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August 18 – Healing the Hidden Wounds · The Daily Ripples Podcast

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  Hey everybody, welcome back to the Daily Ripples Podcast.
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  Today is Tuesday, August 18th. Our daily devotional
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  is titled Healing the Hidden Wounds, and I've got myself,
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  Pastor Mike, and Corey here with us today, and we're going to kick right
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  into this with the stone. True healing begins when I address not only
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  the harm I caused others, but also the damage I have
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  carried within myself. Ripple 1: Practical.
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  Today, I will be honest about the wounds I still carry. Guilt and
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  shame often linger long after the events that caused them.
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  Facing them honestly and taking responsibility where needed allows healing
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  to begin. Ripple 2: Spiritual. As I bring hidden wounds
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  into the light, the Holy Spirit helps me release burdens I was never meant
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  to carry and leads me toward deeper healing. The Father desires wholeness for
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  every part of my life, And Jesus shows me that forgiveness includes
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  receiving grace as well as extending it.
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  Now, when I think about this one, and just so that,
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  you know, we start off on the right foot today, you know,
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  we ended yesterday, you know, threw out some scripture references
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  that we didn't really dig into in the episode, but on this one today,
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  I was thinking about Matthew 11:28-30,
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  and that's the kind of famous passage where Jesus is telling them,
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  come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
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  And then he tells them that my yoke is easy and my burden
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  is light. But the thing that I always come back
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  to on that is that it's still a yoke, you know, so there's still a
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  responsibility. There's still guidance that I'm being received. I mean,
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  Christ's yoke is easy, but he's still guiding me, and what he guides
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  me to is forgiveness,
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  honestly. And I come to forgiveness because that's
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  what I need for myself to get underneath the yoke, you might
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  say, of shame. You know, guilt is one thing. Guilt is,
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  you know, I did something wrong and now I've got to make up for it.
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  Shame is I am wrong and nothing I could ever do as a person
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  will make me worthy, right? So shame is tied a lot to worthiness.
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  And I have to take that to Jesus or to
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  the Father as well. I have to take that feeling of unworthiness
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  to him and let, over time, let him
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  cleanse me of it is all I can really think of. And for me,
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  the way that I am cleansed of those feelings
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  of shame and unworthiness is by being
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  the hands and feet of Jesus. And in recovery context,
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  that means working with another alcoholic. You know, in a church context,
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  it means not shying away from those who are going through a tough time,
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  you know, reaching out in love with a hand of care.
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  And sometimes it's just being present with somebody, you know,
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  can heal some of those wounds that come from loneliness and despair,
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  depression, all those kinds of things. And we alcoholics
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  obviously are not immune to those feelings. I mean, depression, loneliness, despair,
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  a lot of those things, especially at our bottoms, are a big part of what
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  keeps us stuck in the bottle. And now that
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  I have come into recovery and
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  I've worked through the steps and continue to work through the steps with other people
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  and continue to grow spiritually, then I
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  don't have as many wounds that are hidden today. There's more that have been opened
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  up and that Jesus has healed because I have taken those to Him
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  when I was weary and burned. And it's a good reminder that,
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  because look, I'm going to get weary and burdened again. It's not like,
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  you know, I've cleaned up all the wreckage in my past and I'm never going
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  to have any more wreckage. That's not what we're saying. But today, when I do
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  experience those things, I know what to do with it. And that's work
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  my program and take it to the Lord. You know how cool,
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  because I do know people and I
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  think it's really a cool deal to like think about like Coming
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  up into a place where in this present moment, this is the goal
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  for me, that I'll, you know, I think God will lead me into doing
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  this eventually. Coming into a place where I've cleaned
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  up everything up into that present moment. How,
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  what a cool and freeing place. I mean, sure, the more things are going to
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  happen, right? I'm not, but I think like, you know, I think about that and,
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  you know, cause like, you know, what a, that's a spiritual experience within itself getting
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  there. No, that, well, that's probably, you know, having had a spiritual awakening,
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  you know. But, you know, so— Well, and I think that's also
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  the place where you can experience the truest form of peace.
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  Right. Nothing, you know, it's just you and God in that moment.
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  You know, and, you know, Bill Wilson kind of, you know, spoke on
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  this. He said, you know, sometimes we— I was talking on
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  the words of humility, but I'm thinking about this now,
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  how, you know, we might only see little glimpses of it.
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  But maybe in that moment, right after I make that
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  last amends, that morning before I touch anybody else,
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  just that morning, because then I'm going to go affect other people. And there I
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  am again. And there I am, because I'm not going to be perfect.
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  But we're talking about something on the long— true
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  hit. So it says, I caused
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  others, but also the damage I've carried within myself. Yeah.
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  Well, what a cool deal we're
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  in, right? Because the primary purpose is to
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  carry the message to the other person that's just like me,
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  right? Still struggling. That's still struggling. So on
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  page 124 of the big book, it says,
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  cling to the thought that in God's hands, the dark past is the
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  greatest possession you have. The key to life and happiness
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  for others. With it, you can avert death and misery for them.
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  Man, that gives me a purpose too in that, right? So it gets like,
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  you know, my greatest defect,
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  like the worst thing that I'd ever done, has now given
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  me a place and a position to be of use to others. So I think,
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  you know, through this cleaning up of the past and through what
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  was deemed to me to be the worst thing possible for
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  me to be in this world, I'm able to use that to be of And
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  I think like, so, and I've said this before, but I was sitting there talking
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  to a dude one day. We were going through this literature and we were on
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  page 53 of this big book. And we were
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  reading the statement that says, when we
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  became alcoholics crushed by a self-imposed crisis
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  we could not postpone or evade, we had to fiercely,
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  fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or
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  else he is nothing. God either is or he isn't. And so we were sitting
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  there and he said, man, you know, I don't really think God is everything.
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  And I said, okay, well, I mean, what's God not? And he said, well,
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  you know, when I did this and this and this and this, God's the
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  devil. That was the devil, not God. And I think I might have
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  said this to you, but, you know, I looked at him and I said,
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  so, you know, I did this and I hurt other people and did all this.
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  That was the devil, not God, right? He said, yeah,
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  you're right. Yeah. And I said, so right here, right now, that's God because this
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  is good, right? He said, yeah. And I said, well,
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  you know, what if I didn't do any of that stuff? Would I be sitting
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  here right now, here with you and trying to read this book
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  with you? And he was like, well— I said, so maybe God is the shit
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  in the fan, right? And I wasn't supposed to say that word, but— and
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  he said it so quickly that I almost didn't even notice it, but there will
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  be a A beep added in. Right. So like, you know, it's the
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  good and the bad. And, you know, God works through me through any which way
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  possible. And I'm not saying go out there and hurt somebody, but, you know,
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  we're here right now and what are we going to do with it? Well,
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  man, I can go be of use to another person with this. So, and,
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  you know, when I read that, you know, so is God everything? Yes, he's everything
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  to me. But you know what's interesting? When you're looking at nothing, Michael,
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  and all you're looking at is nothing, isn't that everything too?
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  Well, nothing by— man,
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  you're in one of those big brain moments again, Corey, and I'm having a hard
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  time wrapping my head around the point you were trying to make there. I'll be
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  honest, because I was reading something, um,
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  that— or I was watching, I think. I wasn't even reading. It was a stand-up
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  comedian, and it, it was one of those— I don't know, it was an Instagram
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  reel or something like that. But he was making
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  the point about that once you figure out what nothing
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  is and you can define what nothing is, it's no longer nothing.
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  Right? Right. Because if you can define it, it's something. And so what is nothing?
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  Now he was talking about it in the context of the fallacy of people that
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  think that all of life stemmed from nothing in some kind of Big Bang.
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  You know, he was making a joke about that, saying that we all came from
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  nothing, which You gotta keep going back and back and back to figure out,
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  to find nothing, and you'll never find it. Right. Because even
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  in the vacuum of space, what we think of as nothingness,
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  there's infrared light, there's light waves passing,
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  there's atoms, molecules, like there's not a true vacuum.
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  And within nothing, it's everything. It's the absolute.
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  Inside of an absolute, there's an absolute, right? And so
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  I think that's, you know, cool. Because sometimes you bring up thoughts
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  that I think are too smart for this podcast or even for me, by the
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  way. So I appreciate you keeping me in check on that.
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  But I think depending on where you're at in your
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  life, and so I can look at this
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  paragraph on 53 in so many different ways, right? Because it says when
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  we became alcoholics, and when did we become alcoholics? On page
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  30. Right? On page 30, when we fully conceded
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  to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics, the first step in recovery.
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  So when we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis
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  we could not postpone or evade. What's the self-imposed crisis?
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  Well, God either is or he isn't. What's our choice to be?
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  And that's this self-imposed crisis within me.
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  And so, but I can also look at that statement as,
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  Oh, when I became an alcoholic, crushed by this self-imposed crisis,
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  when I had the wall around me, I had everybody hate
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  me, when I couldn't walk out my front door, that's a self-imposed crisis as well,
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  right? So was God in that? Well, and the problem for
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  me came when I put something else in God's
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  position, right? I— when I was drinking, I was— even though, you know,
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  for most of those years I was actively drinking, I was also practicing
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  atheism, and I say practicing now because I don't think I
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  ever truly accomplished atheism given the fact that I came back to the faith and
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  I'm now a pastor. But anyway, when I was practicing— You were just taking a
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  vacation. Right, right. When I was practicing atheism and heavily
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  drinking, then I was placing that alcohol at
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  the highest position in my life. It was my higher power. I placed it
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  above God or anything else. And when I placed
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  the wrong thing in God's position, then yeah,
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  that was the self-imposed crisis just waiting to happen. And clearly
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  I could not escape or evade that either. Right. But I was thinking too about
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  how you said, you know, the part that you read out of the book about,
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  you know, the darkest part of your past becoming your greatest asset.
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  I mean, that's right hand in hand with what the Apostle Paul was writing in
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  Romans 8:28. And I know we've read it on here before. That we know that
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  all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called
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  according to his purpose. And that's in the New Revised Standard Version.
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  But basically, that's not saying— and I always point this out anytime I preach on
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  this too— that that's not saying that all things
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  that happen to us are good or that all things are God. What it's saying
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  is that God can use all things, right? That he can make
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  all things work together for the good. Because my days
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  of drinking and selfishness and sin, whatever you want to call it, they were
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  a form of evil in my life. It was not God's plan
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  for what I needed to be doing. But even
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  that, to your point about of God or of the devil, even that
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  is used as an asset in my spiritual program today.
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  And it's used as part of my experience, strength, and hope that I can share
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  with another man struggling and going through the same things. To hopefully
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  show him a way out. Right.
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  I think that was a— let me end it with a prayer.
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  Yes, sir.
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  Father God, help me face the wounds I've carried for too long.
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  Through your Holy Spirit, bring healing where guilt and shame still linger.
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  Shape my life through the example of Jesus and lead me into freedom
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  and wholeness you desire for
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  me. Amen.