Step Three

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God

God is beyond our understanding!:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55: 8-9)

Unregenerated man has a tendency to assume that God's ways are not right, to begin with:

"Yet saith the house of Israel, The way of the Lord is not equal. O house of Israel, are not my ways equal? are not your ways unequal?" (Ezekiel 18: 29)

We are not saved by our thinking, either, nor can we expect any man to depend on his faulty, fallen thinking to grant him the wisdom which informs him with life and godliness:

"There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." (Proverbs 16: 25)

We need wisdom, which is presented to us in Christ:

"But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:" (1 Corinthians 1: 30)

This wisdom is a gift granted to us specifically through the Holy Spirit:

"But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:" (John 15: 26)

All of this we receive by grace through faith:

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

"Not of works, lest any man should boast.

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2: 8-10)

This verse is especially telling for the inherently humbling element which Paul writes: We are God's workmanship, not the other way around, so there is no disputing the fact that God our Creator, who desires to be our Father, is beyond our comprehension.

And the faith to receive Him is not even our faith:

"Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ." (Romans 10: 17, NIV)

and

"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2: 20)

God's Word from beginning to end informs our faith and our growth, imparting to us fare more than working steps in a humanistic program.