Moral Inventory
Step 4 - ” Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.“
When we took step three we showed a willingness to trust the Lord. We turned our will and our life over to His care. Now in step 4 we will show a further willingness by making a searching and fearless written moral inventory of our life. We will summarizing the thoughts, events, emotions and actions of our life, making our inventory as complete as possible. It is important to put it in writing for use in future steps and to see our inventory in black and white, making it more real. Since this will be the first inventory ever taken we need to take into consideration our whole life, as far back as we can remember. Future inventories, which should be done every five years or so, will begin where the last left off. Keeping each inventory helps us to know where we left off, our most stubborn defects and the progress we have made.
Doing a fearless and thorough inventory of our character defects in our life will not be easy. Fearless does not mean we won’t have any fear, probably quite the opposite. We will experience many emotions as we examine our life, including embarrassment, shame, fear or guilt. A lot of old feelings may also come to the surface, feelings we thought were gone. Fearless means we will not let our fears stop us from being thorough in the inventory process. In this step, we commit to rigorous honesty as we focus on events in our life, including our own weaknesses and not anyone else’s.
In the past we probably justified bad behavior and blamed other people for the problems we created. Now we will begin to take responsibility for our past and current actions & choices by acknowledging painful, embarrassing, or difficult events, thoughts, emotions, or actions. By acknowledging those destructive elements in our lives we have taken the first step toward correcting them.
For me, it was all a little overwhelming. I had no clue where to even begin. I decided to list each person in my life and think through our relationship from the beginning. Some people work through their inventory by places they have lived, others have done it by their age and thinking what took place that year.
As we work through our inventory we must look past our behaviors and examine the thoughts, feelings and beliefs that led to those behaviors, these are the roots. Unless we examine all our tendencies toward fear, pride, resentment, anger, self-will and self-pity we are destined to repeat the negative cycle in our lives.
Still have misgivings or doubts? Look back on Step Three.
What a great post that brightened my day! It is very well written and went back a couple of times to read! #ibabloggers
Thank you so much!!
Sometimes we do need to look back on our shortcomings and failings to move forward. The important part is to learn and MOVE ON…
#ibabloggers
Very true!
It is good to look inward for a little and see the truth of our humanity and then look at what we have being renewed by God’s grace. I like your point about the tendency to repeating negative cycles, that is so true.
It’s never easy, but it is always helpful to take stock every now and then. This helps to keep us real and grounded. God sees it all and He waits for us to recognize our weaknesses before entrusting us with new responsibilities and possibilities. Thanks for your post!
Shellie Bowdoin
http://www.thefabjourney.com
“He waits for us to recognize our weaknesses before entrusting us with new responsibilities and possibilities” Very true!
This is excellent! I’ve totally pinned it.
Thank you!!
I love the idea of looking fearlessly at our lives and seeing our failings. I would like to add that the mirror of God’s word will reflect that truth back to us when we’re humbly receiving the word!
Nice addition! Thanks!
Thank you for sharing this with us at Good Morning Mondays. Blessings
Thanks for stopping by!