based therapy, so Step Three is something you practice with support, not just read about.
If you’re ready to make that decision, or you’re not sure yet and want to talk it through, call 800-662-2873 for a free, confidential assessment.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Third Step Prayer in NA?
It’s a three-line prayer that hands your will and life over to God, asks for guidance in recovery and asks to be shown how to live. Many NA groups say it in the closing circle. NA literature has the exact wording.
Where is the Third Step Prayer in the Big Book?
It’s in the chapter “How It Works,” in the discussion of Step Three. Any edition of Alcoholics Anonymous has it, and most AA meetings have copies on hand.
What’s the difference between the Third and Seventh Step Prayers?
The Third Step Prayer is about surrender: handing your will and life to God. The Seventh Step Prayer comes later, after your inventory, and humbly asks God to remove the specific defects of character that stand in the way of your usefulness to Him and others.
Do I have to say the Third Step Prayer with a sponsor?
No rule says you must, but the Big Book suggests saying it with someone you trust, and many people find it means more that way. After the first time, most people pray it on their own.
