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August 1 – Faith Lived Out · The Daily Ripples Podcast

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Hey guys, this is the Daily Ripples. This is Corey,
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August 1st, and this is the first of the month. And Pastor Mike
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was talking to me the other day, he was like, it's cool you get started
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out on the first of the month. And it is, because like each
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of these months we kind of go into a new thought. And this month
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we're on step 8, and we might cover some of that. And you
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know, but the information We just, what we do is we, we read over this
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stuff and kind of connect it to some things that we find
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that's important through the literature, and we just talk about it. And, um,
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I'm really grateful for this opportunity
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to do this as well, and I try to let you guys know that.
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So thank you for listening. And, um, today's August 1st,
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Faith Lived Out. The Stone: Spiritual
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truth only becomes real in my life when I choose to live it.
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Ripple 1: Practical. Today I will move beyond thinking and into action.
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I will not settle for agreeing with what is right. I will practice it.
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That may mean showing patience, asking for help, or choosing compassion when
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it is not easy. Living it means it shows up in what I
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do. Ripple 2: Spiritual. The Father
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calls me into a life not just as an idea. Jesus lived
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out every truth he taught. Showing what obedience and love
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looked like in real time. The Holy Spirit
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guides me today, and not just to understand, but to act.
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As I step into obedience, what once felt
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distant becomes real and active in my life.
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I remember hearing a talk that my sponsor did a
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while back, and it was talking about obedience to spiritual principles.
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I think I've always been obedient to some kind of principle,
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and mostly it was obedient to this principle
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of self, um, or, you know,
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principle of I need to, uh, have a job, or principle
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of I want to have friends, or,
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you know, principle of I need a woman, or, you know,
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just accept, like, you know, just there's a multitude of things that, like, you know,
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I thought those were principles that I needed to live by.
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And in the book, you know, in the big book, it kind of talks about
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that, you know, throw away theory or gadget for something new, which, you know,
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for something that doesn't work, for something new which does.
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And man, my theory and gadget on that, my life was not working,
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um, in every capacity, you know,
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not just in when I drank,
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it was in matters that just had to do with life.
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Um, and I think some people, you know, like, I just never understood how some
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people got it. You know, some people understood this life thing, and they—
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maybe they didn't, but they sure looked like it, and they did a really good
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job pretending. And there's times, like,
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you know, I would just pretend. And not pretend
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out of, like, you know, hey, you know, I know what I'm doing, but it
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was more of an ego thing because I thought I knew what I was doing,
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but I don't— didn't. At all.
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Um, in page 130 of the— in the,
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in the 12 and 12, page 130, I— there's so much
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in this paragraph. I, uh, I think
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that it, you know, there's so much to break down, but this little
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part in there, it says the AA member has to conform
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to principles of recovery. His life actually
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depends upon obedience to spiritual principles. If he
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deviates too far, the penalty is sure and swift.
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He sickens and dies. And, you know, like a
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dot in literature and in any form,
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if I was to go to the doctor and
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they were going to tell me I was going to die, that would be pretty
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important information. And it,
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like, you know, if someone told me, hey, if you do this, you're gonna die,
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and I'd look at them, you know, and people, you know, I think the electric—
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I work with wires, and you think about that. And someone
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said, hey, don't touch these 2 together, you could die. Well, I'm not going to
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touch those 2 wires together. Actually, I'm going to put tape around them,
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and then I'll go make sure the, the breaker's turned off
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before I touch them, right? Because, like, I don't want to die.
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But then I come up into this place of living and you tell me to
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act this way and I'm like, whoa, hold on a second. Like,
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it's been working so well so far for me. Like, but it hasn't.
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And so I come into that position of like, am I,
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am I willing? You know, and I was writing something this morning about this.
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I do a meditation on some thoughts and,
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you know, it says in How It Works in the big
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book of Alcoholics Anonymous, it says, you know, if you're willing to go to any
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length, for victory over alcohol? Are you
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willing to go to any lengths, right? Well, are you? If you're not,
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that's okay too. Um, but today
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I'm willing. Today I'm willing to love people.
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Today I'm willing to be of service. And I, uh,
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I've been coming around these rooms for quite a long time in my life,
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and I've— it's an interesting concept what some
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of these rooms look like, right? So You'll have people in these rooms
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of all sorts of lengths of sobriety,
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and the chairperson presents a topic out of the literature,
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and then these people talk about it. Well,
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but the one thing that's consistent in all these meetings is they
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open with a prayer. And I think about that today,
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and I think about what that means is like, you know, we've opened with
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a prayer. I do that in the morning right when I open my day up.
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I get on my knees and then a certain topic is presented.
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Well, for that next hour, most of those people,
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besides the people playing on their phones and,
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um, not paying attention, you know, they're, they're thinking
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about this topic for an hour. And so they're meditating on a topic.
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And so somebody says,
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you know, theorizes this topic of how it can connect in
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their life and so on. And So in the Big
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Book of Alcoholics Anonymous,
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on page 83, it says the spiritual life is not a theory.
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We have to live it. And maybe,
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you know, just compounding on these thoughts and ideas and,
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you know, I have to live this. You know, that hour is
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so important because that hour is
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just my meditation, and it's my chance to help another person.
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And I think we've gotten too connected to this room of,
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man, this meeting is going to save my life.
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Well, my job in that meeting is to carry the message
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to the sick and suffering people that are in there for that particular reason.
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And that's the— like, for me, that's, you know, so I'd come into a place
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of, you know, am I there to get fed or am I there to feed?
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And eventually it got to a point where, man, you know,
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I wasn't getting fed anymore. I'd heard all the magical
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words in there, the magic words and this, and I heard
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them talk about it so cool. And I, uh,
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I began, I began to not get what I was getting out of those places.
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And then I became in a position where I had to be able to feed
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people and to give. And yet when I said, when I live
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in my life and give and help and be of service, I mean,
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this literature, you know, and on page 14 and
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15,
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and in the Bible, it kind of connects to that too. It's, you know,
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in James, faith without works is dead.
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And it says this on page 14. It says, faith without works was dead,
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he said. And how appalling true for the alcoholic!
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And there's an exclamation mark right there. For if an alcoholic
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failed to perfect and
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enlarge his spiritual life through work and
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self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive.
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The certain trials and low spots ahead. If he did not work, he would surely
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drink, and again, if he drank, he would surely die. So there's like
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that another die word. So if I don't do this, I'm going to die.
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I think that's important. I think that's almost like, you know, maybe I don't want
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to touch those 2 wires together. And then so what spiritual principles?
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I would imagine love, truth,
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you know, the spiritual principles, you know, behind the steps. And then I'm like,
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My sponsor makes fun of me, but, you know, this was important to me
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at a time in my life that I was really going through things in
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my first stint at sobriety that I,
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that I thought it was the most important thing to learn the spiritual principles
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behind the steps. And it was honesty, hope,
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faith, courage, integrity, willingness,
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you know, those kinds of things. Right. So like, you know, but am I willing?
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Right. Am I going to be honest? I don't think when I come in,
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I'm going to really be honest. Perseverance,
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spirituality, service, right? These things like brotherly love.
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Am I willing to do any of that? Because I don't think of the capacity
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of me just waking up and I'm going to be, have brotherly love today or
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perseverance today. The commitment through this work
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is 4 through 9. I'm just making a decision on some
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of this, right? Am I going to do this work? And maybe you're not even
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beat into a place of reasonableness and that's okay too. Because there's
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more alcohol out there and there's more people sitting in the bars.
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You know, when I went back out after some time of being sober, you know,
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the same people were in the bars.
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Um, you know, what an amazing deal because like,
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I remember last, we had some company over last night for dinner
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and yeah, this person, you know, I really look up
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to this person today because, you know, she was a part of my old life.
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And she was a part of these principles. And I was thinking about this this
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morning in the shower, you know, of like how
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I would meet somebody and I would have motive behind meeting them because they had
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this and I wanted this. And I would keep, you know, moving along
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those lines of my life because if you had what I wanted,
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I would get it. Well, what if you
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have what I want in this deal? Am I willing to go
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to any length to get that? And so I've been, you know,
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thinking about— we— I've been every morning, I've been in the chapter We Agnostics
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for the last, I don't know, 5, 6 days. And,
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you know, so it talks about beat— being beaten to a state of reasonableness
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and alcohol being a great persuader. Well,
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you know, I've, I've kind of like, you know, flowed through I'm not
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beating myself up too much with where I stand on some of these positions today,
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but I used to be kind of, uh, I used to get upset when people
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would talk about their God in these meetings.
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And I, um, because I thought
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they were gonna hurt the newcomer. Because when I came in, I didn't want to
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hear about Jesus, about Allah,
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about all these different sorts of gods.
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Because it made me feel uncomfortable,
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and probably rightly so, because I was living a life with no spiritual
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obedience. And I don't think that
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I would want to have a part of some God that could judge me on
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how I was living, because maybe I wasn't
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living right. And I wasn't. I wasn't living to spiritual principles.
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I wasn't living to any standard of life that was even acceptable
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to anyone. Because I was hurting people, because I was lying
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to people. I was not living up to this thing of
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just being one with myself because I was 18 different people,
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right? You know, I wasn't living an honest life. In the
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chapter of James, it says in
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chapter James, or 1 James, or I
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don't know, it's James chapter 1.
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Verse 22, it says, do not merely listen to the word
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and so deceive yourself. Do what it says.
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Anyone who listens to the word but does not, does not do what
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it says is like a man who looks at his face in the mirror and
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after looking at himself goes away and immediately forgets
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what he looks like. You know,
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I've been at a time in my life where I couldn't even look in
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a mirror. I've been like, you know, and if I did,
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it was just a glance to see if I got any toothpaste on my face,
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and then I'd go get out of there, you know, because I didn't like what
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I saw. And, you know, am I gonna forget who
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I am today? Am I gonna try to live on spiritual principles?
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And what are those principles? I think,
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you know, one of the biggest things in my life today is
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the first part, direction And to continue to watch.
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And I talk about a lot about this, but, you know, continue to watch for
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selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up,
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we ask God to remove them at once.
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At once. And, you know, that's such
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a big, uh, thing for me,
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for something, some way I didn't used to live, right? Because at
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once means we're Right when something happens, instead of saying
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that cuss word, I, I ask God into it.
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Right before I walk in the door to talk to my
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significant other, right before, you know, and the way I would do
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this before is I'd come up with a story because, you know, maybe I was
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late. Maybe I didn't do this. Maybe I didn't
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do this. And I needed a story first because I,
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I, you know, I couldn't live on spiritual principles of honesty and I couldn't just
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say, Hey, I was late because of this. And, you know, I don't think that
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was because I was always doing bad things. It was because I didn't know how
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to be honest. And being honest is, it was a big thing because
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I mean, I've been lying since I was a kid for no particular reason.
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You know, exaggerating the truth or just making something up for
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funsies. You know, that's something that I have, I've had to look
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at. My ego, it's mostly because of my ego, because I don't want you to
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find out who I really am. Because who I really am in my eyes
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is not good enough. But see, when I'm living in this
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world, you know, and I'm drowning
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myself in these different things, you know, I can drink past
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that. I can drink past this looking or walking away from
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the mirror thing, right? Because I'm not thinking about it anymore.
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But when I'm sober with a sober mind,
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I can feel that today. And every time I do a
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lie, we were talking about this last night, every time I do a little lie,
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a little white lie, every time I don't pray,
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you know, I'm drifting further away into this life of no spiritual obedience.
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And for me, this thing, and you know, it kind of
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goes into both of these, a lot of this literature, I die. And I
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don't think of dying as, you know, you hear in these places, you know,
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locked up or covered up. Maybe so. Maybe that's an
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option. Maybe that's not the option for me though. Maybe the option for
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me is something else, something deeper, something darker,
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something where I've hurt more people and I have to live with it every day.
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It goes on to say in the chapter of James, it says,
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but the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and
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continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard but
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doing it He will be blessed in what he does.
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I don't think that, you know, that's an immediate thing either,
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right? I don't believe that because one of
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those spiritual principles we were talking about was perseverance.
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Can I persevere through the good and bad? Do I help
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others through the good and bad, not just the bad? Because that's
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what I believed when I first came in, right? And Yep, back to page
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130 in the 12 in 12. That kind of, you know, talks about this.
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It says,
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it says, at first he goes
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along because he must. I went along because I must,
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because I must do these things, or if not, I'm gonna die.
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I'm gonna drink, so I must help people.
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You know, that was one thing when I went back out drinking after some time,
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a good amount of time too, What did I quit doing is I started—
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I quit praying to God. I quit helping others.
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You know, people would be at meetings. No. Well, what am I— am I being
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loving in my life or is my life looking like me? I— what
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can I get out of this person? And that's what it started looking like.
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What can I get out of you? Because, you know, I had nothing to give.
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But I found this thing, you know, that's the keystone, right? That, you know,
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we had a new employer. Being all-powerful.
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And you know, that kind of expounds on the first requirement.
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Me and a buddy of mine talk a lot about the first requirement.
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It says the first requirement is that we be convinced that any life
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run on self-will can hardly be a success.
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That's the first requirement. So if that be the case,
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and that's the requirement, me knowing that my life run on me is not going
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to be successful. So I had to have God,
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and I had to live by some spiritual principles.
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Um, you go over, and I think that this is kind of interesting because,
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you know, the Third Step prayer in there, it says,
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I've taken away my difficulties. Well, what are my difficulties? Well,
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they're me. I'm my difficulty because I get
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in the way. And if I have some things of I, there are usually some
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things that I need to unblock with God, like some different
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things. I might have hurt somebody here, I might have lied to someone here,
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and that's, you know, all that is. And since we're talking about, you know,
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we're going into 8 and making amends,
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we'll probably talk about this some more. But, you know, I believe, you know,
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the making the list is just as important as step 9.
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Because when I— it was such an interesting thing. And, you know, I remember
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sitting up at night. The way I went about this is this.
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And so the 3rd step prayer, there's not a, uh, there's not an amen after
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it. So what I would do is, because already we already made,
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you know, through this process, we made a list of the people that hurt us,
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but really we hurt them. Then we made a list of the fears,
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and then we made a list of the people we hurt out in our sex
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conduct. Or how we treated people poorly in the opposite
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sex. So after that, you know, it says we make a list
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of people we've harmed just as well, just in a general way.
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So I got this list and, you know, I've kind of come back and I
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come up with probably— I've come up with more and more and more as I've
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gone along. And that's okay. This is not a one-stop shop. There's a lot
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of words that say continue. And I find more and
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more and more as I go along because actually my brain's not as cloudy and
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I'm not And I'm not hesitant, you know, that's an important thing I think,
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is I'm willing and more open-minded to go deeper.
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And since I've gone deeper, then I have to come onto this place too of,
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hey, I'm deep in this deal. And when you know, you know.
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Man, a good friend of mine, after I came back in, he said, you know,
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the problem, Corey, with today is you knew before.
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You didn't know before, right? But now you know, and you knew what
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you didn't do. So now since you know, you get charged. And he wasn't talking
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about with the police. He was talking about on a moral standard, since you know
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now. And if I know now what to do and I just completely
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push that away, I mean, it tells
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me, you know, I sicken and die. And it's not, man,
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the way that looks is not cool. It's not fun.
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There's no— like, it's, you know, and there's
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no only way for me to do is blotting out the consciousness of my intolerable
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situation. That's what I do. And I drink and
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I blot it out and I blot it out. And so what that looks like
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is I do take an index card. On the
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front part of it, I put their name. In the right corner of I'm talking
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about the amends process. In the right corner of that,
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I put if I'm gonna be able to make this right now, I put a
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yes. I put a no or a later.
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So Y, N, or L at the
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top right. So I have their name, Y, N, L. I,
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I write what I did. Well, I stole Susan's
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money, or I stole this person's this,
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or I stole Bob's car.
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And then I go on, you know, on the back,
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I'll put how I can contact them. I think that's important.
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You know, today there's a lot of ways we can contact people via social
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media, mail, phone,
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email. I mean, you know,
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it's a really easy way to get in contact
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with people instead of how it used to be of like driving,
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you know, 600 miles to go knock on a front
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door that I don't know if that person's going to open that door.
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So I, uh, and then on the back side, so on the inventory
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process, if anybody's not familiar with this, and I'm sure there's some
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people that don't do this program I'm in, but when
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we went through the inventory process, we listed out
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how this person affected myself, how they affected me.
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Right? So this, I'm looking at the resentments.
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And did they affect my personal relationships? Did they affect my sexual relationships?
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Did they affect my, uh, pocketbook,
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my ambitions, my security, my pride?
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You know, so we look at that, that we've looked through the lens
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of how they affected us. So on the backside of that card, I look on
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the backside of that of how I may have affected them. How I affected
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their pocketbook, how I affected their ambitions,
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how I affected their security. Like if it was a woman, right?
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Their ambitions on how they're going to move forward in the dating world with
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somebody like me, because that's their past and that's something they got
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to live with because their trust in men has now gone down
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because of me. Their security in men has now gone down because
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of me. Right? And, you know, so in
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their personal relationships, they don't have these friends because of me,
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because they put their trust in this dude. But now I do that.
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So I do that on every single amends. So I know
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what they— so, I mean, I don't— I can't like tell you what they felt,
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but I sure— I've thought about how that made me feel. So I
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might do the courtesy and writing down how— what I did to make them feel
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in my eyes, because I am going to ask them to.
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How did I affect you? And so that's so important.
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But I'll tell you, man, I got just as much of a spiritual experience by
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writing these amends down than making them.
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I listened to a dude one time and he was in a prison cell.
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And when he made these amends, when he wrote down these things, his sponsor told
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him to go back to his cell and go make these amends. And kind of
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like, so when I write this down, I've almost become more willing to
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do it than before. 'Cause I got 'em on paper now and they're
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real because before they were just a theory, right?
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And I talked about that in the beginning. You know, this isn't a theory.
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We have to live this.
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This is the thing that like is kind of separating, you know, am I willing
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to go to any length? Am I willing to go stand trial
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to somebody that I hurt? And it's a hard deal.
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I heard this man say, he said, you're gonna hear a strange sound.
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When you go up and, you know, meet somebody. And the other
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dude was like, what's the strange sound gonna be? It was knock, knock, knock.
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It was gonna be you knocking on the front door of their house or you
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calling them, that ringing sound. Because this is not
25:02
in my wheelhouse of how to live.
25:05
And for me to be good at this would be crazy and me be ego-driven
25:09
to think that I'm good at making amends, that I'm good at facing
25:13
someone and telling them that I hurt them because I've never been good at anything
25:16
like that. 'Cause that's not in the realm of how I used to live.
25:21
You know, I probably rambled. Thank you, Pastor Mike. I'm sorry that I went
25:25
over the— he'll probably cut this down a little bit and find some things that—
25:29
but anyways, after I do the writing part of on my index card,
25:33
I shut it down with a 7-step prayer because that means
25:37
it's complete and I don't have to think about it anymore.
25:40
And obviously you hear me talk all the time on here and I'm kind of
25:43
crazy. So what I— my old sponsor used to do, he would tell me,
25:46
write it Cory, before you go to bed, if your thoughts
25:50
are racing, write them down on a sheet of paper, fold it up, and put
25:54
it in your nightstand so the nightstand can worry about it and you can sleep
25:57
and worry about it tomorrow. Well, I hope you guys have a
26:01
good, uh, day. It's Saturday. And,
26:05
um, yeah, man, it's cool because like it— I
26:09
keep on talking. I just don't know when to shut up. I've had a lot
26:12
of coffee this morning. Um, we do have an email, and man,
26:17
me and Pastor Mike, I, I take on new dudes all the time,
26:20
and I'll take people through this work and just talk about the literature.
26:24
We have an email, reach out to us. Uh, well, it's on
26:28
the Daily Ripples. That's probably in the show notes too. I'm not sure.
26:32
Pastor Mike does all the editing for this. But, uh, thank you guys
26:36
for listening to me rant. Prayer: Father God, help me
26:40
live what I believe today. Through your Holy Spirit, guide my
26:43
actions and not just my thoughts. Reshape my life
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through the example of Jesus and make my faith real in
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the way I live.