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HomeRefiner's Journal › Not My Will, But Thine
Teaching · Step 3

Not My Will, But Thine

Refined Recovery Network · All Scripture KJV · Port Allen, Louisiana
“Not my will, but thine, be done.”— Luke 22:42 KJV

Making the decision is not a feeling you wait for. It is a turn of the will. Step 3 is the moment you stop negotiating with God over the steering wheel of your own life and hand it over — not because everything is resolved, but because you have seen what your own management produces.

The Decision Before the Feeling

Most people wait for the desire to surrender before they surrender. That desire may never come. The flesh does not want to yield. It will manufacture reasons why now is not the right time, why the situation is different, why a little more control is still necessary.

Jesus in Gethsemane did not feel like going to the cross. He prayed three times. He sweat as it were great drops of blood. And He said — not my will, but thine. The decision came before the peace, not after it.

What You Are Actually Surrendering

Step 3 is not surrendering your personality or your convictions. It is surrendering the management of your life to a God who is actually able to manage it. You are releasing the control that has been producing destruction and placing it in hands that can actually hold it.

This is not loss. It is the most rational exchange you have ever made.

The Decision Must Be Renewed

Step 3 is not a one-time event. Every morning the will wakes up with opinions about how the day should go. Every morning, before self-will reasserts its management, the decision can be renewed: not my will, but thine.

This is the practice that makes Step 3 more than a moment. It makes it a way of living.

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