Latest / The Daily Ripples Podcast / June 21 - Choosing Faith Over Fear

Transcript

June 21 - Choosing Faith Over Fear · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:00
  Yeah, and that's a crazy example, so definitely don't put that in the thing.
• 0:05
  That'll be at the top of the episode. That's not a post pod.
• 0:08
  That's how we're going to start, man. What are you talking about? Let's launch.
• 0:16
  And welcome, everyone. Today is Daily Ripples. We have Pastor Mike and Corey
• 0:21
  with us, both the hosts and special guest Memphis, myself,
• 0:26
  and my sister, who's in Colorado Springs, is celebrating her birthday today.
• 0:30
  So happy birthday to you, Cindy.
• 0:32
  Happy birthday, Cindy. Yeah, absolutely. Happy birthday, Cindy.
• 0:36
  And a special shout-out to the guys at AMAA. Robert specifically,
• 0:40
  because he brought up the Daily Ripples the other day in a meeting.
• 0:43
  So special shout-out. There you go. Yeah, we love that.
• 0:47
  So we're going to start today is June 21st.
• 0:54
  And it is choosing faith over fear.
• 0:59
  The stone, fear may always visit, but it does not have to take over.
• 1:04
  The choice between fear and faith is often made in the moment.
• 1:08
  Ripple 1. Practical. Today, when
• 1:11
  fear rises, I will acknowledge it without letting it define my response.
• 1:16
  I will not expect to eliminate fear completely. Instead, I will choose a steady
• 1:21
  action rooted in trust rather than panic.
• 1:24
  Ripple 2. Spiritual. As I place my fears before the Father, the Holy Spirit strengthens my faith.
• 1:31
  Following Christ, I learn that trust is not the absence of fear,
• 1:34
  but the decision to rely on God in the midst of it.
• 1:38
  Over time, faith becomes my anchor, holding me steady in both difficulty and joy.
• 1:45
  Well, you know, I'll start it. That's cool.
• 1:49
  You know, when I was reading it, it says the choice between fear and faith is
• 1:54
  often made in the moment.
• 1:55
  Well, you know, I agree with that, but, you know, my friend's Pastor Mike,
• 2:01
  and I can disagree sometimes as well if I want to.
• 2:05
  And because— As you often use that option, yes.
• 2:09
  Well, because, you know, in the 12 and 12, and I don't call it the 12 of 12
• 2:12
  enough, but on page 34, it says, Faith to be sure is necessary,
• 2:17
  but faith alone can avail nothing.
• 2:20
  And I thought, you know, I was just thinking about this when I read it,
• 2:23
  and, you know, I probably didn't read further, But like, you know,
• 2:26
  when I'm in that fear, you know, do I do what I need to do?
• 2:33
  And like, you know, for what I need to do, man, and I use the people in the
• 2:36
  rooms and everybody else in my life so much, right?
• 2:40
  Because when I'm in the middle of fear, you and like, if I can do anything about
• 2:45
  it, man, I try to reach out to somebody and I don't tell them what's going on
• 2:49
  with me because it tells me on page 84, right? We resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help.
• 2:54
  And so when I do that, for some reason, man, that fear, man,
• 3:00
  like we had a blow up the other day and like, you know, when I say blow up,
• 3:05
  Pastor Mike knows what I mean.
• 3:06
  Like we have a, we had a blow up and man, you know, like the first thing I did,
• 3:12
  you know, I always want to react.
• 3:14
  And, but, you know, first thing I thought was, man, you're going to have to
• 3:18
  be like, there's no way for you to get out of this by yourself.
• 3:24
  And, like, you know, of course, there's little prayers going on in my mind.
• 3:26
  But, like, so the first thing I did, I had to go walk out front.
• 3:30
  And I called this dude that has a lot of stuff going on. And he happened to
• 3:33
  have a lot of stuff going on that morning. And it was, you know,
• 3:37
  but it was right what I needed. And hopefully, you know, it helped him out at the same time.
• 3:42
  But, you know, I wasn't on the phone, though, talking about this problem I had.
• 3:47
  Because that problem would have made it bigger.
• 3:49
  And that problem had a lot of fear involved with it, right?
• 3:53
  So when I think about the faith and I think about fear, I think that's why it
• 4:00
  talks about over time, because these disciplines become more aware to me, right?
• 4:07
  And in the middle of fear, am I praying about it or am I saying a cuss word, right?
• 4:12
  Or am I bringing God into it at once? Or am I going and calling some dude and
• 4:17
  being like, you're never going
• 4:18
  to guess what she said now and making it a bigger problem than it is?
• 4:23
  And so, you know, I think about that stuff and what, you know,
• 4:26
  this program gives me, and it gives me a practical guide.
• 4:31
  And that practical guide, you know, we talked, I don't know if we talked about
• 4:34
  this on this, but, you know, the Sermon on the Mount—.
• 4:38
  And William James, Varieties of Religious Experience.
• 4:43
  So the Sermon on the Mount by Emmett Fox, that had more of a philosophy kind of idea.
• 4:48
  And these ideas kind of, some of these ideas kind of made, like,
• 4:52
  were the ideas that were pushed into the big book.
• 4:55
  But William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, had more of a practical application. So you got.
• 5:03
  Morals and philosophical convictions, right? And that's where the keystone comes in, the God piece.
• 5:09
  And I just connected all this just now. So don't think that this is not old.
• 5:14
  This is brand new information that I'm just playing with, that I have no idea
• 5:19
  what I'm really talking about. But that's all I got on this thought right now.
• 5:22
  Well, I was thinking about, you know, you brought out the one thing that you
• 5:27
  had a slight disagreement on about the choice between fear and faith,
• 5:30
  you know, often being made in the moment.
• 5:32
  And, you know, I would at times, you know, agree with your disagreement because
• 5:38
  I think that even though I wrote this, obviously, but because I think that,
• 5:42
  you know, it says that the choice is often made in the moment,
• 5:44
  but that misses a bit of context.
• 5:46
  You know, today I can make the choice between fear and faith in the moment,
• 5:50
  but I couldn't do that back when I was active in my alcoholism.
• 5:54
  I couldn't do that early in recovery because I didn't have the tools.
• 5:58
  I didn't have the spiritual toolkit. I didn't have, as Emmett Fox says,
• 6:01
  I didn't have the spiritual key to understanding, you know, to unlock,
• 6:05
  you know, the truth, the spiritual truth. You know, all that I had was the physical
• 6:09
  truth in front of me to face.
• 6:11
  And, you know, all of those reading materials, which, by the way,
• 6:14
  thanks, Corey, for turning me on to some of those, because I've definitely been
• 6:18
  reading and studying up on some of those, especially the Sermon on the Mount book.
• 6:22
  But, you know, when things arise today that are problematic,
• 6:26
  you know, when fear starts to creep up—.
• 6:29
  You know, in the past, I would have just probably just retreated into myself
• 6:33
  and found a safe space to go and not deal with it.
• 6:37
  But now the faith is, you know, faith leads me to act in spite of the fears that I have.
• 6:43
  And that's really what choosing faith over fear is, is not allowing fear to
• 6:47
  have the control over me in my life, to have the faith.
• 6:50
  And that faith has been built through my experiences.
• 6:54
  You know, as I have relied and followed, you know, God's guidance and direction
• 6:58
  in the past, even when I was uncertain, even when I was afraid of how it would
• 7:01
  turn out, even if it caused me, you know, financial insecurity,
• 7:05
  when I've done what I felt like God wanted me to do,
• 7:08
  it has never led me to the wrong place.
• 7:11
  It has always led me to a better place than where I was before.
• 7:15
  And that builds up the faith so that when something happens in my life today,
• 7:20
  when those fears arise, I know that, you know, my God is with me.
• 7:26
  And, you know, it makes me think of, you know, one of the most famous passages
• 7:30
  in the Bible related to this is where, you know, Jesus calmed the storm with the disciples, right?
• 7:34
  And the first one, the first story of that that would have been written would
• 7:38
  have been And in the Gospel of Mark, starting in chapter 4 verse 35,
• 7:42
  it says that when it was evening, he said, his disciples, let's go to the other side.
• 7:46
  And leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, him being Jesus,
• 7:49
  just as he was in the boat.
• 7:51
  And there were also other boats with them. But a furious squall came up,
• 7:54
  it says, and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped.
• 7:58
  Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion.
• 8:01
  And the disciples woke him and said to him, teacher, don't you care if we drown?
• 8:04
  And he got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, quiet,
• 8:07
  be still. And then the wind died down, and it was completely calm.
• 8:10
  And he said to his disciples, this is the important part.
• 8:13
  Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?
• 8:17
  And they were terrified, it says, and asked each other, who is this that even
• 8:19
  the wind and the waves obey him? But the point is...
• 8:26
  So I can give myself—Memphis, you hit on this a little bit when we were talking about fear yesterday—I.
• 8:34
  Can give myself grace anytime I remember the example of those first disciples
• 8:39
  who so often did not get it, even though they had the physical God in flesh
• 8:45
  and bone right in front of them.
• 8:46
  And in this case, in the story, why I bring it up is they had God in the boat with them.
• 8:50
  And he was sleeping and calm while the storm was going on, yet somehow they
• 8:54
  were still afraid and terrified.
• 8:56
  And so it allows me through those examples to give myself grace so that when
• 9:00
  the storms in my life come up and fear creeps in, I know that that's only natural
• 9:05
  as part of the human condition, but I can remember that God is with me.
• 9:08
  And he may be asleep in the stern sometimes, but God is still with me.
• 9:13
  I think of the word choosing and, and, and, you know, what you entitled this
• 9:18
  choosing faith over fear.
• 9:20
  You know, before, you know, I got here in recovery and started working the status
• 9:25
  and all that, you know, we hear
• 9:27
  a lot of times early on, and we usually refer to this when it's anger.
• 9:32
  We go, you know, you've got to learn to pause.
• 9:35
  You've got to find the pause button.
• 9:38
  And what I didn't realize is I needed a pause button not just for that emotion, not just for anger.
• 9:46
  I needed a pause button for a lot of different things, whether it's something
• 9:51
  good, because I need God involved in all the things.
• 9:54
  And so when I think about choosing faith over fear, I needed that.
• 9:59
  I need that when things or when that feeling is coming over me,
• 10:04
  I need that pause so that I can have that time with the God of my understanding,
• 10:11
  to reassure me of what it is that my next, what the next right thing for me to do is.
• 10:18
  And how would God have me respond and where he would want me to put my action into it.
• 10:25
  And that has been, I mean, one of the most important, critical things.
• 10:33
  Parts of my recovery is I used to leave myself no room for me to even allow myself to think,
• 10:43
  or to even have the room for God to have that God consciousness within me. You know what I mean?
• 10:50
  Yeah. And what that pause button did for me is that voice was,
• 10:55
  and it says it, and I'm sure Corey can find it in the big book,
• 10:59
  is that voice was always there.
• 11:02
  I just wasn't staying quiet to listen to it.
• 11:06
  And as I developed allowing that to happen, it replaces that fear with courage
• 11:13
  to take the next right action.
• 11:16
  Even if I don't know if it's the right action. You know, if that makes sense
• 11:20
  to you, is when I ask God to help me with what I need to do,
• 11:25
  sometimes I misinterpret it.
• 11:27
  And it doesn't go the way that I expect or I believe I misinterpreted.
• 11:32
  But that's where grace comes in, is my intention was to have the God of my understanding,
• 11:38
  involved in every choice, whether it's when anger is arising,
• 11:43
  whether it's when fear is arising, whether it's,
• 11:46
  when joy or happiness is.
• 11:49
  God has to be a part of all those things for me. And I want you to see it to pick your shoes.
• 11:55
  That's what I think about. When I get to today, I get to choose.
• 12:00
  You know, I don't like what, no, it's not nothing anybody in here says,
• 12:03
  but you know, what I've heard over the years in these rooms is people that say,
• 12:10
  and I said it too, I'm not like, when I talk about people normally, I'm talking about me and,
• 12:15
  my past, like probably just a day ago.
• 12:19
  Oh yeah, but it's much safer just to say, quote unquote, people,
• 12:22
  right? Yeah, that's a very...
• 12:24
  Those people. Those guys, yeah.
• 12:28
  But what I heard for a long time were people that said, it wasn't safe to go
• 12:33
  up in my head because there was a time it wasn't safe.
• 12:36
  And I didn't like it. It was a scary place. And I ran from that scary place for many years.
• 12:42
  And I was thinking about what Memphis was talking about. And I was thinking
• 12:45
  about page 51 of the big book because it says,
• 12:49
  when many hundreds of people are able to say that the consciousness,
• 12:54
  the presence of God is today the most important factor of their lives.
• 13:00
  They present a powerful reason why one should have faith. And so,
• 13:06
  That consciousness of this presence of this God to me and what the quietness,
• 13:11
  you know, because I used to, you know, see prayer and meditation.
• 13:14
  It was like a psalm, right? Prayer and meditation.
• 13:17
  I didn't realize it was two separate ideas.
• 13:19
  Yeah. And, you know, you like that, didn't you? That song, you know,
• 13:22
  anyways, but, you know, but when I, you know, I'll tell you,
• 13:24
  man, I used to go around some years ago when I finally started meditating.
• 13:31
  And I started finding, you know, what meditation was.
• 13:35
  I would be in meetings and talking to people about prayer and meditation.
• 13:40
  I'd be preaching it, you know, but, you know, today, how important it is, though.
• 13:46
  I mean, I found one of my practices today with that presence of God is,
• 13:52
  so one thing I do in the morning after I do some prayers and some writing and
• 13:57
  it's maybe some more prayers, I get quiet.
• 14:01
  And I might have said this on here, it doesn't really matter,
• 14:04
  but I'll breathe in and I'll say in my mind, I love you.
• 14:09
  And that was from me to God. And then when I breathe out, that's I love you from God.
• 14:15
  And I'll do that over and over.
• 14:18
  And, you know, I've talked about this in meditation, but man,
• 14:22
  you know, my thoughts will come back. My thoughts, you know,
• 14:24
  I'll start thinking about penguins over here or the Monopoly game over here.
• 14:29
  And, you know, but then I just come back into that breath.
• 14:32
  But what I found to be the most important fact of my life, and when I breathe
• 14:38
  in some days, I have a question to God.
• 14:42
  And when I breathe out, there's an answer. And today I trust and rely upon that.
• 14:47
  And, you know, sometimes, you know, it could be a little shady,
• 14:49
  so I don't go with it. But, you know, for the most part, it is not.
• 14:55
  You know, man, and it's been very vital to me.
• 14:59
  And because it does say in the big book, it talks about, I think it's on page 85.
• 15:07
  And it says, and you start talking about this to some people that have ever,
• 15:12
  gained this presence of a conscious contact with God, and they'll tell you you're crazy.
• 15:18
  They will tell you you're crazy. But it says in their big book as well,
• 15:22
  to some extent, we have become God conscious.
• 15:25
  We have begun to develop this vital success.
• 15:29
  And so, you know, to me, man, that's an important deal because I trust and rely
• 15:33
  upon that little piece right there.
• 15:36
  And, you know, I've had some absurd ideas as well. And I've,
• 15:39
  you know, played them out and, you know, got the consequences.
• 15:42
  But, man, it's an important fact of this deal.
• 15:45
  But that's what I was thinking about. That's good stuff. And I think it's important
• 15:49
  that we should point out that step 11, where it talks about that we sought through
• 15:53
  prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him.
• 15:58
  It does not say, as I first thought it did when I first came into the program
• 16:02
  with my addled brain, it does not say sought through prayer and medication.
• 16:06
  It's prayer and meditation. That's a very important distinction, right, Corey?
• 16:11
  Medication's good, too, if you got the right doctor. Well, there you go.
• 16:15
  On that note, on that note, Memphis, why don't you close us out for the prayer for today? I will.
• 16:22
  And, Corey, I do still say that exact thing. I don't go upstairs alone.
• 16:27
  I take God with me every time. Well, yeah. Yeah.
• 16:31
  Father, help me choose faith when fear rises.
• 16:35
  Through Your Spirit, strengthen my trust and guide me to walk confidently in
• 16:39
  the path of Your Son. Amen. Amen.
• 16:44
  Just all you got to say is, hey, and don't piss off your sponsor.
• 16:47
  Make sure to say Daily Ripples and not Daily Ripple.
• 16:51
  Right, okay. But Ripples, Ripples.
• 16:54
  I need to start by welcoming everybody to the Daily Ripples.
• 16:57
  Yeah, or just say, but don't say it singularly or you'll get demoted.
• 17:05
  No comment, no comment. At one point I was about to say, they have a right to
• 17:09
  think we're a little crazy.
• 17:11
  I did have a stripper as a higher power at one point.
• 17:14
  I did not want to say that during the episode, but, you know.
• 17:17
  I think you might, I know you. Michael's going to keep it because he's still recording.
• 17:21
  Well, yeah, it might show up as an Easter egg, and I'm kidding.
• 17:24
  No, I would never include anything that y'all didn't want included for sure.
• 17:27
  I just keep it rolling because it's easier to split it up.
• 17:31
  I think that it gives some real good insight of what a relationship we've got.
• 17:37
  And to go from where I was to where I'm at today, I think that's important for
• 17:41
  it to be heard, to be honest. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's.
• 17:46
  And there's, you know, a lot of people that will come into the room and say,
• 17:48
  hey, and they'll talk about that their higher power is a doorknob,
• 17:51
  you know, which always confused me. How would you not want a stripper to be
• 17:54
  your higher power, though? That's a.
• 17:57
  You know, Corey, we're definitely delving into outside issues at this point. So.
• 18:02
  But when my option was a doorknob or a stripper, I haven't, you know,
• 18:07
  anyway. I mean, I use women to be my higher power for a long time.
• 18:10
  Yeah, I think we all did use those other relationships as a higher power and,
• 18:15
  thank God that I have God as my higher power today and not something as fickle as the flesh.