Celebrate Recovery Principle 5: Voluntarily submit to every change God wants to make in my life and humbly ask Him to remove my character defects. In this principle we set out to become entirely ready to have God remove our character defects, but He won’t do that unless we are willing to give those defects to Him. God is patient and waits for us to become willing first, and giving second. It’s all about choices, what do I choose today? What character defects am I willing to turn over to God and what defects of character do I chose to hang onto? I find great hope in the fact that God never gives up on us. His patience is something to behold, only outdone by His love. We may not be entirely ready for God to remove all of our character defects the first, second, or hundredth time we practice this principle, but God will work on those we do give him. This opens the door for those stubborn defects that take longer to surrender to him; its about progress not perfection. If you are not willing to turn some deep difficult character defect(s) over to God, please pray about it. Make the choice to change the internal dialogue in your head from “this character defect I will never surrender,” to “I will pray for the willingness to surrender this character defect to God.”