Latest / The Daily Ripples Podcast / June 8 – Open to Transformation

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June 8 – Open to Transformation · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome back to the Daily Ripples podcast.
• 0:06
  Today is a very special episode of our podcast.
• 0:11
  I'm Pastor Mike, and I've got with me Corey, our co-host.
• 0:14
  And we don't have any specific guests on today, but we will hear from some of our former guests
• 0:20
  at the end of the episode, because we've invited those who had a desire and who've been on the
• 0:25
  show before to give a special shout out today.
• 0:27
  And so we'll get to those after our prayer.
• 0:30
  And the reason why, you may be wondering, is because today is our 100th episode.
• 0:36
  Corey, can you believe that?
• 0:37
  It's crazy.
• 0:38
  It is crazy to think that you and I, either together or individually in some way, shape,
• 0:44
  form, or fashion, we have managed to give a daily episode of at least 10 minutes, sometimes
• 0:50
  as much as 25 minutes, every day for the past 100 days.
• 0:55
  And man, thank you, Corey, for being here with me and through this and doing the work with me.
• 1:01
  Absolutely.
• 1:01
  I truly appreciate it.
• 1:03
  No, it's been, you know, man, this is like, this is the coolest thing ever on Tuesday.
• 1:08
  It's already set into the calendar.
• 1:09
  You know what I mean?
• 1:10
  I love this.
• 1:11
  That's right.
• 1:12
  Tuesdays are our typical recording night.
• 1:14
  That's right.
• 1:14
  A little behind the scenes look there.
• 1:17
  Oh, I'll show you.
• 1:20
  Hey, you know, I just take whatever you say, Corey, and roll with it.
• 1:23
  That's how we've managed to make it a hundred episodes.
• 1:25
  So far, man, you know, if you say something needs clarification, I just do the, I do the
• 1:30
  dad-splain.
• 1:31
  Since we're both dudes, I can't call it man-splaining.
• 1:33
  I guess I can call it dad-splaining.
• 1:34
  I don't know.
• 1:36
  But anyway, all right, Corey, who's your daddy?
• 1:38
  Why don't you kick us off with our devotional for today?
• 1:44
  Oh, hey guys.
• 1:45
  Today's June 8th, open and transformation.
• 1:49
  The stone, change begins with honesty and grows through willingness.
• 1:53
  I cannot move forward while holding tightly to what no longer works.
• 1:58
  Ripple 1 Practical
• 2:00
  Today I will take time to reflect on what needs to change in my life.
• 2:05
  I will not resist it or excuse it.
• 2:08
  I will be open to letting go of old patterns, even if they feel familiar.
• 2:13
  Small steps towards change creates lasting progress.
• 2:17
  Ripple 2 Spiritual
• 2:19
  As I surrender my old ways to the Father,
• 2:23
  The Holy Spirit brings new vision and strength.
• 2:26
  Following Christ, I learned that transformation is not forced.
• 2:30
  It is received.
• 2:32
  Over time, as I release control and trust God, a new way of living begins to take shape within me.
• 2:43
  I had a change in one of yours, so I changed the word in my head to,
• 2:49
  Today I will take time to reflect on what needs to be unblocked in my life.
• 2:55
  And I sent this to a friend of mine the other day.
• 3:00
  Well, I've actually been sending a picture of it because I don't see my journal.
• 3:08
  It's my little prayer book.
• 3:10
  And at the end of it, you know, I have a prayer.
• 3:14
  The last prayer I pray is, God, you know, show me what's, you know, blocking me or could help me be more free today and help me be more, have a bigger conscious contact with you.
• 3:25
  And, you know, so I like to think about that at the end of my prayer so I can kind of meditate on that.
• 3:30
  And, you know, because I do believe God, you know, shows me what those little things are.
• 3:35
  I mean, you know, going back to a couple episodes, but am I willing to do anything about that?
• 3:40
  And usually it's something you go face, a person, a situation.
• 3:46
  I need to go face them and get that situated because I believe,
• 3:52
  and you've heard me talk about this before,
• 3:54
  because if I have something in between me and you, and God is everything,
• 3:59
  and we are just manifestations of God, I have something in between me and you,
• 4:04
  then I have something in between me and God, and I need to unblock that.
• 4:08
  So to me, you know, that's kind of like where my mind went with that in the beginning, because other than that, I'm not good at making changes in my life without bringing God into it.
• 4:21
  Yeah.
• 4:21
  I don't know about you.
• 4:23
  Well, I think about along the same lines of that practical ripple, you know, whether it's what needs to change or what needs to be unblocked in my life, you know, it says I'll be open to letting go of old patterns, even if they feel familiar.
• 4:38
  And that's an important one for me.
• 4:41
  You know, I had this thought when I wrote it, and I have the thought every time that I read it again on today,
• 4:46
  is because my old patterns, man, I was very much pattern, schedule, routine driven, you know.
• 4:54
  And to a certain extent, you know, I can be today, but it's a question of what am I using my routines and patterns to either do or to avoid doing.
• 5:03
  And so, you know, in the past, my routine or my pattern of living and navigating life
• 5:08
  would have been that if you offended me one time, I'm going to store it in the back of
• 5:15
  my mind and I'm not going to forget it.
• 5:18
  I'm going to remember on X and X a day, you know, Corey offended me by saying or doing
• 5:23
  something.
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  Usually it was something that hurt my pride or ego.
• 5:26
  And so I can store it in the memory bank and I don't say anything about it because I'm real
• 5:30
  passive aggressive by nature, you know.
• 5:32
  And then if you do it a second time, you know, I may lightly say something about it or mention it about, yeah, I don't like it when you do that, Corey, and then kind of move on, but have a very light approach.
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  By about the 10th time that you do the same thing that offends me, it's going to come bubbling out in anger and rage because it just got to the point to where I couldn't keep it in anymore.
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  And my reaction to it becomes my response.
• 6:00
  And that's my normal pattern, right?
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  I just sit on it, sit on it, sit on it, you know, resentments form.
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  I just shove them down, shove them down, shove them down.
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  You know, back in the day, I would drink over them so I didn't have to think about them and
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  just shove them down until all of a sudden one time you said one little thing that was
• 6:15
  too much and here I am exploding on you.
• 6:18
  Now, luckily, that explosion never got, you know, physically violent in my life because,
• 6:24
  you know, I mean, if you and I are standing next to each other in a room, everybody can
• 6:28
  guess who's going to win that physical altercation, Corey.
• 6:30
  you're a little bit more buff than I am. But man, I could use my words to cut like a knife. And
• 6:36
  especially somebody that I knew had a tendency to be a little bit insecure or that might be affected
• 6:42
  by my words. Oh yeah, I would give it to them. I was definitely doing that thing that the Bible
• 6:47
  tells us not to do, which is using my words to tear others down. Whereas today, what I've learned
• 6:52
  is how to use those words to lift others up. I've learned through the program and through
• 7:00
  further study and connection with God and the Holy Spirit reminded me day after day,
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  I have a much better life today whenever I use my words and my language to lift others up,
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  whenever I choose to react in different ways than what I reacted in the past. And today,
• 7:17
  when someone offends me, I am able, as I've learned through studying the big book as well,
• 7:22
  to see another person as a fellow sick person. The big book talks about seeing a sick man,
• 7:30
  in others. And that's not used, and it's not used in the book, and it's not used in my experience
• 7:35
  as an excuse for the behavior of others, but it forms in me, or God has formed in me by my
• 7:41
  willingness, by being open to being changed, God has formed a little bit more compassion in me today.
• 7:46
  And that compassion allows me not to take everything so personally like I would have in the past.
• 7:54
  When I talk to guys, some of the guys I talk to know the book fairly well,
• 8:00
  especially guys I kind of worked with, and we talk a lot about the book,
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  and we've gone through it.
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  On page 52, there's the bedevilments in the big book,
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  and the bedevilments are, and I'll go ahead and read them.
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  It says, we were having trouble with personal relationships.
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  We could control our emotional natures.
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  We were a prey to misery and depression.
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  We could make a living.
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  We had a feeling of uselessness.
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  We were full of fear.
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  We were unhappy.
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  We couldn't seem to be a real help to other people.
• 8:33
  And, you know, some kind of times I'll ask them, I'll be like, hey, man, are you living
• 8:36
  on page 52?
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  And they'll be like, what are you talking about?
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  And they know what I'm talking about.
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  But the thing is, when I get down and I let those things build up and I, you know, I'm not
• 8:47
  doing what I'm supposed to be doing every day and watching for these things because, man,
• 8:51
  I'm human and I'm not going to be, I'm not perfect at this.
• 8:55
  Right.
• 8:56
  So when these things happen, for some reason, I have to start on my, and I don't like, you know, actively know, well, I'm on page 52 today.
• 9:04
  But it's like I almost start at page 52.
• 9:07
  And I go through this process.
• 9:09
  But like the thing is, if I go start on the process, I go through the whole, I have to go through the whole process.
• 9:15
  I got to go through, hey, you know, is God everything or nothing, right?
• 9:18
  Because that's on the next page.
• 9:20
  Is God in this?
• 9:21
  Because that's a kind of a place I got to be at in my head is, is God in this or not?
• 9:28
  And, you know, obviously, if God's in everything, if God's at something, God's in everything.
• 9:33
  And so then I could keep on going.
• 9:34
  And then I get to page 61 and 62, being convinced I was at step three.
• 9:39
  And I go through this whole process.
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  Then it tells me, so our troubles we think of are basically of our own making.
• 9:45
  No, they're not, Michael.
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  They're of your own making.
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  And I get all pissed.
• 9:50
  It's your fault.
• 9:51
  Yeah, so I go through this whole process, and I'm so thankful I know this process.
• 9:58
  And when I get really down in the dirt, I mean, I don't even have to get down in the dirt.
• 10:02
  I just have to start working with another person and through the book.
• 10:05
  And usually I go through it, and I start seeing these things crop up.
• 10:09
  But man, like, you know, when I finally get to the place of, hey, I got to go, because I think, like, you know, for someone like me, anybody, you know, that knows what this process is,
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  At the end of the day, usually I got to go make an amends to somebody.
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  Or write it down and, you know, really pray on it.
• 10:27
  And, you know, at least put some pen to paper because I think it's really bad, you know.
• 10:33
  Because I think I've said it on here before.
• 10:35
  I can lie to you.
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  And I can lie to me.
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  I'm really good at it.
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  And I've been doing it for quite a long time.
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  I'm not as old as you, but I'm pretty good at lying.
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  And I was a little stab.
• 10:48
  No, I was just affirming that I hear you.
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  I was saying, yes, you are a good liar, Corey.
• 10:53
  No, I was talking about the old joke.
• 10:56
  Oh, yeah, yeah.
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  No, I just ignored that.
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  That didn't bother me.
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  But, you know, so when I go through this process, for some reason, I get to get the results of God taking over it, right?
• 11:09
  But for some reason, like until I do a lot of that work, man, I'm kind of sitting, you know, and I'm taking it out on people like you, on my significant other, at work, on people I'm trying to read the book with.
• 11:23
  And I'm like, no, you're going to get this right.
• 11:25
  You know, this isn't the results business like we talked about not too long ago.
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  This is me doing the work regardless of whatever's going on in my life.
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  Good, bad day.
• 11:35
  Yeah.
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  Sad day.
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  You know, I drank in those days, too.
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  So I got to put this work in regardless.
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  Well, and you said it.
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  I mean, this is not the results business.
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  It's the being of service business.
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  But the thing is, the more that we are of service, we do get results because the results are that God, you know, transforms us by the renewing of our minds.
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  You know, as we faithfully work to show love of God and love of neighbor, then our reactions over time, you know, will change.
• 12:07
  I don't react today the same way that I reacted to things 13 years ago.
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  You know, I don't get mad as easily.
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  I don't even get as passive aggressive as easily today as I did 13 plus years ago.
• 12:18
  Now, I'm not saying that I can't still dip into that passive aggression a little bit.
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  You know, anybody that's known me very long, I'm sure can affirm that I can.
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  But it's hopefully I don't stay there long.
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  And when I realize that I'm doing it, I could pull myself out of it.
• 12:33
  But I was thinking about how, as you were sharing, I was reflecting on how grateful I am that it's not all on me, and it's not all me doing the work.
• 12:43
  Like we've talked about this month already, I have to be willing to follow a few simple instructions, but the actual work that's happening within me that's healing me from my alcoholism, healing me from my sin, and changing me is the work of God.
• 12:58
  And it goes all the way back to the hope and the promises found, you know, in the prophet Isaiah in chapter 43, verse 19.
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  And this is God speaking, saying, you know, see, I am doing a new thing.
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  Now it springs up.
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  Do you not perceive it?
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  I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.
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  So God is laying out the way in front of me.
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  God is reshaping and reforming my life.
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  And all that I have to do is follow a few simple instructions, both in the recovery program and, you know, in my study in my life of faith.
• 13:32
  And then the other thing, Corey, that I thought of as you were sharing, I'll take out this break because I just had a brain fart, but man, I lost it.
• 13:47
  I don't have to cut that out.
• 13:48
  Well, you know, in Sermon on the Mountain, you've been reading in this, and when you were talking about it the other day, I've been thinking about it a little bit.
• 13:58
  On page 53, and the problem is that our books are going to be different, because you've got the hardback, and I think it might be a different page number.
• 14:08
  But what chapter is it in? We can all find it by chapter.
• 14:12
  It says chapter three.
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  Chapter three, yep.
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  So it says, it says, fix your attention wholeheartedly upon spiritual things.
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  And meanwhile, do all that needs to be done in the ordinary way.
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  And without consciously trying to make haste, you will be amazed to discover the pace at which your soul has hastened.
• 14:38
  And, you know, I talk to people a lot about this.
• 14:41
  And for some reason, Michael, and I'm sure you can relate to this.
• 14:46
  If my life is in one hand, like the material life and the relationships and everything else,
• 14:52
  and my spiritual life is over here of me helping.
• 14:55
  I mean, I think they're all conjoined now, but is over here helping and doing the work
• 15:00
  and the disciplines of prayer, meditation, reading and writing.
• 15:05
  Man, all that stuff we do.
• 15:07
  For some reason, this hand over here of all the other worldly things just falls in place.
• 15:15
  But it takes me focused over here.
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  So I'm not messing around over here.
• 15:21
  Does that make sense?
• 15:22
  Yeah.
• 15:23
  I also think about, you know, I can't bring to mind the exact book, chapter, verse right now.
• 15:31
  But there's instructions in the Bible about not letting your left hand know what your right hand is up to.
• 15:36
  That's what it kind of makes me think of.
• 15:38
  And that's just a call to keep humility throughout the process.
• 15:42
  So, in other words, that we're not, you know, advertising, you know, what we're doing.
• 15:45
  But that, my brain went there when you start talking about the left hand and the right hand.
• 15:50
  But, yeah, I mean, the point holds is that if I'm spending my focus, my thought, attention,
• 15:57
  and my service on being of service to others, then the other things that used to distract
• 16:04
  me, pull me away, cause resentments in me, I'm not focused on those at the time.
• 16:08
  And eventually, I'll think of those even less and less.
• 16:13
  Well, that's a good place for our prayer for today, Corey
• 16:16
  I think so too, buddy
• 16:17
  Prayer, Father, make me open to change
• 16:20
  Through your Spirit, help me let go of what no longer serves
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  And lead me into new light
• 16:27
  You are shaping through your Son, amen
• 16:30
  Amen
• 16:31
  And now, everybody, stay tuned
• 16:33
  We're going to hear a few shout-outs from our friends
• 16:37
  Or some of our friends that have been on the podcast in the past
• 16:40
  and we are so appreciative for each and every one of them.
• 16:43
  Thank you, guys.
• 16:47
  Hey, how y'all doing?
• 16:49
  My name is Paris.
• 16:51
  I just want to give a shout out to the hosts, Michael and Corey,
• 16:58
  for doing an awesome job at this podcast.
• 17:01
  I'm reaching 100 days, consistent growth.
• 17:05
  This is great.
• 17:06
  You know, I'm a part of the Toys Dust Recovery,
• 17:08
  So it has helped me in a tremendous way.
• 17:11
  Thank you, guys.
• 17:12
  Keep working.
• 17:14
  Keep being of service.
• 17:16
  So thankful for the Daily Ripples podcast and for Michael and his commitment to helping all of us along this path of resurrection and reconstruction and transformation.
• 17:33
  And grateful for the small part that I've been able to play in all of that.
• 17:38
  Thank you, Michael.
• 17:40
  The Daily Ripples have made a huge impact to my life.
• 17:45
  Every morning I listen to the podcast and review the information.
• 17:51
  This gives me the opportunity for meditation and to practice the principles of not only AA,
• 17:59
  but of spirituality and fellowship with everyone that I come in contact.
• 18:06
  Thank you, Michael and Corey, for setting up this podcast and giving the opportunity for listeners all over the country to be involved and to stay plugged in.
• 18:23
  Hey, Michael and Corey, this is Larry, and I'm so proud of you guys reaching the 100th episode of the Daily Ripple.
• 18:30
  I know that you guys are helping to change lives and change hearts and strengthen those that find themselves going through the day-to-day struggle.
• 18:39
  We're so proud of the work that you guys are doing, so proud of the men that you are.
• 18:44
  Keep striving, keep pushing.
• 18:45
  Thank you again for the Daily Ripple, and happy 100th.
• 18:49
  Happy 100th episode.
• 18:52
  I know that these podcasts are a blessing to many as well as myself.
• 18:58
  I find encouragement from the daily ripples and I look forward to many, many more as a
• 19:08
  listener as well as perhaps being a part of a future episode.
• 19:14
  Congratulations.
• 19:15
  I'm so very proud of you, sir.
• 19:18
  And to each one of those that have been a part of this journey, onward and upward.
• 19:23
  Worked.