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August 4 – Faith That Takes Root · The Daily Ripples Podcast

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Hey guys,
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this is the Daily Ripples. It's Corey
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and Pastor Mike, and it is August 4th. Faith that takes
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root. The stone. Faith grows when I welcome God into my daily life
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instead of keeping him at a distance. Ripple 1,
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practical. Today I will take one action that reflects trust in
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God. Faith is more than an agreement or belief.
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It grows when I practice it through obedience,
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prayer, and willingness. Ripple 2, Spiritual. The Father
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has been present even when I failed to recognize Him.
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Jesus teaches me that faith is meant to be lived, not merely understood.
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The Holy Spirit nurtures the seeds of faith within me,
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helping them take root and bear fruit over time.
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And you know, you said it right in the beginning of this, right? Faith grows
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when I welcome God into my daily life. That's, I mean,
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you know, and where that takes me, you know, I mean, I'm pretty predictable
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at this point. Yeah, you're going to talk about how you start your day.
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I hope you do. Right, because it says on awakening on page 86,
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and I pulled up the original
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version of this before they all got
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changed. And I think the difference is in the original
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version of this is there's no when we retire at night. So the
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difference is, and I want to read it, so if it— you'd have to
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look it up and it's— there's not really page numbers for this, but it says,
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when you awake tomorrow morning, look back over the day before.
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Were you resentful, selfish, dishonest, or afraid? And I think they do that instead
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of the retire thing. Like, I've spoken this before because after I've had a good
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night's sleep and I thought about, oh, I did cuss that dude
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out, oh, I did like just do this, Yeah. After a good night's sleep,
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man, I forget about it. Well, and not to cut you off, but it's just
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more practical for me too, because my brain is more
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alert and more thinking and remembering first thing in the morning than
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at the end of the day. Right. 100%. And so then it says, do you
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owe an apology? Have you kept something to yourself? It's the same stuff, right?
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So it goes through that paragraph and it's pretty much going through
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what it says on page 86 of the big book. But in the morning time
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where it says when we retire. And so then it goes on to say next,
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in the next paragraph down where it would say on awakening,
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then it goes on to say next, think about the 24 hours ahead.
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So I think that's interesting. So like I'm going over my day
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before and then I'm going to look at my day right now and
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I can kind of relate that, you know, ask God to show me my vision
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for my day. Right. So, but in the big book,
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if you're like, you know, hey, that's not what it says. And that's cool because
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I can, I can argue on that fact too, because when I go
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through the paragraph, when we retire at night— Corey, I think you can argue on
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any fact at this point. But anyway, go ahead. But see,
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when it says on awakening, because I've done this thing at nighttime and
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I've done this thing at nighttime so many times on my knees with my phone
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or pen and paper beside me on my knees. And I've answered the questions
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when I retired. So it says, on awakening, let us think about
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the 24 hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day.
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Well, what's my plans? My other plans like work and all this other stuff,
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that's already kind of just drawn out for me already. Everybody,
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I mean, I think most— it's a standard routine, right? Most people know that.
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But what about the other things? The real plans,
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the real plans with God's kids that I need to go make something right.
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But here's where I would challenge that, because you also have to work with God's
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kids at work, right? Interacting with other people. But I'm trying to
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be more with God, right? And I think that this is all I'm
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talking about in the realm of my home occupation. Got it. Yeah,
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right. The way the book categorizes. So where I— man,
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maybe I said something rude to that dude at work. Yeah,
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maybe I didn't— whatever I did during the day,
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right? Let's make that my plans versus let me
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go run around here with my head cut off and let me do some stuff
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and go make some things right so I can get— because we talked about on
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the last episode, if my, if my job is to seek,
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that's seeking, right? That's seeking through other people.
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And, you know, so the other part I was just thinking about is
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for me doing all this, right? So where God is,
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and it tells me on page 55 where God is. We found a great reality
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deep down within us. Yeah. So when I start my day off like that
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and I know it's deep down within me and there are those things I need
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to get out of the way to get closer to God, that's how— I mean,
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that's how I view the book and that's how I view the work, is I'm
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just trying to grow and take out the stuff that's blocking me from God.
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And it's cool because we're talking— we're on the 8th month now. So yeah,
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you know, this is going to be— we're going to lose some listeners. We're going
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to start getting into making amends, right? And we're going to be willing— we're going
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to lose listeners. Centers for the next couple months, and that's gonna be crazy
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because like nobody who likes to go make amends. Nobody. It's almost
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like in meetings and everywhere in the program,
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people seem to skip from 5 to 10.
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Like people talk about steps 4 and 5 a lot, and then you
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hear people talking about steps 10, 11, 12 a lot. But there's,
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uh, don't get me wrong here, what, 4 steps in the middle of that?
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And 6, 7, 8, and 9. And they're very important because nobody—
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and you know, it's funny, I'll go because I mean, I'll talk. I got plenty
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of amends I've made and I got plenty of amends I need to make.
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So, but it's like you start talking in those meetings and you start seeing eyes
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get open because they're getting interested because they're like, man, because how do
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you do it? How do you do that? Because nobody wants to do that.
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No, because that's the physical side of this. And I was looking at some things
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in the book at So steps 1 through 3, right?
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That's spiritual. Steps 4 through 6— 4
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through 7, I mean— that's mental.
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8 through 9, that's physical, because that's me and
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you, right? I'm going to— yeah, you're doing it with another person. And 10,
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11, and 12, that's in harmony. Yeah, keeping it in harmony.
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I like the way that you just broke that down, for sure.
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I mean, this is one of those where it talks about the faith taking root
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and that today I'll take one action that reflects trust in God.
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And that it could be something simple. We've already hit on several
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things like you already mentioned about if you had
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said something rude to a coworker and needing to make up for that
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in the day ahead, that could be that one action that reflects the
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trust in God. It could be finally
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letting go of a lack
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of forgiveness, you know, for somebody in your life. That could
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be a simple act of trusting in God. For me, many times
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the one action that reflects trust in God is,
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for me, is getting out of the house, you know, like leaving and
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being somewhere where I could be of service to somebody else, either at a meeting
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or at a church event, whatever the case may be.
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But for me, that action, it's always about and goes
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back to James chapter
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2 where he says, faith without works is dead. And it's quoted a couple of
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times in the Big Book. And in one of
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those places, if I recall correctly, is step 9. Is that right? Where it talks
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about faith without works is dead? Yeah, page 76. I knew the step,
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I didn't know the page off the top of my head. But it's because,
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like you talked about, I mean, that's the step where
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the rubber meets the road. Because it's not just at that point
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when I'm talking about steps 8 and 9, and 8 is just becoming
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willing, making the list of people that I have to make the amends to and
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becoming willing to make these amends. And then 9 is making those amends.
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And the Christian life, it's just about reconciliation.
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It's the same concept, trying to reconcile with others. But with,
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uh, recovery specifically, it's not even about
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reconciliation. If my motivation is to try to reconcile with somebody, then I'm
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going with the wrong motivation. Kind of the way we were talking about yesterday.
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I gotta examine my motives in every step along the way because
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my only motive in making those amends is undoing
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the damage of the past. Right. You know, trying to make right
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and take ownership of where I have hurt other people.
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If reconciliation of any type happened after that, in some cases
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that's appropriate, and in some cases it's absolutely not appropriate. And I've
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got an example of that too, where reconciliation after an amends is not appropriate,
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but I don't know if you want to hear it or not.
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Well, I do think there's 2 pieces in this since we're talking about
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On Awakening I'd like to just cover. Yeah. It's important because
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on page 83, It says,
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so we clean house with the family, asking each
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morning in meditation that our Creator show us the way of
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patience, tolerance, kindliness, and love. You know, I— so I
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can take that back, you know, to— and I don't know if there's
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some, you know, people that are, you know, very well— they probably— there's probably
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people in here that have some decent amount of sobriety that listen to this.
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Oh yeah, yeah. And absolutely. So The delusion that I'm like— the
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delusion that I'm like other people has to be smashed, or presently maybe,
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right? So I think that it says each morning right
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here in meditation on this page, not, you know,
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every other day, every other day, whenever I think about— yeah. What are you trying
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to say, Cory? I've been out talking a year. No, I know, I know.
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No, no, no, no, no, I, I didn't think you were, but I was just
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saying that was a big— that was a good little hit too though, because I
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know your prayer life too.
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Anyways, but also on 164, right? So you got on page 83
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and 164, it says, God will constantly
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disclose more to you and to us. Ask him in your morning
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meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick.
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In your morning meditation. And it doesn't say which day that
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is. Oh, it says each day too. So I think that means every day.
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Um, yeah, but those things are important to me because like, you know, until someone
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showed me that, I read right over it every time. And then
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it tells me exactly when to wake up on awakening, what to do
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on awakening. There's not, you know, there's not really any like gray
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areas once you really understand the way this works,
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right? Yeah, there's a lot of gray. And if you don't know
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though, that's the difference. And I was talking to a friend
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the other day about this because he was like, man, more people need to know
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about this. And I said, well, you know, it's kind of dangerous when you know
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though, right? Because then you know there's a responsibility
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that comes with knowledge. That's for sure. If you're not doing it
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well, and I also think about, you know, kind of going back to the,
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to the, uh, the prayer meditation part, you know, the on-awakening stuff
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that you're reading in the book. And I think it's important for us to realize,
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and our listeners also, because some of our listeners are not in recovery
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at all. You know, they're just listening in from a faith perspective, right? You know,
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they're listening because they're, you know, they're Christian, they're trying to grow and expand their
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faith. Maybe they have a family member that struggles with some form
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of addiction that they're trying to understand. But these instructions
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that we have in this big book are for those of us, and especially for
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those of us early in recovery, that the way we
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have been doing things has led us to a rock bottom. Right.
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And we need structure. We need a set
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of instructions. Now, as a pastor, I'm not going to tell
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anyone this is the way you pray.
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This is the only way to pray. This is how you have to pray and
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when and all those kind of things. Right. I think Jesus teaches
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us a little bit, you know, in the Bible about how to pray. And,
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you know, the Big Book authors wrote certain things about when to pray and to
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start your day with prayer, things of that nature. So I don't want anyone to
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get the idea that we're some kind of egomaniacs,
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think that we've got the only way to do things.
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The suggestions, you might say, that come in the book and that we repeat
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are based upon our experiences and what has worked for us
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and what we've seen work in the lives of others. So I just wanted to
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put that clarification out there for anybody that's ever listening and thinking, well,
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they're being a little bit hardcore. Well, we're rooted in
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one of these 2 books that we're studying and basing our lives on,
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you know, Alcoholics Anonymous, and of course, it's all rooted
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in the Bible. But you really can't argue. You can't.
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So like, I know that that's true to an extent,
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but if you were to base this information
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off to somebody, and it's really cool in the foreword to the first edition,
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it says, we assure that our way of living has its advantages
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for all. But if I was to tell somebody,
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hey, this is what I would like you to try to do for 90 days.
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And I said, oh, there's going to be improvement. Absolutely. Ask each
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morning in meditation that your creator show you the same patience,
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tolerance, kindness, and love towards your family. Yeah.
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And see, and I'm not arguing with what you're saying. No, you're not.
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What I'm saying is, It's not your prayer
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life, anyone's prayer life. Yeah, it's between you and God. Right. Absolutely.
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And I'm not in God's shoes. No. Yeah, absolutely. But no,
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see, like, because I also know that like what I do for myself,
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you know, like my prayer life and things are things that I don't usually,
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you know, unless it comes up in a one-on-one conversation, you know, I may talk
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to somebody about that. But on this, like a public forum or from the pulpit
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and things like that, I'm not going to stand up there and say this is
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what I do because I always remember the the passages of
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Jesus in the Bible talking about what the Pharisees do, how the Pharisees
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love to wear their fancy clothes and say their prayers in public so everybody knows
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and thinks they're holy and righteous. And so that's always a warning for me about
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that. And so it's that balance between showing someone
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the way and saying, this is the only way.
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And it's just a balance, and everybody has a different approach to that.
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I remember I used to lay down in the bed and
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like, I'd like knock out a prayer here and there sometimes, sometimes not.
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And I remember when I first got down on my knees to do
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it. And now, now that you're talking about these Pharisees and like, tell— but
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man, like, I remember because it was a big deal. And like, I started
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thinking after a couple of months of doing it, I was like, well, you know,
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if I'm asking this dude, this guy, this all-knowing, this loving
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woman, whatever it is, because it's everything.
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I called him a dude at first, then I had to bring that back in.
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But if I'm asking God to come
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into my day, why would I not be giving him the courtesy
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of some action? And that's what I came up with in my head after I
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really got disciplined in this nature.
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Yeah, because the physical posture kind of prepares
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the mental and the spiritual engagement
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in the process of prayer. Huh. I think we talked a
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lot about prayer. We did. I don't know how we got sidebarred into prayer.
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I guess that's one of the easiest ways for faith to take root though,
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is to start your day with prayer. It is. And so we're
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starting this day, if you're listening on the way to work, with Corey giving our
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prayer for the day. Prayer. Father God, help me welcome you into every
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part of my life today. Through your Holy Spirit,
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strengthen my faith and increase my willingness to follow you.
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Shape my life through the example of Jesus. Amen.
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Amen. I was holding in a smile.