One's Higher Power

Pages 11-12, AA Big Book- Ebby Carries the Message to Bill

I saw that my friend was much more than inwardly reorganized. He was on different footing. His roots grasped a new soil.

Despite the living example of my friend Ebby Thacher there remained in me the vestiges of my old prejudice. The word God still aroused a certain antipathy. When the thought was expressed that there might be a God personal to me this feeling was intensified. I didn't like the idea. I could go for such conceptions as Creative Intelligence, Universal Mind or Spirit of Nature but I resisted the thought of a Czar of the Heavens, however loving His sway might be. I have since talked with scores of men who felt the same way.

My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea. He said, "Why don't you choose your own conception of God?"  That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last.  
It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning.  I saw that growth could start from that point. Upon a foundation of complete willingness I might build what I saw in my friend. Would I have it? Of course I would!

Thus was I convinced that God is concerned with us humans when we want Him enough. At long last I saw, I felt, I believed. Scales of pride and prejudice fell from my eyes. A new world came into view.

It is my belief, that AA's intention for one to believe in a Power greater than ourselves, does not mean to 'make up' a God as one sees fit, but to develop a personal and spiritual relationship with the One who exists.
A very important part of every AA meeting, is the reading of the 12 Steps, as it IS the Program of recovery. So, I will refer you to Page 164 in our beloved Big Book, where all 12 Steps are listed in a single paragraph:
"Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. (Steps 1, 2 & 3)
Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. (Steps 4, 5, 6 & 7) Clear away the wreckage of your past. (Steps 8 & 9) Give freely
of what you find and join us. (Steps 10, 11 & 12) We shall be
with you in the Fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet
some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny."

To Christ I conceded the certainty of a great man, not too closely followed by those who claimed Him. His moral teaching - most excellent. For myself, I had adopted those parts which seemed convenient and not too difficult; the rest I disregarded. The wars which had been fought, the burnings and chicanery that religious dispute had facilitated, made me sick. I honestly doubted whether, on balance, the religions of mankind had done any good. Judging from what I had seen in Europe and since, the power of God in human affairs was negligible, the Brotherhood of Man a grim jest. If there was a Devil, he seemed the Boss Universal, and he certainly had me. But my friend sat before me, and he made the point-blank declaration that God had done for him what he could not do for himself. His human will had failed. Doctors had pronounced him incurable. Society was about to lock him up. Like myself, he had admitted complete defeat. Then he had, in effect, been raised from the dead, suddenly taken from the scrap heap to a level of life better than the best he had ever known! Had this power originated in him? Obviously it had not. There had been no more power in him than there was in me at the minute; and this was none at all. That floored me. It began to look as though religious people were right after all. Here was something at work in a human heart which had done the impossible. My ideas about miracles were drastically revised right then. Never mind the musty past; here sat a miracle directly across the kitchen table. He shouted great tidings.

 If you are sitting here lost, afraid and alone, finding yourself in a helpless, desperate situation, do not lose hope. There is a solution for us in AA.

AA Big Book, page 50

Here are thousands of men and women, worldly indeed. They flatly declare that since they have come to believe in a Power greater than themselves, to take a certain attitude toward that Power, and to do certain simple things, there has been a revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking. In the face of collapse and despair, in the face of the total failure of their human resources, they found that a new power, peace, happiness, and sense of direction flowed into them.