Latest / Sober Readings / Release from Fear
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Good morning everyone, welcome to Sober Readings. Today is Saturday, the twentieth of June. Let's begin 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 the wisdom to know the difference. Today's reading from Daily Reflections Release from Fear. The problem of resolving fear has two aspects. We shall have to try for all the freedom from fear that is possible for us to attain. Then we shall need to find both the courage and grace to deal constructively with whatever fears remain. And that's on page sixty one of As Bill sees it. Most of my decisions were based on fear. Alcohol made life easier to face, but the time came when alcohol was no longer an alternative to fear. One of the greatest gifts in AA for me has been the courage to take action, which I can do with God's help. After five years of sobriety, I had to deal with the heavy dose of fear. God put the people in my life to help me do that. And through my working the twelve steps, I am becoming the whole person I wish to be, and for that I am deeply grateful. Today's reading from twenty four hours, june twenty, AA Thought for the Day. You should be ready and willing to carry the AA message when called upon to do so. Live for some purpose greater than yourself. Each day you will have something to work for. You have received so much from this program that you should have a vision that gives your life a direction and purpose that gives meaning to each new day. Let us not slide along through life. Let us have a purpose for each day, and let us make that purpose for something greater than just ourselves. So ask yourself, what is my purpose for today? The meditation for the day. To see God with eyes of faith is to cause God's power to manifest itself in the material world. God cannot do his work because of unbelief. In response to your belief, God can work a miracle in your personality. All miracles happen in the realm of personality. And all are caused by and based on belief in God's never failing power. But God's power cannot manifest itself in personalities unless those personalities make his power available by their faith. We can only see God with the eyes of faith, but this kind of seeing produces a great change in our way of living. Today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may see God with the eyes of faith. I pray that this seeing will produce a change in my personality. Today's Daily Meditation from Touchstones Wait till next year is the favorite cry of baseball fans, football fans, hockey fans, and gardeners. Robert Orban Hope was a casualty for many of us in our life of chaos and extremes. Some of us said to ourselves Life is just drab. I'd better get used to it. We may have slowly changed our definition of normal to mean a hopeless existence. Others of us held on to some shred of hope that said better times are just around the corner, but it only kept us from confronting how disastrous our lives had become. We are brothers in that we truly have been men on a dead end path. Our new lives have seen the drawing of new hope solidly based on reality. We have the reality of friendships with our brothers and sisters. They provide comfort and support that are reliable and durable. We have the reality of our clearer thinking and our amended lives. We may not have everything we could desire, but we are actually on the road and progressing in directions we wish to go. We are engaged in the adventure of increasing our conscious contact with God. Our hope is founded in what we already feel in our lives. Today, nothing is perfect, but hope underlies everything. With the return of hope, I have my life back again. And finally, today, a reading from As Bill sees it. We're going to read from page 300 today. People of faith. We who have traveled a path through agnosticism or atheism beg you to lay aside prejudice, even against organized religion. We have learned that whatever the human frailties of various faiths may be, those faiths have given purpose and direction to millions. People of faith have a rational idea of what life is all about. Actually, we used to have no reasonable conception whatever of it. We used to amuse ourselves by cynically dissecting spiritual beliefs and practices, when we might have seen that many spiritually minded persons of all races, colors, and creeds were demonstrating a degree of stability, happiness, and usefulness that we should have sought for ourselves. And that is from the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, page forty nine. And that's it for today's readings. Before I close, I'd just like to make a comment on The daily meditations from Touchstones. And it uses the word hope in here a lot. Hope was a casualty for many of us. Our new lives have seen the drawing of new hope. And then the last line, Our hope is founded in what we already feel in our lives. And I heard this great line a long time ago, and it said, Hoping and wishing are excuses for not doing. And that just reminds me of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous because it's a program of action. I can hope and wish all I want, but if I don't actually take the action of doing the steps and working this program into my daily life, practicing these principles in all my affairs, I might end up staying sober, but I'm not gonna have that peace and serenity and the calmness that I'm looking for, that I live in my daily life now. So thanks everybody for listening today. If you enjoyed the show, do me a huge favor and hit that like button. And subscribe to the show so you don't miss the next episode. And also if you'd like to be a guest reader on Sober Readings, just send me an email at soberreadings with Scott at gmail.com. Also, if you'd like to drop a dollar in the virtual donation basket for today, go to my website, soberreadings.com and click the donate button. So again, thank you so much for listening. Stay sober, keep reading, and I'll catch you in the next episode. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other, and remember, just for today, don't drink, go to a meeting. And keep coming back. Have a great day. And as my friend Larry says, best day ever.