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August 30 – Making Room for Others · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:03
  Welcome back to The Daily Ripples podcast.
• 0:06
  Today is Sunday, August the 30th.
• 0:09
  I'm Pastor Mike.
• 0:10
  It is, as you know, lately on Sundays.
• 0:13
  You've just got me.
• 0:14
  We heard a great episode from Corey yesterday, and then starting tomorrow and the rest of this week, you'll have both of us back together again, and so tune in every day, and if you would, follow us on your favorite podcatcher.
• 0:27
  Subscribe to the website, so you never miss one of these daily devotionals when it drops, and we'll see you each and every morning at 4 AM, whenever all these things release. But let's jump right in today with our devotional for Sunday, August the 30th.
• 0:43
  It's titled Making Room for Others.
• 0:47
  God's Grace Becomes Easier to Share when I remember how freely it was given to me.
• 0:52
  Ripple one is practical.
• 0:54
  Today, I will welcome others with patience and kindness.
• 0:58
  Everyone begins somewhere, and few arrive with everything figured out.
• 1:02
  I can offer the same acceptance and encouragement that helped me when I needed it most.
• 1:07
  Ripple 2 is spiritual.
• 1:09
  As I make room for others, the Holy Spirit helps me create space for them to grow, learn, and find hope.
• 1:16
  The Father welcomes all who sincerely seek him.
• 1:19
  And Jesus opened his arms to people who others often overlooked or excluded.
• 1:25
  You know, I can't help but think back to the 1st time that I came into a 12 step meeting.
• 1:36
  And I think back to that because I think of the welcome that I received and how that meeting was something that, you know, many have experienced who are in 12 step programs, uh, it was a newcomer meeting.
• 1:48
  And what that means is that little did I know, but as soon as the meeting started, they all started talking directly to me and telling me how they got there, why they got there, how to stay there, all of this things. And I compare that to how often, especially in larger groups, larger rooms, larger churches, so many times people will come in and sometimes people don't even recognize that there's a new person in their midst.
• 2:15
  Everything becomes about, you know, their traditions, their their format, kind of how everything is structured.
• 2:22
  And it's a different thing, of course, when we're talking about a worship service from a recovery meeting, but some of the aspects of the welcome that we assume to others in recovery meetings.
• 2:31
  I think we need in the churches at times.
• 2:33
  But so many of us, I think, are similar to how we were when we were kids.
• 2:39
  You know, I raised or helped raise 3 daughters, 3 little girls.
• 2:42
  Well, by the time you get multiples, you start to see competition, right?
• 2:47
  And because, you know, it can be as simple as, you know, their mom and I in the bedroom and they want to come in the bedroom with us.
• 2:56
  And so one of the kids knocks on the door and we go and open the door and as soon as they get inside the door, they turn around and slam the door shut so that their sisters can't come in too.
• 3:05
  Because they made it it.
• 3:06
  And now their sisters have to figure out how to get him on their own.
• 3:11
  And The same thing happened whenever I came to a recovery meeting.
• 3:17
  You know, I got in and then how quickly was it before I was thinking, well, I'm in and I'm safe and now, you know, everybody else could figure it out on their own.
• 3:27
  But at the same time, somebody, whatever that room was that you needed or wanted to be in, or you finally walked into, whatever it was, it could have been a recovery meeting.
• 3:39
  It could have been a church, somewhere that you showed up in bad shape and hoped nobody would look at you too closely or kick you out, but somebody let you in.
• 3:46
  And they might have even had every reason not to.
• 3:49
  They might have thought you were going to be a problem or a threat in some way, and they let you in anyway.
• 3:54
  But now, that you're in that room, you're on the other side of that door.
• 3:59
  And somebody else is walking up to it, one of your sisters, one of your brothers.
• 4:03
  Then you now, because you're in the room, you're one of the people who decides, what happens next?
• 4:10
  See, I think the important thing to know is that if we remember grace, then it is much easier to share that grace with others.
• 4:21
  The clearer, the clearer I am about how freely I was let in, the less interested I am in guarding the door.
• 4:28
  You see, I've got to be clear about with grace, with love, with freedom, I was let into these rooms, whether it's a room of a church or whether it's a room of recovery.
• 4:38
  So now I have to extend that same grace to everybody.
• 4:42
  Ripple one says that everyone begins somewhere, if you arrive with everything figured out.
• 4:47
  That's easy to agree with when I read it or when you hear it or even if you see it written on paper or, you know, on the screen in today's daily devotional.
• 4:57
  But sometimes it's hard to deal with that.
• 5:01
  Once we're actually in the room.
• 5:03
  You know, every um, alcoholic, every addict, Every, especially AA, is part of their big book, has a real problem with that, excuse me, the early program of AA had a real problem with that.
• 5:19
  And in the 12 and 12 on pages 139 and 140.
• 5:23
  It talks about that.
• 5:23
  It says at one time, every group had a whole lot of membership rules, that everybody was almost, you know, scared, witless, that something or somebody would, you know, mess up the program and and all of a sudden it wouldn't work anymore.
• 5:38
  It said something along the lines of the total list was a mile long. And, and then, The problem is, you know, if all of those rules had been in force everywhere that nobody could have walked into the room at all.
• 5:52
  Nobody could have joined that early group of alcoholics anonymous because nobody would have qualified.
• 5:58
  And I have to sit with that because, man, I think of all the little internal rules I have in my head about who does and doesn't deserve grace and who qualifies and who doesn't qualify.
• 6:07
  Maybe I need to take it back to something as simple as willingness.
• 6:12
  But the people making the rules had all been let in themselves.
• 6:18
  Every one of them was somebody else's risky case, just a week, a month, a year, 2 years before that.
• 6:27
  In the moment that they were safely inside of the program, that they had the solution, then they started building a long list of who else deserved this solution.
• 6:39
  And that's, man, that's nothing more than our shared humanity, you know, it's just like my daughters when they were kids.
• 6:45
  You know, the 1st one gets through the door and then they immediately slam the door on the other 2 and come up with a whole bunch of rules and maybe even a password and got to slip something under the door with 3 references before you can get in.
• 6:58
  And we do it in the church too.
• 7:00
  I mean, you know, when I ask me how I know.
• 7:02
  I see it all the time.
• 7:03
  You know, our vocabulary may be in the church is a little bit nicer.
• 7:06
  We say things like, uh, you could join up to be a partner, we might even call them a member, we can talk about people making a commitment.
• 7:14
  We can ask people, are they ready to commit to this thing?
• 7:18
  But it's still a list.
• 7:20
  And it grows in the same way and it grows out of the same fear.
• 7:24
  And the 3rd tradition in alcoholics anonymous anyway, landed on the only requirement for membership was a desire to stop drinking.
• 7:33
  One line.
• 7:34
  A mile long list used to be there, but all that it really came down to was a desire.
• 7:40
  Not their track record, not a, you know, passing a background check, but a desire.
• 7:47
  So if you're listening to this, what's on your list?
• 7:51
  What's on your list of things you never say out loud, but the one you used to decide who is worth you giving of your time, your energy, your creativity, or your resources this week, or even today?
• 8:04
  It also says in our devotional that, as I make room for others, the Holy Spirit helps me create space for them to grow, learn, and find hope.
• 8:14
  It's the same pattern, you might say, as always, is that if I do something, if I do my part, if I'm willing, if my desire leads me to a willingness, I can make room for others.
• 8:28
  And then my higher power, God, the Holy Spirit, helps me along that.
• 8:34
  So in other words, I'm not doing it by myself.
• 8:38
  You know, there's more than just one verb in that in that line also.
• 8:42
  You know, I grow, I learn and I find hope.
• 8:44
  And all 3 of those things take time, and none of them happens in a doorway to a room, and also none of them happens overnight.
• 8:51
  And they don't happen on my own either.
• 8:54
  I need my higher power.
• 8:56
  I need God.
• 8:56
  I need God working through other human beings as well.
• 9:01
  Impatience man.
• 9:03
  Patience is not something that's easy for me to do either.
• 9:07
  So I want the solution.
• 9:08
  I want the answer right away, and as soon as I think I've got the answer,
• 9:11
  Then, you know, I want to be seen as somebody who has it all figured out, and that's my character defects coming into play.
• 9:18
  And so many times, those things can be a barrier.
• 9:21
  They can be something that keeps that door locked from other people coming in.
• 9:26
  You know, some of the people that I've been the slowest with helping or with extending grace to are the ones that remind me of myself.
• 9:36
  Don't worry, I'm going to tell you what those people are like.
• 9:39
  It's the person that talks too much or the person that has an answer for everything.
• 9:44
  The person who shows up acting like they've got everything handled and got it all together.
• 9:49
  You know, they walk in the room and they want everybody to know that they are in the room.
• 9:53
  We've all known people like that, and I have been a person like that.
• 9:57
  And Yeah, I don't want to be that person anymore, that's for sure.
• 10:03
  So how do I overcome that tendency to keep the door barred on the people that look like me, sound like me, act like me or at least act like aspects of me.
• 10:15
  How do I make sure that that door stays open, even for those guys? Because, man, those guys can be real jerks because, and I know that they can be because, like I said, I used to be one.
• 10:25
  Well, that's where I have to model the welcome and the love of my higher power.
• 10:33
  You know, it says that the father welcomes all who sincerely seek him, and that's all of them.
• 10:39
  And man, I wish I wish that I could do the same thing, honestly.
• 10:42
  Acts 10 and where we have Peter and Peter sometimes learns his lessons late.
• 10:48
  You know, he is a, he was a Jewish man.
• 10:50
  He was been sent to a Roman soldier's house and that Roman soldier or that house was probably nowhere on his list of who should be included.
• 10:58
  And he says out loud.
• 11:00
  He says, I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.
• 11:08
  And Peter saying those words, I truly understand.
• 11:12
  You know, you might can read between the lines as a, you know, I used to not understand, but I do now, or maybe I didn't understand until just now, whenever I have a person in need of God's love, grace and mercy in front of me, and I know how Jesus would react.
• 11:28
  This is Peter, thank him because Peter, after all, followed him for those 3 years.
• 11:31
  So, Jesus' own disciples built a membership rule almost in real time.
• 11:40
  They couldn't even help it.
• 11:41
  You know, Jesus opened his arms to people that everybody overlooked and excluded.
• 11:45
  And then in March, excuse me, in Mark 10, you know, people were bringing children to Jesus, and the disciples were speaking sternly to them and trying to turn them away.
• 11:55
  They weren't necessarily trying to be cruel about it.
• 11:58
  They were just trying to protect Jesus in his time.
• 12:00
  They thought that they were managing, you know, the mission or the ministry.
• 12:04
  But Jesus, you might say, got indignant, and that's the word that Mark uses, and and he, you know, He uses it infrequently, but he says, let the little children come to me.
• 12:15
  Do not stop them.
• 12:17
  And the same thing we see in the Gospel of Luke in chapter 19 with Zacchaeus, who's a short, wealthy, but thoroughly hated man who was hiding up a tree.
• 12:26
  Jesus stopped and looked up and invited himself to dinner at the man's house.
• 12:30
  And Luke says everyone who saw it began to grumble and the grumbling, you might say, is the sound of whatever membership rule that they had being broken.
• 12:38
  They were not exactly trying to make room for others.
• 12:42
  And the other thing that we hear a lot, especially in Rooms of Recovery is about the singleness of purpose, you know?
• 12:50
  We use the singleness of purpose sometimes as a way to exclude others without even meaning to.
• 12:57
  Because, and I think to, you know, there's an example of this as well in that same 12 and 12 book on page 141 and 142.
• 13:07
  This is up in Akron.
• 13:08
  There was a newcomer came knocking, a desperate case, he wanted to get well, and he tells the truth about himself.
• 13:13
  He says that he was a victim of another addiction, even worse stigmatized than alcoholism.
• 13:17
  He said, you might not want me among you.
• 13:19
  And the elders of the group talked it over, and their 1st instinct was objection, and they're like, you know, we have a singleness of purpose.
• 13:26
  We only deal with alcoholics, right?
• 13:27
  And shouldn't we, you know, let this man, you know, go for the sake of the minute, you might say.
• 13:34
  And then one of them says the truest thing.
• 13:36
  It says what we're really afraid of is our reputation.
• 13:38
  We're much more afraid of what people might say than the trouble that this strange alcoholic might bring.
• 13:45
  And then they ask the really important question, what would the master do?
• 13:49
  The book says, not another word was set.
• 13:53
  And that's a book with no religious program in it.
• 13:56
  And then the hardest moment it had, it went straight to Jesus.
• 14:00
  Well, the newcomer plunged into the 12th step work and carried the message to scores of other people.
• 14:05
  He could relate his alcoholism to be a part of the group while still applying the 12 steps to other aspects of his life.
• 14:13
  And I think about the same thing.
• 14:14
  Every time that I'm in a room and somebody starts hounding somebody who identifies himself as an addict instead of an alcoholic, and they start harping on the singleness of purpose, but all that we have to do is we have to turn and ask that simple question, you have a desire not to drink today.
• 14:28
  And our 3rd tradition says, that is the only rule, just one, just one little rule.
• 14:33
  And in church, I would say, if somebody comes in, I only have one question for them too.
• 14:38
  You have a desire to seek Jesus.
• 14:40
  And if so, then anybody can be there.
• 14:43
  Or even if they don't even know if they have a desire yet or not.
• 14:46
  They just want to learn about Jesus.
• 14:48
  Welcome them into your church today.
• 14:49
  If you see somebody new today when you're in church, be sure to go up to them and welcome them. I'm not saying give them a whole newcomer meeting and freak them out like a newcomer who's shaken and shaking like a leaf on a tree walking into an AA meeting for the 1st time, but at least let them know that they are welcomed and loved.
• 15:06
  You know, we look back to our stone today.
• 15:09
  It says God's grace becomes easier to share when I remember how freely it was given to me.
• 15:14
  Didn't cost me anything.
• 15:16
  It was given to me freely.
• 15:19
  Nobody ran my numbers or checked on whether I'd be able to earn it.
• 15:24
  They just gave me grace.
• 15:26
  God gave me grace through other people.
• 15:28
  So today, think of one person that you might be slow to serve, slow to reach out to, whether that's in a recovery room, whether that's sitting next to you in a pew or a chair at church and giving them maybe a little bit more of your time than you've done in the past.
• 15:45
  And that's the whole assignment.
• 15:47
  And when your objections start showing up and they will, try Dr. Bob's 5 words on them, what would the master do?
• 15:56
  I think the master would clearly make room for others.
• 15:59
  Let's pray together.
• 16:00
  Father God, help me extend the same grace that you have shown me. Through your Holy Spirit, make me patient, welcoming and encouraging to others, shape my life through the example of Jesus.
• 16:11
  Amen.
• 16:11
  Thanks, everybody, for being here today.
• 16:14
  Be sure to come back tomorrow for our next episode, read today's full devotional on dailyripples.com, reach out anytime to us.
• 16:23
  Uh, email us at wave at dailyripples.com.
• 16:26
  And then in the meantime, go and do all the good you can, all the places you can, and all the places you can, and all the ways you can, by all the means you can, and do it all for as long as you ever can, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
• 16:40
  Go in peace.