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April 30 – The Paradox of Giving · The Daily Ripples Podcast

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  April 30th, the paradox of giving, the stone.
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  Some gifts grow stronger, the more they are shared.
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  What we give away in service often deepens within us.
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  Ripple one practical.
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  Today I'll remember that encouragement, wisdom, and kindness multiply one shared.
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  The lessons I've learned through struggle are not meant to be kept to myself.
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  When I offer them to someone else, both of us are strengthened.
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  Ripple two spiritual.
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  Jesus taught that whoever seeks to keep life for themselves will lose it, but whoever gives their
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  life away will find it. As I walk in his example, the Holy Spirit turns my experience into blessings
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  for others. What God has done in my life becomes a light that helps someone else find the way
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  forward. Yeah, I told you we were going to talk about a couple things, and we are going to talk
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  about a couple things, because when I look at a place where I've been in the deepest place in my
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  life, and I come to these rooms, and, well, in Tradition 5 of the 12 and 12, let me just give
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  their example, then I will, anyways, it says, there's another reason for the singleness of
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  purpose. It is the great paradox of AA, that we know we can seldom keep this precious gift of
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  sobriety unless we give it away. If a group of doctors possess a cancer cure, they might be
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  conscious stricken if they failed their mission through self-seeking, yet such a failure wouldn't
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  jeopardize their personal survival. So when I think about that, and you know, I kind of related to herpes.
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  Okay. I wasn't ready for that, Corey, but okay, yeah, I don't think anyone listening probably was
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  ready for that evening. But yes, please, a herpes. So think about this. And if you had a room and
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  you had this thing, herpes, and I don't have it, been tested. Thank goodness. But if you had a room
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  where these people had this cure for this thing, right? And you went into this room and all these
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  people being cured by this thing and nobody said anything, or they did say something and they helped
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  you out, right? And you stayed hanging out with these people and you never said anything to these
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  other people that came in the door like, hey, man, I'm going to show you what I did to relieve
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  this thing. And so I see that today, though, because I hear it all the time across the board.
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  And, you know, it's like, yeah, I'm not going to do that. This is a selfish thing. Well, you know,
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  this is not a selfish thing, Michael. The reason it's not is because it's a selfless program for
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  selfish people. Right. Right. It's taken way out of context. So when I start deciding,
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  hey, I'm going to hold on to this and not give it away. That's why it leaves because I'm so,
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  I'm killing myself inside, holding on to this message that was freely given to me.
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  And I sit down with guys, you know, depending on who it is, especially if we're in the book,
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  I sit down with them for an hour, hour and a half a week. So then I do that with somebody else or
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  somebody. And they, you know, I remember this one guy, and I usually say this to people when they say
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  thank you. And I'd say thank you for their time, because their time was as important to me as the
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  other way around. But I just tell them, you know, just do it for somebody else. And that's the most
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  important thing, just do it for somebody else. Because if we just keep doing it, it just keeps
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  growing. And I just think it's so cool. Well, and that's why, you know, it talks about the paradox
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  of giving. And there's paradoxes that happen, you know, throughout this whole program. And for
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  anybody listening who maybe hadn't looked it up as recently as I have, you know, on a paradox,
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  the simplest way for me to define a paradox, two things existing in the same place that should not
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  exist in the same place together, that seemingly would be, you know, opposites that somehow exist in
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  the same place. And so you think about that definition of it when you talk about giving in
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  the way that the program tells us is that to keep recovery, we have to give it away. Well,
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  well, that's a paradox. How do you give something away and keep it? To serve ourselves,
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  we should be selfless in giving and loving and serving others. Well, how does that work?
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  Well, how it works is that when I am selflessly helping somebody else,
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  I'm not giving myself something to fill my cup, but God is. God is filling my spirit with
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  affirmation, with hope, with assurance, with faith, all of those in the fruits of the Holy
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  Spirit that the Bible, you know, talks about so much as well. The fruits of the Holy Spirit are
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  growing within me as I'm out there giving it away. You know, I'm out there, you know, trying to
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  faithfully, whether it's in recovery or whether it's in my faith, you know, sowing seeds of faith,
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  but I'm not the one responsible for the harvest. You know, the harvest is being done by Jesus. And
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  I think, you know, this whole thing about the paradox of giving, it's very biblical, you know,
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  where this comes from also, you know, because this concept in recovery, of course, it comes from
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  the earliest founders, I'm sure, understanding of Scripture and the Bible and the teachings of Jesus,
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  because in that, you know, Luke, the sixth chapter, you know, and we've talked about this recently,
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  because I think recently you've been studying the Gospel of Luke and reading some of it and sending me
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  some passages on certain days, but in the Sermon on the Plain, as it's called in Luke, which is a
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  companion to Matthew 5, starting the Sermon on the Mount. But this Sermon on the Plain in Luke in 638,
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  you get to some of the more famous verses at the end. And because they're so famous,
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  I'm going to read them out of the message interpretation, because that kind of puts it
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  in plain language. And the message, what it says in there is that, you know, don't pick on people,
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  jump on their failures or criticize their faults, unless, of course, you want the same treatment.
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  Don't condemn those who are down. That hardness can boomerang. Be easy on people. You'll find life
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  a lot easier. Give away your life and you'll find life given back, but not merely given back,
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  given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity.
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  And I like the way that that's written because I think we all know the more,
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  the traditional reading of that, which, you know, from the New King James Version,
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  that verse 38 is give and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together and
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  running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured
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  back to you. And we're all familiar with that, but I love the closing line of the message that
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  generosity begets generosity. It may not beget generosity in you if I'm being generous with you,
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  but it makes me more generous. It makes me more generous with others. People may be, you know,
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  the Holy Spirit may spark a thought within somebody else if they happen to see that generosity of spirit and say,
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  hey, you know, maybe you need to be more generous the way you see Corey being.
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  You know, maybe you need to be more giving with your time the way that you see Corey giving his time so freely for others or whomever it may be.
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  But that is definitely that paradox of giving, because the more that I give, the more there is to give.
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  You know, I mean, that's the thing.
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  So I don't know.
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  I don't understand it.
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  This is where I always come back to saying, well, that's just part of the mystery of faith.
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  You know, I don't know how it works, but I know through my own life and experience that it does work.
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  Yeah.
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  You're kind of the Bible guy, and I'm the big book guy.
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  But I did like this part of the Bible, and we're going to tie it all in, so that's cool.
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  In Matthew 16, 25, it says,
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  For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
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  You know, so when I give freely and give freely to people, you know, God's people, right?
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  You know, and even spiritually sick people, because I'm spiritually sick, and I think we're all spiritually sick in one way or the other.
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  And I think that ties in together with page 100 of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
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  Because it says these first five, six words are really important of the promise that this gives you.
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  But people forget it because they'll give the whole rest of it and forget the other side of it because it says both you and the new man.
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  So you got you and new man.
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  So you and the person you're helping must walk day by day on this path of spiritual progress.
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  If you persist, remarkable things will happen.
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  When we look back, we realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God's
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  hands were far better than anything we could have planned. That's been the case of my life,
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  and that's my journey to right here. If it wasn't anything but that, I wouldn't be sitting here with
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  you, right? Because my life looked like how it was going and how it should have gone. I think
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  we've talked about this before of what I deserve versus what I've gotten, grace.
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  right? You know, thank God for grace, because if it was what I deserved, I'd be dead or in a jail
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  cell. And, but, you know, God gave me this grace, the ability and the chance to go help some other
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  people and to now be giving freely and to live a life of freedom, to live a life where I'm able to
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  go help another man and to sit and, you know, to talk with somebody. And yeah, to go out and,
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  you know, I think the best thing in the recovery rooms is when I have people judging me.
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  Like, I piss people off.
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  There is some people that do not like me because I only like talking from this.
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  Because if I'm talking from my feelings and my point of views and my thoughts,
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  people, they're not going to get anything out of that.
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  And they might, you know, because I can kind of weave it in.
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  But, you know, my point of view is someone that used to be Corey.
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  I used to be a criminal.
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  I wasn't just a heavy drinker.
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  I did things that were not good to people, and I treated people very poorly.
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  And that's probably why the discipline I have today, I know, because I have been in those places too, right?
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  And I have been in cells, and then I find out when I'm sitting in a cell, for some reason, I'm a great person.
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  And so I'm institutionalized.
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  I institutionalized well, and that's not something to be proud of.
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  And when I go talk in certain places like we were talking about earlier today, I talk about those things.
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  And when I say that in front of guys like that, I'm like, man, I do very well in institutions.
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  I see a lot of heads nodding because they understand and I understand because I do well in those situations because those are my people.
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  And I agree with that.
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  I live that life with those guys.
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  But yeah, man, just like the other side of that.
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  So I agree, like when I walked through with a new man or, you know, our buddy, our buddy, I'm not going to say his name, but man, you know, so he was about to come off his probation stuff, right?
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  Be done with it.
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  And then he got some bad news of something happened and they added six months more to his thing.
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  And he called me and, you know, I told him and I pointed into that page 100 in the big book.
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  And I said, man, like, you know, you are very disciplined within your sobriety right now.
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  But I said, you know, you have no idea what's going to happen in the next six months.
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  You know, it could be something, you know, that, you know, puts you in a position.
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  And for some reason, the only thing that helps you stay sober in that moment is that drug test.
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  Because he has to take a drug test while he's under probation, right?
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  He knows parameters.
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  And, you know, so I said, you have no idea, man, what's in store.
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  The only difference in your life today is a couple extra dollars you got to pay to be on it.
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  And, yeah, so he was kind of going through it.
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  But, you know, but today I get to do that with guys.
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  I get to talk with them just like that.
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  I get to be there for them as a helping hand.
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  Well, and the thing about, you know, the paradox of giving is that it's not just about being of service. Sometimes what we're giving is something more elusive, like we're giving people hope, you know, by sharing our experience strength, you know, we're giving people hope.
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  And as we see that hope dawning in someone else, it gives us more hope.
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  Like it fulfills us in thinking that, you know, we're doing something good.
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  But I like one of the things that you, you know, talked about because it talked about, you know, in the book, and it might have been on that page 100, said that you and the new man must walk day by day.
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  Right.
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  Right. And I think of how, you know, early on for me in recovery, and I'm not going to use any names, but I had a sponsor one time who we got to a certain point, you know, working through the steps. And I, I'm trying to think of a way to word this. Yeah. And I didn't want to say that because it sounds like ego or what have you, but it's just the truth. It was that, that, you know, he still has some things going on in his life that he needed to deal with.
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  So he wasn't necessarily walking hand in hand with me through those steps.
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  He was giving me the information, you know, about how to walk through those steps.
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  But then once, you know, I walked beyond that through the steps and again, still maintained
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  a great, you know, relationship with him throughout the years, but there became a point to where,
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  you know, as a sponsor, you know, he was not providing what I needed for my recovery at
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  that moment in time.
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  Right.
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  And so I had to make a change.
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  And I know that, you know, so I never go into, you know, working with a sponsee thinking that I'm going to give them everything that they ever need.
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  I'm there just trying to be faithful.
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  I'm giving away as I am receiving because what I'm receiving is through, you know, the Holy Spirit, you know, working in me and forming within me the willingness.
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  because one of the key things that he did give me at that time was a great example of what it means to go above and beyond and out of your way to be there and to walk, you know, even just through life with a new person who comes into recovery.
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  And that was definitely an invaluable gift that I received from him.
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  You know, I think we've kind of touched on it a little bit, but I think I was telling my fiance about this because, you know, she gets really let down because, you know, I mean, a lot of people go back out.
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  The stats are not in our favor.
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  Not at all.
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  No.
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  But the big book tells me otherwise.
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  But anyways, we're not going to get into that rant.
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  Because, you know, my first sponsor, you know, he was a big part of my life.
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  And I talk about him a lot because he was a huge part of my life.
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  But I didn't stay sober.
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  And we're talking about Doug, right?
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  I've even picked up on the end there.
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  Yeah, Doug was a big part of my life.
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  And we would talk for hours at a time.
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  It was so cool when I was in his presence.
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  Things happened, and I kind of drifted away.
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  And the next thing you know, I'm drinking again.
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  But when I came into this position, though, of coming back in, because I kind of outgrew, I mean, you can listen to this too, buddy.
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  I mean, I got into a place, a position where I kind of outgrew him too.
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  But, you know, because if I'm searching, if I'm always seeking, I'm always trying to grow.
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  And that's okay, because, you know, I'll have different circumstances, you know, in each person in my life.
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  you know, this kind of sounds kind of using,
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  but has been right where they were supposed to be
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  in that right particular moment.
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  You know, that divine thing.
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  But, you know.
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  Yeah, to flip that around, it's not using at all.
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  That's God's providence, providing for you
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  what you couldn't provide for yourself.
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  Absolutely.
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  And so it put each thing, you know,
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  like my buddy Kevin, man, when I came back in the rooms,
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  man, you know, that guy saved my life.
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  But then I started looking at all these different people that have affected me.
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  And, you know, it grows and grows and grows and grows and grows.
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  So my fiancé, man, I'll tell her, you know, I'm like, man, you have no idea.
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  That girl that you spent time with and that you, you know, were there for her was just a step, you know, I like this.
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  It's just a stepping stone, right?
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  If she did go back out, she comes back in, she'll remember, hey, but we went through this and she talked about this.
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  You know, because you can't see until you can see, right?
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  And I couldn't see until I can see.
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  And so I think, you know, everybody in this world, because, you know, if you think about
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  we're all God's children.
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  Nobody's greater.
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  Nobody's less than us.
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  That's right.
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  And everything is just divinely put in place.
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  And, you know, it's amazing.
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  Like, it starts getting overwhelming, you know, because all you start thinking about it, you're
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  like, man, everything is just designed perfect.
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  But not in the moment.
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  I can't see it in the moment for some reason.
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  Yeah.
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  And I think that's the temptation with all of us is that in the moment, many times we cannot see where God is there with us and God is there covering us and watching over, protecting us.
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  And that's why I'm so thankful that hindsight being 20-20 as it is, because me looking back at my past and seeing where God was there with me provides me the assurance and the faith that God is still there with me today.
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  Because if he brought me through that, then he could certainly bring me through this minor little problem that I have today.
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  I wish Bernard.
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  I wish to know the reason why Bernard's taking so long with my car.
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  Anyways, that's besides the point.
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  Anyways, the prayer.
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  Father, thank you for the gifts you have given me through every season of life.
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  Help me follow the example of Christ and share what you have done in me
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  so that others may find hope and strengthen.
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  Amen.
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  Amen.
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  Hey, guys.
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  This is Corey.
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  I'm with Pastor Mike.
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  I'm going to just restart that.
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  Yeah, that's crazy.
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  Take two.