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June 22 - Free Through Surrender · The Daily Ripples Podcast

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  Hey guys, this is the Daily Ripples, and today is June 22nd.
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  Oh, we got Pastor Mike as our co-host, Memphis as our host, and Corey as your premium host.
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  Oh, June 22nd, free through surrender.
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  The stone, freedom begins where control ends.
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  When I accept what I cannot change, I release the constant tension of trying to manage everything.
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  Ripple 1 Practical. Today I will stop fighting battles that are not mine to win.
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  I will focus on what I can do and release what I cannot control.
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  Acceptance is not giving up. It is choosing peace over constant struggle.
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  Ripple 2 Spiritual. As I trust the Father and follow Christ,
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  the Holy Spirit teaches me to be still and let God be God.
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  In that surrender, I find a deeper freedom.
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  Over time, peace replaces conflict, and I no longer feel the need to fight everything
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  around me. And, you know, man—.
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  I got a rigid sponsor and he, he picks apart words and we break down words and
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  definition back and forth. You
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  know, this is a daily thing and this isn't just, you know, on a blue moon.
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  And, you know, so we talk a lot about like, you know, people,
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  you know, just the, the, the idea of acceptance is the key and,
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  you know, what surrender means and can I really just surrender?
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  And so you know like you know when all this stuff was hitting me you know originally
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  because i got some i'm sweeping aside some prejudice from him as well um but
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  when i think when i read this you know and think you know what surrender means and,
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  i would say the best way to describe surrender is on page 164.
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  And you know because you know one page 164 tells me the most because you think
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  about surrender in a fight, right?
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  Abandon. I'm abandoning my right to fight, right?
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  And 164 says, abandon yourself to God as you understand God, right?
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  And what is, like, you know, so I think, what do I mean by that? And what do I do?
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  Well, I think the first, you know, that's crazy. That's what the one page of
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  our book says, but, you know, we got a new director, right?
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  Being all powerful, You know, and then we talked about this before,
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  you know, but he provided what we need if we kept close to him.
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  And so what do I need to do? Well, the next sentence in that says,
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  and we talked about this the other day, admit your faults to him and to your fellows.
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  So I'm clearing the wreckage of the past.
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  And then it says, clear away the wreckage of your past and give freely at what you find and join us.
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  And so, you know, man, when I'm sitting in my life and probably one of the main
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  things I'm thinking about through my day is how I can be of service to my family,
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  how I can be of service to the people around me.
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  And, you know, if I didn't have that, though, if I didn't have that position
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  to do that, man, you know, I don't know what my life would look like,
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  you know, because Alcoholics Anonymous gave me a purpose.
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  Alcoholics Anonymous gave me an avenue to be able to have a purpose.
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  Is when I, because I had a lack of ambition, I had a lack of trying to better
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  myself out there in the world because, man, I didn't have any care in the world to do that.
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  All I cared about was me. I'm selfish and self-centered by nature,
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  but to an extreme extent, maybe like the word they use, egocentric, right?
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  So why would I ever think about helping somebody out there? The only time I
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  wanted to help you is if I could get something from me.
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  And if you had something to gain from me.
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  But, you know, and that's, you know, so I think about like, you know,
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  what does, you know, freedom or surrender, you know, really mean to me?
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  And it's abandoning myself to God and his kids. Right.
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  And, you know, and when I do that, man, I'll tell you, you know,
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  there's been time and time again in my life that I can't explain to you what
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  God's done. But, you know, in acceptance, you know, I think,
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  you know, acceptance comes from.
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  Working the 12 steps,
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  or through nine somewhere, right? Because if I can't accept my resentments of
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  what you did to me and go clear the stuff really what I did to you,
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  I'll never accept you in my life.
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  Never. Because you're still the problem and I'm not the problem.
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  But today I've been the problem in my whole life.
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  But that's just what I was thinking about about this.
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  Well, as I've talked about on the show and in Rooms of Recovery and from pulpits,
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  you know, time and time again, one of the greatest spiritual gifts that I receive
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  through my relationship with my higher power is the gift of serenity.
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  And I talk often about, you know, my favorite prayer being the serenity prayer,
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  you know, and it's kind of, you know, quoted a little bit in the initial stone,
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  you know, God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change.
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  The courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
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  So we talked about courage a couple of days ago, so we don't have to dig into
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  that again, but we're on acceptance today.
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  And so when we're talking about accepting what we can't change...
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  I think it's important to, you mentioned about having a hardcore sponsor and
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  about latching on to words and the definition of words and things of that nature.
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  And so when I think of surrender, I think of placing my life in the hands of God.
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  When I think of acceptance, I think of releasing my need to control what other
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  people do, you know, because it's not costing me anything to accept what another person does.
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  And I think that that's an important lesson that God has taught me that I think
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  that, you know, many people need to learn because, you know,
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  we live in a time, in a society, in a moment of time, you might say,
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  where there's not a whole lot of acceptance out there.
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  You know, it's almost like we accept people as long as they're part of our group,
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  you know, whatever that group may be.
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  You know, they're part of our progressive group. They're part of our conservative
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  group. They're part of our recovery group. They're part of our church group.
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  You know, we can accept people as long as they're part of our group and follow
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  the norms and standards of our group.
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  But something outside of that, you know, societally, we've gotten to a place
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  where we feel the need to condemn and criticize a lot of things.
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  And the acceptance side of that is not, you know, giving up or not saying that
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  we approve of a person or what someone else does.
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  But it's, like it says, it's choosing to be a peacemaker instead of a get-my-way maker, you might say.
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  And then I think about the difference between acceptance and resignation,
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  another word, you know, that comes into play.
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  Because resignation means almost like a sense of, as the root word resign indicates, that.
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  It's almost like giving up, you know, and acceptance is not the same as just
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  giving up. Acceptance is not throwing up my hands and saying,
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  yeah, whatever, I can't do anything about it. So y'all just do what you want.
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  Acceptance is relinquishing control enough to still be a part of the community that I'm involved in.
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  You know, if I'm resigned to something,
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  then I'm going to have a negative attitude and outlook about it.
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  But if I can accept something, then I can move forward in faith and without
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  fear, and I can be a contributing member of whatever that community may be.
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  And so that's why I think it's very powerful for me to be able to get to a place of acceptance,
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  on situations and things in my life that I can't control.
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  And that's one of the reasons why, you know, we've talked a lot,
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  you know, the past few days about fear as well.
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  You know, one of the biggest fears that I've had, you know, in my life the past
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  probably few years is the fears that come through, you know,
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  some relationship issues, you know, that I have within my family.
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  And it got to the point where it led
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  me, honestly, to kind of a mental or psychological breakdown last fall.
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  But during that process, God definitely spoke to me in the midst of that and
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  let me know that I was trying to hold on and control things that were out of my control.
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  And I was truly, for the first time, able to get to a place of acceptance of
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  where the situation was and to be open and willing to watch for where God was
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  leading me next through that process.
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  And since then, the fear of those situations is not nearly as powerful as it
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  once was, because I'm just moving forward one day at a time,
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  applying the recovery principles to all my affairs as I've been taught in the program,
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  and just allowing God to direct my actions, and more importantly,
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  to influence my thinking.
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  Because, like we talked about recently, when I get stuck upstairs in my head
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  by myself, sometimes it could be a pretty scary place, but I've got to give that over to God also.
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  You know, it's so interesting, and hearing both of you talk about this,
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  it kind of reminded me of what happened,
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  in that time in my life or been in recovery when I found Surrender.
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  You know, I had to figure out a way to...
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  To be able to, for that to be okay in my mind. I had to come to terms with it.
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  And it's pretty interesting because a lot of times when Pamela and I are speaking
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  or we're at AAB, I bring up that, you know, whether or not she's at home,
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  when I get home each night,
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  I'll be okay either which way, whether she does or doesn't come home.
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  And there's people that are bothered by me saying that.
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  And I say, it's not because I don't want her to be there.
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  I understand now that that's her free will. She gets to make a choice whether
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  she's here, whether she comes home to our home tonight or not, right?
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  What I understand when I surrendered was I understood my role.
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  My role isn't to control and make her come home.
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  My role in this is to do the things that God would have me do.
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  Is God would have me do them to impact that she wants to.
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  That is, when I hear surrender now, it's not a negative. It's not a defeat.
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  It's not a, it is, I've surrendered the role that was never mine to play.
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  I surrendered that back to who rightfully has it.
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  God controls the outcomes. It is what he wants me to do, is do things as he
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  would have me do them and impact the things that I want in the best way.
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  So it's my job to make sure when I get up in the morning, you know,
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  that she knows I love her. And it's for me to do that, something extra special
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  that day, that makes her want to come home. You know what I mean?
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  So for me, that's how you become free, is you're free from having to control
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  things or feeling like that you can control things.
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  And you realize that your role was never was to do that.
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  Your role was just to impact things in a positive and healthy way,
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  the way God would want you to and to do whatever I want.
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  God hasn't taken from me the things that I want to do. He's just asked me to
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  do them in the way that He would have me do them.
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  And however that works out, whether she is or isn't here, I can go to bed with
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  a clear conscious knowing that I did the things the way God wanted me to in
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  that instance, in that relationship.
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  And as long as I do those things in my work relationships, and I do those in
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  my friend relationships, whether it's in the car community, whether it's in
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  my relationship with Pamela, as long as those are all driven by the way that
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  God would want me to do them,
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  I don't have to worry about the outcomes. That's His job.
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  That's, that's what allows me to be free. Surrender is, is just me surrendering
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  a role that was never mine to have. Yeah.
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  And I think you put it in here too, right? I'll stop fighting battles.
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  I'm not going to, you know, I'm going to stop it at there because it says that
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  are not mine to win, but I'm just going to put, I'll stop fighting battles.
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  Because, because it says after all, you know, our pro, you know,
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  this is funny because we got both of you guys on here and, you know, boom, boom.
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  And, you know, this dude that we know that y'all talk to, right,
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  I told him to check out this page.
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  And it was page 103 one day. And this is an important page because it kind of
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  rounds out 84, well, page 84 and probably the fourth step as well.
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  Because it says, after our problems were of our making, bottles were only a symptom.
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  Besides, we have to stop fighting anybody or anything. We have to.
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  Because we cease fighting anything or anyone. But that's a promise, right?
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  You know, that's a promise of this work. And, you know, if you were to ask me
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  what I think about the ninth step promises, I think they're a great commercial
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  for anonymouses around the world.
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  Because the little phrase at the end of it, if we work for them,
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  and that's a daunting deal, right?
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  To actually do what it's telling me to do and that's go make amends and go make all my amends.
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  Because all those things sound really, they're really great.
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  But until I do what I'm supposed to do, like work to them and make those things, right?
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  You know there and then we've ceased
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  fighting anything or anyone that's a promise as well and like you know,
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  i used to you know a friend of mine memphis we all might remember him he was
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  a really big tall dude named justin he used to come around and he was a really good friend of mine and,
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  like you know we would talk about we've ceased fighting anything or anyone like that was a job for us.
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  And I think, you know, as I grow this conscious contact with my higher power,
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  with the things that has been shown to me, I stop fighting these things, right?
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  It's something that starts happening more naturally than me,
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  because if I'm forcing myself not to fight people, I'm still fighting it, right?
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  And I think this stuff starts happening gradually and gradually,
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  and it starts happening closer and closer.
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  I started my main job to grow my conscious contacts with my higher power.
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  And when I look at my problems were of my own making, yes, they were,
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  man. And that's such a cool deal.
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  Because if they weren't and if they were over everybody in my life,
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  that's a daunting task for me to do.
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  But the problems being my own making, that's a little less daunting than everybody
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  in my life, including the people that are dead being the problem.
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  You know, I think that's, I don't know, I thought that was kind of interesting.
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  Well, and for me, it's almost like the problems are of my own making.
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  It turns around and it's a little more scary for me, right? Because that means
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  that I have to do something about it.
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  If my problems are everybody else's making, then I can throw my hands up and
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  say, well, I don't have any work to do.
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  But the problems being of my own making, that means that I'm responsible for
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  doing something about it. Right.
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  And that's a great thing. You know what? One of the things that hearing that
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  is, if these are problems that are derived from me, then they're definitely
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  something I can do something about.
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  Exactly. You know what I mean? God is my helper. That's right.
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  That's it. And you know what I have found is, as I've done better,
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  and as I have listened, and as I, you know, I have so, so chewer for problems of my own making.
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  And that's not because of me. That's because of the God of my understanding.
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  Amen. Well, Corey, you want to close us out with our prayer today?
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  Yeah. Father, teach me to let go of what I cannot control.
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  Through Your Spirit, lead me into peace and freedom that comes from trusting
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  you and following Your Son.
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  Amen. Amen. Amen.