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May 12 - Released from Yesterday · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:04
  Well, welcome back, everybody, to the Daily Ripples podcast, where we are at the intersection
• 0:09
  of faith and recovery.
• 0:11
  Today, I am Pastor Mike.
• 0:13
  Well, I guess every day I'm Pastor Mike, but today I have with me our co-host, Corey, and
• 0:19
  we will start our Daily Ripple for today.
• 0:21
  May the 12th is titled, Released from Yesterday.
• 0:25
  Ooh, this is going to be a good one.
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  The stone, the past cannot be changed, but it does not have to control the present.
• 0:32
  Healing begins when I stop reliving what has already been done.
• 0:37
  Ripple one is practical.
• 0:39
  Today, I will stop carrying yesterday as if it still defines me.
• 0:44
  I will speak about what needs to be faced and take action where change is possible.
• 0:48
  I cannot rewrite the past, but I can respond differently today.
• 0:53
  Ripple two is spiritual.
• 0:55
  As I bring my past before the Father, the Holy Spirit loosens its grip on my heart.
• 1:01
  Through Christ, I am not trapped by what has been.
• 1:04
  Over time, truth and grace reshape my perspective, and I learn to walk forward with freedom instead of regret.
• 1:13
  And as always, we'll save our prayer for the end.
• 1:15
  But, you know, when I think about this one, you know, in the stone, there's one line that jumps out to me.
• 1:23
  And it may be because, Corey, you read this line on yesterday's episode and I had to edit it out because you were on the wrong day.
• 1:30
  But anyway, we're not pointing any fingers here.
• 1:33
  But there's a line in there that says, healing begins when I stop reliving what has already been done.
• 1:40
  And I can't wait to hear what you have to share about that for us today, Corey.
• 1:44
  Oh, so you're ready for me now?
• 1:46
  Oh, I like that.
• 1:47
  I'm ready for you now.
• 1:48
  We're on the right day now.
• 1:49
  Yeah, so, you know, when I started talking before, you know, the way I said it was, because I don't know if I have the power or the choice in the matter of I'm going to stop caring yesterday.
• 2:04
  Like, you know, I'm just going to quit doing it.
• 2:06
  I'm going to just let go and let God.
• 2:08
  And I'm not, because I've been doing that my whole life, Michael.
• 2:11
  And I've been, you know, pushing things down and pushing things down and pushing things down and running for this stuff.
• 2:17
  And, you know, I believe that the Book of Alcoholics Anonymous was divinely written for somebody like me.
• 2:27
  And so when I think about, like, the past, you know, well, it was everybody else.
• 2:33
  It was never me.
• 2:35
  You know, and I pushed it.
• 2:37
  Maybe that happened as a defense mechanism.
• 2:39
  I don't know science like that or I don't know anything like that.
• 2:42
  But I know that for some reason, I've pushed everything down, and in my thoughts, it was their fault.
• 2:49
  It was always their fault.
• 2:51
  And I hope my friends were, I hope one of my friends that listens to this, he's not still mad at me about our discussion today.
• 2:59
  But, so we were, you know, we were talking about the fourth step, and, you know, these treatment centers and things, they let you, we talked about this a little bit,
• 3:11
  but they let you do a little basic four-step.
• 3:15
  And it's heavy on the first three columns.
• 3:18
  Well, the first three columns is what you did to me.
• 3:22
  The first three columns are the fourth step of Alcoholics Anonymous.
• 3:25
  Right.
• 3:26
  But, you know, the first column is what you did to me, or who it was.
• 3:30
  Well, it was Pastor Mike.
• 3:32
  Well, what did he do to me?
• 3:34
  Well, he cut me off when I was talking on the podcast.
• 3:37
  Well, how did, you know, so how did that make you feel, Corey?
• 3:41
  well, it hurt my security. It hurt my self-esteem. And it hurt my ambitions going further with this
• 3:47
  podcast with him. This never happened, but I'm just, you know, I'm making an example.
• 3:52
  And so when I, but that's the way my brain looks at it. Well, that way it looks at it is a lie.
• 4:02
  That's a lie. The reason it's incomplete, it's incomplete. Because the real thing is,
• 4:07
  is, well, I'm selfish because I want my time.
• 4:10
  Well, I'm just, you know, and I'm going to be dishonest, you know, in that resentment,
• 4:14
  I'm really going to be dishonest with some people and make that problem bigger than it really was.
• 4:19
  So, see, the next time we talk, I'm going to talk over him.
• 4:23
  I'm going to show him what a real man looks like, and this is what this is.
• 4:27
  And, you know, and the fear part of it, man, maybe people like him more than me.
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  And where was I to blame?
• 4:35
  Well, trying to take time and not even being respectful of someone else's time.
• 4:40
  So that's the real issue.
• 4:42
  The first three calls weren't even true.
• 4:45
  It was really my selfish and self-centered motives, right?
• 4:49
  And so, but when I come to, you know, so, man, I've been reliving things my whole life.
• 4:56
  I relived the moment that I sent, you know, because I was adopted, I told you,
• 5:00
  and I sent a letter off to meet my birth mother when I was 18.
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  I sent it to the adoption agency.
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  And I remember when I did my first four-step, Doug told me, he said,
• 5:11
  you know what?
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  He said, well, Corey, have you ever put your hand on a hot stove?
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  And I said, no.
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  I probably said yeah at the time because I wanted to just agree with him
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  so he could get the story.
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  He said, well, can you feel that feeling right now of being burnt from a hot stove
• 5:32
  from the past?
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  And I said, no.
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  And then he said, well, if I slept with your girlfriend, could you feel that again?
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  If not just from that one event.
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  And I said, well, yeah, I could feel, you know, and I thought about that because I could feel things over and over and over and over and relive them.
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  And we talked about it in a couple of episodes earlier, living in a make-believe world.
• 5:56
  Yeah.
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  Because I could start lying to myself and I could start lying to everybody in the world around me because I think it's true at this point.
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  After I've said it a couple times, it sounds good, too.
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  And so, you know, but it's an interesting thing.
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  And so when I go through this process, so the main thing that happens is, you know, I put God into this whole resentment of Michael.
• 6:21
  Well, the next process of that, and it sucks because, you know, we've talked a little bit about this.
• 6:26
  I've got to go make amends to Michael and say, hey, man.
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  And, hey, man, I was dishonest with some people, and I talked bad about you, about this.
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  And I got to go face that.
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  And that, you know, because people think this, the fourth step, they can kind of make it a, what is it called?
• 6:49
  Like a group, like a therapeutic thing.
• 6:52
  Right, right.
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  And I can't make amends.
• 6:56
  Me personally, there's a lot of amends I can't make without bringing God into it.
• 7:00
  I can't write these things down, that I did these things to you without bringing God into it, because it's against my will.
• 7:07
  It's against my nature, because my nature says, F him.
• 7:13
  Like, you know, it'll be...
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  And the horse he rode in on.
• 7:16
  Yeah, because I don't, because that's how I, man, like, that's how I lived.
• 7:20
  But, you know, so this is only, you know, I was telling this guy, I can bring this to a head, I'm sorry.
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  but I was telling this guy, you know, because he was very, sent me some pictures and he wrote a lot
• 7:31
  of stuff on the first three columns. And I said, well, the first three columns are a lie.
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  And, you know, he didn't really respond. Yeah, the fourth column is where the truth is revealed.
• 7:41
  Right. Because that's the one where in the book it tells you, then we turn to our part. And that's
• 7:47
  when we go, oh, crap, here it comes. Now I got to get back into this honesty thing, you know,
• 7:52
  that we've been talking about this whole time in the program. And you mentioned something earlier
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  about that you don't know how to do the first thing that that practical ripple said, you know,
• 8:01
  which is it said, today, I'll stop carrying yesterday as if it still defines me. And you
• 8:06
  talk about, well, I don't know how to do that. Well, the way to read these is that, you know,
• 8:10
  that first line is kind of like the goal, right? And then how to do it is I'll speak about what
• 8:16
  needs to be faced and take action where change is possible. When I do those things consistently
• 8:21
  every day. If today I am speaking about what needs to be faced, you know, what fears I still have
• 8:27
  that are lingering in my life, what resentments maybe that I still have where I'm still looking at
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  those, only those first three columns of the fourth step, but not looking at my part.
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  If I'm doing those things and not taking any action about it, then I'm still carrying yesterday.
• 8:40
  I'm still stuck in that place. But it happens over time and it happens with me through,
• 8:47
  you know, working the 12 steps of recovery. It's not a, I say a magic prayer and the next day I
• 8:53
  wake up and I don't have the past that I'm walking around with me anymore, you know. And when I find
• 8:58
  myself more weighed down by the past, that's when I have to listen to where, you know, God is telling
• 9:06
  me, for example, you know, in the morning when I don't want to get up out of bed, well, hey, maybe
• 9:10
  there's something that you need to actually do to help somebody else. Maybe that will, you know,
• 9:16
  take your mind off of the past thing and get you to a place where you can actually live into and be
• 9:22
  the person that, you know, God created you to be and not this person from the past. Because I try to
• 9:28
  slip back into that person from the past, you know, way more often than I should. I don't do it as much
• 9:34
  today as I have in the past because we grow and change and develop, hopefully, you know, over time.
• 9:40
  But, you know, and we do have to bring that, you know, past before the Father, as it were.
• 9:46
  You know, it says in 1 John 1 and 9, and I know we've read this before on here, but if
• 9:51
  we confess our sins, meaning to God, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins
• 9:56
  and purify us from all unrighteousness.
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  So that confession, that being honest, that bringing my past before the Father is how the
• 10:06
  Holy Spirit loosens its grip on my heart.
• 10:08
  Man, you know, I didn't even Google.
• 10:12
  I didn't even grok.
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  I didn't do no AI thing.
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  And I found that verse.
• 10:19
  Yeah.
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  And you just swept it out.
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  But anyways, but I was going to add to that.
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  You know, because on page 60, man, I'm bad with page numbers.
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  But on 67.
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  Right, right, right.
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  As you quote about 10 of them per episode.
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  But anyway, you know, but it says on page 67 of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, in the sick man prayer, it says, when a person offended, we said to ourselves, this is a sick man, how can I be helpful to him?
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  God saved me from being angry.
• 10:59
  there's some parts of the 11th step of the big book.
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  It starts talking about, you know, how I was supposed to wake up,
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  you know, on awakening.
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  Those are pretty big words, you know.
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  It says on awakening, not, you know, after I've made coffee
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  and did breakfast and, you know, pet the dogs.
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  It says on awakening.
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  And then it says, well, we retire at night.
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  But, you know, what's interesting in the original,
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  in the original version that Bill Wilson wrote out
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  that didn't go, you know, in front of the hundreds of others,
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  And I know nobody cares about this version, but I think it's very interesting because he said something.
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  So there wasn't a when we retire at night piece.
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  That was put in from the hundred others.
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  It said part of when we were on awakening was we go back through our day before.
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  That's very interesting because, you know, and I think, you know, I think that's actually a would have been better because, you know, and this is not talking [down about] Alcoholics Anonymous.
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  I'm going to be trying to be loving in this, but Alcoholics Anonymous has made the 10th step something that it's completely not.
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  You know, so 10 and 11 are two different steps and two different numbers.
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  Well, the 10th step is how I walk through my day.
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  It has nothing to do with I go sit home and go write how bad of a boy I was and go.
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  It's not.
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  Because it says when these crop up, it tells me exactly things to do as the day is going on.
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  Not at nighttime.
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  Because the nighttime piece, it says on the next page, that's on 85.
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  On page 86 of the big book, that's what it says when we retire at night.
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  And that's in meditation.
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  And it also says not to drift into morbid reflection because that would diminish my usefulness to my fellows, right?
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  Because if I get all depressed at night, I'm going to wake up depressed.
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  That tenth step, you know, that you were talking all around about, you know, it's not just something that you do at night.
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  And, you know, I would agree with that because, as it says, if you just look at the words on the page of the tenth step, it says,
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  continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
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  It doesn't say continue to sit down every night and list out a personal inventory and then admit it the next day or take care of it the next day.
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  So it's talking about a way of living more than anything.
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  You know, you live in such a way that whenever you're wrong, you know it right away.
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  And as soon as you realize it, that is when you promptly admitted it.
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  Well, that's what I was getting at, because if I did everything at night, and I said, well, man, I cussed out Michael, I cussed out my fiancé.
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  He cussed on the podcast.
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  I kicked the dog.
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  But what I'm going to do now is I'm going to think about all that.
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  I'm going to write it down, and in the morning, it's a new day, so I'm probably going to forget it all.
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  But I think that that did a disservice there.
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  Because I was at this event, AA event this last weekend and sat through a panel.
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  And this is kind of on the same, it's on the same step, 10 step.
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  But on page 85 of the big book, it says,
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  our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness, right?
• 14:30
  But how many times in the rooms have you heard that 10 and 11 are maintenance steps?
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  Well, and a lot of times they'll say 10, 11, and 12, they call them maintenance steps.
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  And what that means, I think it might mean something different to each person, but what does it mean to you when you hear that?
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  There's no maintenance about it because, you know, so if I was to maintain, I'm not a good maintainer, man.
• 14:53
  I never can maintain my drinking, and I can't maintain, I'm not good at it.
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  Because there's also literature that says for the alcoholic whose hope is the growth and maintenance of a spiritual experience.
• 15:08
  So when I think about it, it says growing, understanding, and effectiveness, growing my spiritual experience.
• 15:13
  It does say maintenance in there, but man, if I was to maintain this, and this is a good shout out for something new that's coming, but we got the East Memphis group coming up.
• 15:25
  If I was to sit in my house and maintain this thing and just go to meetings and do the bare minimum and maintain it, I would go drink.
• 15:36
  I know that because I have.
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  I've lived that life of trying to maintain something.
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  But the way me and you do this podcast, this is such a cool thing because we're growing, right?
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  We're able to help more people.
• 15:51
  You've been a part of the book study, right?
• 15:53
  We've been able to affect people that way too.
• 15:55
  But if I'm not growing in that nature, you're able to grow as a pastor.
• 15:59
  You're going to a bigger church, right?
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  If you were to sit at, and I'm not saying anything bad about a small church because you
• 16:05
  could be there too, but if you were to sit at the same church and in your eyes you want
• 16:11
  to grow as a pastor, you might start feeling like you were resting on your laurels, we might
• 16:19
  say, and not growing.
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  And, you know, I hear a lot of these words in AA, though, and I think they're right.
• 16:26
  If I'm not growing, I'm going.
• 16:29
  Well, and in terms of the concept of maintenance there, maintenance in and of itself, or calling them, you know, the maintenance steps or what have you, is not necessarily the problem.
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  The problem is, what am I maintaining?
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  Because I can maintain the status quo, and that's not necessarily in a place of growth.
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  But if I'm maintaining my spiritual program, that means I am pouring something into it.
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  I'm taking action on my spiritual program of growth each and every day.
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  And that type of maintenance is definitely the type of maintenance that those steps 10, 11, and 12 help with.
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  Because if I continue to take that personal inventory and admit where I'm wrong,
• 17:08
  if I maintain conscious contact with my higher power so that I can grow in that,
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  And if I'm working with other alcoholics, I'm growing by doing those things.
• 17:19
  And by doing those things, I'm maintaining my spiritual program.
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  Now, if I'm just maintaining going to meetings only, that's half measures.
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  If I'm maintaining just talking to other alcoholics, that's half measures.
• 17:32
  If I'm maintaining, you know, only reading certain portions of my Bible or only saying
• 17:38
  certain prayers or avoiding, you know, the things that I don't want to look at, then I'm
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  stuck in that place and I'm not growing.
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  I'm just maintaining my status quo.
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  But what I want to maintain is a strong and powerful prayer life,
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  and that's why I think that we need to close this out with our prayer for the day.
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  I think you're right, buddy.
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  Our prayer for today says,
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  Father, help me release what is behind me.
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  Through Your Spirit, heal my memories and guide me to live today
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  in the freedom given through Your Son.
• 18:06
  Amen.
• 18:07
  Amen.