Latest / Sober Readings / Giving Up Center Stage
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Welcome to Sober Readings. Today is Sunday, july twelfth. Let's begin today's episode with the Serenity Prayer. God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. From Daily Reflections Giving U Center Stage. For without some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all. Without it, they cannot live to much useful purpose, or in adversity, be able to summon the faith that can meet any emergency. That's in the twelve steps and twelve traditions page seventy. Why do I balk at the word humility? I am not humbling myself toward other people, but toward God as I understand him. Humility means to show submissive respect, and by being humble, I realize I am not the center of the universe. When I was drinking, I was consumed by pride and self centeredness. I felt the entire world revolved around me, that I was master of my destiny. Humility enables me to depend more on God to help me overcome obstacles, to help me with my own imperfections, so that I may grow spiritually. I must solve more difficult problems to increase my proficiency, and as I encounter life's stumbling blocks, I must learn to overcome them through God's help. Daily communion with God demonstrates my humility and provides me with the realization that That an entity more powerful than I is willing to help me if I cease trying to play God myself. Today's reading from twenty four hours AA thought for the day. Today is ours. Let us live today as we believe God wants us to live. Each day we'll have a new pattern which we cannot foresee, but we can open each day with a quiet period in which we say a little prayer, asking God to help us through the day. Personal contact with God as we understand Him will from day to day bring us nearer to an understanding of His will for us. At the close of the day, We offer him thanks for another day of sobriety. A full constructive day has been lived and we are grateful. So ask yourself today, am I asking God each day for strength and thanking him each night? The meditation for the day. If you believe that God's grace has saved you, then you must believe that He is meaning to save you yet more and to keep you in the way that you should go. Even human rescuers would not save you from drowning only to place you in other deep and dangerous waters. Rather, they would place you on dry land, there to restore you. God, who is your rescuer, would certainly do this and even more. God will complete the task He sets out to do. He will not throw you overboard if you are depending on Him. And today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may trust God to keep me in the way. I pray that I may rely on him not to let me go. Today's daily meditation from Touchstone. If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet. And that's a quote from Isaac Bashevis Singer. Many of us have the habit of taking a negative outlook on whatever comes along. We don't believe things will work out for us. We don't think we will have a good day. We can't accept our friends' warm feelings. To follow this gloomy path is a strange distortion of faith. It is faith in the negative. Any forecast, whether hopeful or pessimistic, is a step into the unknown. So why do we choose the dark one? We get a payoff from our pessimism, which keeps us hooked. It creates misery, but it serves our demand for control. There is more risk in being open to something positive because we cannot force positive things to occur. We can only be open to them and believe in the possibility. But when we predict the negative and expect only bad things, we squelch many good things or overlook them. Then we say, I knew it would be this way. And in our misery we satisfy our self-centered craving to be in charge. When we surrender our need to be in control, we are more open and welcoming of the good things that come our way. Today I will be open to the good that is around me. And for today's final reading, we're gonna go to As Bill Sees It, and we're on page 313 today. In the sunlight at last. When the thought was expressed that there might be a God personal to me, I didn't like the idea. So my friend Ebby made what then seemed a novel suggestion. He said, Why don't you choose your own conception of God? That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last. And that's on page twelve of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. It may be possible to find explanations of spiritual experiences such as ours, but I have often tried to explain my own and have succeeded only in giving the story of it. I know the feeling it gave me and the results it has brought, but I realize I may never fully understand its deeper why and how. And that's on page forty five of AA Comes of Age. And that's it for today's readings. Thanks for listening. But before I close, let's again go back to twenty-four hours and the question at the end of the AA Thought for the Day. And today it asked, Am I asking God each day for strength and thanking him each night? And so my answer is for many years in sobriety, my answer to this was no. Apparently I hadn't learned the lesson God wanted me to learn, and I had to go back out and Do more research, as we say in the program. It was only after my convincer that I knew that building my relationship with my higher power, which I call God, was a necessary piece in my sobriety, maybe the most important piece. Today, I get on my knees each morning and I say a few simple prayers, including, help me to be a good person and do the right thing, just for today. I feel like it keeps me humble and knowing that I'm not the master of my universe. And I say thank you each night for helping to keep me sober for another day, and also for all the wonderful things in my life which I sometimes take for granted. So I would love to hear your answer to this question. Am I asking God each day for strength and thanking him each night? You can send me an email at sober readings with Scott at gmail.com. Or you can go to my website, sobereadings.com and you can fill out the form. And while you're there at my website, if you'd like to drop a dollar in the virtual donation basket, just click that donate button. So again, thank you so much for listening today. Stay sober, keep reading, and I'll see you in the next episode. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other. And remember, just for today, don't drink, go to a meeting, and keep coming back. Have a great day. And as my friend Larry says, Best day ever.