Latest / The Daily Ripples Podcast / May 29 – Love Without Conditions

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May 29 – Love Without Conditions · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:05
  Hey everybody, this is the Daily Ripple.
• 0:07
  We got a special guest with us.
• 0:09
  His name's Kevin, and he's a good friend of ours.
• 0:13
  He's been in the deal for a little while.
• 0:15
  Well, actually, we'll just, you know, here you go.
• 0:17
  Introduce yourself, Kevin.
• 0:20
  Hey, my name's Kevin.
• 0:21
  I'm an alcoholic.
• 0:22
  Glad to be here.
• 0:23
  Good to have you, buddy.
• 0:25
  And we got pastor...
• 0:26
  Yeah, yeah.
• 0:27
  Sorry to jump in on you there.
• 0:28
  Yeah, Kevin is a friend of both of us from our home group there, so we're all familiar, and I know many of our active listeners will be familiar with Kevin as well.
• 0:39
  But I do have to pause you before you read the devotional, even, Corey.
• 0:43
  This podcast is called The What?
• 0:46
  Oh, it's The Daily Ripple.
• 0:48
  The Daily Ripples.
• 0:50
  That's right.
• 0:50
  How many of them are there?
• 0:52
  Multiple.
• 0:53
  Multiple.
• 0:54
  That's why it has an S.
• 0:55
  Okay, never mind.
• 0:57
  See, that is why people might go to the wrong website, because it has an S in it.
• 1:03
  That's so smart.
• 1:03
  You know, I'm just catching on to these little bitty things, and I see why it could be a pet peeve of yours.
• 1:08
  I mean, it's only been a couple of months.
• 1:10
  We're all good, Corey.
• 1:11
  Yeah, how long y'all been doing this?
• 1:13
  All right, Kevin.
• 1:14
  All right.
• 1:15
  Cheap seats over there.
• 1:16
  Keep it down.
• 1:18
  Today is May 29th, and it is love without conditions.
• 1:22
  The stone, true acceptance does not require perfection.
• 1:25
  It meets people where they are and makes room for growth.
• 1:30
  Ripple 1 Practical.
• 1:31
  Today I will practice tolerance in real ways.
• 1:35
  I will not set silent conditions for who deserves my kindness or respect.
• 1:40
  I will allow others to be where they are, just as I've needed space to grow.
• 1:46
  Ripple 2 Spiritual.
• 1:48
  Christ welcomed people before they changed, not after.
• 1:52
  As I follow his example, the Holy Spirit forms a love of me that is patient and open.
• 1:58
  The Father's love is not earned, and as I live in that truth,
• 2:02
  I learn to extend the same grace to others.
• 2:07
  You know, you guys are pretty well read within the book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
• 2:13
  And, you know, I don't know if this kind of pops up to you guys,
• 2:17
  But when I think of that, I think of page 67 in the big book in 66 and 67.
• 2:25
  It says, we realize that people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick.
• 2:30
  Though we did not like their symptoms in the way they disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too.
• 2:37
  And so, knowing that I'm sick and someone does something to me that I don't really like or, like, you know, just annoying.
• 2:45
  I don't know about you guys, but I don't have as much resentments today as annoyances.
• 2:51
  And I know Pastor Mike could probably shake his head, but I'm not going to say anything.
• 2:56
  But, you know, when I get annoyed at something, I wonder how many people I annoy.
• 3:04
  I mean, I'd imagine there's people on this podcast that listen to me, and they're like,
• 3:09
  man, I wish he'd just shut up, but I'm not going to yet.
• 3:13
  So the thing is, though, is like, if I know that everything I've done to everybody in my life,
• 3:19
  intentional, non-intentional, accident, non-accident, you know, but these other people have given me
• 3:25
  the patience, the tolerance and the pity that I should give to other people.
• 3:32
  But that's just what I'm thinking about right now.
• 3:33
  And I don't know if, what do you think about that, Kevin?
• 3:37
  It made me think about, you know, how in the meetings people say, you know,
• 3:41
  well, love you, do you love yourself?
• 3:43
  I don't know if I've heard a lot of people say that,
• 3:46
  and I was always like, I didn't quite get that in the beginning.
• 3:51
  But, you know, it's basically, you know,
• 3:56
  trying to be accepting of others and their faults, you know,
• 3:59
  especially, you know, if I think about all the faults and things,
• 4:04
  you know, all the past resentments and things I've done to other people,
• 4:10
  And, you know, it's pretty easy to be able to step back and have a little forgiveness for others now, you know, where before I came into this program, you know, I was so selfish and it was all about me and what I could get and trying to manipulate situations in order to, you know, get my way.
• 4:33
  And, you know, if you wronged me, that was just even more reason for me to be right, you know.
• 4:40
  So, you know, I had to come to terms with that once I came in here and realized, hey, I'm not the only one that's sick in here.
• 4:46
  And other people need love and tolerance, you know.
• 4:49
  Like it says in the book, love and tolerance is our code.
• 4:52
  And so I have to continue to remember that.
• 4:55
  And sometimes, you know, whether I'm in the rooms or, you know, out in the world, I think I can get, you know, complacent sometimes and forget about that.
• 5:08
  And I have to go back and seek God's attention or his will because if I start thinking about something somebody did too long, I can churn that thing up into where the next thing you know, I'm kicking the dog because of it.
• 5:30
  It's not a good place to be.
• 5:31
  So I've learned, you know, if I start having those feelings, I need to, you know, resort back to praying about it and asking, you know, how can I be helpful to this person instead of, you know, feeling that resentment.
• 5:45
  Right.
• 5:47
  I think that, you know, as I think about this love topic, the first thing that caught my
• 5:53
  attention when you were sharing there a little bit, Kevin, is you brought up about that, you
• 5:59
  know, in the meetings, one of the things that they say or that we say, you know, when newcomers
• 6:02
  come in is that, you know, we're going to love you until you love yourself.
• 6:07
  And here comes that self-love topic back up again, Corey, that we were talking about recently.
• 6:12
  I wonder what kind of reaction you had when Kevin said that, because Corey and I were having
• 6:16
  a bit of a discussion about can we fully love another person if we don't truly love ourselves?
• 6:25
  And I think that you can act lovingly toward another person, but to truly experience love
• 6:31
  as I think God would have us experience love is to develop that self-love as well. And that comes,
• 6:39
  it came to me more so through working the 12 steps, not through anything that I've done on my
• 6:44
  own, but through God working in and through me as I worked the 12 steps in recovery. And also as I
• 6:49
  explored and got deeper, you know, into studying my own life of faith. But, you know, the love topic
• 6:56
  is always one that any good preacher always loves to talk about this, you know, because we've got,
• 7:01
  you know, the standard of what love is and what love is like, obviously comes from 1 Corinthians 13.
• 7:07
  You know, we read it on a lot of weddings, you know, and we read it whenever we gather together,
• 7:12
  but it's the, in verse four of chapter 13, it says, love is patient, love is kind, love is not
• 7:19
  envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable.
• 7:25
  It keeps no record of wrongs. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears
• 7:31
  all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. And that's verses four
• 7:38
  through 7 of 1 Corinthians 13, and that's in the New Revised Standard Version for anybody
• 7:43
  keeping score at home. But when I think about all those things that it describes love as,
• 7:51
  there are always certain aspects of love that are harder for me to do and harder for me to show.
• 8:00
  And I talk about a little bit in the practical ripple that I'll practice tolerance in real ways,
• 8:06
  that I'll not set silent conditions for who deserves my kindness or respect.
• 8:12
  And for me, the part of that scripture that I read that sometimes is the hardest is it says
• 8:18
  that love does not insist on its own way.
• 8:21
  And sometimes in my shortcomings, my character defects, use recovery language,
• 8:26
  I can certainly insist on my own way, and I can insist on my way or the highway.
• 8:31
  And so one reminder for me every time I think about the love topic is that if I ever feel as though I'm acting out in a selfish way of loving someone, trying to be of service so that I can get something out of it, then I need to stop and kind of inventory my own motives and kind of see where I am and make sure that I'm doing it from a true place of what spiritually we call agape love, which is that selfless love.
• 8:59
  I'm going to jump through this some things real quick.
• 9:06
  On page 25 in the big book, it's talking about a spiritual experience.
• 9:13
  This is one of the many ways it explains a spiritual experience, but it says,
• 9:17
  the great fact is just this and nothing less, that we have had a deep and effective spiritual experiences
• 9:23
  which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward our fellows, and towards God's universe.
• 9:31
  And, you know, they've got different descriptions of that.
• 9:33
  And, you know, you go into Action and to page 83 or 80, no, it's more 81.
• 9:44
  It talks about, you know, remembering that we were doing this for a spiritual experience, that we would go to any length to get it.
• 9:55
  Because on 19, then, it says most of us sense that real tolerance of people's shortcomings and viewpoints is a respect for their opinion or attitudes which make us more useful to others.
• 10:07
  So if a spiritual experience, and I think, you know, maybe there's a piece of view that is right.
• 10:16
  There's a piece.
• 10:18
  So if I think about what a spiritual experience does, it changes my whole attitude and outlook upon life.
• 10:24
  Right?
• 10:25
  And the way I can look at people is I can love them and I can be useful to them.
• 10:31
  Yes, I agree with that.
• 10:34
  But it takes a spiritual experience, I think, to get there through the work.
• 10:39
  I myself would be sitting in a room right now thinking about how I could get over on both of you guys
• 10:49
  if I had not went through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
• 10:53
  What can I get out of you?
• 10:55
  You know, what is this doing for me, for my prestige?
• 10:58
  What is any of this doing?
• 10:59
  So without going through the work, I don't think maybe, because it does say on page 62,
• 11:05
  it says about many of us have moral philosophical convictions of the Lord, but we cannot live
• 11:13
  up to those even though we'd like to.
• 11:15
  Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness by wishing or trying on our own power.
• 11:20
  We had to have God's help.
• 11:23
  And God, it's core, God meets us because Psalm 34, 18 says, the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
• 11:34
  So crushing spirit, hopelessness.
• 11:38
  You know, I think, you know, man, I like to, you know, I think like, you know, we're recreating lives in, you know, in these different things, you know, because who I am today is not who I used to be.
• 11:49
  My attitude is different towards others.
• 11:51
  And I want to be useful.
• 11:53
  but I don't think you, you know, loving.
• 11:57
  And so yes, self-love, whatever, maybe,
• 12:01
  but you know, can you guys love me
• 12:04
  until I'm able to love someone else
• 12:05
  and pass this thing on?
• 12:07
  I think that's the beauty of it though,
• 12:10
  to get people to love themselves, maybe.
• 12:16
  Well, it says there in the ripple tube,
• 12:18
  you know, Christ welcomed people
• 12:20
  before they changed, not after.
• 12:23
  So I think that's what they mean when they say,
• 12:25
  hey, we're going to love you, you can love yourself,
• 12:28
  because I think a lot of people come into the rooms.
• 12:31
  I mean, obviously, a lot of people have these major ego,
• 12:36
  super egos, what they bring in with them.
• 12:38
  But there's also a lot of, I think, people that are just beat down
• 12:43
  to the point where it's like they're ready to give up on life.
• 12:48
  And, you know, I think that, you know, we can only, you know, try to be helpful because we know where they've been, you know, by trying to give it an encouraging word or, you know, just being a good listener sometimes.
• 13:07
  Well, and it's, you know, the sad thing is, you know, that people, alcoholics, addicts, you know, whatever addictions that people are struggling with or whatever brokenness people are struggling with, you know, many times they come into church and they hear about, you know, the, hopefully what they're hearing is that, you know, the Father, you know, God loves you, you know, without conditions, without exception, you know, that God desires for you to be loved, to be saved, to be made whole.
• 13:33
  but they don't feel that because they've never had other human beings show them that.
• 13:38
  And I think that's one of the powers of the statement that you just,
• 13:43
  that you started off with, Kevin, about that phrase that we use,
• 13:47
  that love people until they can love themselves,
• 13:49
  is because a lot of people coming in are so broken that they have never loved themselves
• 13:54
  because they've never experienced an unconditional love from another person.
• 13:59
  And that is one thing, if nothing else, that we can share in a recovery room, and we should
• 14:04
  be sharing it in all of our churches as well, is that unconditional love, no matter what
• 14:08
  someone has gone through, no matter what they have done.
• 14:11
  And that love is the only thing that is ever going to wipe out the hold of the shame, the
• 14:18
  guilt, the resentment, the remorse, you know, the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization,
• 14:23
  you know, that people come into the rooms of recovery with, is that being shown that
• 14:27
  love and being shown that kindness and being of service to others. And yes, Corey, to your statement,
• 14:33
  people can show love and show service to others before they're fully at that place of loving
• 14:38
  themselves. But I think most people that are saying something like that in the rooms, Kevin,
• 14:43
  that come in and say, we're going to love you until you love yourself, they can say that with
• 14:47
  assurance because they have experienced it in their own lives because they came into the room,
• 14:53
  because they worked through the steps, because they felt the love of the other men and women in the
• 14:57
  rooms, they now feel that love of themselves and that worthiness of themselves.
• 15:02
  Maybe worthiness is a better word, that worthiness of themselves to be of service and be active
• 15:08
  in a recovery or a faith community for that matter.
• 15:11
  You know, worthy is a good word.
• 15:13
  Worthy is a good word.
• 15:15
  Hey, we're going to end this with a prayer, guys.
• 15:18
  Absolutely.
• 15:20
  Father, teach me to love without conditions.
• 15:23
  Through Your Spirit, help me reflect the acceptance and grace shown through Your Son.
• 15:28
  Amen.
• 15:29
  Amen.
• 15:30
  Amen.
• 15:30
  Amen.
• 15:37
  I didn't know that you were doing that one.
• 15:41
  You just sent me that.
• 15:42
  And I was expecting May 30th.
• 15:45
  Y'all threw me way off.
• 15:47
  It's okay.
• 15:48
  You did great, though.
• 15:50
  I started reading it when you were finished, when you started talking about it.
• 15:53
  I was like, oh, my God, hold on.
• 15:55
  You're like, Evan, what do you think?
• 15:56
  I know, and then he immediately went to you first, which is even better.
• 16:00
  Yeah, that was great.