If I have fully accepted my Sexaholics Anonymous Step One--that I am powerlessness over my sexual acting out and my life has become unmanageable--then I have admitted that I am not God. If I am powerless over lust, and if I want to have any hope for freedom, then I must have a Power greater than myself and greater than my lust, or all is truly lost. SA offers God as the solution to my powerlessness (StepTwo). Step Three and all subsequent Steps require that I surrender my will and my life to God. Without the attitude and actions of complete surrender to God, I will inevitably return to the bondage of lust, which is an insidious power that is always more powerful than I am.

If I Surrender...

But why when I first came to SA did I not immediately surrender to this God who could and would restore me to sanity? When confronted with the truth of what my life had become, I had to conclude that there was either something wrong with the God of my understanding, or there was something wrong with how I related to that God. Something was stopping me from surrendering to God, and something had to change.

The SA “White Book” has this to say on page 81 at the conclusion of a section on the topic of surrender:

In summary, for us surrender is the change in attitude of the inner person that makes life possible. It is the great beginning, the insignia and watchword of our program. And no amount of knowledge about surrender can make it a fact until we simply give up, let go, and let God. When we surrender our "freedom," we become truly free.

As it turned out, what was stopping me from surrendering my sexual acting out to God was a combination of shame and pride. It might seem that those two concepts can't really fit together, but they do very much fit  for me. As I’ve heard other sexaholics share, I felt shame for what I had been thinking and doing in my sex addiction, but I desperately wanted to take care of the mess myself. I wanted to fix me, so that I would not have to rely on anyone else to do it for me. Shame and pride were both at work, and my old beliefs about both God and myself had to be rebuilt upon the truth of who I am and who God is.

...God Is Willing and Able to Set Me Free From My Sex Addiction

Fortunately, through the fellowship of Sexaholics Anonymous, the God of my understanding has proven to be exceedingly patient with me, and when I finally had come to the end of my rope (pain and complete defeat in my sex addiction), He was still there, ready and willing to set me free.

Step 1 Test Yourself    Step One: Stirring Up the Mud    Giving up fighting