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April 29 – Freedom and Discipline · The Daily Ripples Podcast

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  Welcome back to the Daily Ripples podcast. I am Pastor Mike, and I've got Corey here with us
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  again today. And we're going to jump right in with our Daily Ripple for today, which is April the
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  29th, Freedom and Discipline, The Stone. True freedom is not the absence of limits. It is the
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  ability to live responsibly within them. Ripple One is practical. Today, I will remember that
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  freedom and discipline belong together. When I govern my own choices with honesty and restraint,
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  I avoid the chaos that comes from unchecked impulses. Healthy freedom grows where responsibility
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  is practiced. Ripple 2 is spiritual. Christ taught that truth leads to freedom. As I follow his example,
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  the Holy Spirit teaches me to live with both liberty and self-control. The Father's wisdom
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  shows that real freedom is not doing whatever I want, but living in ways that bring life and peace.
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  and we will save our prayer for the end of our episode.
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  So, anytime that I, you know, am reading or writing something about, you know, along the
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  lines of, you know, Christ taught that truth leads to freedom, well, of course, I always
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  go back to, you know, the verse of the Bible of Jesus saying that He is the way, the truth,
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  and the life.
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  So, truth for me is always measured through the teachings and the life and the example,
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  you know, of Jesus.
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  And so, what does that look like?
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  You know, well, that looks like, you know, Jesus obviously had the freedom to do whatever he wanted, you know, and the way that he chose to live was in the way of love.
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  You know, the way that he chose to live was in the way of service.
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  The way that he chose to live was in the way of not placing himself over everybody else, which he clearly could have done.
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  I mean, you know, he was fully God, but he chose to humble himself, to empty himself, you know, for our sake.
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  And if that is where life and truth and love, you know, come from, and that's the source of those,
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  then I need to be trying to model my life, you know, along the same lines and form those disciplines
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  so that I can experience, you know, that, as I talked about, the freedom within the limits.
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  Because me with no limits is not a good thing, Corey.
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  You know, me with no limits is me out there just being a complete terror, you know.
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  I need some guardrails at times, you know, and so that's why I'm glad that I have those guardrails.
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  You know, we talked about this week already some, those sets of instructions that we have.
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  And now, you know, today I can obey those instructions because I see the benefit of doing that,
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  not because I'm sitting back in the corner going, well, you know, I'm afraid I'm going to go to hell if I don't or something like that.
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  No, it's about experiencing that abundant life today and experiencing those fruits of the Holy Spirit.
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  So that's where my mind first goes on this.
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  But what have you got for us today, Corey?
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  Yeah, true freedom is not the absence of limits.
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  It is the ability to live responsibly within them.
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  You know, my God, which we could say is your God, which is anyways, is limitless.
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  Right?
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  And so, and we've talked about this before, but like, you know, so when I think about,
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  when I come up to that place of, you know, what's possible within the realm of God, anything, right?
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  And it's this huge thing, and, you know, so it's limitless.
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  And we were talking on the last one about the prayer of responsibility and humility,
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  and then you brought up discipline, and we've kind of talked about this,
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  but I have this view of everything, like, is in this divine way, and this, you know,
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  because I could never explain it any way else.
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  It's like this, you know, divine inspiration.
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  You know, my life has been divinely inspired by God.
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  And so, you know, I kind of went back to,
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  went to when I was thinking about that,
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  Galatians 5, 13.
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  And it says,
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  You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free.
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  But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh.
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  Rather, serve one another humbly in love.
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  For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command, love your neighbor as yourself.
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  And I think there's a couple other places in the Bible that connect to love your neighbor.
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  That's the command.
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  But loving your neighbor is just not your neighbor.
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  It's anybody.
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  Absolutely, yeah.
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  Your fellow.
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  It's just like an AA, you know, our fellows.
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  And when I think about that, it's not just the people around me.
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  It's everybody.
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  And that's kind of puts, when I look at it in that way, it puts things in a different perspective.
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  Because on page 67 of the big book, when we're talking about resentments, it's talking about, you know, when I got this resentment of somebody for being spiritually sick, but I was spiritually sick.
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  And then the prayer behind it is the sick man's prayer.
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  How can I be helpful to him?
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  God saved me from being angry.
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  Because I've never looked at it in that view, right?
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  I've always looked at it like, you know, a bad word, you.
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  You know, like F you.
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  You know what I mean?
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  But I've never said, you know, how can I be helpful to this person?
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  Because when I look at it in that view, it's like, well, man, how can I be helpful to them?
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  And so when I insert, just like it says, you know, when I insert in this Bible verse, or in the Bible, it says,
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  But do not use your freedom to indulge with flesh rather than serve one another humbly in love.
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  And I think that's really cool.
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  And that is, I mean, that is one of the greatest commandments, obviously, you know, throughout the Gospels or in every one of the Gospels.
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  You know, somebody tried to test Jesus and ask him, you know, what are the greatest commandments, of course.
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  And he said the greatest commandments are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.
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  And the second one, which is like it, which is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.
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  And then, you know, in the Gospel of John, you know, one of the things I'd written about, because this is talking about, you know, true freedom and living responsibly within our limits and things like that.
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  In John 8, you know, in verses 31 and 32, you know, Jesus said to the people who believed in him,
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  you are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
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  Well, his teachings, he said, all summarized down to within those two greatest commandments.
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  You know, the teachings of Jesus all centered around loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself.
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  And he gave a parable, a great example, you know, of the Good Samaritan, you know, which I'm sure you've heard of and are familiar with.
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  And that's the example of the guy who was on the side of the road, you know, and it's funny because my buddy, you know, Pastor Larry, that was a guest on here a few weeks ago, he retold that parable very well.
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  But the guy on the side of the road, you know, all the religious leaders, you know, passed him by and they couldn't help him.
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  And it wasn't because they didn't care.
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  It's just because they were busy or they had limitations.
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  You see, for them, the law was that for them to perform their temple duties, they could not become unclean.
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  And so helping this guy on the side of the road would have made them unclean, which is why they kept walking.
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  Not because they didn't care.
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  They didn't, you know, have feelings for the guy.
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  But Jesus was pointing out through the parable that, you know, the laws that we set up sometimes, you know,
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  or that we try to interpret or orient around our lives miss the mark.
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  But if we can peel it back and see that the rules or the set of instructions that we're following are all based on love, love of God and love of each other, then we're going to be on the right track.
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  And the guy who ended up helping the one on the side of the road was a Samaritan, which that's similar to saying to maybe today in the U.S. today that that's the Venezuelan drug lord, you know, that walked by and was the one who helped him.
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  It's basically the last person in the world that you would think of.
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  But he took care of him and he was the one who was showing him love.
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  And what I have found is that when I try to live my life that way, when I try to love my neighbor, and what I mean by that is not just the neighbors that I like, but most especially probably the ones that I don't like, I am more free.
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  But following along with those disciplines, you know, gives me the freedom to where I'm not thinking about a drink.
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  I'm not thinking about a substance.
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  You know, I have that soul satisfaction that comes from following the Father's will for my life.
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  Me and my sponsor were talking about this this morning.
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  Because, you know, he really talks a lot about where I practice this stuff at.
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  Because the big book talks about where I'd practice at first is in my home.
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  Second one's my occupation.
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  Third is my affairs.
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  And we were talking about, like, you know, because we were, you know,
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  we talk a lot about these guys that, you know, are, you know,
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  these circuit speakers and deal and, you know, the magic speakers,
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  the magic sponsors.
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  But that's one thing I don't hear a lot of them.
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  And he said, you know, he said it first, and I guess I agreed,
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  whatever that wants to go.
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  But if he listens to this, he could be like, yeah.
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  But whatever.
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  It doesn't matter because, you know, well, not as many people talk about where I practice this is in my home, occupation, and affairs.
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  Because, you know, that's the most, that's where I'm at.
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  That's where I need.
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  Because I can get that confused with, let me go help some hopeless drunks and not be there for my fiancé.
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  Right.
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  And I almost called her old lady because she just got diagnosed with arthritis.
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  And she's taking arthritis medicine, that old lady.
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  Anyways, she's not really old, but she's going to get mad.
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  No, he's going to get mad.
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  And you're going to be in trouble.
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  But we were talking about, because I said something to him.
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  I said, well, maybe, because when I came here, did I even have the ability to act like a good person?
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  because my book, the book of Alcoholics Anonymous, says,
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  many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore,
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  but we could not live up to them even though we would have liked to.
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  We couldn't live up to them.
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  So then it says, neither could we reduce our self-centeredness
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  much by wishing or trying on our own power.
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  We had to have God's help.
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  That statement in there, and there's a little couple other statements I could weave in there, but it changes this thing instead of a self-help program into a spiritual.
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  Yeah, and when it becomes spiritual, it becomes transformative, because it transforms our whole life.
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  Because when I think of self-help, I think of something that I can read, I can study, I can take whatever I want out of it and apply it.
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  But it's almost like a patch in a nail hole in a tire.
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  Right.
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  I mean, eventually it's going to come undone again,
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  and we're going to have a bigger problem and stick with a flat somewhere,
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  versus, you know, when I take it and actually apply it in those areas that you mentioned,
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  you know, the home, outside the home, and work, and all of our affairs,
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  which, by the way, affairs is just the antiquated word for everything else.
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  They're not talking about sleeping around.
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  So just to clarify that.
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  Don't get excited.
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  Exactly.
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  And, but when I'm doing those things, it's like I'm replacing the tire, you know, not just patching it.
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  You know, it does give me that new freedom.
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  Well, I don't know.
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  Well, I do know.
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  I'm sorry.
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  There was one other thing I wanted to quote out in this because he was talking a lot about freedom, right?
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  Yeah.
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  And on page 26 of the big boat, at the very bottom of the page, if anybody wants to go, you know, double check me,
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  which I would really like because if you open the big book and you're in the recovery, it might help.
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  Anyways, it says, but this man still lives, and he is a free man.
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  He does not need a bodyguard, nor is he confined.
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  He can go anywhere on earth where other free men may go without disaster, provided he remains willing.
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  And this is one word that your sponsor likes to use.
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  He remains willing to maintain a certain simple attitude.
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  Yeah.
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  Definitely all interconnected together.
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  Yeah, for sure.
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  Well, let's close out with our prayer for today.
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  Our prayer says, Father, teach me the freedom that comes from wisdom and discipline.
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  Help me follow the example of Christ and walk in step with your spirit so that my choices bring life rather than confusion.
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  Amen.
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  Amen.