Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Humility (noun): a modest or low view of on'es own importance; humbleness; modesty; lack of vanity; unassertive; freedom from pride or arrogance; "right-sized"
I like the term "right-sized" when defining humility. For some reason finding humility takes on a negative connotation in the world today. Too many live grandiose lifestyles that are more projection than reality. Humility is simply seeing yourself exactly as you are, not how you want others to perceive you. Weren't we the actor in our own show? Accepting yourself precisely as the person you are today, with all your strengths and certainly with all your faults and weaknesses, is a requirement in gaining humility. Our journey towards humility took substantial steps in Step 4 when we made our inventory. We then confessed the truth of all of this to God, to ourselves and to another human being.
Read Step 7, pages 70 - 76, in the Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions
In Step 6 we asked Are we ready? ... now from a position of having gained some humility, we continue.
Big Book, pg. 76 "When ready, we say something like this: "My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen." We have then completed STEP SEVEN."
Okay, so what just happened? Is it reasonable to think that God just did what we asked Him to? Of course not. What do I do now?
Undoubtedly you have already asked yourself "What is God's will?", or "How will I know what God's will is?". There's no precise answer to those questions except of course the obvious which is we usually know what it isn't. There's likely a long list of past behaviors and actions we can clearly stack up on the side of what was probably not God's will. When I asked my sponsor this question and in the same way I answer for my sponsees, while we may not ever know what God's will is at any particular time, we probably have a pretty good idea that God's will would be kind, honest, tolerant, loving, compassionate and patient. So, while you're waiting around for God to remove your own shortcomings, how about practicing some of those? It's too easy to be paralyzed and do nothing if we wait for clarity on what God's will is in any given circumstance, but what we can do is align our own will with what we think God's will would be. In essence, begin practicing that God has already removed your defects of character until such time they actually do go away. You'll likely realize one day that your natural instinct is now to be that kinder, more tolerant, more patient, more loving, more compassionate individual and in fact your shortcomings have been removed.