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April 27 - Joyful Discoveries · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:01
  Welcome back to the Daily Ripples podcast.
• 0:04
  This is Pastor Mike, and I've got with me our co-host, Corey, here again.
• 0:10
  And today is April the 27th.
• 0:13
  Our Daily Ripple for today is titled Joyful Discoveries.
• 0:16
  And so, Corey, I'm going to give you a test because I gave this test to my wife, you know,
• 0:22
  when she was the guest host on here, and she failed miserably.
• 0:26
  I don't know if you listened to it or not, but why don't you remind our audience or anyone
• 0:30
  when new listening, what is a daily ripple? Oh, daily ripple. I think this is cool because
• 0:35
  we kind of came up to this thing, a daily ripple. So you think about, and this is going to be not
• 0:40
  your daily, this is not your view, but the ripple is that like, so when you throw the rock,
• 0:45
  it ripples in the water. That's exactly right. And it was funny because when I was listening to,
• 0:51
  I think it was when you sat down with Bill and Zach, I think it was about four episodes in when
• 0:57
  And Zach finally made that connection.
• 0:59
  And it was the funniest thing.
• 1:00
  He's like, wait a minute, I just got it.
• 1:02
  What the stone is.
• 1:03
  It's like throwing a stone in the water.
• 1:05
  That's exactly what it is.
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  And so, but it's about taking a stone of truth.
• 1:09
  And the stone of truth comes from AA's Daily Reflections.
• 1:13
  You know, I'll just own that.
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  I basically read those, interpret it into a nugget of truth.
• 1:17
  And then the cool thing about it is that it ripples out to the practical and spiritual application.
• 1:24
  But our daily ripple for today, you actually did.
• 1:27
  You did better than my wife, Christine.
• 1:29
  She will listen to this, and then I will be in trouble for saying that.
• 1:32
  But anyway, our ripple for today, the stone.
• 1:35
  Growth is a lifelong discovery.
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  The more we walk faithfully each day, the more wisdom, clarity, and purpose unfold.
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  Ripple one is practical.
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  Today I will remain teachable.
• 1:47
  Each day holds lessons if I pay attention.
• 1:50
  Small acts of kindness, patience, and service are not insignificant.
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  They are the quiet ways a life begins to change and influence others.
• 1:58
  Ripple 2 is spiritual.
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  Jesus taught that those who seek will find.
• 2:03
  As I draw near to the Father in prayer and follow Christ's example, the Holy Spirit continues revealing truth step by step.
• 2:10
  The deeper my relationship with God becomes, the more naturally my life can encourage and strengthen others.
• 2:17
  And then we will save our prayer for the end of the episode as always.
• 2:22
  But as we get ready to launch into this, I mean, there's several things in here that I, you know, and again, when I'm reading this, when we're sitting down to record these podcast episodes, typically I've actually written these, you know, in a batch like, you know, month or two months ahead of time.
• 2:39
  So it's almost like discovering these again, even for myself, you know, whenever I come back to look at them.
• 2:46
  And but one of the things that jumps out to me right away was that part about remaining teachable, you know, because for me, that is that's been a challenge throughout my life, I would say.
• 2:57
  You know, I was you talk quite a bit, you know, Corey, about like some of your earlier experiences, either, you know, as a teenager or early adult and things like that.
• 3:08
  For me, I was a boring little nerdy kid, man.
• 3:11
  I was probably the guy that you, Corey, probably would have been picking on and bullying on the
• 3:15
  playground.
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  You know, I was the nerd who, you know, was full of book smarts and zero common sense,
• 3:21
  you know, that kind of thing, but convinced that, you know, I was smarter than everybody
• 3:26
  and probably had a little bit of a disdain, you know, a bit for people around me.
• 3:30
  And one of the greatest gifts that I've received has been in the school of hard knocks, you know,
• 3:37
  because going through and getting to the point where in my adult life, you know, I couldn't figure
• 3:42
  out how to stop drinking and I couldn't figure out why I had all these problems in my life and
• 3:46
  why nothing was working, why I was unhappy all the time. My, you know, my education, my, you know,
• 3:55
  focus on, you know, intellect and all that kind of stuff did absolutely no good for me at the point
• 4:01
  where I was at rock bottom. And that, at that point, you know, I had to be teachable, you know,
• 4:05
  I had to, I mean, my ego and intelligence convinced me that I was even too smart, you know, to believe in God, you know, or to believe in a higher power.
• 4:14
  And so I didn't believe anything for a long time, you know, claim to be atheist.
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  And I would sit around and argue with, you know, Christians about, you know, God and things of that nature.
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  Now, I never took it to the point of what, you know, the Bible calls blasphemy, which is seeing something that's of God and calling it evil.
• 4:30
  You know, I never went that route with it.
• 4:32
  But I certainly thought that nobody, especially nobody who believed in Jesus, had anything that they could teach me.
• 4:39
  And man, I'm glad that because of my alcoholism, I had to learn the hard lesson of not only related to recovery, but related to faith.
• 4:48
  I had a whole lot to learn.
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  And looking at those lessons every day and paying attention to those today, which is also part of what that first ripple says, really helps me to get out of myself, get out of my own head, put my ego aside, and learn from others that are in the program and learn from others that are in the church.
• 5:10
  There are people in my church that teach me things about faith and spirituality all the time.
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  I just have to be open to it.
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  But anyway, that was the first place my mind went with it.
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  But what have you got for us today, Corey, to take us off or any more Corey stories or Corey-ism?
• 5:25
  Because, you know, I think this is interesting because, you know, big things in my life, big things have happened in my life that, you know, would, you know, kind of like, you know, drive me, you know, to a place of just, you know, being
• 5:48
  And that's weird because, like, you know, I think about, like, different things I've been through.
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  Then I think about the little things.
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  They really hit me a little harder.
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  And so when I'm going through it, I think, you know, the main thing is what we do is because it says right here, it says,
• 6:05
  today I'll remain teachable.
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  And it says, but then it goes on to say, where is it?
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  Small acts of kindness, patience, and all that.
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  But like, how do I remain teachable?
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  Well, I probably need to continue to watch, right?
• 6:22
  So watching and like, you know, so if every day, the more we work faithfully each day,
• 6:27
  the more wisdom.
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  So the more I work faithfully, the more I go through things on the basis of trusting
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  or like upon a power greater than myself, which I like to call God, it becomes easier, right?
• 6:38
  And, you know, I find that every time it does and not less.
• 6:46
  But I was really thinking about, I don't even know what I was talking about, but we could, you know, it says our next function on page 84 in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, it says our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness.
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  This is not an overnight matter.
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  Oh, absolutely not.
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  And we were just in a meeting just a minute ago.
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  That's right.
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  And it talks about on page 66, it says for the alcohol, on page 66 of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, it says for the alcoholic whose hope, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience.
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  And it's talking about resentments in there, but we can go into argument, there's different offenders, fear, all these different things, not just resentment.
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  So when I think of my only hope is the growth and maintenance of a spiritual experience, not of a human experience, but a spiritual experience.
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  So if my human experience says, oh, I need money, this, this, this, and this, that usually only gets me just as far as I ever got.
• 7:53
  But when I have a spiritual experience and I'm growing that spiritual experience by interactions with others, by helping others, by growing and understanding and effectiveness of this work that I go through with another man, that experience grows.
• 8:09
  My humility grows.
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  And then in return, you know, for some reason, the spiritual grows the human problem, the human things in my life.
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  But when I get the human things, it doesn't grow me spiritually.
• 8:22
  So when I come to this problem of the spiritual malady and I bring this God thing into me, I grow an understanding.
• 8:29
  When I bring a human thing into me, I almost do what we were talking about.
• 8:33
  You know, it was, what is the word that you used?
• 8:36
  We were talking laurels.
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  Oh, yeah, resting on our laurels.
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  I rest on my laurels.
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  Yeah.
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  And then I'm right back where, you know, and there I am again.
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  What is a laurel, by the way?
• 8:45
  That's a great question.
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  You're good with looking up definitions of all these words.
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  So what is a laurel?
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  It's a past achievement.
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  A past achievement.
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  So resting on what I did yesterday.
• 8:56
  Yeah.
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  And so when I think about what I did yesterday, it's not going to suffice for what I do today.
• 9:06
  And that page in the book on page 85 of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous where it talks about that and the spiritual condition, that gets way overtook in AA.
• 9:16
  I'm going to tell you why.
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  Because everybody's like, all I got to do is not drink for today because it's talking about this is a day of the time.
• 9:22
  Right, right.
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  But for someone like me, that like I think about, well, if I just had to do this a day, what am I doing in AA?
• 9:30
  Well, and to me, that is just a great way to get frozen in time, right?
• 9:35
  I mean, because you're never, if all you're doing is showing up to a meeting and not drinking today, then you're not growing.
• 9:41
  I mean, you're not regressing, which is good.
• 9:43
  You know, I mean, you're not getting worse necessarily, at least not at the moment, but you're also not growing. And then all this for me, my fear is that if that's all that I'm doing, at some point, something in life is going to come along that I don't have the spiritual tools to deal with, you know, because I have not been filling my spiritual toolkit and what have you.
• 10:04
  And so something's going to come along to where just going to a meeting and not drinking today is not going to be enough.
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  Something's going to come along that's too hard for me.
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  And I don't I haven't been practicing calling other men in the program.
• 10:17
  I haven't been practicing praying, you know, to change my day.
• 10:20
  You know, that was another thing that I was just talking about earlier today in that meeting, too, is that, you know, I can I can start off the day, you know, in a funk and then spend some time in prayer and turn it around.
• 10:29
  And it's very important, you know, in that practical ripple, and that's why it's written that way, is that those small acts of kindness, patience, and service are not insignificant.
• 10:41
  Because for me, when I'm being kind to somebody, when I'm being patient with somebody, and especially when I'm being of service to somebody, I'm being taught during that whole process.
• 10:52
  So it goes right back around to where it's talking about remaining teachable.
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  Because as I'm serving others and I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, you know, I am still being taught.
• 11:01
  And I don't have this one pulled up in front of me, but one of the things that I think the greatest gifts of my faith is the gift of the Holy Spirit.
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  You know, because Jesus, you know, told his disciples and, of course, us, you know, by default, you know, prior to even his, you know, his ascension for sure.
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  but that he promised that he was leaving with us the gift of the Holy Spirit.
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  And one of the key things in the Bible that it says is that Jesus told us the Holy Spirit would continue to teach you even more.
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  So, in other words, we don't just rest on even the past laurels of what Jesus did.
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  I mean, obviously, those are pretty big laurels, let's be honest, but nobody else can even come close to those.
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  But he left us the guide, you know, the Holy Spirit that we have within us that continues to teach us those things as well.
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  And I think that that is, you know, equally important because if I'm not trying to spend that time in prayer and meditation,
• 11:59
  especially at step 11 time where I'm trying to listen to the guidance and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit speaking to me,
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  then I'm just like if I'm showing up to a meeting and saying, hey, this is enough.
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  I'm not drinking for today.
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  I'm going to get what I'm trying to get out of it, you know,
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  which is going to be a very stale recovery and a very stale faith at some point.
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  You know, you put in here right here, it says,
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  Jesus taught that those who seek will find.
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  And, you know, I've got a verse for that.
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  Well, I do, but, you know, I'm going to go with a verse of the big book first.
• 12:35
  Yeah.
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  Because it's my fiance's favorite probably sentence in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
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  And it says on page 46, it says,
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  We found that God has not made too hard of turns for those who seek Him.
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  But in Matthew 7, 8,
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  For everyone who asks, receives.
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  The ones who seeks, finds.
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  And to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
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  I seek out, you know, guidance and direction every day.
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  When I started thinking about what that looks like to me,
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  It's not really that I'm seeking out for me anymore.
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  It's when I'm seeking out people to help.
• 13:16
  Yeah.
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  That's because I can, you know, we kind of talked about this before, but like, man, when I'm around in those meetings, just like here, man, I have the ability because, man, I'm pretty well read in the literature.
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  And I'm pretty well, I've gone through the literature in a way and I understand it.
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  So I can talk, you know, you bring up a topic.
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  I got three or five minutes every day.
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  Yeah.
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  Every day.
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  You got your share ready to use A.A.
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  I can hit the mark.
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  I can hit the mark.
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  But that's not what it's about because, you know, it's about when I go, when I'm done with the talking and, you know, I go up to somebody.
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  Yeah.
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  And I go say, hey, man, can I help you?
• 13:59
  Yeah, everybody can hear where your mouth goes, but where do your feet go afterward?
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  And that's the critical part, you know, to me.
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  You know, and that part about, and I'm glad that you brought it up, you know, that everyone
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  who asks receives, he who seeks finds, to him who knocks it will be opened.
• 14:15
  You know, sometimes on the faith side, I've heard people that tend to use that verse as
• 14:22
  a get out of jail free card, right?
• 14:23
  Like, well, I can pray to God for anything.
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  And Jesus says, you know, God's going to answer my prayers.
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  All I got to do is ask and I'm giving it, it's given to me.
• 14:31
  But we forget that, you know, earlier in the gospel, Jesus had already taught us how to pray.
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  And he taught us how to pray by using the example prayer.
• 14:40
  We use that prayer at the end of every recovery meeting, and that's the Lord's prayer, you know.
• 14:47
  And so, and the Lord's prayer teaches us to pray only for what we need, right?
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  It's not teaching us to pray for extravagances or seek something that's going to give us, you know, an edge up in the world.
• 15:00
  telling us to pray for our daily bread.
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  You know, and that goes all the way back to the times of, you know, the Israelites, you
• 15:06
  know, wandering in the desert after they escaped from Egypt.
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  You know, God literally gave them their daily bread, the manna from heaven.
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  And now as we're praying, the point is we only, I only pray for myself enough to equip me to
• 15:19
  be of service to others, because then it goes into talking about, you know, forgiving others
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  as we've been forgiven and not going into temptation, you know, all of those things.
• 15:27
  And it closes by acknowledging that God's alone is the power and the glory, you know, forever.
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  And so that time of prayer seeking God, what I'm asking for when I go and I'm seeking before God
• 15:42
  is I'm asking that I am filled enough spiritually so that I can continue to go out
• 15:48
  performing those small acts of kindness, patience, and service that it's talking about.
• 15:53
  But let's close out today with our prayer for today.
• 15:58
  Father, open my heart to the lessons of this day.
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  Help me walk in the way of Christ and listen for the guidance of your Spirit
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  so that my life may bring hope and encouragement to others.
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  Amen.
• 16:09
  Amen.
• 16:10
  Amen.