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October 2 – The Daily Test · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:04
  October 2nd, the daily test, the stone.
• 0:08
  Spiritual maturity is revealed not by easy days, but by how I respond when life becomes difficult.
• 0:15
  Ripple one practical.
• 0:16
  Today I will pay attention to what disturbs my peace.
• 0:19
  Instead of immediately blaming someone else,
• 0:22
  I will honestly examine my own heart and ask God, ask what God may be showing me.
• 0:27
  Even painful moments can become opportunities for growth.
• 0:31
  Rippled to spiritual.
• 0:33
  As I follow Christ's example of humility and self-examination, the Holy Spirit uses even my struggles to shape my character.
• 0:40
  The Father does not waste my pain when I bring it honestly before him.
• 0:45
  He transforms it into wisdom, maturity, and peace.
• 0:48
  Good morning, everyone.
• 0:50
  I hope everyone's having a good morning so far.
• 0:53
  And if you listen yesterday, I hope that you uh, made a good decision this morning and got up 1st thing and asked for your thoughts to be directed and uh, divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives, and you can uh, deploy your, employer flat faculties with much greater assurance if you've done that.
• 1:11
  So kind of what I want to talk about today is the maturation from a spiritual perspective.
• 1:17
  And I really like this topic a lot.
• 1:19
  Um, mostly because it lets me to talk, it lets me talk about, uh, and I'm probably going to depart a little bit from what Pastor Mike wrote, but, but I think it, it really defines and kind of ties together what this spiritual, um, path looks like for people that follow it, as particularly through the 12 steps, um, in in AA, uh, the way that what we're looking at is what I call the allegory of a free man.
• 1:49
  And where does that, where does that start?
• 1:52
  Well, it starts earlier in the book where we get the definition of a free man as someone that can go anywhere without disaster.
• 1:59
  And how do we get there?
• 2:01
  Well, you know, we start by taking a look at at ourselves and and really, you know, I mean, I don't have a whole, I don't have, but, you know, 20 minutes max here to talk about this, but, you know, I'll start here on page 62.
• 2:22
  And what we're talking about is we're talking about this arch.
• 2:26
  And a lot of my friends hear me talk about this or have heard this before, but it talks about having moral and philosophical convictions, right?
• 2:36
  So I could have these great, this great idea for my conduct and I could have this great idea for my thinking, but the needed power to put those 2 things together was not there.
• 2:47
  And it was not there because I thought I was the power, right?
• 2:52
  And that's the next sentence that says, neither could we reduce ourselves centering this much by wishing or trying on our own power.
• 2:59
  We had to have God's help.
• 3:01
  And this is the how and why of it.
• 3:03
  The how and why of it.
• 3:04
  First of all, we had to quit playing God.
• 3:08
  That's how that's the 1st step in getting God's help.
• 3:12
  The why of it is because it didn't work, right?
• 3:16
  So it answers the question.
• 3:18
  It gives you the statement of this is the how and why of it, and it basically answers that with those 2 things, which is we had to quit playing God as the 1st step of getting God's help, and the 2nd portion of it looks at, why do I need to quit playing God because me quit me playing God doesn't work?
• 3:37
  Uh, and then, of course, it gives me a couple of different um, uh, examples of concepts that I could use for this keystone.
• 3:46
  Me personally, I like the father and children because Jesus tells us in the Bible, he says, come to me as children.
• 3:53
  You know, and for me, what does that mean?
• 3:56
  It means to come to me as an empty bucket.
• 3:58
  And uh, one of my one of my sponsors, uh, Doug, you know, asked me one time, he said, how much water can you put in a full bucket?
• 4:06
  And I said, well, I guess you could fill it up because, but what if it's already full?
• 4:11
  I said, well, you can't put any more water in it.
• 4:14
  And he said, well, you got to empty the bucket.
• 4:16
  You know, and for me that's what that looks like.
• 4:18
  When I thought, think about how, as a child, you know, I knew Jesus loves me, this, I knew, no, for the Bible tells me so, it was just that simple.
• 4:27
  I mean, I didn't really have that concept at a deep level, right?
• 4:31
  But I just, you know, was just that simple.
• 4:33
  Go to Jesus, you know, and I'm not saying choose Jesus and everything will be okay.
• 4:38
  I'm saying that as someone approaching this concept for spiritual freedom and salvation, that coming to this creator, as a child, free from prejudice, you know, earlier in the big book, it asks us to lay us high prejudice against any spiritual terms, you might find in this book, ask yourself honestly what they mean to you.
• 5:06
  And when I do that and I look at this and I say, well, every, every, uh, word and every punctuation in this book is spiritual in nature because it's a precise.
• 5:16
  Um, it says precisely how we recovered is the main purpose of this book, which means that it's a precise tool, which means every single word has value, and every single word means something, and that's just how I approach it.
• 5:28
  And for me, the concept of the child is approaching with no knowledge, free and being ready, uh, an empty bucket being prepared to be filled with holy water, you know, and and, and for me, that that symbolizes the crucified Christ, essentially because both blood and water flowed from him, the water of life, which is what he gives us.
• 5:50
  And so, it says most good ideas are simple.
• 5:55
  That was a little bit complicated, but it is a simple idea, right?
• 5:58
  I mean, my, my, my thinking about it and the way I, you know, unpack it might be complicated. It may not be complicated to think about it like that, but it was very worry the way I described it.
• 6:09
  It was very uncomplicated.
• 6:10
  Just come as a child, an empty bucket, you know, that doesn't know any better and ask for this help.
• 6:15
  And because most good ideas are simple.
• 6:18
  And this is the concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed the freedom.
• 6:27
  Right?
• 6:28
  So again, we're dealing with that freedom.
• 6:29
  Another word for freedom would be salvation.
• 6:32
  So once God, Jesus is my keystone, in my arch, my thinking and my actions, right?
• 6:39
  Because we just talked about 10 and 11.
• 6:42
  In October 1st episode, we talked about 10 and 11.
• 6:46
  And my behavior, love and tolerance of others is my code, and I come to rely on my thinking.
• 6:52
  So my philosophy and my behavior are held together by this keystone.
• 6:57
  And as I go through this thing, right? And I'm going to backtrack here, and I'm going to jump back to page 55, I know you guys love this because Corey, I'm sure Corey does it a lot, and you can hear you guys turning pages, and you can hear him turning pages.
• 7:09
  Okay, not the turning pages again.
• 7:11
  But if you look at, um, if you look here on the bottom and it says, uh, you know, gives me a, gives me the certain simple attitude, and I won't won't bore you with that part of it.
• 7:21
  But if you wish, you can join us on the broad highway.
• 7:23
  And it's interesting because it ties this thread together, and we find it starting on page 62.
• 7:30
  And what I basically I'm saying is like, hey, I'm going to make
• 7:34
  going to come here.
• 7:34
  I'm going to make this 3rd step prayer because now that my keystone is in place that holds the 2 pillars of the arch up, I will make this prayer and then God will take me because it says immediately.
• 7:46
  Next, we launch down, of course, vigorous action.
• 7:48
  Well, that course of vigorous action is a house cleaning, right?
• 7:51
  Because why do I need a house cleaning? Because, We need to be, we need to make a strenuous effort to face and get rid of the things in ourselves, which have been blocking us.
• 8:03
  Well, what is it blocking us from?
• 8:05
  Well, it tells me that again.
• 8:07
  Uh, On the, uh, on page 66, you know, that we, uh, maintenance and growth of spiritual experience and the business of resentment is fatal, right?
• 8:19
  Because why?
• 8:20
  Because it shuts me off from the sunlight of spirit essentially blocking me.
• 8:23
  So we go through this inventory.
• 8:25
  And we're talking about, um, maturation and growth in, in recovery and in our spiritual life and clearing up our side of the street as part of that. And we do an inventory resentment, which creates our a men's list.
• 8:40
  We do a fear inventory, which teaches us how to rely on God and then we do a sex conduct inventory, which teaches us how we should treat other people, particularly uh, people that we're involved with intimately.
• 8:53
  And as we go through that, we have a maturation process.
• 8:56
  And the final part of that process.
• 8:59
  Again, we kind of talked last time about discipline.
• 9:03
  These are the disciplines.
• 9:04
  That's not discipline, like hitting you with a stick discipline.
• 9:07
  It's practice.
• 9:08
  It's discipline.
• 9:09
  It's shooting the basketball bazillion times that the free throw.
• 9:13
  You know, all these professional sports people or anybody that's been very successful in any area of their life.
• 9:20
  They're disciplined in a way, not by, you know, punishment, but they're disciplined in that they're, they practice and they continue to do this thing over and over and over again.
• 9:30
  And on page 75, one of the one of the things that it ties this thread together is that you can find us on the broad highway walking hand in hand in spirit.
• 9:39
  And if you look down a little bit further down that page, it, it talks about,
• 9:45
  Um, excuse me.
• 9:49
  It talks about, actually, it's on, talks about making mortar without sand, omitted anything for building an arch, which we shall walk a free man, and the free man is a man that can go anywhere without disaster.
• 10:05
  And so from, from that perspective, like, I, I like to look at this, and I would say, you know, from a biblical, uh, from a biblical perspective, It says, Hebrews 61, it says, therefore, let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ, and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that led to death, and faith, and of faith in God, instruction about baptism
• 10:36
  laying hands in resurrection of the dead in eternal judgment, and God permitting, we will do so.
• 10:41
  So we go from, we go from this real elementary idea of just being a child coming to his creator and saying, please help me, just something that has been given the full gifts as a free man to walk this world without disaster as long as our keystone remains in place. And the way our keystone remains in place, we practice those disciplines in 10 and 11, every single day, over and over again, rinse and repeat.
• 11:07
  And when we do that, we can trust our behavior, because love and tolerance of others is our code, and we can trust our thinking because our new philosophy for life, is that this is how we practice our life.
• 11:18
  And in the, in, in the 12 and 12, uh, step six, the very 1st line in step six, which I think is interesting, is it says, this is the step that separates the men from the boys or the women from the girls.
• 11:36
  And if you think about the way that what I just explained to you is structure.
• 11:39
  It says we walk through this arch, a free man. So we started as a child.
• 11:44
  We turned into a man, and now we're free.
• 11:47
  We have salvation.
• 11:48
  And I want to close with this one thing.
• 11:53
  First Corinthians, 1st Corinthians, I'm sorry, 1st Corinthians 13.
• 12:00
  11. Verse 11.
• 12:04
  When I was a child, I talked like a child.
• 12:06
  So prior to doing this inventory, I was selfish and self-centered in the extreme.
• 12:11
  I stepped on the toes of my fellows and they retaliated, seemingly without provocation, but I invariably found that sometime in the past, I'd done things to harm others.
• 12:21
  whether I knew that or not.
• 12:23
  You know, so that's how childish people immature, lacking the ability to uh, think straight.
• 12:31
  We kind of talked about that earlier in the week, the sanity, lacking the ability to think straight.
• 12:36
  And certainly did not have the ability to behave correctly because the needed power is not there because I don't have the keystone in place.
• 12:45
  I don't have that relationship of my creator in place.
• 12:48
  But once that relationship is in place and I take those disciplines, those practices, primarily the inventory, and then coming on the backside of that inventory.
• 12:58
  I show up a man and I'm prepared to set right the things that I have done.
• 13:02
  that have caused harm to others.
• 13:05
  And says when I when I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
• 13:11
  So when I pass through that arch, free man.
• 13:15
  I no longer approached my life in a way that a child would, a selfish and self-centered and extreme.
• 13:20
  And I really hope that this has been helpful for some people out there today.
• 13:24
  Again, we talked about how to start your day yesterday, and this is why you have to do this.
• 13:30
  This is a rinse and repeat because this is a cycle of continuing to maintain the keystone in your arch, which is the power needed to behave correctly and think correctly. And we'll close this with a prayer.
• 13:46
  Father God, help me respond to every circumstance with honesty and humility.
• 13:50
  So your Holy Spirit, use even today's challenges to shape my heart, form me through the example of Jesus.
• 13:57
  Amen.
• 13:58
  Bye for now.