It is widely used across Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step fellowships, and it is not in the Big Book. That surprises people, because it sounds like it should be. It spread by word of mouth rather than in print, which is also why you will hear it worded differently from one meeting to the next.
Historical Context
The prayer is generally credited to Don Pritts, a Colorado old-timer who passed it to the men he sponsored — among them Joe Hawk, who got sober in Denver in the early 1980s and carried it further. It was never written into AA literature. It travelled through sponsorship, through meetings, and through the Big Book study tapes and guides that circulated in the 1980s and 1990s.
Its language comes from somewhere specific, though. Chapter 4 of the Big Book, “We Agnostics”, asks the newcomer to “lay aside prejudice” and to stop leaning on what they are certain they already know. The Set Aside Prayer is that instruction turned into a sentence a person can actually say.
Set Aside Prayer
God,
Today help me set aside everything I think I know about You,
everything I think I know about myself,
everything I think I know about others,
and everything I think I know about my own recovery,
so I may have an open mind and a new experience
with all these things.
Please help me see the truth.
Amen.
The shorter form
Most often heard before opening the Big Book or beginning a step. The blank is filled with whatever the person is about to approach — the book, the steps, a meeting, a sponsor, God.
God,
Please help me set aside everything I think I know about ______,
so I may have an open mind and a new experience.
Please help me see the truth.
Amen.
Best Times for This Prayer
- Before reading the Big Book, particularly if you have read it many times and have stopped hearing it.
- At the start of a meeting, before anyone speaks.
- Before step work with a sponsor, when you already have an opinion about the step.
- When someone is saying something true that you do not want to hear.
Scripture Connection
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths.” — Proverbs 3:5–6
The parallel is close enough that the prayer is sometimes introduced with this verse. Both ask the same thing: that a person stop treating their own understanding as the final word. Proverbs frames it as trust, the Set Aside Prayer frames it as an experiment — set the certainty down, see what is there without it, and pick it back up afterwards if it still holds.
Related prayers in recovery
The Set Aside Prayer is often confused with the step prayers from the Big Book, which are different texts with different jobs. The Third Step Prayer (“God, I offer myself to Thee”) is a prayer of surrender, said once, at a turning point. The Seventh Step Prayer (“My Creator, I am now willing”) asks for defects of character to be removed. The Tenth Step Prayer belongs to daily practice.
The Prayer of Saint Francis — “make me a channel of thy peace” — is also widely said in AA, appearing in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, though it predates the fellowship by centuries.
