Latest / The Daily Ripples Podcast / June 30 - Strength Through Sacrifice

Transcript

June 30 - Strength Through Sacrifice · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:04
  Hey guys, this is Corey and this is the Daily Ripples, June 30th, Strength Through Sacrifice.
• 0:12
  The stone, what I give up for the sake of others often strengthens what matters most.
• 0:18
  Sacrifice is not lost, it is an investment in something greater.
• 0:23
  Ripple won practical, today I will set aside personal preference when necessary for the
• 0:28
  good of others. I will choose cooperation over control and unity over ego. Strong relationships
• 0:36
  are built when I value the whole, not just myself. Ripple to spiritual. Christ shows that sacrifice
• 0:44
  leads to life. As I follow him, the Holy Spirit shapes humility within me. The Father uses surrendered
• 0:50
  desires to build unity and lasting strength. Over time, I learned that what I release is never
• 0:57
  wasted when it is given for a greater purpose. So when I was first reading this, you know,
• 1:04
  I thought about the stone, what I give up for the sake of others also strengthens what matters most.
• 1:10
  And so I was thinking about page 97 in the big book. And, you know, so this is probably,
• 1:17
  this is a lot of information. And, you know, this is really cool stuff, though. It says,
• 1:21
  Helping others is the foundation stone of your recovery.
• 1:26
  A kindly act once in a while isn't enough.
• 1:28
  You have to act the good Samaritan every day if need be.
• 1:33
  And so, you know, then when it talks about sacrifice is not loss and is investment in something greater.
• 1:39
  And, you know, I heard one time that this is the promises of step 12.
• 1:46
  It might not sound like that cool of a thing either, but this is what it says.
• 1:51
  It says, it may mean the loss of many nights' sleep, great interference with your pleasures,
• 1:57
  interruptions to your business.
• 1:59
  It may mean sharing your money and your home.
• 2:02
  It may mean counseling frantic wives and relatives, innumerable trips to police courts, sanitariums,
• 2:08
  hospitals, jails, and asylums.
• 2:10
  Your telephone may jangle at any time of the day or night.
• 2:13
  Your wife may sometimes say she is neglected.
• 2:17
  A drunk may smash the furniture in your home or burn a mattress.
• 2:21
  It still goes on a little bit longer, and I'm not going to keep on going.
• 2:24
  But, you know, when I read this, man, I think about the guy that's very, you know, my sponsor.
• 2:30
  He's, you know, very, you know, has done a lot of these things, right?
• 2:33
  He's been in police courts with me.
• 2:35
  He's taken phone calls through the night.
• 2:41
  You know, he's dealt with, I mean, he's dealt with a lot of this stuff with me.
• 2:45
  And, you know, when I look at him, he's an example of what I want to be and who I, you know, because, you know, he did this for me and, you know, my job is to do this for someone else.
• 2:57
  What I'm taking a dude through this work, every time I get done, I thank him for their time.
• 3:05
  And sometimes they'll thank me and, you know, I just tell them, you know, the way to thank me is just do it for somebody else.
• 3:12
  Because someone did it for me.
• 3:14
  And that's important.
• 3:17
  But I did like the Ripple One practical because it's all just talking about, I will choose cooperation over control and unity over ego.
• 3:27
  And this might get really boring to some and that's okay.
• 3:30
  But this is, you know, this is, so this isn't the, this, I was thinking about the traditions.
• 3:38
  And so when you think about how a group starts, it has to have some people starting it.
• 3:45
  And the 12 and 12 tells me on page 133 that there's going to be a founder.
• 3:53
  So the founder turns into the benign dictator.
• 3:57
  So, and that says there's a chairman.
• 3:59
  So he's the chairman of a group of friends.
• 4:01
  So you got a group of friends, a benign dictator.
• 4:05
  And so when they formed this group, you know, they got all these people, you know, wanting positions.
• 4:09
  And I think so then these people can turn into the elder statesmen.
• 4:17
  And then so it talks about the elder statesmen.
• 4:19
  So that it says, ultimately, they divide into two classes known in AA slang as elder statesmen and bleeding deacons.
• 4:28
  the elder statesman is the one who sees the wisdom of the group's decision
• 4:31
  who holds no resentment over the reduced status whose judgment fortified by considerable
• 4:37
  experience is sound and then you know it talks about a little bit more but then it says the
• 4:41
  bleeding deacon is the one who is just as surely convinced that the group cannot get along without
• 4:46
  him who constantly connives the re-election to office and continues to consume with self-pity
• 4:54
  Then it goes on to tell me that, you know, the elder statesman turns into the quiet opinion.
• 5:01
  So you got the benign dictator, the elder statesman, and the quiet opinion.
• 5:05
  And so I was thinking about it in the 12 and 12 as well.
• 5:10
  It says, on page 111, it says, they make us, let's say, the group chairman.
• 5:18
  Here again, we are presented with the temptation to overmanage things,
• 5:21
  And sometimes this results in rebuffs and other consequences which are hard to take.
• 5:27
  And so I think, you know, the way I look at that and the way I'm, you know, I've kind of been explained a little bit to this.
• 5:32
  And I'll tell you, you know, what was really cool is this group asked me to do a chairperson workshop.
• 5:41
  And, you know, I've kind of read through the traditions a little bit and studied them.
• 5:45
  But when they did that, it really dove me into, because I got to have a reason, right?
• 5:52
  And I think this podcast is so cool because it gives me another reason to dive into the literature.
• 6:02
  Sometimes going back through it and through it without a reason is hard.
• 6:09
  There's not a lot of motivation to reread and reread.
• 6:13
  That's why I think it's important for me to read with new people, to take people through this work, because I'm constantly in it.
• 6:22
  This podcast is really cool because it keeps me constantly in it, too, and keeps me wanting to grow and learn more.
• 6:31
  So when I think about the group chairperson, the benign dictator, me and a couple of friends, we started a book study.
• 6:41
  And so we started this book study and people started calling it like, you know, Corey and this guy's book study.
• 6:50
  And, you know, we came to this conclusion that we needed more people to get involved rather than the attention be on us, but not dictative.
• 6:59
  So good.
• 7:00
  But you have to have that to start something.
• 7:03
  And I think that's, you know, so when I think about, you know, what God is and, you know, God is everything.
• 7:08
  So God is, you know, and so when I think about that part, God is in everything.
• 7:13
  And within these groups, you'll kind of have people that are like,
• 7:19
  kind of how I was brought up into this of being conservative in the literature
• 7:26
  and try to be conservative through the traditions.
• 7:31
  Then you'll have other people that, you know, are more loose with it.
• 7:34
  And I'm not getting into any politics.
• 7:37
  I'm just saying conservative and kind of loose. But what's the beautiful thing about a group conscience is that you got both sides and we vote on things. And when you vote on things, it meets in the middle. And that's the group conscience.
• 7:58
  And then you got an informed group conscious and informed group conscious is what happened in that business meeting. You have an informed group conscious. Now you could argue that you read the minutes of the business meeting too and then you got an informed group conscious too.
• 8:12
  But the best representation of the group conscience is through the chairperson sheet of how the chairperson should run the meeting.
• 8:23
  And the people around that meeting that are participating in that are participating in the group conscience.
• 8:29
  And I know this is all kind of boring probably to some people that don't even know what the traditions are.
• 8:35
  And in the Anonymous, the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, this book talks about there's 12 traditions.
• 8:46
  And a lot of people get bored with the traditions.
• 8:48
  And they're like, well, that doesn't apply to me.
• 8:50
  Well, it can apply of how I treat other people.
• 8:54
  Just like unity.
• 8:55
  You know, and so Unity is the long version of Unity, and there's a short version, which is what's on the walls in a lot of these places.
• 9:08
  And then there's the long version, and the long version is the real version.
• 9:11
  I don't know if anybody ever realized that, but Unity is step one.
• 9:20
  I mean, tradition one, I'm sorry.
• 9:22
  Each member of Alcox is anonymous, but a small part of a great whole.
• 9:28
  AA must continue to live or most of us will surely die.
• 9:32
  Hence, our common welfare should come first, but individual welfare follows close afterward.
• 9:40
  And, you know, so when I think about that, you know, so the group has to stay alive.
• 9:46
  Yeah, because, man, when I went back out for four years, when I came back in, there was still a group and there was still the same people sitting in that room, regardless if I was there or not. So realization dawns on me, I'm just a small part of a great whole. And that's cool too, because I'm part of a purpose now. And that purpose is the primary purpose in the traditions is to carry this message to alcoholics who still suffer.
• 10:15
  So, well, you know, I think the long version of that's a better tradition five.
• 10:22
  Each alcoholic synonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose, that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.
• 10:34
  So I'm a part of that today.
• 10:35
  And that's a really cool deal because, you know, I've never, you know, I've been a part of things, but they haven't always been healthy things.
• 10:44
  Maybe I had some virtue in them.
• 10:46
  Maybe I had some good thoughts.
• 10:48
  But, you know, it was always just my doing and me trying to run it.
• 10:52
  But being a part of a group doing that.
• 10:55
  So, you know, and that group has common problem.
• 10:59
  And then common problem with common solution is the powerful statement which binds us.
• 11:03
  It keeps us together.
• 11:06
  It's really cool that book study that we started, we went for about a year.
• 11:12
  And now we're turning it into a meeting.
• 11:15
  and that's cool too
• 11:16
  because like you know
• 11:17
  getting to be a part of that
• 11:18
  and just to watch that
• 11:20
  you know
• 11:21
  maybe you know
• 11:21
  impact to someone else's life
• 11:23
  and you know
• 11:24
  maybe be an example
• 11:25
  to show other people
• 11:26
  that they can do that as well
• 11:28
  it doesn't matter
• 11:28
  you know
• 11:29
  as long as we're just
• 11:30
  following along
• 11:31
  and you know
• 11:31
  the thing
• 11:31
  the cool thing is
• 11:32
  is God just presents
• 11:34
  these opportunities
• 11:36
  and so
• 11:38
  I've heard things
• 11:39
  and I think it's true
• 11:41
  but there's no loss
• 11:42
  there's no loss
• 11:43
  in God's economy. And that is true. But if everybody just sits back and lets everybody
• 11:51
  else just do the work in anything, then who's going to do the work? Because everybody's just
• 11:58
  sitting back. So there's got to be people, just like I talked about the benign dictator.
• 12:03
  So you got the benign dictator that starts things, that has some virtue and it has some
• 12:09
  ambition to start things. And, you know, without God, you know, I don't think, you know, we would
• 12:16
  be able to do any of this. I mean, you know, me personally, I couldn't. Other people, you know,
• 12:21
  are maybe equipped to do things. But, you know, and just like this podcast, right, you know,
• 12:27
  it was so cool because me and Pastor Mike, he said, he came up to me, he said, hey, man,
• 12:32
  would you want to do this? And I was already talking to somebody else about doing something
• 12:36
  of that nature. And the timing was perfect. And, you know, so what a cool thing too about that.
• 12:44
  You know, what a cool thing, because at that time I was just starting to like open the Bible
• 12:48
  and kind of read a little bit here and there. But, you know, what this has done for me,
• 12:54
  what this has done for me is pushed me in the Bible and got me reading. And what else has happened
• 12:58
  is that as a chain reaction to that, it has my son in the Bible. None of that would have happened
• 13:04
  unless I wasn't in the Bible.
• 13:07
  And constantly reading and learning and seeking.
• 13:10
  And on page 46 of the big book,
• 13:14
  and I'm a really close person to me,
• 13:17
  found a lot of hope in this.
• 13:19
  And I do too, a lot of hope.
• 13:22
  We found that God does not make too hard of terms
• 13:25
  with those who seek Him.
• 13:29
  You know, seeking looks different probably for everybody,
• 13:32
  But if it was me and I was new to something like this, I would start with prayer and meditation and go from there.
• 13:42
  And, you know, I think it's, you know, a cool deal because this stuff has changed my life.
• 13:49
  You know, the Ripple 2 Spiritual says Christ showed that sacrifice leads to life.
• 13:53
  Prayer, Father, teach me to sacrifice with the right heart.
• 13:57
  Through Your spirit, form humility in me and help me build unity and strength in the lives
• 14:03
  around me through Your Son.
• 14:05
  Amen.