For Recovery Worship

A Responsive Litany:

The Twelve Steps and Psalm 51

1. We admitted we were powerless

over our separation from God, 

that our lives had become unmanageable. 

2. We came to believe

that a power greater than ourselves 

could restore us to sanity.

3. We made a decision

to turn our will and our lives over

to the care of God, as we understood God.

Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your steadfast love; 

according to your abundant mercy,

blot out my transgressions. 

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, 

and cleanse me from my sin.  

4. We made a searching and fearless

moral inventory of ourselves. 

5. We admitted to God, to ourselves,

and to another human being 

the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. We were entirely ready to have God remove

all these defects of character.

7. We humbly asked God

to remove our shortcomings.

For I know my transgressions, 

and my sin is ever before me. 

Against you, you alone, I have sinned,

and done what is evil in your sight, 

so that you are justified in your sentence 

and blameless when you pass judgment. 

Indeed, I was born guilty, 

a sinner when my mother conceived me.

8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed 

and became willing to make amends to them all. 

9. We made direct amends to such people

wherever possible, except when to do so

would injure them or others.

10. We continued to take personal inventory 

and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

You desire truth in the inward being; 

therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; 

wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Let me hear the joy and gladness; 

let the bones that you have crushed rejoice. 

Hide your face from my sins, 

and blot out all my iniquities. 

Create in me a clean heart, O God, 

and put a new and right spirit within me. 

Do not cast me away from your presence, 

and do not take your holy spirit from me. 

Restore to me the joy of your salvation 

and sustain me in a willing spirit. 

11. We sought through prayer and meditation

to improve our conscious contact with God 

as we understood God, 

praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us

and the power to carry that out. 

12. Having had a spiritual awakening

as the result of these steps, 

we tried to carry this message to others 

and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Then I will teach transgressors your ways, 

and sinners will return to you. 

Deliver me from bloodshed, O God,

O God of my salvation, 

and my tongue will sing aloud

of your deliverance. 

O Lord, open my lips, 

and my mouth shall declare your praise.