Latest / Sober Readings / Came To Believe - Ch 3 - Prayer
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Came to Believe the spiritual adventure of AA as experienced by individual members. Hey everyone, my name is Scott. Welcome to Sober Readings for this Sunday, the nineteenth of July. And today I'm going to be reading chapter three from Came to Believe. Chapter three is titled Prayer. And the intro goes like this. In AA, we have found that the actual good results of prayer are beyond question. They are matters of knowledge and experience. All those who have persisted have found strength not ordinarily their own. They have found wisdom beyond their usual capability, and they have increasingly found a peace of mind which can stand firm in the face of difficult circumstances. And that was from Bill W and it's on page one hundred four of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. Chapter three has six short stories, but two or three of them are very short, like one or two paragraphs. So I'm probably gonna get through the entire chapter this ⁓ this episode. But before I get to the readings, let's begin with the serenity prayer. God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference. All right, let's get started on chapter three. The first story is titled Infinite Need. In practice, I have always found it rather difficult to let Allah's superior and flawless will prevail in my life and govern my will. However, when I make humble efforts, serenely accepting his will for me at some moment in my life, I feel absolutely relieved of the load I carry on my shoulders. The mind does not wander anymore, and the heart is full of happiness at every breath I take. The most wonderful thing I have discovered is that prayer does work. I am beginning to think of Allah as a most loving creator who is specially interested in me, otherwise, he would not have led me to AA nor given me so many chances to come out of slips. He is patient and merciful. Although a moral inventory and a daily inventory reveal myriads of flaws in our makeups, still we as human beings are cannot unravel all our liabilities and the personality. So at night when I offer thanks to him for the day's sobriety, I add a prayer. I ask him to forgive my failings during the day, to help me to improve, and to grant me the wisdom to discover those faults in myself which I cannot lay my finger on. In short, the need for prayer is infinite. That was written in Karachi Pakistan. The next story is titled More Than a Symbol. In the not too distant days of my drunken past, when locomotion was failing and consciousness was fading, I would always manage to get at least one knee on the floor before I fell into bed. This gesture was accompanied by a mumbled God, I'm checking in, I'm drunk. I tell this not to elicit prayer for having kept an outward vestige of the faith I knew as a child, but because I want to show the deep entrenchment of a symbol after the meaning was gone. When my life was mercifully turned around and I threw in my lot with AA because I could not do otherwise and live, a new prayer took the place of the old one. Monotonously, almost every moment when I was alone, I repeated God please restore me to sanity. And finally the answer began to come. Asane me was a startling revelation. Being able to look at the what I was part of my life with unclouded insight. made me feel like a clairvoyant. I was looking into the life of someone I really had never known, though I knew everything that had taken place in her life. My perception is not keen enough to understand the how or why, but now at least I can see the pattern of that life. Since my quiet miracle happened when I happily found I did not need or want to drink, I have continued to pray. Now I say funny private prayers and Like one that is a line from a song, asking that there be peace on earth and that it begin with me. Most of my prayers are just short thank yous for a favor or for making me stop to think before I act or react. My relationship with God has matured as any child's might normally do with his earthly father. I appreciate his kindness and wisdom more. That's from Nashville, Tennessee. The next story is titled How Do You Pray? Many times while I was drinking, I asked God to help me, and ended up calling him all the curse names I could think of and saying, If you're so almighty, why did you let me end up drunk and in all this trouble again? One day I was sitting on the side of my bed feeling all alone, with a shotgun shell in my hand, ready to load. If there is a god, I cried out, give me the courage to pull the trigger. A voice, soft and very clear, spoke, get rid of that shell. I threw the shell out the door. In a moment of calm, I dropped to my knees, and that voice spoke again. Call Alcoholics Anonymous. It startled me. I looked around, wondering where the voice came from, and I said out loud, ⁓ God. I jumped up and ran to the phone. As I grabbed for it, I knocked it to the floor. I sat down beside it and with a shaking hand dialed the operator and yelled for her to call AA. I will connect you with information, she said. I'm shaking too damn bad to dial any numbers. You go to hell. I can't explain why I didn't hang up. I just sat there on the floor with the receiver at my ear. The next thing I heard was, Good afternoon, Alcoholics Anonymous. May we help you. After I had been sober in AA for four months, my wife and I got back together. I had always said it was her fault that I drank so much. All those crying kids and her complaining would cause anyone to drink. But after we had been back together for three months, I realized how wonderful a wife and mother she was. For the first time, I knew what real love was, instead of just using her. Then it happened. I had always been afraid to love. For me, to love meant to lose. I believed that was God's way of punishing me for all the sins I had committed. My wife became very ill and she was rushed to the hospital. She had cancer. A doctor finally told me. She might not pull through the operation, he said, and if she did, it would be only a matter of hours before she passed away. I turned and ran down the hall. All I could think of was to get a bottle. I knew that if I got out the door, that's just what I would do. But a power greater than myself caused me to stop and cry out My God, nurse, call AA. I ran into the men's room and stayed there, crying, begging God to take me instead of her. Again the fear took over, and in self pity I said, Is this what I get for trying to work those damn steps? I looked up and the room was full of men, standing there looking at me. It seemed to me that they all stuck out their hands and said their names at the same time. We're from AA. Cry it all out, one of them said. You'll feel better, and we understand. I asked them, why is God doing this to me? I've tried so hard, and that poor woman is One of the men stopped me and said, How do you pray? I said that I asked God not to take her but to take me. He then said, Why don't you ask that God give you the strength and courage to accept his will? Say, Thy will, not mine be done. Yes, that was the first time in my life that I prayed for his will to be done. As I look back, I see that I had always asked God to do things my way. I was sitting in the lobby with the AA men who when two surgeons came up to me. One of them asked, Can we talk to you in private? I heard myself answer Whatever you have to say, you can say it in front of them. They are my people. The first doctor then spoke. We have done all we can for her. She is still alive, and that is all we can say. One of the AAs put his arm around me and said to me, Now why don't you turn her over to the greatest surgeon of them all? Ask him to give you courage to accept. We all linked hands and joined in the serenity prayer. How much time passed, I don't recall. The next thing I heard was a nurse speaking my name. She said softly, you can see your wife now, but only for a couple of minutes. As I ran up to the room, I thanked God for giving me this chance to let my wife know that I did love her and was sorry for my past. I was expecting to see a dying woman. To my surprise, my wife had a smile on her face and tears of joy in her eyes. She tried to reach out her arms and in a weak voice she said, You didn't leave me alone and go get drunk. That was three years and four months ago. Today we are still together. She works her program, Alanon, and I work mine, both of us living in today one day at a time. God answered my prayers through the people of AA. Huntington Beach, California. And this next writing is one of the very short ones. It's titled God Found Me. I believe that God found me more than I found him. It was similar to watching a child walk. He falls down again and again, but it is better not to try to help him until he comes to realize that he cannot do it alone, and extends his hand. I had gotten myself into a position where I had no other place to turn. I was at a point of almost complete despair. Then and only then did I honestly and simply ask God to help me. He came to me instantly and I could feel his presence, even as I do this moment. Nashville, Tennessee. Alright, we've got two stories left in chapter three. This next one is titled A Small White Card. When I came to AA, I was a self ordained atheist, a part time agnostic, and a full time antagonist. Antagonistic toward everyone, everything in general, and God in particular. This was due in part, I suppose, to my trying to hold on to my childhood concept of God. A more bewildered, confused, powerless woman there never was. It seemed that I had lost faith first in myself, then in other people, and finally in God. There was only one good thing about my refusal to believe that I had a creator. It certainly relieved God of any embarrassing responsibility. Yet I had a spiritual experience the night I called AA, though I didn't realize it until later. Two angels came, carrying a real message of hope. And told me about AA. My sponsor laughed when I denied that I had prayed for help. I told him that the only time I had mentioned God was when in my despair at being unable to either get either drunk or sober, I had cried out God, what am I doing? He replied, I believe that prayer was a pretty good one for a first one from an atheist. It got an answer too, and so it did. In a state more like rigamortis than an acute hangover, I was taken to my first AA meeting, about sixty five miles from my hometown. We visited a member's house on the way and I caught my first glimpse of the Serenity Prayer on a wall plaque. It was a shocker. I thought I've really got myself into another big mess with my drinking as usual. I hope this prayer has nothing to do with AA for heaven's sake. And I studiously avoided looking in that direction all afternoon. Little did I know that starting twenty four hours later, the serenity prayer would be my companion and hope and salvation for five horrifying days and nights. After we reached the closed AA meeting in the evening, my whole attitude began to change in spite of myself. These people had something I lacked, and I wanted it. Later, I learned that what they had was power drive and power steering, and that the source was a loving God as they understood him. They acted as if I was an answer to a prayer, and they really wanted me there. Eventually, the belief these AAs had in me led me to believe in them, then in myself again, and finally in God. One of the women handed me a small white card with the Serenity Prayer printed on it. What if I don't believe in God? I asked. She grinned and said, Well, I believe that he believes in you. Didn't you say that you were willing to go to any lengths? And she added, just hang on to this card for deer life. If you're tempted to take that first drink, read it. Or read it if you run into some other problem too big for you to handle. At home, just twenty four hours later, I did begin hanging on to that little card for deer life. My husband of twenty five years went into DTs and In his madness he prevented me from phoning or going for help. For five days and nights there was no sleep for either of us, and there were times when I became part of his nightmares and my life was threatened. All the while I never allowed the card to leave my person. I read and reread the Serenity Prayer. Though the house was as well stocked with liquor as a small bar, the miracle of it all was that I did not take a drink. Me. Who had solved all my problems with strong drink. Instead, I clutched that little card and murmured the words over and over for five days and nights. I do not recall making any decision to believe. I felt only that the god of these AA people might take pity on me and help me, but I certainly had come to believe that I was powerless. As our big book states, the alcoholic at certain certain times has no effective mental defense against that first drink. Except in a few rare cases neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a higher power. All this so soon after my first meeting. The whole experience caused me to listen intently to other members' stories of how they came to believe. It caused me to read and reread the chapter We Agnostics in the Big Book, and the words on the same subject in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. At last I came to the conclusion that there was an easier, softer way, easier than anything I had tried for myself before AA. I came to believe. And lest I forget, I still have in my possession a small, tattered, faded, serenity prayer card which saved my sanity and my sobriety and restored my faith in the God of my understanding. That was written in Brighton, Colorado. And the last writing in chapter three is titled Heard at Meetings, and it's another short one. Many people pray as though to overcome the will of a reluctant God instead of taking hold of the willingness of a loving God. It is wise to pray for the future but not to worry about it, because we can't live in it until it becomes the present. The depth of our anxiety measures the distance we are from God. If we have the opportunity to help in some practical way when our loved ones or other people we are concerned about are in trouble, let's do so. If there is no such opportunity, let's pray for them and believe that in doing so we are helping to connect their minds to God's influence. But let's not expect same day service. The important part is not to cancel our prayers by later worrying. There is a vast difference between being concerned and worrying. Long distance unconditional faith is the best kind. That was written in Sydney, Australia. And that's it for chapter three, so next week we'll start on chapter four, which is titled Release from Obsession. And I'll read that intro now. In the late stages of our drinking, the will to resist has fled. Yet when we admit complete defeat and when we become entirely ready to try AA principles, our obsession leaves us and we enter a new dimension. Freedom under God as we understand him. And Bill W wrote that in a letter in 1966. So that's chapter that's the beginning of chapter four. We'll begin that next Sunday, and I hope you'll join me for that. But until then, don't forget to listen to the daily episodes where I read Daily Reflections, 24 Hours, as Bill sees it, and one reading from Touchstones. But I've been mixing it up a lot quite a bit lately in reading from AA Comes of Age or Grapevine Articles. So don't forget to tune in daily for those readings. So that's gonna do it for today's episode of Sober Readings. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, hit that like button and share and also subscribe. And if you'd like to be a guest reader on the show and help me read chapter four of Came to Believe next week, that would be great. Just send me an email at soberreadings with Scott at gmail.com and we can certainly make that happen. Also, if you'd like to drop a dollar in the virtual donation basket for today's readings, just go to soberreadings.com and click the donate button. So again, thank you so much for listening today. Stay sober, keep reading, and I'll catch 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.