Latest / Sober Readings / To Be Of Service
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Happy Monday everyone and welcome to Sober Readings. Today is Monday the third of August. Let's begin today with the serenity prayer. God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Today's reading from Daily Reflections. It is a continuation of yesterday's title, which was We Become Willing, and today's title is To Be of Service. Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us. And that's on page seventy seven of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is clear that God's plan for me is expressed through love. God loved me enough to take me from alleys and jails so that I could be made a useful participant in His world. My response is to love all of His children through service and by example. I ask God to help me imitate His love for me through my love for others. Today's reading from twenty four hours a day. August three, AA Thought for the Day. We in AA must remember that we are offering something intangible. We are offering a psychological and spiritual program. We're not offering a medical program. If people need medical treatment, we call in a doctor. If they need a medical prescription, we let the doctor prescribe for them. If they need hospital treatment, we let the hospital take care of them. Our vital AA work begins when a person is physically able to receive it. And the question of the day is am I willing to leave medical care to the doctors? Today's meditation for the day. Each moment of the day which you devote to this new way of life is a gift to God. The gift of the moments. Even when your desire to serve God is sincere, it is not an easy thing to give him many of these moments. The daily things you had planned to do, given up so gladly that you can prove it. Form a good service or say a kind word. If you can see God's purpose in many situations, it will be easier to give Him many moments of your day. Every situation has two interpretations your own and God's. Try to handle each situation in the way you believe God would have handled it. Today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may make my day count somewhat for God. I pray that I may not spend it all selfishly. Today's meditation from Touchstones. To live a spiritual life, we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude. That's a quote from Henry J. ⁓ Nguyen. Knowing our loneliness and admitting it to ourselves is the beginning of a spiritual path for many men. Today we are on a spiritual journey. We already have the means to translate the pain of our loneliness into a deeper spiritual dimension. Most men in this program came in deeply aware of their feelings of isolation. Now, with the companionship of our higher power, we can spend time alone and use it for spiritual growth. As we develop a relationship with ourselves and deepen our knowledge of our higher power, our loneliness transforms into solitude. In this quiet moment today, We can be more accepting of ourselves than we were in the past. We admit that loneliness has caused us pain, but now we can see that it also can lead us to our deeper self where we find serene solitude. This change is a movement into the spiritual world. Thanks to God for the solitude I have found in my life. And for today's final reading, I'm gonna read from page 327 of As Bill Sees It: Three Choices. The immediate object of our quest is sobriety. Freedom from alcohol and from all its baleful consequences. Without this freedom, we have nothing at all. Paradoxically, though, we can achieve no liberation from alcohol obsession until we become willing to deal with those character defects which have landed us in that helpless condition. In this freedom quest, we are always given three choices. A rebellious refusal to work upon our glaring defects can be an almost certain ticket to destruction. Or, perhaps for a time, we can stay sober with a minimum of self-improvement and settle ourselves into a comfortable but often dangerous mediocrity. Or finally, we can continuously try hard for those sterling qualities that can add up to fineness of spirit and action, true and lasting freedom under God. And that was written in a grapevine article from November of 1960. And that's it for today's readings. But again, I'd like to go back to daily reflections and talk about today's reading. To be of service. And the first line says, It's clear that God's plan for me is expressed through love. God loved me enough to take me from alleys and jails so that I could be made a useful participant in his world. And to me, that's talking about Getting sober is more than simply r removing alcohol from my life. If all I do is stop drinking and continue living only for myself, ⁓ I may remain trapped in the same selfish thinking that contributed to my alcoholism in the first place. Recovery asks me to become helpful, dependable, and useful to other people around me. When I listen to someone who's struggling, ⁓ when I show up for my family, when I help another alcoholic Or quietly do what needs to be done, I begin to live with purpose. Service gets me out of my own head and reminds me that sobriety is not only a gift for me, it allows me to become the person I was meant to be for others. And so the real value of sobriety is is not measured only by how many days I've gone without a drink, but by what I do with those days. I stay sober so I can be present, contribute, and offer hope to someone who may still be suffering. So tell me about your service. What does doing service look like to you in your sobriety? I'd love to hear about it. Send me an email at soberreadingswithscott at gmail.com or you can drop a comment below. So that's gonna do it for today's episode of Sober Readings. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the show, hit that like button and share and subscribe and do all the things. I really appreciate it. ⁓ also like I said, if you'd like to be a guest reader on the show, I'd love to have you. Send me an email at soberreadings with Scott at gmail.com and we can make that happen. Also, if you'd like to drop a dollar in the virtual donation basket for today's readings, just go to my website, sobereadings.com, and click the donate button. And so I appreciate you being here with me today. Thank you for listening. 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, everyone, and as my friend Larry says, best day ever.