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August 2 – Willing to Be Made Whole · The Daily Ripples Podcast

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Welcome back, everybody, to the Daily
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Ripples Podcast. This is Sunday again, and that means
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that you have just gotten me today, Pastor Mike.
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As Corey would say, I'm the host, the co-host, and the soloist,
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or the special guest. I don't know. Anyway, we lose the thread on these intros
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at times. The Daily Ripples Podcast is where our
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life of Christian faith meets our life of recovery.
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It's where the 12 steps, the Big Book, and the big, big book,
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as we often say, the Bible, meet at the intersection of our lives.
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And so every day we're on here talking about
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the Daily Ripples devotional of the day. And if you
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wonder, well, what the heck is that? Well, that's something that I wrote starting this
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year, and I take AA's daily reflection, I take a stone
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of truth from it, cast it out into the waters or the surface of
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our lives, and it ripples into practical application. Spiritual development,
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and then we end with a prayer. So today, with all that being said,
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is Sunday, August 2nd, and it's titled Willing to
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Be Made Whole. Now again, if you're a parishioner at
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one of the churches I serve listening to this before the first service,
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you already know the drill. Just because you're listening to a
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talk from a pastor doesn't mean that you get out of going
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to church this morning. So With all that being said, the stone.
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Making amends is not about easing my conscience, but becoming
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willing to let God change my life. Ripple 1 is
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practical. Today, I will examine my motives.
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I will seek what is right, not merely what makes me feel better.
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True willingness means doing the next right thing regardless
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of the outcome. Ripple 2, spiritual. The Father
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is preparing me for greater usefulness, not greater comfort.
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Jesus teaches me that reconciliation requires humility and
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honesty. The Holy Spirit reveals hidden motives and helps
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me surrender my own agenda.
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And as always, we save our prayer for the end of the episode.
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Now, today's stone, if you haven't figured it out by now, is really
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about the 8th and the 9th steps. It's making a
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list of the people we've harmed and become willing to make amends to them all,
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and then actually going out and doing it wherever we can, except when to do
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so would injure them or others. And of course,
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as we know, this is the 8th month, August, and since these daily devotionals
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are based upon the daily reflections from AA-approved
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literature, we're going to be talking a lot about particularly the 8th step
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this month, and of course, That goes hand in hand with the 9th.
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But the Stone says this is about becoming willing to let
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God change my life. And willing, that's kind of the key word
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right there, because willingness is the thing that's being asked of me.
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It's sometimes it's an open hand reached out to someone who needs it.
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Sometimes it's a readiness to let God move in my life in ways
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that I didn't expect or maybe didn't even ask for. But it's
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all based on where I am today. And again, taking that next right
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indicated step. Ripple 1 tells us where the willingness
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actually starts. It says it starts with our motives. Today I
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will examine my motives. And that's the trap in making the amends sometimes,
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and it can be a subtle trap at times, but it's entirely
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possible to go out to make amends to somebody for the exact wrong reason.
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It's possible to walk up to somebody, say all the right words, check the
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box, and walk away having done the whole thing just to make myself
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feel better, and not to make anything right.
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And again, our Big Book warns us about this exact
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situation, and I'm not going to read it or quote it word for word,
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but on pages 76 and 77, if you want to research it,
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it's right there in the 9th step instructions. It says that we go to a
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person we've harmed, and we do it in a helpful and forgiving spirit.
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Sometimes we have to confess that we once had ill feelings and
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express our regret toward them. And then here's the line that
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I think we all have to hear clearly. It says that the man
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or the woman or whoever is making the amends asks that he
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or she be given the strength and the direction to do the right thing no
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matter what those personal consequences may be.
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And that part about no matter what the personal consequences may be,
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I mean, that's the Ripple 1 in a nutshell. It said true
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willingness means doing the next right thing regardless of the outcome.
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See, if I only make the amends that I think are going to go well,
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or maybe only the amends that I don't care that much
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about, if I only apologize when I'm pretty sure
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that I'm about to be forgiven, then I'm not exactly examining my
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motives. I'm just managing my own comfort. I'm staying
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in my comfort zone. I'm apologizing to people who I know
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have probably already forgiven me or who will on the spot.
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Instead of doing the uncomfortable thing and
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making the amends to the person who may not actually forgive me,
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who may not even at times even want to see me.
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And that's where the
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willingness part of that comes in. I have to be willing to do that even
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when it's uncomfortable, even when I just don't feel like it today.
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Now, this morning, for the second week in a row,
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I'm preaching a message that has a little bit of
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overlap with our Daily Ripples devotional of the day,
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because I'm preaching on a passage that at first glance might have nothing to do
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with amends, but as I sat down and looked at it next
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to this Daily Ripples entry, I realized that it's the exact same lesson
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sometimes that wears a different coat, because it's about willingness.
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And what I'm preaching on today is actually the feeding of the 5,000, and that's
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in Matthew chapter 14. And the connection is not necessarily
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one that you might expect, because when Jesus
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went off by himself to the quiet place, because he had just found out that
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John the Baptist, his beloved friend, his cousin, the one who baptized
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him, had just been beheaded by
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Herod as part of a birthday party celebration,
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and he was pleased with the dancing of Herodias and said
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he'd give her whatever she wanted, and she said she wanted John the Baptist's head.
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And so after that, Jesus had to take some time, and He had to go
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out and be by Himself. Now,
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the crowds that had been following Him, they followed Him off to where
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He was in the secluded place. And as the day got late, they figured
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out that there wasn't enough food to go around,
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that people would need to be fed. It was getting late.
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They're in a deserted place. There are thousands of hungry people around,
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and the disciples come to Jesus with what could sound like a perfectly
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reasonable suggestion. They told him, send the crowds away
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so they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.
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And that's what they said, send them away. But, and that's not necessarily
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a cruel suggestion because, you know, on paper it might seem like the only responsible
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one. After all, it was getting late. There was no food.
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So the sensible thing is to make sure everybody gets back into town while
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there's still time. It even sounds like they're looking out for the crowd.
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But if we sit with it for a second, I think that's where the ripple
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1 overlap. Comes into play. It says,
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I'll seek what is right, not merely what makes me feel better.
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See, the disciples, I'm sure, were tired. They'd been at this all day.
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Jesus himself had come out there to grieve his cousin and get some room to
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breathe, and the crowd wouldn't leave any of them alone. So when
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the disciples say, send them away, yeah, it's reasonable. But underneath
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the reasonableness of it all is probably their exhaustion,
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a little bit of apathy, and maybe a wish that this whole thing about
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having to feed all these people would land in somebody else's
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lap. See, the comfortable thing and the reasonable thing lined up so neatly that they
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couldn't even tell them apart. And that's the amends trap too,
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precisely. Send it away.
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Send away the hard conversation. Send away the
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person that I owe. Maybe not even send them away, but just
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don't go around them anymore for a while. You know, it's not always a slammed
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door. It sometimes is an excuse that sounds reasonable.
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You know, those excuses we make to ourselves about why we don't make the amends,
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you know, that now is not a good time, or, you know, it was a
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long time ago and it would just reopen old wounds. They've probably forgotten all about
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it. My favorite is that part in the 9th step about,
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you know, that we made direct amends to such people wherever possible,
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except when to do so would injure them or others. See,
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my alcoholic brain, my addictive brain, can convince me
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that if I'm not comfortable doing it, they're not going to be comfortable receiving
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it, and that would be injuring them. But I have to
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examine what's the real motivation behind that. Am I just trying to seek
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my own comfort? Am I trying to send that amend away,
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in other words, so that I don't have to deal with it?
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You know, every one of those excuses that I've just listed can be true,
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but every one of them can also be just exhaustion that's
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wrapped up in the skin of wisdom or discernment
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or care. But doing the math to make the need go
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away and calling it prudence is not exactly what we're
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called to do, either in our life of faith or in our life of recovery.
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And watch here what Jesus does with their suggestion. You see, He doesn't just accept
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their off-ramp, their reasonable exit. He says the words
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that blow the whole thing up. He says, they need not go away. You give
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them something to eat. So in other words, don't send this away. You deal with
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it. You feed them. And that's the 9th step, is dealing with it right then.
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It's the amends made now on their own terms,
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whether or not the timing feels convenient or whether or not I can even be
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sure that my amend will land well. You give them something
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to eat. Do the next right thing right now, because the
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willingness that the stone is asking us for is the willingness to feed the
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need in front of me instead of sending it off down the road,
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and much less instead of rationalizing and making excuses about why
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I don't need to do that to begin with. But there's part of this that
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also gives us hope as well, because when the disciples protest that all they've got
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is 5 loaves and 2 fish, they say, nothing but, they call it.
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You know, they're holding something in their hands and they're calling it nothing, in other
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words. And Jesus didn't ask them to produce more. He said to
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them at that point, he said, well, bring it here to me. You don't have
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to fix the whole thing. In fact, you couldn't if you tried.
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You just have to stop sending it away and instead bring the little bit that
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you really have— your honesty, your regret, your willingness
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to make things right. Right, and hand them over to your higher power,
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which for me is to Jesus. And that brings us to
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the spiritual side, the ripple 2, the spiritual. The Father is preparing me
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for greater usefulness, not greater comfort.
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Maybe I need to read that one twice. Maybe we need to hear that again.
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The Father is preparing me for greater usefulness,
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not greater comfort. That cuts
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against everything in us. We want God to make us comfortable,
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do we not? I mean, how many times have we prayed asking for God to
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give us something that would just make our lives a little bit easier? But this
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ripple says that God's actually up to something different, that he's making
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us useful, and usefulness and comfort are very
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rarely the same road. They don't take the same path at all.
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So let's look at how the feeding story actually
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unfolds, because there's 4 verbs in it that I can't stop thinking about.
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And Matthew says that Jesus took the loaves, he blessed
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them, he broke them, and then he gave them.
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Take, bless, break, and give.
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And those verbs, if you've been around church very
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long, they should sound very familiar because that's the same verbs,
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the same words used at the Last Supper. He takes the bread,
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he blesses it, he breaks it, he gives it to his disciples.
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It's the same pattern word for word. And that's what I think is important
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for us to see in this. It's not just what Jesus does with the bread,
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It's what He does with people. He takes what we have,
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our 5 loaves and 2 fish in our hands.
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He blesses it, or in other words, sets it apart, calls it for His use,
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and then He breaks it. And the breaking of it is a hard thing
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in the list, isn't it? Because break means that it's
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broken down. We don't like to feel broken. I mean,
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broken is where I was when I came into the rooms of recovery back
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in 2013. And I don't necessarily want to feel
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that again. But some things have to be broken down so that they can
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be multiplied. They can't stay in one piece and still be useful.
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See, making amends is a breaking. It's walking up
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to somebody that you've wronged and humbling yourself, and that breaks your pride.
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And for many of us, whether we're sitting in a church pew
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this morning or whether we're sitting in a recovery room this morning, many of us
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need our pride broken over and over and over and over
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and over again. The ripple tells us the truth about why. It says
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that the Father is preparing me for greater usefulness.
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And some of us know exactly what that means because we've been broken, and we
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found out on the other side of it that God can use us in ways
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that he never could have when we were still whole and self-sufficient
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and, in my case, all full of myself. Then it says,
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Jesus teaches me that reconciliation requires humility and
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honesty. And that's the whole posture that we take as we go into the 9th
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step, humility and honesty. It's a real apology,
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plainly spoken, that owns my part and stops there. It doesn't
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stop and then wait patiently for the other person to apologize back to me.
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That's not the point of any of this. The Big Book points us to clean
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up our own side of the street and leave theirs alone. So I go in
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to be honest, and I can't get hung up on
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whether they receive it, how they receive it. I just have to show up,
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do my part, and clean my side of the street. And I love
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how the feeding story models this. Jesus has compassion on the crowd before he feeds
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them. See, the reconciliation, the meaning of the need, it comes out of compassion
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and not obligation. And when we make amends the right way,
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it's the same thing. It comes from a genuine desire to heal
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something in ourselves, and hopefully it can at times heal something
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in others too. But we're doing this work so we can heal something
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in ourselves, because my own life, my internal
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life, is the only thing that I can control. It's not
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making amends just to get rid of a debt that I owe. It's to clean
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up and try to heal and reconcile a situation.
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And the last bit of the spiritual ripple says that the Holy Spirit reveals
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hidden motives and helps me surrender my own agenda.
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Hidden motives, man, that word hidden does a lot of work in this because the
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whole problem with our motives is that we usually cannot see them ourselves.
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Now, hopefully we've gotten a little bit better at this by the time we get
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to the 8th or 9th step, because this is where I'll tell you, if you
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haven't already picked up on this over the course of your time in recovery.
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We don't work these steps out of order. We take them in order, especially when
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we're recovering from an addictive substance like alcohol or drugs.
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But once we've completed the 4th step and the 5th step, we should have a
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much clearer idea of where our motives are coming
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from. And again, that 4th step is making a complete moral inventory of
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ourselves, and then the 5th step is admitting to God, to ourselves, and another human
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being what that moral inventory includes, the exact nature of our
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wrongs, in other words. By the time we do all that, we should know what
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our motives are. And so let's think back on those disciples a
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little bit. You know, I promise you that probably not one of them stood there
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thinking, well, I'm exhausted and I don't feel like dealing with these people.
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What they heard in their own heads when they said, send them away, was,
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this is the responsible thing to do. See, their self-interest,
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in other words, was hidden. It was tucked inside a suggestion
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that sounded like wisdom. That's exactly how it can work in us too, because I
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can convince myself all day long that I'm making amends out
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of pure willingness when really I'm doing it to look good or to
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get something back or to relieve my own guilt.
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And I genuinely can't tell the difference from the inside, and especially
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if I try to do the 8th and 9th step when I first come into
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the rooms of recovery. And that's why we need the Holy Spirit to reveal it
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to us, to reveal the truth of our motivations. That's the searching part.
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That's the part that comes through our prayer time. It's God showing
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me the stuff in my own heart that I've been hiding even from myself.
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Because send them away was the agenda of the disciples, but it was never
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announced as an agenda. It came dressed up like common sense. But surrendering
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my agenda doesn't start with heroically giving up something that I can
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see in front of me. It starts with the Spirit showing me what agenda I
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had there underneath what sounded reasonable at
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the time. And man, how often do I find that that
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send them away motivation, that hidden agenda,
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that I don't want to deal with it today, something along
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those lines. I find myself reverting back into that
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all the time. But the thing is, I realize that about myself today because
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I have worked through the steps, and I do know that at
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times in my life, not every day, but there are times when I get
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caught up in self, just like we all do, and I don't want to be
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bothered. Maybe it's because I'm exhausted. Maybe it's because I think somebody else can help
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them better. But I've learned to push that aside and to listen and
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kind of test it against what God would have me do and what God is
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calling me to do. And that's almost always going to be to
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do the next right indicated thing.
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So that's what I'd leave you with before we pray today. See, the miracle
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in the story wasn't that the disciples had enough, because they didn't. The miracle
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was that they handed over what they had, God multiplied it, and they
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had 12 baskets left over when they got done. See, your amends
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might feel like you've only got 5 loaves and 2 fish. It might feel like
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you have nothing but 5 loaves and 2 fish, too small for the size
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of what your drunkenness or your drug addiction broke in
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the lives of those around you. And Jesus calls us to bring
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it anyway, to hand it over, because the point was never that
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you had enough to fix it. The point was that you're finally willing to give
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what you had. And in God's economy, there is no waste. Thanks,
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Nathan. But in God's economy, willingness handed over always
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comes back as more than you brought. And that's what being made whole
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actually is. It's that moment when our willingness
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takes over, where we trade our grip on comfort for
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an open hand held out, ready to receive instruction,
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ready to lift up another and let God do the rest.
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Let us pray. Father God, help me seek Your
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will above my own comfort. Through Your Holy Spirit, reveal my true motives
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and guide my steps. Shape my heart through the example of Jesus.
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Amen. And that's it for everybody today.
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Come back tomorrow on Monday. You'll hear myself and
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Corey again. And as always, tune in Saturdays to hear Corey and
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tune in Sundays to hear me, Pastor Mike. And we will see you on
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the next episode. Until then, go and
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do all the good you can for all the people you can in all the
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places you can in all the ways you can by all the means you can,
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and do it all for as long as you ever can. In the name of
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the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, go in peace.