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April 4 – No Longer Chasing the Moon · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:02
  Hey guys, it is April 4th, and this is the Daily Ripple.
• 0:06
  We got Pastor Mike on here, and do you want to read it?
• 0:10
  Yeah, I can read it, and thanks for everybody being back with us today.
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  So the Daily Ripple for April the 4th is no longer chasing the moon, the stone.
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  When I live for approval, I become restless and unsatisfied.
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  One moment I feel invisible, the next I demand to be the center.
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  Pride and insecurity often share the same root.
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  Ripple 1 is practical.
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  Today, I will notice where I am craving validation or recognition.
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  I will not chase applause or collapse when I don't receive it.
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  Instead, I will focus on faithfulness in the small things,
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  letting go of the need to be seen as extraordinary.
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  Ripple 2 is spiritual.
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  As I walk in the humility of Christ, the Holy Spirit steadies my identity.
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  I no longer need to be the moon, brilliant and admired.
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  I am content to reflect the light I've received.
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  Over time, security replaces striving, and my vision grows clearer in the Father's love.
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  And as always, we will save our prayer for the end.
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  Corey, as I was reading through there, it struck me, you know, again, about just the wisdom of this.
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  And again, it's not from me.
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  It's from, you know, just the inspiration to write it.
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  But I no longer need to be the moon.
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  You know, I thought about that line in particular in the spiritual ripple, right?
• 1:35
  Because the moon, I mean, what a great analogy.
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  The moon doesn't have any light of its own.
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  It's reflecting the light of the sun.
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  And we just see it because we're in between the sun and the moon.
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  You know, at the times that we can see the moon and we see the moonlight at night, that
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  means that we are between the sun and the moon in some way, shape, form, or fashion.
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  However, the heavenly bodies all work.
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  I don't know.
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  I didn't put them there.
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  But it's, I like that analogy of, you know, I don't have to be the moon.
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  I don't have to, well, I do have to be the moon, actually.
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  I don't need to chase the moon.
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  I need to be the moon.
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  I need to just be reflecting the light instead of trying to feel like I am the light.
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  That may or may not have made any sense to you, but that's where my immediate thought went.
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  But where have you got to go with us on this one today, Corey?
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  Well, when I read When I Live for Approval, I'll get back to when I was 12 years old.
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  I wasn't the smartest kid, but I wanted to be funny.
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  I acted out and all these things because I felt less than.
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  I felt less than everybody.
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  Or I felt more than.
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  This is all at 12 years old, right?
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  And I thought, I'll tell you because I was adopted.
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  We've talked about this.
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  I was adopted and I thought it was because I was in this household that I wasn't with my real parents.
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  But then I started, when I started looking back at this, though, I started thinking about, well, even my, you know, I would judge other kids.
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  I would be like, well, you know, they got two sets of parents because their parents got divorced.
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  But they got brothers and sisters, and I don't have brothers and sisters.
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  You know, I would find everything to my ego.
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  I'll tell you, I know what it is today.
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  My ego would make me different than everybody.
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  I could never feel a part of.
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  And so when I think about when I lived for approval, because when I was 13 years old, that was when I first took my first drink of alcohol.
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  And at that age, I quit living for approval.
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  I got what I wanted.
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  Alcohol fixed that problem of other people being less than or more than, other people being different from me, and it brought me to one with the world.
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  It was a spiritual experience, man.
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  I'll tell you, because it made me feel one with everybody.
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  And it was interesting down the road, you know, way down the road, my drinking, you know,
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  like it quit working like that, right?
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  The thing that I used for so long quit working and giving me that approval of others because
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  I saw my life, man, I was broken, you know, my liver was going out.
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  I was facing prison time and all these other things.
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  But today I found, man, when I walked into the rooms of the recovery rooms, I felt a part
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  off because I was with like-minded people and I heard these like-minded people talk about
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  the same problems I was going through.
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  And I didn't have to get approval from them.
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  And a good friend of mine, he was, mind me, saying his name, Nathan, he talks about this
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  a lot of when I sat in these rooms for so long.
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  So I think after the first part of when I came around, I sat in those rooms and then I started
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  looking for approval within those rooms because my ego started separating. So that's when I had
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  to start getting this connection with this God. Because, man, it's always been, I've always looked
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  at human problems. We were talking about this earlier, right? But I failed to ever change my
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  point of view. And when I started changing my point of view and trying to start growing my
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  conscious contact with God, I didn't need approval anymore because, man, I knew that I was loved from
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  this God that, you know, loved me more than anything that could possibly love me and loves
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  everybody the same way too. And I just think that's the coolest thing because today I'm not looking for
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  the approval. And when I am, I know you just, you said it not too long ago, then I'm in my will,
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  right? And I'm not in God's will. And that, you know, because that connected, and I think what
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  really connected with what you just said about the moon and the sun and all that was what we were
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  talking in the St. Francis prayer. Let me bring light to this. Right. Instead of shadow, right?
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  And let me bring light to everybody's life. Instead of being this dark,
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  groomy person that comes in and hurts people, let me bring light to this. And, but yeah,
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  I think there's a great topic right here. Well, and I think, you know, 12-year-old Corey,
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  who was going around, you know, trying to be the class clown and get all the attention and all that,
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  I mean, you were trying to bring light in terms of levity, humor, what have you, but it's from a very adolescent and kind of selfish point of view in terms of you were bringing the light so that you could get kind of the applause, the accolades, the love, as it were, of your fellows there.
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  And I'm sure that there's a lot to unpack in that in terms of like why you had that drive.
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  But there was a gentleman who was here in the Memphis recovery community, and he has gone on to the great meeting in the sky, as it were.
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  But he unfortunately ended up kind of taking his own life after a relapse.
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  And I've always kind of looked at him as a kind of a warning for myself.
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  But while he was here with us, both in recovery and he was a pastor in the same denomination that I'm in, the United Methodist Church.
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  And one of the things that he always said was that we're all born with a God-sized hole in our hearts, and we spend our lives trying to fill it.
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  And the only thing that can fill a God-sized hole is, what would you think it would be?
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  God.
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  Only God can fill that God-sized hole.
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  early adolescent Corey, what I was hearing was somebody who was trying to fill that hole with
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  the applause, you know, of his peers, and then somebody who found a way to fill that hole with
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  alcohol. And that's really the analogy he always went to, is that he poured alcohol all over, you
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  know, tried to fill the hole in his spirit with alcohol, but it never satisfied. You know, it
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  always, it empties us out more than it fills us up, you know, and it's harmful to us, versus if we
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  fill that hole with God and God's love, then, you know, we can't go wrong if we're on the track and
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  on the beam with that. That was my initial thought. Well, you know, when you said this
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  God-sized hole, you know, you could almost say spiritual indifference or spiritual malady, right?
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  Absolutely. And so, when I go through the book of Alcoholics Anonymous with another man,
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  There's some key things I have them highlight.
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  And I have them highlight every time it says must and every time it says body and mind.
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  Because the first step of the recovery program is I was powerless from alcohol and my life had become unmanageable.
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  And powerless from alcohol has two definitions, right?
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  It has, when I take a drink, I want more.
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  And then after a certain amount of time, I drink again.
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  So it's a two-sided thing.
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  And then you got the unmanageability, right?
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  I don't know how to live.
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  And I could connect that pretty closely to the spiritual malady as well.
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  Because in the big book on page 64, it says,
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  from it stems all forms of spiritual disease,
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  for we have not only been mentally and physically ill,
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  So mental, physical.
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  We have been spiritually sick.
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  When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.
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  And how important that was to me because, you know, we go back to point of view and this and this and this.
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  But when I focus on the spiritual thing, for some reason over here fixes by itself.
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  And I don't have to worry about it.
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  So I kind of use the right hand, left hand when I'm talking to people.
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  I say, man, if you work on this over here with this hand, with your right hand, for some reason, everything else will just fall in place just like it's supposed to.
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  And it will be better than you can ever have imagined it.
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  You just have to do the work.
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  And that's where this marketing of doing the work comes in.
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  And it sucks because we sit in here, people on their deathbeds trying to convince them that maybe this thing that I've done might work.
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  And they're like, I don't know about that.
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  I still got to go try this over here first.
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  And they might die.
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  And it's the saddest thing in the world, man.
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  I hate watching that.
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  That's very hard to watch.
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  It's funny how I'm getting a little bit of a God wink as you were sitting there sharing that last little bit,
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  especially when you started talking about the right hand and the left hand, right?
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  because unbeknownst to you in preparation for this episode and this ripple,
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  I had looked up in the Gospel of Matthew in Matthew chapter 6,
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  which is part of the Sermon on the Mount,
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  which ironically you sent me a screenshot of some verses from that this morning
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  from the Sermon on the Mount.
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  But at the beginning of chapter 6, and what you sent me was out of chapter 7,
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  but at the beginning of chapter 6 in the third verse it says,
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  when you give to the needy, or in other words, when you're serving others,
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  Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your giving may be in secret.
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  Then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.
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  So in other words, it's again, we're not shooting for the moon or in other words,
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  trying to get applause and acclaim for working for and serving others.
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  We're doing it because that's what we're supposed to do.
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  And it affirms what the Bible says about do it in secret.
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  You know, don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing because that way we don't even have a thought
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  to get, you know, applause or praise for where we're going and what we're doing.
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  So, was that verse 1 in chapter 6?
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  It started with verse 3.
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  Well, I like verse 1.
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  That's another good one.
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  That's the other one that I had actually in my show notes, so good job.
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  It says, be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others, to be seen by them.
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  If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
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  Right.
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  And I talked to you about this.
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  That's what Doug, my old sponsor, used to tell me.
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  He was like, Corey, go do something today and don't tell anybody about it.
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  Right.
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  And, you know, I wouldn't.
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  It would just hurt me inside in the beginning because I was like, I just got to tell somebody.
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  Because my pride, my pride, anytime I ever did anything, I wanted someone to know so I could take accountability.
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  Right.
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  But when I start being quiet about it, man, that's an act of humility.
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  But also there's a balance to that as well.
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  Within the rooms that we hang out in, I need to lead by example.
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  And I think, you know, when I lead by example and people see that, right, and people see,
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  well, why is he in this room reading with this guy and been sitting up here for a couple hours
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  after this meeting?
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  And when they see that, they understand as well what it looks like to be of service.
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  Yeah.
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  Not just spitting out three minutes in a meeting and thinking you're cool.
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  Yeah, sponsorship is not, hey, give me a call if you need something.
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  Sponsorship is going through the materials with a willing person, you know, because you can't force somebody to do it.
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  You got to have a willing participant.
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  But, yeah, no, absolutely.
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  And, you know, to get into a Corey-style micro-analysis of that verse, as it were,
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  because you could pick apart a sentence in the big book, and I can definitely do the same thing,
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  you know, with verses of the Bible, but that verse 1 of Matthew 6 that you read, you know,
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  be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.
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  That is a complete sentence, in other words.
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  It's not, be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others,
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  Because sometimes you'll see people that are either praying in public or they're doing this, that, or the other.
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  And somebody walked by and they'll have a snarky remark.
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  They'll be like, well, you're not supposed to practice your righteousness in front of others kind of thing.
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  But the closing phrase is the key to that, to be seen by them.
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  I get it.
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  In other words, what is your motivation?
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  Are you doing it to be seen or are you doing it because you're doing it out of love and you're following God's plan and will for your life?
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  See, I can go and I can do for others and have everybody in the world see it, and I'm still fine as long as that's not my motivation.
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  Right.
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  Yeah, I lived up in Ohio for a couple of years, and this lady, you know, they have different mannerisms up there in the north.
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  Oh, yeah.
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  And this lady looked at me, because I'm from here, and I hold the door for anybody.
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  It doesn't matter how old you are, what gender you are, doesn't matter.
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  And we were talking about what's different from up here.
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  I said, you know, I noticed that nobody, you know, men don't hold the door for women.
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  And she said, yeah, I mean, or only hold the door for women.
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  They don't hold the door for other just men walking behind them or whatever.
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  And she said, yeah, I mean, why would you hold the door for a man?
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  And like at that moment, like I lost this connection with this lady.
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  But at the time I had hair and she was cutting my hair.
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  And I don't have any hair, obviously, anymore.
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  Yeah, this is two bald guys talking to y'all.
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  Sorry.
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  So I was definitely very nice to her.
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  And then, you know, because I was like, man, you know, but treating everybody the same.
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  And because I've done that, right?
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  But not the place I'm at today, you know, I would go help somebody on the side of the road.
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  If I had a woman with me, if I was single, right?
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  I wanted to show how gracious and how virtuous I was in my life.
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  And I look at what I do.
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  I help people.
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  But today, I think I understand it now.
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  Thank you for pointing that out.
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  Absolutely. Well, let's close our episode today with our prayer. Father, free me from the hunger
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  for approval. Through your Spirit, anchor my identity in Christ and teach me to live with
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  quiet confidence and steady humility. Amen.
• 15:56
  Amen.