The Daily Ripples Podcast

Pastor Mike is traveling this Sunday, so instead of a solo episode he shares the sermon from his home church, part of a series called "Well, Actually," which takes Jesus' most familiar teachings and asks whether we actually know them as well as we think. This week's text is Peter's question about how many times he has to forgive someone, and Jesus' answer that blows past every number Peter offers. Peter thought seven was generous. Jesus says seventy-seven, or seventy times seven depending on the translation, and the point isn't the math, it's that if you're still counting, you probably haven't forgiven yet.
The sermon works through the parable that follows, a servant forgiven a debt of roughly a hundred sixty-four thousand years of labor who then throttles a man who owes him about three months' wages, and lands on the line most people skip past: forgive your brother from your heart. Not as an obligation. Pastor Mike draws on his own recovery for the practical heart of it, that unforgiveness makes you the jailer holding someone else prisoner in your mind, and you're not the only one locked up in there. He's careful to separate forgiveness from reconciliation, especially for anyone in a genuinely unsafe relationship, and closes with four steps anyone can do this week: name the debt honestly, do the math against what you've already been forgiven, write it down, and pray for the willingness before the feeling ever shows up.
The stone for today: The direction of my life changes when I allow God to become my guide instead of my last resort.
Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com. Reach out any time at wave@dailyripples.com.
Following God's lead | forgiveness from the heart | seventy times seven | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | the unforgiving servant | releasing the debt | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Corey opens with an honest confession: he's never much cared for the word acceptance, at least not the way it gets used in the rooms, like a soft trick for feeling better about something he doesn't actually like. He works through the resentment inventory on page 65, the classic Mr. Brown example, and pushes it further by turning the exercise on himself. Once he's traced the hurt back through his own part in it, the fourth column lands on page 62's harder truth: sometimes people hurt us seemingly without provocation, but almost always there's a decision made somewhere upstream, rooted in self, that set the whole thing in motion.
From there he takes it to page 124 and the promise that willingness to face and rectify errors turns them into assets, and pairs it with a story about a dragon that starts small under a closet door and grows every time it gets ignored. The point lands simply: the things he refuses to look at don't go away, they just get bigger. He closes on his own history with the amends list, admitting he could barely write a name down when he first started, and on page 73's line about the alcoholic leading a double life. His read: he was living five different lives at once, and making things right one at a time is how he's slowly become one person again.
The stone for today: Peace begins when I stop resisting reality and trust God with what I cannot change.
Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com. Reach out any time at wave@dailyripples.com.
Accepting what is | the resentment inventory | facing our own part | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | turning errors into assets | the alcoholic's double life | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Paris joins Pastor Mike and Corey for his final day of the week, and the conversation starts with letting go of the need to prove you can handle everything alone. Pastor Mike admits the three hardest words for him used to be I don't know, back when he needed an answer for everything except sports. What changed wasn't memorizing more, it was learning where to look and how to actually live what he found there. Paris brings his own version, a car that went into a lake, a near miss crossing a street, moments he used to credit to himself before he could see God's hand in them.
Corey works the throughline of the week, that he can't blame the alcohol for what he did completely sober, cheating on women while stone sober and setting up the very appointments that made it possible. Page 62's line about moral convictions galore that could never be lived up to on his own power becomes the hinge, along with the Third Step's word abandon, surrendered not just to God but to God's people. He circles back to page 69's refusal to be the arbiter of anyone's sex conduct, and the honest admission that human problems don't disappear with sobriety, they just get worked on differently now.
The stone for today: God's love frees me from the illusion that I must save myself.
Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com. Reach out any time at wave@dailyripples.com.
Loved into freedom | letting go of self-sufficiency | abandon myself to God | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | not the arbiter of anyone's conduct | philosophical convictions galore | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery
Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Paris opens on what freedom actually looks like now, and locates it in the daily work rather than in circumstances. His example is page 101 and the question the book tells you to ask before going anywhere: do I have a good social, business, or personal reason for being here. He can sit at his cousin's house around the pot and the tequila with no desire to drink, and that's the freedom. Then he raises the harder case, a friend who used to use and had a breakdown when a doctor came at her with a needle, and asks what freedom from that kind of trauma looks like. Pastor Mike answers plainly that trauma belongs with a professional, that a sponsor relationship isn't built for it, and that he can't pray somebody through a PTSD episode, though he can offer presence while they find the right help.
Corey traces the promise on page 75, where fear falls from us, back to the page before it and the double life the alcoholic leads. His read is that the fear goes because the performance stops. He makes a practical case for why the fifth step is told to one person rather than spread across several, since telling the criminal parts to one friend and the rest to another is just running the same double life in a new configuration. It closes on the Twelve and Twelve's definition of humility, a clear recognition of what and who we really are, and Matthew 6 on the impossibility of serving two masters.
The stone for today: The greatest freedom God offers is not freedom from hardship, but freedom from fear.
Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com. Reach out any time at wave@dailyripples.com.
A greater freedom | freedom from fear | the double life | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | fear falls from us | humility and self-knowledge | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery
Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Corey opens on how long it took him to get comfortable calling his first sponsor, and admits he used to fake phone calls to get out of conversations at meetings. What he learned from Doug and others was that they would just talk, so that's what he does now with the men he works with, filling the silence early on because a newcomer usually has nothing to say to a stranger he met at a meeting. His own instinct runs the other way. Left alone he'd hide in his closet behind the clothes.
Pastor Mike takes it to John's gospel and the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, and makes the case that a God who chose to live in community is showing us the design for living rather than describing an exception. Jesus wasn't waiting in a throne room for people to come to him. Paris brings Psalm 133 and the goodness of brothers dwelling together in unity. The practical end lands on Working With Others and what it actually takes to reach someone, finding out all you can about a man so you can approach him the way you'd have wanted to be approached, and knowing when to step back if he wants a banker instead of a solution.
The stone for today: God never intended me to walk this journey of faith alone.
Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com. Reach out any time at wave@dailyripples.com.
Stronger together | connection over isolation | unity and personal recovery | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | the Word became flesh | working with others | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery
Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Paris takes the open and starts with the Doctor's Opinion, where doctors admitted they had no fix and something else was going to be required. What he's after is what comes after the freedom. He's been going to a different group lately, praying in the mornings to be shown where he can be useful, and finding the answer keeps involving people he might not otherwise have met. Pastor Mike picks up the word daily from the practical ripple and says it's the part that keeps him out of trouble. Looking too far ahead brings worry back to roost. Asking what today's act of love or service looks like tends to make the day work.
Corey separates three things people run together: the real purpose on page 77 belongs to a person, the primary purpose in Tradition Five belongs to a group, and the high mission belongs to the society. Pastor Mike draws the parallel to having a personal relationship with Jesus and a communal one with everybody else. The last stretch turns personal, with Corey tracing Mike's path from problem to solution to being useful with it, and Mike naming the hypocrisy that drove him out of church for sixteen years and why every sermon he preaches now ends with something you can go do. The reason comes straight out of the rooms. His thinking changed once his hands and feet started moving.
The stone for today: God offers more than freedom from addiction. He offers a life filled with purpose.
Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com. Reach out any time at wave@dailyripples.com.
A life that matters | purpose beyond sobriety | maximum service to God and others | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | shoemaker stick to thy last | common problem common solution | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery
Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.