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July 16 – Healed by Humility · The Daily Ripples Podcast

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  Welcome back, everybody, to the Daily Ripples podcast.
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  I am Pastor Mike, and you have just me today.
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  Corey's not with me, but I don't want anybody to miss out because he'll be back with us tomorrow.
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  But today is July the 16th, and our devotional is titled Healed by Humility, the stone.
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  Humility does not increase my pain. It begins to heal it. Ripple 1 is practical. Today,
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  I will stop trying to control everything around me. When life does not go my way,
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  I will resist the urge to escape or react. I will accept what is in front of me and move through it
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  one step at a time. Ripple 2 is spiritual. The Father meets me in surrender. Jesus shows me how
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  to trust even in difficulty, and the Holy Spirit gives me strength to face what I would rather
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  avoid. As I place my life in God's care, fear and anger begin to fade, and I discover a steady
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  peace that carries me through. And as always, we save our prayer for the end of the episode.
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  We'll start today with the practical side, I suppose, because I think this ripple sometimes
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  is more confrontational or may read as more confrontational than it looks to be on the surface.
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  It says, today I will stop trying to control everything around me.
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  Well, that's a lot easier for me to read today than it is for me to live by.
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  Because myself, and I know most of us, we don't experience our control as control.
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  We just think that this is the way that things should be.
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  We experience it sometimes as a responsibility.
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  Sometimes we are saying that we are just being diligent when we're actually trying to control everything.
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  Sometimes we say that we're just getting things done or being a person who handles things.
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  But all of those can tie right back to simply being expressions of our attempt to control everything and everyone around us.
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  But look at what the ripple actually says as the alternative behaviors, you know, escape or react.
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  You know, those are two things that, you know, or two exit ramps you might say that we take when we can't control something.
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  So if we can't control anything, we either react negatively or we try to escape a situation.
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  If I can't manage an outcome, I'd rather leave the situation completely alone somehow,
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  either physically leave or emotionally or mentally check out,
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  or I might react by being more aggressive than I should be.
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  I might come out swinging at it, trying to force a situation or even a person into submission.
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  But both of those are still control.
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  They're just controlled wearing different clothes, you might say.
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  But there's a moment in the big book, in the chapter called How It Works, and it's right
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  as it's walking through the third step, and it says something short and blunt, and it always
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  sticks with me and hopefully sticks with anybody who has ever read it.
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  It says that first of all, we had to quit playing God.
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  Just three short words, quit playing God.
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  Yeah, that's a lot easier to say than it is to do, I know. And now, I don't really know a single
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  person, whether in rooms of recovery or in church pews, who would tell you outright that they think
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  that they are God. But if you look at the evidence of how some people actually operate from day to day
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  and how I've even operated day to day in my past and how much energy and time and creativity goes
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  into managing outcomes that we never really had any control over to begin with, you know,
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  trying to manage other people's choices, trying to manage the future, trying to control what
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  other people's opinions of us are.
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  We're not usually claiming to be God out loud.
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  We're just quietly doing God's job for Him.
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  You might say one unsolicited intervention or one, you know, step at a time.
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  I think that's why the literature and why even this devotional today, it doesn't say, you know, stop caring about people, stop caring about situations.
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  It says stop trying to control it because those are not the same thing.
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  One of the things that I say a lot is that love and control don't really go in the same sentence.
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  You know, if you really love someone, that you're not going to control them.
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  And you could care about something with your whole heart and still not be the one in control of the situation or of the person.
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  And then our passage today, you know, we have the alternative.
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  It's not to manage or fix it or force something into submission, but sometimes our alternative is just to accept what is in front of us and move through it one step at a time.
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  And that phrase, you know, one step at a time, that's not just decoration, you might say, but that's the whole way that the program of recovery works.
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  And honestly, it should be the whole rhythm of our Christian life as well.
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  You know, you don't get, you know, the whole staircase, you might say, illuminated at once.
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  You just get the step you're on.
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  And there's also a verse in the Bible that, you know, I tend to go back to for this, you know.
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  And it's in Psalm 46 in verse 10.
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  And NRSV says simply, be still and know that I am God.
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  Be still.
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  Man, sometimes I need that, right?
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  That reminder just to, I don't have to run 90 to nothing and control one thing to the
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  next and what's the next thing I have to do and then the next and then the next and then
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  the next.
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  Sometimes I have to learn to just kind of step back and, as it says, be still.
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  And the second part of that is to know that I am God.
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  And that's God speaking through his prophets and authors in the Old Testament, reminding us that one of the things that I say often is that God is God and I am not.
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  And I say that a lot because I need the reminder a lot, you know, like we're talking about a minute ago.
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  Sometimes my actions show that I think I'm trying to take on the role of God in either my life or other people's lives.
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  And sometimes I have to step back and stop doing all of that.
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  In the context of the psalm, God is speaking into chaos.
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  You know, the nations were in uproar, the earth giving way.
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  And the instruction isn't go out and fix it.
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  It's be still.
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  It's sit down.
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  The instruction is to quit playing God, and God's reminding us time and time again,
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  do not worry, I've got this.
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  And I think that this is where the word practical and the ripple one really earns its name,
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  because this is not a theological abstraction.
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  It's a decision that you get to make in the next five minutes when trouble arises,
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  or in the next conversation, or in the next moment in your life when your plans get interrupted.
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  And maybe for you today, that's a medical diagnosis or mental health diagnosis you didn't ask for.
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  Maybe it's a relationship that is not healing quite on your timeline.
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  Maybe it's just traffic.
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  You know, if you're listening to this all the way to work and somebody pulls in front of you and cuts you off and they didn't even have a turn signal and you want to blast the horn and the finger at them.
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  Maybe that's when this one is reminding you today to be still.
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  maybe it's your schedule falling apart and how you respond to small stuff you know usually tells you
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  the truth about how you'd respond to the big stuff you know the big book and the forward calls this
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  whole way of of learning how to live differently learning how to react differently learning how to
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  give over control to our higher power instead of trying to control everything around us
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  you know, the foreword to the big book calls that a design for living. It doesn't say it's a design
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  for controlling. Corey, if you're listening, I know you dig in on these words. It's a design for
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  living, it says, and that's a big difference. And it's the difference that this ripple is
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  trying to get us all to practice today. So practically, and this is where I'd invite
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  myself and everybody to actually sit with this today, is to think about where in your life right
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  now, are you doing the escape move? Where in your life are you trying to do the react move?
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  And where in your life do you need to step back and do the accept it and take the next step move?
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  Or in other words, where is life asking you to take the next right indicated step? Because I
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  promise you, whatever it is, the problem that you're having is not going to get any smaller the more
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  that you try to squeeze your fist around it and control it. And then we move on to the spiritual
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  side. And today, you know, it walks through all three persons of our Holy Trinity. And so we'll
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  take them one at a time because I'm a pastor and I can, and you've made it this far along the ride.
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  So why not continue with me just a little bit longer? But each one is doing something a bit
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  different. It says the Father meets me in surrender. And it's very important to realize
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  it does not say that the Father meets me in success. Now, is God with me in success? Yes,
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  but many times when I succeed at something, when any of us succeed at something, we tend to
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  self-congratulate versus when we're at our rock bottom, when we're at that place of surrender,
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  you might say, when we have nowhere to look but up, that often is when we turn to the Father.
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  It doesn't say that the Father meets me once I've figured it out, but it meets me in surrender. The
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  with God. The Father is not achievement, in other words, it's release. There's a passage near the
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  back of the big book, and I think it's in the personal stories, the one called Dr. Alcoholic
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  Addict. And it's one of the, I think that's the story that it's in, and I'm sure Corey or someone
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  will correct me if I'm wrong, but it says that, you know, acceptance is the answer to all my
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  problems today, that when I'm disturbed, it's because I found some person, place, thing, or
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  situation unacceptable to me, and I won't find any peace until I accept it exactly as it is.
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  And that's, you know, the Father meeting us in surrender, not because surrender is a nice,
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  humble little posture that we adopt, but because surrender is the only doorway into peace that
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  actually works, or at least that's actually worked in my life. Everything else is just the hall,
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  and it circles back around to the same locked door, and I just wander around aimlessly in my own head,
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  he might say. And I think it's worth saying, too, that surrender in the big book is not a
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  one-time event. You know, the Father doesn't meet us and surrender one time. He meets us there every
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  time that we come back to the door. And then the spiritual ripple says that Jesus shows me how to
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  trust even in difficulty, and that's where I want to read you something, and this is out of Matthew
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  chapter 11, verses 28 through 30, and this is in the New Revised Standard Version. It says,
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  Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
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  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find
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  rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Now, he doesn't say in this
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  passage, come to me and I'll remove the yoke. He says, take my yoke. So there's still weight to it.
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  You know, there's still a road ahead, but it's God's weight now. It's Jesus's weight now shared.
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  You know, it's not something that I have to bear and carry on alone. And that's what trust in
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  difficulty looks like. Not the absence of the burden, but the presence of Jesus right there with
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  me, carrying the burden with me. And then it says the Holy Spirit gives me strength to face what I
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  would rather avoid. And that's not strength to skip it. That's not give me the strength to avoid
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  what I would rather avoid. No, it says give me the strength to face what I would rather avoid.
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  There's a line in Isaiah 41 in verse 10 that I think of every time that I think about this ripple.
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  It says, do not fear for I'm with you. Do not be afraid for I'm your God. I will strengthen you. I
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  and help and uphold. Three different verbs and three different kinds of support for three different
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  kinds of days that we can have. And sometimes I need all three of those in the same day. I don't
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  know about you. And that's how we get to the last line. As I place my life in God's care,
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  fear and anger begin to fade. I discover a steady peace that carries me through.
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  Then there's another verse that you might say ties this whole ripple together for me, and that's in
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  1 Peter 5, verses 6 and 7. Again, in the New Revised Standard Version, I know there's various
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  versions of this out there, but it says, essentially along the lines of, humble yourselves, therefore,
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  under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on Him,
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  because He cares for you. So humbling yourself and casting your anxiety onto God aren't always
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  two separate actions. Sometimes they're in the same motion. It's just being described in two
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  different ways. And you might even say you can't really do one without doing the other.
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  So today we've got the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, each one meeting us somewhere different.
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  The Father meeting us in surrender, the Son meeting us in the weight that we're already carrying,
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  and the Spirit meeting us with the strength to actually stay in the room instead of running from
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  it as soon as trouble arises. And that's the healing that this devotional's title is actually
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  pointing toward. It's not a healing that removes the hard thing, but it's a healing that happens
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  when you're still standing in it with your hands open, sharing the weight. Fear is starting slowly
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  to fade. And that's where I would leave you with today as we pray our way out.
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  Father, I place my life in your care today. Through your Holy Spirit, give me strength to face what
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  comes without fear or anger,
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  shape my trust through the example of Jesus
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  and bring healing to the places in me that still hurt.
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  Amen.