Psalm 118:24
This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
Philippians 4:19
But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6-7
Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Read more Bible http://www.bookbindery.c
My Prayer for the Day
"Heavenly Father, Thank You for the many miracles that you have woven into my life that I would-nor could have seen before with those set of eyes. Thank You for shining Your light on the things that I need to see, when I am ready to see it. Thank You for blessing me with Faith, Love and Trust in You, that I could have never found in a human form-Please forgive me for putting them before You and for placing them on a pedestal with my unreasonable and high expectations. Please grant forgiveness in my heart for them and for myself. Please forgive my arrogance and resistance to Your authority. Thank You for convicting me and holding me accountable to You- and to You alone...In Jesus name, Amen" (the conviction and accountable part was inspired by the chick on the mountain..she knows who she is ;)
Today’s action
- Today I will forgive others as God has forgiven me (who am I not to forgive?)
- Today I will accept people for who they are-"Bless them, change me"
- Today I will not allow pride and ego to put a wedge in between me and someone I love knowing that that kind of block also blocks me off from receiving God. If I am not receiving God then who or what am I receiving?
- Today I will not let complacent or allow old patterns infiltrate my fragle and new walk with God. I will protect my relationship and connection to God with ALL my spiritual might!
Hil's Blah
How many times do we or have we said "I love you" to someone? Do we know what "love" is? A sponsee sent this to me a few months ago...I have read it many times before-in fact I gave it as a mother's day gift to mom engraved on a plage thing. But when you REALLY read it, it takes on a whole new meaning because I haven't ever actually "experienced" love like this-until I started sponsoring.....Maybe mothers have this for their children, maybe there are actually relationships that have this, but until I could receive this kind of love from God, then how could I possibly give or feel this love toward another...
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8 King James Version
or in New King James Version
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8 New King James Version (NKJV)
Do you give love like this to your family, husband, friends??
Am I really kind-or do I expect something in return?? Am I envious of them and what they have? Am I rude and gossip about them behind their back? Do I provoke them into anger and take away their peace to fulfill something in me? Do I seek my way and then think evil of them if they don't deliver? Do I rejoice in their accomplishments or secretly with they would fail? If I do any of this how can I call it love?? If I say it's love I am a liar.
True love never fails...but this part really strikes me:
"but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away."
All these things will fail us...people's words-their knowledge, our knowledge-unfulfilled prophecies...what then?? The only Power and Love that will sustain and never fail is the love we receive from God. He might punish us, discipline and convict us, like any good parent would and should, but His love is real.
How am I honoring His love for me? Am I ignoring him and distracting myself with something or someone else? Am I replace Him with TV? Am I replacing Him with my dog? Am I replacing Him with Brian? Am I replacing HIm with food? Am I replacing Him with trying to achieve a "feeling" that makes "me" feel good instead of doing good for others? How am I glorifying and showing fidelity to Him that saved me from my own destruction? How am I showing respect and honor to Him for providing? How am I growing in my Primary Purpose today? Am I in love my words or the the power that gives me the words? Do I give love or do I give the appearance that I am loving? I have to ask myself this stuff in order to stay free and grow. A disingenuous women is not who I want to be anymore...
Thanks for letting me share! lol
Podcast of he Day
Pat R. 4th Session Fall 2017 Step Series
Listen to more AA Podcast:
12 x 12 on Step 4
“Made a searching and fearless moral inventory
of ourselves.”
"CREATION gave us instincts for a purpose. Without them we wouldn't be complete human beings. If men and women didn't exert themselves to be secure in their persons, made no effort to harvest food or construct shelter, there would be no survival. If they didn't reproduce, the earth wouldn't be populated. If there were no social instinct, if men cared nothing for the society of one another, there would be no society. So these desires—for the sex relation, for material and emotional security, and for companionship—are perfectly necessary and right, and surely God-given.
Yet these instincts, so necessary for our existence, often far exceed their proper functions. Powerfully, blindly, many times subtly, they drive us, dominate us, and insist upon ruling our lives. Our desires for sex, for material and emotional security, and for an important place in society often tyrannize us. When thus out of joint, man's natural desires cause him great trouble, practically all the trouble there is. No human being, however good, is exempt from these
troubles. Nearly every serious emotional problem can be seen as a case of misdirected instinct. When that happens, our great natural assets, the instincts, have turned into physical and mental liabilities.
Step Four is our vigorous and painstaking effort to discover what these liabilities in each of us have been, and are. We want to find exactly how, when, and where our natural desires have warped us. We wish to look squarely at the unhappiness this has caused others and ourselves. By discovering what our emotional deformities are, we can move toward their correction. Without a willing and persistent effort to do this, there can be little sobriety or contentment for us. Without a searching and fearless moral inventory, most of us have found that the faith which really works in daily living is still out of reach."
Read more 12 X 12 http://www.portlandeyeopener.c
Big Book Chapter 3
More About Alcoholism
"Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.
We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals—usually brief—were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better."
Read more Big Book http://www.portlandeyeopener.c
AA History
LETS ASK BILL W. Q&A NO.3
Question:
Just how does A.A. Work?
Answer:
"I cannot fully answer that question. Many A.A. techniques have been adopted after a ten-year period of trial and error, which has led to some interesting results. But, as laymen, we doubt our own ability to explain them. We can only tell you what we do, and what seems, from our point of view, to happen to us.
At the very outset we should like it made ever so clear that A.A. is a synthetic gadget, as it were, drawing upon the resources of medicine, psychiatry, religion, and our own experience of drinking and recovery. You will search in vain for a single new fundamental. We have merely streamlined old and proven principles of psychiatry and religion into such forms that the alcoholic will accept them. And then we have created a society of his own kind where he can enthusiastically put these very principles to work on himself and other sufferers.
Then too, we have tried hard to capitalize on our one great natural advantage. That advantage is, of course, our personal experience as drinkers who have recovered. How often the doctors and clergymen throw up their hands when, after exhaustive treatment or exhortation, the alcoholic still insists, "But you don't understand me. You never did any serious drinking yourself, so how can you? Neither can you show me many who have recovered."
Now, when one alcoholic who has got well talks to another who hasn't, such objections seldom arise, for the new man sees in a few minutes that he is talking to a kindred spirit, one who understands. Neither can the recovered A.A. member be deceived, for he knows every trick, every rationalization of the drinking game. So the usual barriers go down with a crash. Mutual confidence, that indispensable of all therapy, follows as surely as day does night. And if this absolutely necessary rapport is not forthcoming at once it is almost certain to develop when the new man has met other A. A.s. Someone will, as we say, "click with him."
As soon as that happens we have a good chance of selling our prospect those very essentials which you doctors have so long advocated, and the problem drinker finds our society a congenial place to work them out for himself and his fellow alcoholic. For the first time in years he thinks himself understood and he feels useful; uniquely useful, indeed, as he takes his own turn promoting the recovery of others. No matter what the outer world thinks of him, he knows he can get well, for he stands in the midst of scores of cases worse than his own who have attained the goal. And there are other cases precisely like his own - a pressure of testimony which usually overwhelms him. If he doesn't succumb at once, he will almost surely do so later when Barleycorn builds a still hotter fire under him, thus blocking off all his other carefully planned exits from dilemma. The speaker recalls seventy-five failures during the first three years of A.A. - people we utterly gave up on. During the past seven years sixty-two of these people have returned to us, most of them making good. They tell us they returned because they knew they would die or go mad if they didn't. Having tried everything else within their means and having exhausted their pet rationalizations, they came back and took their medicine. That is why we never need to evangelize alcoholics. If still in their right minds they come back, once they have been well exposed to A.A.
Now to recapitulate, Alcoholics Anonymous has made two major contributions to the programs of psychiatry and religion. These are, it seems to us, the long missing links in the chain of recovery:
1. Our ability, as ex-drinkers, to secure the confidence of the new man - to "build a transmission line into him."
2. The provision of an understanding society of ex-drinkers in which the newcomer can successfully apply the principles of medicine and religion to himself and others.
So far as we A.A.s are concerned, these principles, now used by us every day, seem to be in surprising agreement." (N.Y. State J. Med.,Vol.44, Aug. 15, 1944).
Another Answer
On the surface A.A. is a thing of great simplicity, yet at its core a profound mystery. Great forces surely must have been marshaled to expel obsessions from all these thousands, an obsession which lies at the root of our fourth largest medical problem and which, time out of mind, has claimed its hapless millions. (N.Y. State J. Med., Vol. 50, July 1950).
2 Corinthians 5:12-14
For we commend not ourselves again unto you, but give you occasion to glory on our behalf, that ye may have somewhat to answer them which glory in appearance, and not in heart.
For whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause.
For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: