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July 31 – Living the Prayer · The Daily Ripples Podcast

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  July 31st, Living the Prayer. We got Pastor
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  Mike and me, Corey. The Stone: Serenity,
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  courage, and wisdom are not ideas to admire,
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  but a way of living each day. Ripple One Practical:
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  Today I'll slow down and recognize what I
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  cannot change. I will stop wasting energy fighting what is fixed.
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  Then I will take action where I can, doing what is mine
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  to do. I will trust that clarity comes as I move,
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  not before. Ripple 2 Spiritual: The Father
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  gives me peace to accept what is beyond me. Jesus shows me
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  how to act with courage in what is before me. The Holy Spirit
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  gives discernment to know the difference.
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  As I live this out, not just recite it,
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  I find that my life becomes steadier, clearer, and more grounded in
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  God's care. Where it says,
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  I will slow down and recognize what I cannot change. We talked
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  about this not too long ago, but, you know, on page 62 of
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  the Big Book, it talks about self-will run riot.
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  Though I usually don't think so, right? Yeah. So when I'm running,
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  I wouldn't even know that I'm running. It says, An extreme—
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  it says, so our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise
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  out of ourselves. And the alcoholic is an extreme example
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  of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn't think so.
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  So do you think I'm going to know when I'm in self-will run riot?
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  Not initially. You got to have somebody point it out to you most of the
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  time, or life point it out to you, because you get to the point where
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  what you're doing is not working, one or the other, right? And so I think
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  the opposite version of that is on page 84, right? It tells me to continue
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  to watch. So I'm watching and I'm like in a, you know, he would
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  be vigilant in my life. Yeah. And that's more where my mind went when
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  you were talking about that, is that I was sitting there thinking as you were
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  reading it and, and speaking that I'm better at noticing
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  where my self-will is, is kicking in today, right? I notice it
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  quicker than I did certainly before,
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  you know, I sobered up. And whenever I was drinking, I can see it
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  there's a shorter distance of time between when I'm off in self-will
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  and when I recognize it and try to correct it. You know what I mean?
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  Well, do you— I mean, let me ask you this, like, because I kind
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  of— you kind of grew up in church. Yeah, right. Yeah.
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  Um, when you were— and this is just— this is probably
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  kind of weird, but whatever, I'm gonna ask it anyways. When you
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  were in that position, did you feel like a connection to
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  God? Growing up in church? Yeah. No, not really.
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  Um, I felt more wanting
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  to perform and
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  please others, if that makes sense. Like, if I were
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  doing something that was spiritual or holy,
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  so say singing in church or, you know, reading scripture in
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  church or praying in church, things like that, public kind of displays of faith.
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  It wasn't as a child because I necessarily felt that in
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  my heart. It was usually because I felt like that was the expectation
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  of what other people wanted from me. And so from an early age, I learned
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  how to perform for the sake of others. And then
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  when I hit adulthood, that started my journey of about 15,
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  16, 17 years of atheism because I wasn't
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  actually feeling that the whole time. And I thought it was just
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  words on the page and I wasn't seeing, you know, as we,
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  uh, talked a little bit yesterday, you know, the faith without works, you know,
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  is dead kind of thing. I was seeing dead faith, right? And so viewing
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  dead faith, at least from my child perspective, um,
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  didn't give me a good sense of what real faith looked like, right? I didn't
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  have a good sense of what real faith looked like, Corey, until I came
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  into the rooms of recovery and started working the 12 steps. Well,
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  well, the reason I was asking was because So like,
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  I don't feel like I was in a position when I came in here to
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  be able to watch, right? Yeah. Um, you know, to some
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  end, to some degree, you know, maybe I can
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  like, you know, try. I, you know, I, I say like, I'm, you know,
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  we were just these outright,
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  you know,
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  non-communicative people when I was out there. I could communicate
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  and I could interact with people. Yeah, but you know, so, but you
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  know, I think about this God thing and think about what that looks like in
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  a different version, because I could watch me, you know, and think about
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  how I'm waiting for you to say something to use you.
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  However, you know, I had motive about a lot of things. Sure, today I don't,
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  but in the big book— because I,
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  I grew up in church, right? Grew up in church. Uh,
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  grandfather was a, uh, pastor.
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  But yeah, I was the type of person that I'd look over at my mom
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  with my grandmother with her hands raised. Yeah. And I'd say, hey, will you ask
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  her to put her hands down? Yeah. I don't know if I even said that
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  loud enough for them to hear that. But anyways, but like, you was always embarrassed.
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  I was embarrassed of this whole thing. And, you know, I didn't understand.
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  I didn't, uh, but I had these different feelings sometimes,
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  right? When the music was playing or you're praying I'd have these feelings.
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  And because on page 46 of the Big Book, it says,
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  we found ourselves thinking when enchanted by a starlit night, who then
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  made all this? There was a feeling of awe and wonder,
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  but it was fleeting and soon lost.
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  So like— and that's kind of, that's very much akin to kind of what I
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  was talking about. Most of the time, you know, kind of it was performing in
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  church. There would be rare moments of kind of feeling the presence of God,
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  but they would be discounted quickly. Was where I was at the time, right?
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  So on page 75, Michael, it asks us
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  to go sit for an hour. And that's if you— that's after doing
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  a certain thing. Yeah, this stuff. Yeah, after. So that's if you can sit for
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  an hour. Because what if it's that one thing that, like, you did with,
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  like, that, you know, can completely question your manhood, or this,
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  or this, or this, and you can't sit for an hour
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  because that thing's racing in your mind? Yeah. You got to get up
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  and do something and go. So, and then I like that perspective.
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  That's interesting. So the interesting thing about that is, so the sitting
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  for an hour is a test. It is a test. Yeah. Because what I do
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  with other men when I sit with them, when I, after I do a fist
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  up, yeah, I let them sit either if I got, if, you know, if someone,
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  anyways, I usually go have them sit in their car. I'd let
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  them leave their phone in the house. They go sit in the car.
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  And I just say, go sit out there and please don't listen to the radio.
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  Yeah. So it's silence, you know. So but if I could
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  do that after I get some of these things out that have been blocking me.
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  So that's where I think it's interesting, the fleeting and soon lost thing.
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  So, well, hold on though. This is July in the Mid-South
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  and you're having guys go sit in their car in the heat and the sun
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  for an hour. Couldn't you at least give them an air-conditioned space? Corey,
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  I hope the air conditioner works.
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  Because, man,
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  it's really a test, isn't it?
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  So anyway, so when
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  we do this, right, and they can, and usually what happens is they come
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  back and they go, hey, man, I forgot
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  to tell you this one thing. That was the one thing they were thinking about
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  right when they walked in the door. Oh, yeah. It's the thing that they thought
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  was so bad that they could never tell another person. Right. And what
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  they find is if they do a 5th step completely is, because I had
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  one of those with my sponsor, I had something that was like, oh, I can't
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  tell him about this. And then as I'm talking and I'm sharing the things
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  that I thought were bad enough, and he was sharing things out of his experience
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  that were just as bad or worse than what I did. And I found myself
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  like, it didn't take me that hour of coming back to have to say,
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  I could just tell right away that I had the trust there. And so what
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  I found is that I was indeed sharing the thing that I didn't think I
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  was ever going to tell anybody. Right. So what the
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  fleeting and soon lost thing, right? That God, that feeling of
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  awe and wonder. So awe and wonder, we do 5th step,
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  sit for an hour, then we go through this work and we're in— really
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  what we're doing is we're going to go make things right. Burning the
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  consciousness of every man that, you know, that all he has to do is trust
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  in God and clean house. Yeah. So when I'm cleaning house, what am I doing?
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  I'm getting closer during that time to that awe and
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  that wonder, because now I'm getting closer contact with this higher power.
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  Yeah. Because you're not cleaning the house alone even.
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  We got to have God's help to clean the house too. So through prayer,
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  and page 109 tells me this, in the 12 in
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  12, it says, the persistent use of meditation and prayer, we found,
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  did open the channel so that where there had been a trickle,
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  a trickle, the fleeting and soon lost thing, right? Yeah.
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  There now was a river which led to sure power and
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  safe guidance from God as we were increasingly better able to understand him.
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  So I'm able to feel this God, this power, right? And I'm able to go
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  with that power. And then I'm able to trust and rely upon that power too.
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  When I used to, man, I would get thoughts in my head and the thoughts
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  in my head weren't good thoughts. They were, you know, they had motive.
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  Yeah. But anyways, I'm sorry I went on that rant. Well, no, and it's good
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  because I think part of that, you know, house cleaning process— and, and you just
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  mentioned, you quoted, you know, and the whole thing today is talking about living the
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  prayer. It's talking about primarily, you know, living the, the Serenity Prayer.
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  And it could be talking about living the 7-step prayer as well, you know,
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  because that's one of the things in the literature. We'll get to that here in
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  a minute. But You were talking about growing
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  an understanding of our higher power, right? Right. And so
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  for me, that is nothing more than working
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  these steps, applying these principles in all my affairs teaches
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  me more and more how to love, how to love
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  other people, how to give love expecting nothing in return,
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  how to love others the way that God loves others,
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  how to love myself the way that God loves me. You know, it takes some
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  humility and soul-searching for me to be able to do that because I've
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  done so many things in my life that I never really feel worthy of that.
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  And I think it's in 1 John 4:8 that
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  tells us that, you know, God is love, you know.
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  And I like it in the
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  first church that I went to, you know, kind of when I came back off
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  of my period of atheism, was Heartsong UMC, you know, out here
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  in Cordova. And one of the things that they always say is that God is
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  love and only wants love for us and from us.
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  Well, we were talking about that and different things,
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  and I think, you know, it says in James 1:5, it says,
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  if you want to know what God wants you to do, ask him and
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  he will gladly tell you, for he is always ready to give a bountiful supply
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  of wisdom to all who ask him. He will not resent
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  it. And that's interesting because, like, you know, and one
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  thing in the morning, and I've been talking with a bunch of guys about this,
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  and yeah, there's a bunch of places in the Big Book
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  of Alcoholics Anonymous that tell me what to ask.
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  It says ask in a bunch of different places. Yeah. Um,
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  and it says that anyways, but it tells me each morning,
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  every morning, ask what you can do for the next man. It tells me,
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  ask him. It's actually, there's 12 prayers in the book
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  of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't know if you know that. They're spread throughout the book.
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  Well, I didn't know the exact number the way that you would've, but I know
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  there's multiple prayers throughout the Big Book. Yeah. I've gotten pumped up, man.
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  There's this dude that he's out here, you know,
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  on podcasts too. And he was talking about
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  this and he's broken the, you know, talking about a Big Book guy. He is
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  a Big Book thumper mechanic. I think he's a wizard.
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  Yeah, you know, so it's really cool. And, you know, he really
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  breaks it down. And, you know, but that wasn't the important one. The important one
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  was about the family, Michael. And I've been, you know,
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  talking a lot about this because I never under— I never really saw this.
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  And it says, so we clean house with the family on 83,
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  page 83, I'm sorry. So we clean house with the family asking each morning,
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  each morning. I wonder if that means each morning or every other. In meditation
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  that our creators show us the way of patience,
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  tolerance, kindliness, and love. Yeah,
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  that's important because, you know, my family— you know, I know your
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  family is very important to you. Absolutely. And my family is very
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  important to me. And, you know, I might as well ask,
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  you know, you know, if I'm in the middle of it, you know, might as
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  well, you know, ask for that because like Yeah, sometimes I'm not the best
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  partner. I'm not always kind
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  and patient. Man, I can be demanding, especially if there's something
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  I want and I'm not getting it. Yeah. Anyways.
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  Well, one of my favorite prayers, and I know one of yours,
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  and this month with July, and this is our last day in July
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  for an episode, is that a lot of this circles around
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  how we should be starting our day and living our lives. And we can do
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  it easily with what's called the 7th step prayer in the literature. And that one
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  is the— I think the full context of it is, I think, on page 76.
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  Is that right, Goris? Yeah. And it's, my Creator, I am now willing
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  that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now
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  remove from me every single defect of character which stands in
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  the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength as
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  I go out from here to do your your bidding. Amen.
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  Amen. And that is a great prayer.
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  And I think, you know, I also think of one
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  of the— it's a call to action
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  too, right? It's as you go out from here, these are the things that you
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  do as you go out from here. So as we pray that in the morning,
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  as we go out from our prayer place, everything else
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  that follows that day should follow from that as our grounding source.
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  And if I'm living my life today that way, then it's probably
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  going to be a pretty good day. Yeah, things may come, trials may come,
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  but they won't throw me off the beam. And if you were to look at
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  it in a structural way, right, to go
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  out here to do your bidding and you're on step 7.
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  Yeah. In a structural way of the steps, I would imagine just,
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  you know, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, the next step's 8.
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  Really? That's how that works? Yeah. And so like, you know, but that's important
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  when I tell guys that, I'm like, man, like, this is the work. This is
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  the bidding. And I know we're going a little bit over, but you know,
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  we were already talking about James, right? Yeah. So faith without works is dead.
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  And I talk about this a lot. It's in 3 places in the big book.
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  On page 14, and that's 14 and 15, that's talking about
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  unselfishness and helping others. And on page 76,
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  it says faith without works is dead. And that's talking about cleaning house.
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  Yeah, you know, on page 88,
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  going into the chapter Working with Others, it says faith without
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  works is dead. So I'm gonna just take a wild gander,
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  Pastor Mike, and say faith with the
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  works is cleaning house and helping God's guests.
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  This is a, you know, but anyways. And another way that you could say that
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  is loving your neighbor as you love yourself. Right,
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  man. We're— big brain time, big brain time for you.
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  Prayer: Father God, grant me serenity to accept what I
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  cannot change, courage to change what I can, and wisdom
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  to know the difference. Through your Holy Spirit, help me live this prayer
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  today. Shape my life through the example of Jesus and keep me steady as
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  I walk forward with you. Amen. Thank you, guys.