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May 10 - Becoming Who I Am Meant to Be · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:05
  Hey guys, this is Corey and Michael, Pastor Mike, and this is The Daily Ripple.
• 0:11
  It is May the 10th, becoming who I'm meant to be, the stone.
• 0:17
  Freedom begins with honesty.
• 0:19
  When I see myself clearly and accept who I am, I create space to become who I was meant
• 0:26
  to be.
• 0:27
  Ripple 1 practical.
• 0:29
  Today I will resist the urge to hide behind image or performance.
• 0:33
  I will be honest about my past and present without exaggeration or denial.
• 0:39
  Growth starts when I stop pretending and start living in truth.
• 0:43
  Ripple 2 spiritual.
• 0:45
  As I bring my whole self before the Father, the Holy Spirit forms humility within me.
• 0:52
  Following Christ, I learn that humility is not thinking less of myself, but seeing myself rightly.
• 0:58
  In that clarity, God begins shaping me into something new, and freedom takes root.
• 1:05
  And you've been doing some good ones lately.
• 1:06
  These are, but when I was first reading this, you know, when I just read it again, I was thinking about ego.
• 1:17
  Yeah, yeah, me too.
• 1:18
  And I mean, you know, I think we talk a little bit about ego, and I think we, I talk a lot about ego,
• 1:26
  Because I think that it's very, you know, especially on the fifth step, right?
• 1:29
  Because this is where we're talking about a lot of things.
• 1:32
  And the cool thing about, we talked about fear in the last episode.
• 1:37
  But, you know, it also says in the promises of the fifth step, fears fall from us.
• 1:43
  And it talks about it in the page 72 through 75, which in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous,
• 1:48
  that's explaining what the fifth step is.
• 1:51
  But it talks about that it says I live a double life.
• 1:54
  And it talks about I have stage characters.
• 1:58
  Man, isn't that true?
• 1:59
  Because this kind of aligns with that because it's talking about when I see myself clearly and accept who I am.
• 2:08
  Well, who am I today, right?
• 2:10
  You know, who was I just an hour ago or two hours ago?
• 2:13
  Because I was in the gym an hour ago.
• 2:15
  Can I be the same person I'm in the gym as I am to my friend Michael, right?
• 2:20
  Or am I different people?
• 2:21
  Because that's a lot to keep up with.
• 2:24
  And I think when I'm coming into this place, and really in the fifth step, because it kind of aligns with your thing, too, it talks about, it says, we've admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our defects.
• 2:41
  And that's on page 72, and it's weird because it says your defects instead of, anyways, I think it's cool how Bill Wilson likes to use different words in that nature.
• 2:52
  But so I think, man, when I tell somebody like you, who's a pastor, some things that kind of, you know, because I can kind of have some conversation with you.
• 3:04
  And I'm like, yeah, you know, I grew up in church and this happened and this happened.
• 3:08
  And then I go on a construction site and I'm talking about this and this and this and this.
• 3:14
  And I go to the gym and I'm talking about working out this and this and this.
• 3:17
  and I get with my significant other,
• 3:21
  and we're talking about this and this,
• 3:24
  and I'm different people.
• 3:26
  So when I have one problem come up,
• 3:29
  I react to that problem from all these different stage characters.
• 3:35
  And it's crazy, because I don't know how to deal with that.
• 3:39
  That's why resentment's the number one offender
• 3:41
  for someone like me that has a double life,
• 3:44
  that has a quadruple or eight it's...
• 3:46
  I don't know how you even say eight and those kind of words, but it's cool.
• 3:51
  But, you know, I think that's the deal.
• 3:52
  When I tell somebody everything, one person.
• 3:56
  Octuple.
• 3:56
  Quadruple?
• 3:58
  Octuple.
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  Octuple.
• 3:59
  Like an octagon.
• 4:01
  When I tell one person everything, it eliminates some of that, right?
• 4:07
  Because I'm honest with one person.
• 4:09
  And sometimes, man, I'm going to let you go just one second.
• 4:14
  The way you worded this, it says, as I bring my whole self before the Father, the Holy Spirit forms humility within me.
• 4:23
  Man, I remember when I was sober before and I was kind of doing some not the best of things.
• 4:30
  I thought I was somewhat spiritual.
• 4:31
  I prayed all the time and this and this.
• 4:33
  But I'll tell you what I didn't do before I went and did that, prayed.
• 4:37
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:38
  For sure.
• 4:39
  And that's a weird thing because God's always there.
• 4:44
  Mm-hmm. Where I go to is, again, as you were reading this, you know, the second, you know,
• 4:51
  sentence of the stone, you know, starts out saying, when I see myself clearly and, and the and is very
• 4:57
  important. You like those conjunctions. You like to point those out a lot of times in the big book
• 5:01
  literature, and accept who I am. That is when I create space to become who I was meant to be.
• 5:08
  And the reason why that jumped out to me is because, and I'll be honest, I probably wrote this particular, you know, Ripple for today, probably at least about a month ago, you know, in time.
• 5:21
  But then at my most recent, you know, session that I had, you know, with my therapist as I, you know, continue to work on, you know, myself, and it just helps me reveal things about myself, you know, kind of going to therapy and what have you.
• 5:33
  But as I was talking to my therapist, one of the things that she said to me very recently was that I need to learn how to accept the person that I am today because I'm still weighed down at times by shame, guilt, whatever of the person that I used to be.
• 5:53
  And kind of the way you started out, you know, that is a form of ego because ego has two sides to it.
• 5:59
  You know, ego can be where I lift myself above everybody else and think that I'm so much better than everybody else.
• 6:04
  But the flip side of that is tearing myself down constantly and being so weighed down by shame and guilt and remorse that I'm not able to be of service to anybody.
• 6:14
  Because if I'm not able to be, you know, solid in my own head and in my own life, then how am I going to be, you know, a solid foundation or vessel of love, you know, as it were, for other people around me?
• 6:27
  So I really have to work to believe that, you know, as it's promised, you know, in the scripture, that if God has and God has forgiven me for all of those things that I've done in the past, then who am I not to forgive myself?
• 6:44
  You know, if God has forgiven and even taking it beyond that, if God has forgiven me for all of the things that I've done in the past, who am I not to forgive Corey?
• 6:56
  You know, if you hurt or offend me, who am I not to forgive my wife or my family or, you know, anybody that I can think of?
• 7:03
  And, you know, I also was thinking, you know, along the lines of this ripple and I've got a deep cut, as you were, you know, out of scripture a little bit.
• 7:12
  And that's from the book of Job in the Old Testament.
• 7:15
  Are you familiar with that one, Corey, or did you think it was about having a job?
• 7:19
  Michael, I have heard of the book of Job.
• 7:21
  I just haven't opened it yet.
• 7:27
  Well, there you go.
• 7:28
  Well, Job is the guy in the Bible who was the most faithful.
• 7:31
  And, you know, the story goes that basically the devil said, you know, if you take away God,
• 7:36
  if you take away all his stuff that you've provided for him,
• 7:40
  then he's not going to worship you and remain faithful.
• 7:42
  Well, obviously he did.
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  He did remain faithful.
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  But at the time when he was going through everything, when he was losing everything in his life,
• 7:51
  all the other religious leaders and folks around him tried to counsel him about how to get his life back on track
• 7:58
  because they thought at the time that if he was losing everything, it was because he had offended God
• 8:03
  or he was not faithful or not true to God.
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  So they thought that he deserved to lose everything that he had.
• 8:09
  But even so, even in their words of trying to bolster him and turn him around, there's
• 8:13
  still some wisdom even for us today.
• 8:17
  And I'm going to read a little bit out of the 11th chapter of Job.
• 8:20
  And I'm going to read the message translation because it's easier to read and understand.
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  And beginning in about verse 13 of chapter 11, they're counseling him.
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  They say, still, if you set your heart on God and reach out to him, if you scrub your
• 8:35
  hands of sin and refuse to entertain evil in your home, you will be able to face the world unashamed
• 8:41
  and keep a firm grip on life, guiltless and fearless. And really, that's what it's all about.
• 8:47
  If I turn to God, if I turn my fears, if I turn my past, if I turn all of those things over to God,
• 8:53
  and then truly believe and live as though I believe that God has forgiven me of all those
• 8:59
  things and washed all those things away, when I am able to do that, and I am at times able to do that
• 9:05
  in my life, I live in much more of a place of peace. That is how I, you know, whenever I apply
• 9:13
  that in my life, that's how I'm able to kind of allow the Holy Spirit to guide me to see and know
• 9:19
  where I can be of service to other people, because it always, to me, comes back to being a service to
• 9:24
  others. You know, and if I'm so weighed down by my own stuff, even my own past, if I'm still
• 9:30
  carrying it around in my backpack, as the program teaches us, I've got to eventually, you know,
• 9:35
  cut the strap, cut a hole in that backpack, start letting some of that stuff go, because it'll just
• 9:40
  run me into the ground. You know, it's kind of like this, I think. It's, you know, it's a fairy
• 9:45
  tale land, right? And maybe this is probably another reason why we have to be so broken and
• 9:49
  hopelessly come into the programs of that nature because, you know, up until that happens,
• 9:57
  up until the whatever bottom someone comes to with whatever their life, it's a fairytale land.
• 10:03
  You know, I'm able to lie to myself. I'm able to lie to those around me. Until the gig's up,
• 10:09
  dog, I can keep going. And I think I can keep going. And, you know, especially if some people,
• 10:15
  especially if I got some big problems in my life, right?
• 10:18
  You know, I mean, I can reference my dad passing away, right?
• 10:22
  My dad passing away was probably the hardest thing,
• 10:25
  you know, one of the worst things I went through.
• 10:27
  But, you know, on top of that, it gave me a reason.
• 10:32
  It gave me a reason for me to not be,
• 10:36
  for me to be in oblivion and for me to tell you
• 10:40
  why I'm in oblivion, too, because I had a reason.
• 10:43
  And I think when the deal's up, like, you know, I'm not able to live in that fairy tale land.
• 10:48
  And when I go back to when I see myself clearly, and in the 12 and 12 of Alcoholics Anonymous on page 58, it tells me a definition almost of humility.
• 11:00
  This is the only thing I've found in the literature so far that's the best representation of it.
• 11:06
  It says humility, a word often misunderstood to those who have made progress in AA.
• 11:13
  It amounts to a clear recognition of what and who we really are, followed by a sincere attempt to become what we could be.
• 11:24
  And, you know, so I think that comes in the, you know, I haven't talked about this a lot, but, you know, I mean, I lived in a fairytale land myself.
• 11:38
  you know, in all these different ways. And sometimes I probably still can, you know, I mean,
• 11:43
  I still can peel the onion back some more, but, you know, I try to be this person because I think
• 11:48
  a real man's this and I want to be like that or whoever. And I really, when we talked, I read that
• 11:55
  third or when I read the seventh step prayer, when, you know, cause it's, in God, in that prayer,
• 12:00
  it's saying, God, take away my defects of character to be of use to you and my fellows,
• 12:06
  not for whatever Corey thinks he should be,
• 12:09
  because I can see other people.
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  I'm like, man, have you ever talked with somebody
• 12:15
  that sounds like they have humility?
• 12:17
  Oh, yeah.
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  You know what I mean?
• 12:21
  I've heard people talk like that, and I'm like, man, that guy.
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  So I started wanting to have these different things these people have
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  just for my own selfish gain, because I think it's almost like
• 12:32
  Tony Hawk Pro Skater.
• 12:34
  I'm adding to like this, my skater, right?
• 12:38
  I'm adding because of what I want.
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  But it doesn't talk about that for what Corey wants.
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  Meanwhile, the reality is I'm just sitting on the sidelines here as an NPC.
• 12:47
  You know, I'm not even the star of that game, Tony Hawk Pro Skater.
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  But really, it's not for me.
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  And God doesn't want it for me.
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  He wants it for his kids.
• 12:59
  And when I can come to one with that, when I can come to one with what my, and I think, you know, man, I'm so grateful to know what my purpose is in this world.
• 13:12
  I was listening to a podcast.
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  I might have told you a little bit about it.
• 13:16
  It was funny because we were all the way back from Gatlinburg.
• 13:19
  And it was a guy talking to an exorcist, a guy that performed exorcisms.
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  And he was just, I can't think of his name anyways, but it was funny because, you know, it was a four-hour-long podcast and my son was in the car.
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  And after we got home, he said, when can I get baptized?
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  And it was a really cool experience because now, like, you know, we're in church and he's going to get baptized soon.
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  But anyways.
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  That's awesome.
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  Because of that podcast.
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  But, man, he had said something about angels and about demons
• 13:55
  and something along the lines of, like, you know, demons have something.
• 14:00
  You might know what I'm talking about better,
• 14:02
  but something about angels know their purpose.
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  And, you know, man, I wish I could think about what it is.
• 14:10
  Anyways, I'm not trying to promote other podcasts,
• 14:13
  but it's on the Sean Ryan Show, and it's with the guy that he's a,
• 14:17
  he is a
• 14:19
  does exorcisms
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  and it was the most interesting thing because you know
• 14:22
  the way it put some things
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  and it really straightened some things
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  out in my life you know but
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  made me understand some things too
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  but anyways you know back to
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  this you know I
• 14:34
  it is freedom when I
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  start getting honest with others about
• 14:38
  who I really am and when I make
• 14:41
  that's where the bidding comes
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  in right to bring this all around full
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  circle when I go face these people that I hurt, that I really hurt deep down. That's how I become
• 14:52
  the better person in my life, right? And it's not for me trying to be a better person. It's when I
• 14:57
  go look in front of that girl's face and I tell her, hey, I cheated on you and I treated you like
• 15:02
  crap. Because you know what that does in my life on the other side? Because it's all connecting.
• 15:07
  It makes me not treat the person I'm with like crap.
• 15:11
  Right, because you learn from it and you grow from it.
• 15:13
  And one thing that I thought of as you were sharing that, you know, and again, I'm totally fine with shouting out another podcast and what have you because, you know, maybe you'll get a guest spot on that one too, Corey, by shouting out.
• 15:26
  But I will say the…
• 15:27
  A co-host spot.
• 15:28
  I want to be a co-host spot.
• 15:29
  That's right.
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  Co-host spot.
• 15:32
  I'll say the only exorcism that I want to be involved in is the exorcism that we all go through when we work through the 12 steps.
• 15:39
  because as we work through the 12 steps, we are exercising our demons in the best way that we can.
• 15:44
  You know, it's not an instantaneous thing, you know, that you see and depicted on, you know,
• 15:50
  film and for those who have cast out, you know, literal demons and things of that nature.
• 15:54
  But we are working on casting out our demons. But before we close out or you close out with our
• 15:59
  prayer, I wanted you to read that line, that definition out of the 12 steps and 12 traditions
• 16:04
  again, just because I don't remember it word for word without having it in front of me.
• 16:08
  What was that definition of humility that you read a few minutes ago?
• 16:12
  It says, it's on page 58.
• 16:14
  It says, humility, a word often misunderstood.
• 16:19
  To those who have made progress in AA, it amounts to a clear recognition of what and who we really are, followed by a sincere attempt to become what we could be.
• 16:32
  All right.
• 16:32
  Very good.
• 16:33
  And that's, so what and who we really are with an attempt to become what we could be.
• 16:38
  And the reason why I had you read that again is because I was trying to make sure that what I wrote in our spiritual ripple today did not contradict that.
• 16:46
  And it doesn't because it says, following Christ, I learned that humility is not thinking less of myself.
• 16:52
  So, in other words, clear recognition of who and what I am, but seeing myself rightly.
• 16:56
  So, in other words, who does God want me to be?
• 16:59
  So, we're consistent.
• 17:00
  Real quick, Michael, I just want to tell you, I don't know how well you're versed in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
• 17:05
  I know you're pretty versed, but when I read these, I'm very impressed.
• 17:12
  Because, I mean, it says on page 73 of the big book, it says,
• 17:18
  this is talking about when someone doesn't do a full fifth step, right?
• 17:22
  Yeah.
• 17:22
  This is kind of like a warning.
• 17:24
  It says, they took inventory all right, but they hung on to some of the worst items in stock.
• 17:29
  They only thought they had lost their egoism and fear.
• 17:32
  They only thought they had humbled themselves, but they had not learned enough humility, fearlessness, and honesty in the sense we find it necessary until they told someone else all their life story.
• 17:46
  But we'll get into more of this in some of the next episodes.
• 17:50
  And the prayer is, Father, help me see myself clearly and live honestly.
• 17:54
  Through Your Spirit, form humility in me and lead me into the freedom that comes from becoming who You created me to be.
• 18:03
  Amen.
• 18:04
  Amen.
• 18:11
  And this obviously probably will not make the cut into the episode, but—
• 18:16
  Wow, Pastor Mike.
• 18:19
  Pastor Mike deleted that, but—
• 18:22
  We're all human.
• 18:23
  What can you say?
• 18:24
  We're all human.
• 18:25
  You know, I got a past.
• 18:26
  What are you talking about?