Pastor Mike flies solo on Sunday and opens with a confession: for much of his life he was certain he already knew enough, and humility came to him through humiliation. He traces it back to his first drink as a college freshman, a fifth of Jack Daniels finished in one night in a dorm room, which felt like relief after growing up believing in a God waiting to punish the smallest offense. He decided what he'd been taught was an elaborate hoax and ran on his own answers until they ran out. Page 58's easier, softer way, and the old ideas that got him nowhere until he let go absolutely, set up the order in Proverbs 11:2, where pride comes first, then disgrace, and wisdom lives with the humble. Psalm 119:71 in the NRSV, "It is good for me that I was humbled," names that road in a single line. He learned to listen the hard way, first through corporate active-listening trainings and then by weighing side by side what listening and refusing to listen had cost him. Page 62 carries it further: the hurts he blamed on others traced back to decisions based on self, and the fourth column of the inventory asks him to look resolutely at his own part.

The back half moves through Proverbs 12:15, Proverbs 18:13, and James 1:19, and he points out that the order matters: listen first, speak second, and be slowest to anger, since his own anger shows up most when he feels unheard. Listening to understand has replaced listening to react, which lets him offer a response where he used to hand out a reaction, and it changed how he prays too, since his early prayers were shouted at God with no pause to hear anything back. Discernment, as he uses the word, means hearing what sits under the words, and Hebrews 5:14 and pages 86 and 87 describe it as a skill trained by use, where the hunch becomes a working part of the mind. Page 87's advice to be quick to see where religious people are right, and Proverbs 16:2's reminder that motives are weighed by the Lord, lead into his challenge for the week: listen to a friend only to understand, say it back until you get it right, then ask what that person taught you.

The stone for today: A teachable heart opens the door to the life God desires for me.

Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com. Reach out any time at wave@dailyripples.com.

Willing to learn | a teachable heart | humility and humiliation | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | active listening | quick to listen slow to speak | 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 takes Saturday solo and starts by comparing his mornings across different stretches of his life. During his drinking years that meant waking early to sit in a hot jacuzzi bath and sweat out enough alcohol to get through the workday, and feeling miserable anyway until even that stopped working. When he first came into the rooms, prayer meant asking to get over whatever the day's hump happened to be, and he built from there. Page 47's "your own conception of God," which applies to other spiritual expressions too, becomes his permission to keep it small: please in the morning and thank you at night is enough to begin. He sets that beside the Preface on page xi, where the book calls itself the basic text for our Society, and says it's where he returns to check his bearings. Page 86's on-awakening instructions anchor his routine, and he points out that self-pity heads the list of motives to be divorced from. His mind runs from circus clowns to penguins to complaints before he's had coffee, so he rolls out of bed onto his knees as a courtesy to God and an action on his own part.

He practiced God the way he once practiced drinking, starting small and only ever adding. The devotional's vehicle-maintenance image leads him into John 3, where the wind blows where it chooses, and he turns that into a river. Dishonesty, self-seeking, and unmade amends are the rocks, and page 84's prescription is how he gets moving again: ask God to remove it at once, talk to someone, and make amends quickly. John 3:20-21 on coming to the light, page 77 on maximum service, and page 133's advice to capitalize on trouble as a chance to demonstrate what God can do for the next guy carry it home. It closes on his own morning text that goes out to a long list of people every day, and on the line from today's Ripple that today's faithfulness is enough for today's journey.

The stone for today: My spiritual life stays healthy through daily attention, not occasional repair.

Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com. Reach out any time at wave@dailyripples.com.

Daily attention | morning prayer and on awakening | your own conception of God | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | John 3 and the wind | the spot-check inventory | 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 with an image from a friend who describes the program as bumpers at a bowling alley, keeping the ball in the lane even when the throw itself is far from perfect. He's honest that some days he's still bouncing wall to wall, and that the whole point was never getting a perfect roll, it was staying in play long enough for the next one.

He and Pastor Mike walk page 84's promise that growth in understanding and effectiveness isn't a one-time event, it's a lifetime, tracing the daily loop from on-awakening through the pause-when-agitated practice back to the moment of making amends quickly when something's been gotten wrong. Both admit which half of the day comes easier to them, Corey strong in the morning, Pastor Mike stronger at night, each filling in what the other tends to miss. They land on page 96's instruction to let a man know you're available if he wants to make a decision, and tell his story, but don't insist on it if he'd rather talk to someone else, and marvel a little at how fast the earliest members moved people through the steps out of pure necessity, one house, one weekend, twelve hours at a time. It closes on a shared observation: both recovery and the early church were originally intimate, home-based, person to person, and something worth getting back to as both have grown into something closer to an industry.

The stone for today: Spiritual growth is not an occasional practice. It is a way of living every day.

Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com. Reach out any time at wave@dailyripples.com.

Faithfulness throughout the day | growth in understanding and effectiveness | the daily loop | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | let him know you're available | getting back to intimacy | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery