Latest / The Daily Ripples Podcast / May 26 - Growth Through Setbacks

Transcript

May 26 - Growth Through Setbacks · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:04
  Well, welcome back everyone to the Daily Ripples podcast.
• 0:07
  Today is May the 26th.
• 0:10
  We're glad that you're joining us back here today after, for some of you, I'm sure a holiday
• 0:14
  yesterday, Memorial Day.
• 0:16
  But we've got Corey and myself here with us, our regular host on the pod.
• 0:21
  We're going to launch right in with the Daily Ripple.
• 0:23
  Today is titled Growth Through Setbacks.
• 0:26
  The stone.
• 0:27
  Failure is not the end of growth.
• 0:30
  Often it is the place where deeper understanding begins.
• 0:33
  What feels like a step backward can become a step upward.
• 0:36
  Ripple 1 is practical.
• 0:38
  Today I will not waste my setbacks.
• 0:41
  Instead of hiding from them or being defined by them, I will learn from them.
• 0:45
  Mistakes can teach me what success never could if I'm willing to reflect and adjust.
• 0:52
  Ripple 2 is spiritual.
• 0:55
  God does not waste failure.
• 0:57
  As I walk with Christ, even my mistakes can be shaped into growth.
• 1:01
  The Holy Spirit uses weakness to form humility and wisdom.
• 1:05
  Over time, I begin to see that what once discouraged me can become a turning point toward a stronger and more grounded life.
• 1:12
  And we will end today with the prayer as well.
• 1:16
  But, Corey, I got to say, I know we're both part of the same home group.
• 1:21
  And especially at noon, there's a guy there.
• 1:23
  I'm only going to say his first name.
• 1:24
  I hope that he's listening or somebody gives him a shout out from this episode, but a guy named Nathan.
• 1:29
  And the reason why I thought of Nathan is that one of the things he always says is that there is no waste in God's economy.
• 1:36
  And that is such a powerful way of saying what this Daily Ripple is talking about as well, that we grow through those setbacks.
• 1:45
  In fact, when I wrote the first line of the spiritual, God does not waste failure, I could
• 1:49
  have just as easily quoted Nathan directly and said, there's no waste in God's economy
• 1:55
  because that is such a powerful way that he looks at it.
• 1:59
  And I think also, even going to the Psalms, which we go to a lot, Psalm 119 and verse 71,
• 2:05
  the psalmist writes that, it was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your
• 2:10
  decrees.
• 2:11
  So in other words, using that time of trial, that time of affliction, so that I could learn what God has in store for me or so that God can lead me through that.
• 2:22
  And I think that that is important both in our recovery and in our faith because, man, Corey, if I was never knocked down, I would stay on my high horse constantly.
• 2:33
  But anyway, that's where I initially go with it.
• 2:36
  What do you got for us today, Corey?
• 2:40
  Yeah.
• 2:40
  Yeah. And then, like, you know, then I got to, with all that, right, I got to be trusting that God is doing that in other people, too, right?
• 2:49
  Oh, absolutely.
• 2:50
  And that's, you know, and that's cool.
• 2:53
  But on page 124 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, it says,
• 2:58
  Henry Ford once made a wise remark to the fact that that experience is the thing of supreme value in life.
• 3:06
  That is true only if one is willing to turn the past to good account.
• 3:11
  We grow by our willingness to face and rectify errors and convert them into assets.
• 3:16
  The alcoholic's past thus becomes a principal asset of the family and frequently is almost the only one.
• 3:27
  I just got a text message from my son's grandmother.
• 3:36
  And it's so cool today.
• 3:39
  He had his graduation from elementary school today.
• 3:44
  Congratulations to him, yeah.
• 3:46
  It's cool to see, it's cool to be a part of these people.
• 3:53
  And for them to see me in a different light today.
• 3:56
  And, you know, and to be a part of that, you know, because, man, I'll tell you, there was a night that me and her, you know, I remember, shoot, we were fighting, like, we were both intoxicated and she was like, come on, Corey, hit me.
• 4:09
  And, like, we're fighting, you know what I mean?
• 4:11
  And, like, today, you know, it's, like, you know, I send his mother Bible verses in the morning, right?
• 4:18
  And, you know, it's just a cool deal to see that and be a part of that.
• 4:22
  Because, like, you know, my biggest defect, my greatest defect has become our greatest asset today.
• 4:31
  And, you know, and that's not by my doing.
• 4:34
  It's by God's.
• 4:34
  But, you know, I had to come to a place of complete willingness to do this thing.
• 4:38
  And on page 25 of the big book, or 23, I think.
• 4:42
  Oh, no, now I'm lost.
• 4:45
  I'm not usually like this.
• 4:47
  Yeah, you're usually spot on.
• 4:49
  You got a page number ready and you turn right to it.
• 4:51
  Yeah.
• 4:52
  Yeah, I'm kind of embarrassed.
• 4:54
  That's okay.
• 4:55
  I'll edit this out so no one will ever know.
• 4:57
  Well, you can keep it in here because it's on page 25.
• 5:00
  I was about to say, or will I?
• 5:02
  I was on page 25 and I was right.
• 5:04
  I just was going to...
• 5:07
  It says, if you're seriously alcoholic as we were, we believe there's no middle of the road solution.
• 5:13
  And a lot of people get mad at people in that middle-of-the-road solution.
• 5:17
  They're like, you're talking about us because we're doing da-da-da-da.
• 5:19
  Anyways, they get mad at that.
• 5:22
  But then it says, we were in a position where life was becoming impossible,
• 5:26
  and we pass into the region from which there is no return from human aid.
• 5:31
  And human aid, Michael, I don't know if you know this,
• 5:33
  but that means Alcoholics Anonymous meetings as well.
• 5:36
  Oh, of course, yeah.
• 5:38
  Or treatment, or anything in between, right?
• 5:43
  human aid is anything human.
• 5:46
  We had but two alternatives.
• 5:48
  One was to go on the bitter end,
• 5:51
  blotting out the consciousness
• 5:53
  of our intolerable situation
• 5:55
  as best we could.
• 5:56
  And the other was to accept spiritual help.
• 5:59
  And if anybody's listening to this
• 6:01
  that's still drinking or doing anything
• 6:04
  or might be going to go drink
• 6:07
  in the future,
• 6:08
  I will tell you this,
• 6:10
  that they tell you in these rooms
• 6:12
  that AA will mess up your drinking.
• 6:15
  And I will tell you that you can drink past that.
• 6:20
  Yeah, with enough willpower, right?
• 6:23
  Right, because it's just blotting out the consciousness
• 6:26
  of our intolerable situation.
• 6:28
  My situation is that I have a problem,
• 6:31
  and I knew I had a problem,
• 6:33
  but I drank past that thought of any problem
• 6:36
  and blotted it out.
• 6:38
  And, you know, the same way I used to do
• 6:40
  like bad text messages, I would have given a text message that I didn't want to read,
• 6:46
  and I'd blot my eyes out just enough to blur it.
• 6:48
  I remember you talking about this.
• 6:50
  Yeah, that's funny.
• 6:51
  That's funny.
• 6:52
  But, you know, then I come to, you know, can I accept spiritual help?
• 6:55
  Well, what if I can't?
• 6:57
  You know, so the steps are aligned in a way that, you know,
• 7:00
  I hear people, and it's silly to me today that it's always been silly, actually,
• 7:05
  because I've never understood it.
• 7:06
  You know, they're like, I got a problem with step two.
• 7:09
  I got a problem with step three.
• 7:12
  Well, then just go back to one and come back when you're ready.
• 7:15
  Because, you know, if you're broken down enough, in my view, man, I'll do it.
• 7:23
  Like, it was like when I was telling you I was in a jail cell and I had a million-dollar bond.
• 7:28
  And, you know, this one guy across the hall was like, I got a Quran.
• 7:31
  And the other guy in my cell was like, hey, do you want to borrow my Bible?
• 7:34
  And I said, man, I'll read whatever that gets me, you know, makes this bond lower for me to get out of it.
• 7:39
  Right, right. But I was thinking about, you know, this growing through the setbacks, you know, and today I've experienced that enough to know that when I'm going through hard times today, I know that that's not the end of the story.
• 7:58
  You know, that that's not the, that's not where I have to stay. That's not going to be where, you know, life ends and it's not the situation I'm going to be in always.
• 8:08
  And I think that comes through enough life experience to grow a little bit of that faith and trust in God.
• 8:18
  You know, I mean, Jesus said to his disciples all the time that, you know, with faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains.
• 8:24
  And for me, all I need is enough faith to be able to endure the hard things in life.
• 8:28
  You know, because without my faith, hard things come along and I'm ready to call it quits.
• 8:33
  Give up, you know, hang up my hat and say, never mind, this is as bad as it's going to get.
• 8:37
  I just want to, you know, curl into a ball and just stay there, you know.
• 8:41
  But another good, you know, biblical example of that type of faith, you know, even in the
• 8:46
  midst of hard times comes from, again, going back to the Old Testament, you know, the book
• 8:50
  of Job.
• 8:51
  You know, Job, who was the guy that, you know, was tested to prove that, you know, his faith
• 8:58
  in God and that his faith was strong.
• 9:01
  And he was talking to all the guys that were, you know, questioning him about the bad things
• 9:04
  that he was experiencing.
• 9:05
  and he said, he's talking about God, he said in Job 23:10, but he knows the way that I take.
• 9:12
  When he has tested me, I will come forth as gold. And I imagine that was a hard thing for Job to say
• 9:18
  in the middle of losing everything he owned, his kids dying, his, you know, crops, and, you know,
• 9:25
  dealing with all the different things that he had to deal with. But even in the middle of that,
• 9:30
  He's saying that he's trusting in God because he knows that once he gets to the other side of that, he'll come forth as gold.
• 9:37
  And that has happened to me in my life so many times.
• 9:41
  Where I am today, I'm not the richest, most famous, most powerful person in the world, but I'm content.
• 9:48
  I'm happy.
• 9:49
  I have that joy we were talking about yesterday.
• 9:52
  And if I focused only on the setbacks that I've had in life or the failures that I've had in life and did not grow through those, I wouldn't be able to sit here and say that today.
• 10:01
  And it gives me a lot of peace.
• 10:04
  You know, you were saying that what you were just saying, you know, if you focus on, and we could have touched on this a little bit, but it just made me think.
• 10:12
  If I'm always focused on the setbacks, right, those setbacks roll over.
• 10:17
  And then there's another setback.
• 10:19
  And then there's always another setback right there, because there's always situations.
• 10:23
  And if I'm always focused on those situations, maybe my whole life's going to be a problem.
• 10:28
  Right.
• 10:28
  The whole thing.
• 10:31
  And, you know, I don't know, you know, but if I stay in the side of, you know, being grateful,
• 10:39
  and just knowing that God's taking care of me this far, and they're just situations,
• 10:43
  and, you know, some people are going through some hard things.
• 10:46
  And, you know, my significant other definitely is right now.
• 10:49
  And, you know, watching that and, you know, having trust that it's going to be, you know, that she's going to be okay during this.
• 10:59
  You know, it's crazy because, like, I do have trust in it, in the whole process.
• 11:08
  But I just hate to, because, you know, I mean, people prayed for me when I was going through it, right?
• 11:14
  Yeah.
• 11:14
  And people trusted that, hey, there's nothing lost in God's economy.
• 11:22
  Right, right.
• 11:25
  But still, you know, to see the destruction as well through that process, you know what I mean?
• 11:33
  Yeah.
• 11:33
  That's something to watch.
• 11:35
  And, you know, one thing I don't like about that statement, though, the one thing I don't,
• 11:42
  is because I've heard it for a long time,
• 11:45
  and, you know, people,
• 11:47
  it takes the responsibility off the members in those rooms.
• 11:53
  Because, and this is just a thought,
• 11:56
  because you're not like this, and I'm not like this.
• 11:59
  But, so if everybody, and I've seen this, though,
• 12:02
  and it's sad, because, you know, everybody in the room,
• 12:05
  you know, say a new person comes in,
• 12:07
  and, you know, maybe that person,
• 12:10
  Nobody even went up to them and said, hey, do you need someone to help you through this?
• 12:14
  Yeah.
• 12:15
  And, you know, then that person goes back out.
• 12:18
  Then all those people in that room were like, they weren't ready.
• 12:21
  And nobody even went up to that person.
• 12:24
  And then everybody's like, you know, well, there's nothing lost in God's economy.
• 12:29
  Well, no, there's a responsibility of that group to carry this message.
• 12:35
  And if that message isn't getting carried, then there's just a room full of sick people.
• 12:39
  And those sick people and a sick person goes into that room.
• 12:42
  And now I feel like I'm, you know, kind of ranting, but that's okay.
• 12:46
  But that sick person, you know, had nowhere to go.
• 12:52
  And there's nothing lost in the economy of the people that don't do anything.
• 12:57
  And there's nothing lost in the economy about the people that sit here and, you know, talk about it either.
• 13:03
  And bring it up.
• 13:04
  I don't know.
• 13:05
  And I think, I mean, you hit on it.
• 13:06
  It's the responsibility of the group.
• 13:08
  It's not that the newcomer wasn't ready.
• 13:10
  It's that the old-timer sitting in the room wasn't ready for the newcomer to come in.
• 13:13
  Right.
• 13:13
  Because they weren't ready to offer the hand of AA, you know, anytime that it's needed,
• 13:18
  as one of the, you know, traditions or phrases that we use, you know, in the AA program at least says.
• 13:24
  Right.
• 13:24
  You know, we have, like you said, we have a responsibility statement that says,
• 13:27
  when anyone anywhere reaches out for help, I want the hand of us always to be there for that I'm responsible.
• 13:34
  And we could do a better job of living up to that.
• 13:37
  But again, even that, even not living up to that can be one of those setbacks that we can grow through.
• 13:44
  Because the people who don't do that the best, you never know.
• 13:48
  They might hear you talking and sharing about it and take that as encouragement to do a little bit better.
• 13:53
  Because we've also seen the examples of where that is done in a good way as well.
• 13:59
  I've been fortunate enough recently to the one time in the past year that I've been invited to and went along with some people from our group to a rehab facility on a Monday night.
• 14:11
  It was just two of us there.
• 14:13
  And it was myself and my sponsee, Memphis, who has been here on the pod before for a couple of days.
• 14:19
  But we were the two there.
• 14:21
  And there was a guy there in the group that he was getting out the next day.
• 14:24
  And so we shared our phone numbers and he got out the next day and he called us and texted us.
• 14:29
  And we got him, you know, come into our home group.
• 14:32
  And then I didn't let him go too far along, not past, you know, a couple, three meetings when, you know,
• 14:39
  I kind of did some behind the scenes, you know, checking with my, you know, sponsee saying,
• 14:44
  hey, do you have the time and availability to sponsor this guy?
• 14:48
  And of course he said, yeah, he would make the time for it because it was important.
• 14:52
  And so then I was able to suggest, you know, to the new guy, hey, why don't you reach out and ask,
• 14:57
  you know, Memphis to be your sponsor? And he did. And he's now getting ready to, you know,
• 15:02
  getting very close to his first 30 days of sobriety in a long time. And so that's really what it's all
• 15:08
  about, you know, and, and he, there's lots of conversations, you know, that I have with him about,
• 15:15
  you know, he'll get frustrated or discouraged about his progress or lack thereof, or his
• 15:20
  situation in life right now. And that's where we are the hands of the program that have to be there
• 15:25
  because somebody was there for me when I was going through those things, when I was experiencing all
• 15:29
  the setbacks, when I was trying to recover from the greatest failure that I had in life, you know,
• 15:35
  which was my rock bottom, you know, from alcoholism, somebody was there for me. And again,
• 15:40
  hearkening back to our gratitude episode as well, how ingrateful would I be not to be willing to be
• 15:45
  of service to him in his time of need.
• 15:48
  Yeah.
• 15:50
  Yeah, and that guy, he seems, you know, I know who you're talking about, too, because
• 15:53
  he seems like he's really willing, I guess, is the word, and, you know, well, he's really
• 16:01
  broken.
• 16:01
  It turns into willingness.
• 16:03
  Yeah, I love a broken one, man.
• 16:07
  And I guess I was broken, you know, and I was willing, and, you know, I don't like the
• 16:12
  ones that I'm almost having to convince to do this work because it's like, man, like, you know,
• 16:17
  nobody had to convince me. And with people that I sponsor, I don't try to convince them. I'm just
• 16:23
  there when they're ready to do the work. I'll give them the next step. And then they have to,
• 16:29
  their, their willingness to show in that they're trying to work the program by doing the next step.
• 16:35
  [2] Corinthians 12:9.
• 16:38
  I have that down.
• 16:40
  And it says, but he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
• 16:53
  You know, I think, you know, that's because if I'm on some high horse, right, and I'm, if, you know, if the drink is still working for me,
• 17:02
  And I don't know about you, Michael, but there was a time probably for you when the drink was working.
• 17:06
  Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 17:09
  Why would I ever, you know, if I'm in that place, you know, I've had a guy the other day, you know, text me and he's out there and he's like, man, I need to get back in there.
• 17:19
  And I'm thinking, why?
• 17:21
  Why?
• 17:21
  If my life is not just was not in shambles, I would never even consider coming back in those rooms and the rooms I'm in because it would still be working, even if it wasn't working at its best ability.
• 17:35
  Right, right.
• 17:37
  Because, you know, I'm still getting that spiritual experience by means of the bottle.
• 17:43
  And if I'm getting a spiritual experience by means of the bottle, I'm not going to be searching out for another one.
• 17:48
  That's right.
• 17:49
  But, yeah.
• 17:51
  Well, I think that's a great spot for us to stop today.
• 17:56
  Why don't you close us out with our prayer for the day?
• 17:59
  Father, help me learn from my failures.
• 18:02
  Through Your Spirit, turn my setbacks into growth and guide me to walk more faithfully in the way of Your Son.
• 18:09
  Amen.
• 18:09
  Amen.