Transcript

HP As Guide · Sober Readings

Scott Hayes: Welcome to Sober Readings, my name is Scott. Thank you for joining me today. It is Sunday, the twentieth of September. Let's get started today with the Serenity Prayer. God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference. Today's reading from Daily Reflections HP as Guide. See to it that your relationship with him is right, and great events will come to pass for you and countless others. This is the great fact for us. That's on page one hundred sixty four of Alcoholics Anonymous. Having a right relationship with God seemed to be an impossible order. My chaotic past had left me filled with guilt and remorse, and I wondered how this God business could work. AA told me that I must turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand him. With nowhere else to turn, I went down on my knees and cried, God, I can't do this. Please help me. It was when I admitted my powerless that a glimmer of light began to touch my soul, and then a willingness emerged to let God control my life. With him as my guide, great events began to happen, and I found the beginning of sobriety. Today's reading from twenty four hours a day. September twenty AA thought for the day. Step four is made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Step five is admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Step six is we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Step seven is humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings. Step ten is continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. In taking a personal inventory, we have to be absolutely honest with ourselves and with other people. So ask yourself, have I taken an honest inventory of myself? The Meditation for the Day. God is good. You can often tell whether or not a thing is of God. If it is of God, it must be good. Honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love are all good. Unselfish helpfulness is good, and these things all lead to the abundant life. Leave in God's hands the present and the future, knowing only that He is good. The hand that veils the future is the hand of God. He can bring order out of chaos, good out of evil, and peace out of turmoil. We can believe that everything really good comes from God and that He shares His goodness with us. And today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may reach out for the good. I pray that I may try to choose the best in life. Today's reading from Keep It Simple. Daily meditations for 12-step beginnings and renewal. The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. That's a quote from Mark Twain. Sometimes it does no good to try to deal with our feelings. For the moment, we're stuck. We can only see things one way. No matter what anyone says, we're closed up. For the moment. But this puts our sobriety at risk. How do we stop self-pity? Focus on someone else. When we really want to help someone else be happy, we'll ask our higher powers help. Then things start to change because our good deeds come back to us. Remember, service will always keep us sober. And the prayer for the day from Keep It Simple, Higher Power, sometimes I get stuck in my old ways. Help me change my focus at those times. Help me stay sober. And the action for the day. I will think of a time when I was stuck in bad feelings. How did I get out of that spot? And for today's final reading, let's go to As Bill Sees It, and we're reading from page 18. Companion and Partner. Dr. Bob was my constant companion and partner in the great AA adventure. As the physician and great human being that he was. He chose work with others as his prime AA vocation and achieved a record which, in quantity and in quality, none will ever surpass. Assisted by the incomparable Sister Ignatia at St. Thomas Hospital in Akron, he, without charge, medically treated and spiritually infused 5,000 sufferers. In all the stress and strain of AA's pioneering time, no hard word ever passed between us. For this, I can thankfully say that the credit was all his. And that was written in a letter in nineteen sixty six. I took my leave of doctor Bob, knowing that he was to undergo a serious operation. The old, broad smile was on his face as he said almost jokingly, remember, Bill, let's not louse this thing up. Let's keep it simple. I turned away, unable to say a word. That was the last time I ever saw him. And that's from AA Comes of Age page two one four. And that reminds me, we haven't read from AA Comes of Age in some time. So stay tuned for tomorrow's episode. The final reading tomorrow is gonna come from AA Comes of Age. And that's it for today's readings. Before we close, let's go back to twenty four hours a day and the question from AA Thought for the Day, and let's answer that question together. So the question is, have I taken an honest inventory of myself? And they're talking about step four. For me, taking an honest inventory of myself means being willing to look at what is actually going on inside me, not just whether or not I drank today. Sorriety can make it easy to focus on the obvious measure. I didn't drink, so I must be doing okay. But an inventory asks deeper questions. Am I angry? Am I isolating? Am I holding on to resentments? Have I stopped reaching out to people? Am I becoming complacent? Am I being dishonest with myself about something? Those things may seem small compared with picking up a drink, but they can quietly create the conditions where drinking starts to look like an option again. An honest inventory also helps me catch problems while they're still manageable. I don't have to condemn myself for what I find. I just have to recognize it and do something about it. Maybe I owe someone an apology. Maybe I need to call another person in recovery, get to a meeting, pray, write, or simply admit that I'm struggling. For me, relapse doesn't begin with the first drink. It can begin much earlier when I stop paying attention to myself and start believing my own excuses. Taking inventory keeps me aware of where I am today so I can make corrections before I get too far off course. And perhaps the most important word in the question is honest. An inventory isn't very useful if I'm only willing to count the things I want to see. Sobriety requires me to be willing to see myself as I am, not as terrible, not as perfect, but as a work in progress. So thanks for listening to my take on step four. I'd love to hear your take on it, in your opinion, and your answer to the question: Have I taken an honest inventory of myself? And what that looks like for you in your sobriety. So that's gonna do it for today's episode of Sober Readings. Thank you so much for listening. I hope something you heard today stays with you and helps you through your day. If you'd like to be a guest on the show and share your experience, strength, and hope, and talk about step four or answer that question, you can find a link in the show notes to send me an email. And if you enjoy Sober Readings and would like to help support the podcast, just navigate over to my website, sobereadings.com, and click the support page. On that page, you'll find a button that says drop a dollar in the basket. So thank you so much for that. You'll also find on the website a page where you can listen to all the episodes of Sober Readings, and also a page that says be a guest, where you can fill out this form ⁓ to request to be a guest on the show or just leave me comments. So thanks so much for listening to Sober Readings today. Remember, just for today, don't drink, go to a meeting, and keep coming back. Have a great day, everyone. And as my friend Larry says, best day ever.