Latest / The Daily Ripples Podcast / October 23 – Staying Focused

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October 23 – Staying Focused · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:04
  October 23, staying focused.
• 0:08
  The stove, God accomplishes his greatest work when I remain faithful to the purpose he has given me.
• 0:15
  Ripple and Practical.
• 0:17
  Today I will focus on what God has called me to do instead of trying to do everything.
• 0:22
  A life scattered, into many, in too many directions, accomplishes little.
• 0:29
  Faithfulness grows when I give my best to work when placed before me.
• 0:34
  Ripple too spiritual, as I follow Christ's example of unwavering purpose, the Holy Spirit keeps me drawing my attention back to what truly matters.
• 0:42
  When distractions compete for my time and energy, the father has given each of his opportunities to serve.
• 0:49
  And lasting fruit comes from faithfully attending to the work he has entrusted to us.
• 0:55
  Um, You know, I was listening, you know, they talk about a fig tree, right?
• 1:01
  And aren't the, the, uh, on a fig tree, aren't there?
• 1:06
  Like the little fruits were very small.
• 1:09
  They're not huge.
• 1:10
  They're, they're not as small as like a grape or anything, but they're, but they're not big like apples or peaches, I don't believe.
• 1:17
  Yeah, so if you were like tending to a fig tree.
• 1:20
  You'd have to like pay attention to detail, wouldn't you?
• 1:22
  Oh yeah.
• 1:23
  I think most any type of gardening you do.
• 1:25
  Right.
• 1:26
  Yeah.
• 1:26
  Yeah, I've never garden.
• 1:27
  Me either.
• 1:28
  So we're both talking outside bar experience.
• 1:31
  Well, you know, I was just thinking about you going to, like, pay attention to that and don't, like, you know, because it says up here, staying focused.
• 1:37
  Yeah, right?
• 1:39
  And if I'm paying attention to what I need to be doing and where God has me, because in the big book, it says on page 124, uh, where it cling to the thought that in God's hands, the dark pass is the greatest possession you have.
• 1:53
  Well, what's the greatest possession?
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  What's my dark path?
• 1:57
  Well, it's full of alcohol, misery and all that stuff, right?
• 2:02
  So that's my dark past.
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  But my dark past could be something else, but I'm going to say that's my dark past.
• 2:07
  And the key, and then it says, the dark passes the greatest possession you have, the key to life and happiness for others.
• 2:14
  With it, you can avert death and misery for them.
• 2:17
  And I like, you know, I'm going to talk for you, and that's really cool that I could do this because I know you.
• 2:22
  And what's...
• 2:24
  I'm listening, yeah.
• 2:26
  Um, but your dark pass is you being a practicing atheist.
• 2:31
  Yeah.
• 2:32
  And what you do today as a preacher is you help people do that.
• 2:37
  And that's really cool.
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  And I, like, you know, I'm glad, like that one time, like, we can, I,
• 2:42
  I came to that because I was, you know, I think about that.
• 2:45
  like, you know, common problem, common solution.
• 2:47
  Right.
• 2:47
  easy, simple.
• 2:48
  You know, well, my common problem is when I take a sip of alcohol, I do not want to stop.
• 2:55
  I have this allergy of the sort that says, hey, I'm not gonna stop.
• 2:59
  And I like him, I have no plans of stopping and you're not going to stop me.
• 3:04
  nobody's going to stop me.
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  anybody can't stop me.
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  without happens.
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  And so like, yeah, but that's my darkest path. And, you know, it's really cool that you put it, you put in here, right?
• 3:16
  It says, God accomplishes his greatest work.
• 3:18
  When I remain faithful to the purpose he has given me.
• 3:22
  Well, you know, with the purpose he has given me, and in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, tradition five, then the law and form says, each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity, having had but one primary purpose, not 2 or three, but one that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.
• 3:45
  And what a cool thing.
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  I have a purpose.
• 3:47
  But let me, in my ego, get off the track of that purpose, not have, and I can.
• 3:54
  And also our sponsoring dudes that, you know, our math addicts or this or this, because I think, I think I have this thing that could save everybody.
• 4:04
  But if I don't have the common problem, how am I going to relate to that common problem with you?
• 4:08
  And so I'll get off the beam a little bit and I'll go this way and maybe someone, you know, helps somebody here and then I'll take me into, but when I stay amongst the structural lines of what I know.
• 4:20
  And what this book talks about.
• 4:22
  Because it says right here, it says, a little bit down, it says, today I'll focus on what God has called me to do instead of trying to do everything. Because I want to do everything, though.
• 4:33
  Because my mind tells me that Corey, he could do everything.
• 4:38
  Man, when I was younger, this was cool.
• 4:41
  So I just started, you know, doing electrical work and all this and uh, the guy came approached me and he goes, hey man, let's start a company.
• 4:49
  And you can kind of do the electrical part and I'll do this.
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  And I did, this was all on the side.
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  I still had a job.
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  I was like, yeah, man.
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  And like, you know, the way I kind of viewed that is like, you know, let's do everything.
• 5:02
  I don't want to just do one thing I want to do at all.
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  And I've kind of, you know, I was in that position early on a lot, like when I 1st started doing construction.
• 5:10
  Man, I want to start a company that does it all.
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  Residential, commercial, want to be conquering, all this, any piece of it.
• 5:19
  I want to do it all.
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  Get the bag because why not?
• 5:23
  Yeah.
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  But, you know, you know what FOD does, this is that, you know, just start out like that.
• 5:27
  You know, you can have like a handyman.
• 5:29
  I'm not knocking them, but they're not big successful businesses because they focus on one thing.
• 5:35
  Yeah.
• 5:36
  And you know, for me, you know, if I want to be effective in this, I probably want to focus on one thing.
• 5:41
  And to be honest, as a homeowner, those are the people that I look for that I call.
• 5:46
  I don't want the plumbing, HVAC, handyman, van pulling up, where I want the plumber pulling up.
• 5:52
  Right.
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  When my toilet clogs up.
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  I want the handyman pulling up when a cabinet falls apart.
• 5:56
  You know, like I want those who are specialized.
• 5:59
  Yeah, and what they're good at.
• 6:00
  What do you think, buddy?
• 6:02
  Well, I was thinking about, as you're reading this one, especially the part about staying focused.
• 6:09
  I was thinking about just the timing and the lessons from the past, right?
• 6:13
  Because we're at Friday, October 23rd.
• 6:17
  And this is about the time, one year ago that I was coming off of and kind of back to reality from a little bit of a breakdown of, well, in the back, back in the day, we would call it a nervous breakdown kind of thing.
• 6:30
  I had, uh, got to the place where I had been changing too many, you know, anxiety medicine, so then I just stopped them all one day and had a new puppy and didn't sleep for 3 nights and that all happened like October 15th and 14th of 2025.
• 6:46
  You know, because, and shortly after all that happened, you know, in early November of last year, uh, is when I very publicly, you know, lost a prominent role that I had in a job.
• 6:57
  But it wasn't a role that was enabling me to truly live into the calling that God had on my life.
• 7:05
  Like, I was being of service to other people, and I rationalized it, and I was doing a good job for a long time, you know, that everybody was, I mean, heck, the Chamber of Commerce, that suburb gave me their Person of the Year Award.
• 7:16
  So, I mean, I was doing decently and I was accomplishing things.
• 7:18
  But I was also working 7 days a week.
• 7:21
  I was stressed out all the time.
• 7:22
  I was having anxiety in my personal life.
• 7:24
  I wasn't taking the time to work with other people in recovery.
• 7:27
  You know, I was doing the bare minimum in terms of like what God's purpose for my life was, and I was pursuing this other thing, you know, and trying to be successful at it.
• 7:35
  And what I found now, you know, almost a year removed from that is that what I do today is things like this, that we're doing this podcast, that are trying to get the message out to other people, I work more directly with sponsees again, you know, spend time with them, walking through the book, walking through the steps, you know, I've got a guy working on his nightstep stuff now and using the, some of the things that you've taught me, you know, through the course of this past 6 months, you know, about the, especially the note cards, you know, here, he's doing the note card method, honest,
• 8:06
  Step amends and things like that.
• 8:08
  And so I'm in this place now where every day I have an opportunity to be of service to somebody else, either through recovery or through one of my churches.
• 8:19
  And the contentment, and I would even say happiness that I have today is night and day different than what it was a year ago, because happiness is not just extreme joy all the time.
• 8:31
  The real definition of happiness is more like contentment and being fulfilled, right?
• 8:35
  And so I have a true and lasting happiness today.
• 8:38
  It's because I stay focused on, like it says, focus on what God has called me to do instead of trying to do everything.
• 8:44
  You know, I was running around trying to do everything.
• 8:47
  I was trying to do all the jobs, trying to earn all the money, and we come back to this, the purpose.
• 8:52
  God accomplishes his greatest work when I remain faithful to the purpose he has given me.
• 8:57
  You know, a week ago, as of this airing, a week ago, it was Friday during the Bluff City conference.
• 9:05
  And there was a speaker meeting that I went to, and one of the things that I got out of what she was saying was I made this really cool connection between something that I've heard time and time again in recovery, and the Great Commission in the gospel.
• 9:17
  And because she said, the speaker said that her real job today is to carry this message and to practice these principles and all her affairs, right?
• 9:26
  And so I started thinking and I thought, well, that's just like what Jesus was teaching us to do in Matthew 28, you know, at the end of it.
• 9:35
  He says, go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.
• 9:44
  And so that part of that, going and baptizing, that's carrying the message, the gospel of faith, and then the part about practicing his principles in all affairs, that's where Jesus is saying, teaching them to observe the things that I've taught you.
• 9:57
  And so the same things, you know, it was just a really cool connection in here in that speaker, just connecting back one of those common recovery phrases to that great commission.
• 10:07
  But when I'm carrying out that great commission or the plan or the calling that Jesus has on my life, I have a sense of fulfillment that, you know, nothing else that crops up is going to be the end of the world.
• 10:17
  Huh. I don't even, man, I was thinking about what you wrote right here.
• 10:23
  So life scattered in too many directions accomplishes little.
• 10:28
  Yeah.
• 10:29
  Um, and you know, I, I, I've been a part of that.
• 10:34
  And you know, I've been a part of talking about in my life.
• 10:38
  You know, this was a long time ago about the business of being managing, right?
• 10:44
  And like, you know, balancing and, you know, words like that.
• 10:49
  I would talk about that frequently and I thought that, you know, people around the realm of where I was at in my life, um, that was talked about a lot.
• 10:59
  Yeah. And, you know, I find today in the realm where I'm at, I don't talk a lot about that.
• 11:07
  I mean, I do, but I'm not worried about it.
• 11:10
  Right.
• 11:11
  Because I do have a structure and I understand like what's important.
• 11:14
  And like, you know, because if it's a life scattered in too many directions accomplishes little.
• 11:19
  Well, my life looks like my home is the most important thing.
• 11:23
  My 2nd thing is my job to keep my home to make, you know, the 3rd thing is, you know, my affairs and, you know, and I wrote while I wrote about it this morning.
• 11:34
  You know, because I don't have to worry about what God's vision for me today is because I know I know my purpose.
• 11:40
  And so my purpose is to love and be of service in those 3 areas of my life.
• 11:46
  Man, like my life isn't scattered everywhere around.
• 11:50
  Yeah. In your morning meditations lately, just to give you your flowers here, they've been really good.
• 11:56
  I've been telling you for the past few days, every time I read them, I get something out of it, and I keep telling you, and for everybody who wants to see it, send us an email to wave at dailyripples.com.
• 12:06
  I'm trying to convince Corey to get on here, figure out how to publish these on our website and get them out to more people because they're really good connection points, you know, that he's making between the readings and kind of what he's learned through his recovery journey.
• 12:20
  You ready for the prayer body?
• 12:22
  Yes, sir.
• 12:22
  Father God, help me remain faithful to the work you have given me through your Holy Spirit, help me focus on what truly matters.
• 12:30
  Shake me through the example of Jesus.
• 12:33
  Amen.
• 12:33
  Amen.
• 12:34
  And I see what you did there.
• 12:35
  You know, I get in away with that.
• 12:37
  I start talking about you doing something next and potion those and you just cutting into the episode with the program.
• 12:42
  I don't want to talk about that.
• 12:45
  Y'all, reach out, make him do it.