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Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> Good afternoon.

My name is Scott and I'm an alcoholic. Is this thing working? >> No.

Okay. >> Uhoh. I can't do that.

>> Pull it up. >> Did I do it? >> Okay.

Okay. Did we do it that time? >> Okay.

Brace yourselves. Here it comes. Uh I noted your local custom to give your sobriety date.

Mine's June the 28th, 1984. Close. And um my home group is the backroom group in Nashville, Tennessee.

And um they're a great bunch of people. I have a very important announcement, and that's that we need to sell some more barbecue tickets. If you don't have one, uh John's got them there in the back.

We're going to take a break here in about an hour, and I'm sure he'd be more than happy to uh to acquaint you closely with one at that time. Um I'd like to open the meeting, as I usually do, by quoting Lois Wilson, co-founder of Alanon, Bill's wife, who was asked one time, "What did she do in the moment of silence before the meeting?" And she said, "I invite God to the meeting." That was powerful for me. And I started doing that, and meetings got better everywhere.

And so what I'm going to do here in a few minutes is I'm going to ask for another moment of silence and do something I've already done and that's invite God to uh to join us and fill this room with love and to bless me with an open heart that that he might share through it at the worst case that I might share through it. We talk in our fellowship about the language of the heart and for me learning to lay down the language of the gutter and to pick up the language of the heart. It's been part of my recovery.

It's incomplete but I can report progress. And uh what I want to ask you to do is to invite God to join us and bless you with an open heart that you might hear through it and later on when we get to sharing from the microphone that that you would share through it also. And in case there's someone here who doesn't have a God borrow mind for this time that we're together, I think you'll like them a lot.

Or if you got one that you're afraid of, try them. We'll see what just do experiment and we'll see what happens. So let's take a moment and invite God to join us and fill this room with love.

And I'll meet you back here. Amen. And thank you.

Thank you very much. Anybody here less than 60 days? Come on.

Great. Great. We are so glad you're here.

Thanks for coming. Um I I hope we're going to have some fun. Uh a lot of what I do in this is uh I think it's kind of funny.

I hope you do. Uh, I want to tell you that I do not consider myself an expert on the four step. I am a fourstep junkie, but I am not a four-step expert.

And uh, I love your your slogan, uh, your theme. It's in the book because that's what we're going to talk about. It's in the book.

Uh, I'm going to talk very briefly about the first and second steps uh, a little bit more in depth about the third step, and most of my presentation is going to be on the fourth step. We will be taking a break to give you an idea cuz the fourth step is by the way the easiest I think of all of the steps. It is uh maybe the longest.

And if you don't think so, stick around and uh and we'll talk about it here a little bit later. I think you're going to find that it's fun. I'm going to start by doing a little bit of uh a book study.

Do a little bit of reading here so that we can establish um some definitions I think before we get started. And I'm going to start um on page 59 with what my sponsor said was the definition of the program. He said here are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery.

So there was the definition of the program. I hear the word thrown around a lot and there's the definition for it. And a matter of fact on page Roman numeral u 22 I find a phrase that that even enlightens that a little bit and it says the 12 steps that summarize the program.

So what that means to me is that the 12 steps that we see in the wall in a lot of places or that we see on pages 5960 are a summary. They are the cliff notes, if you will. And I had too much wagered on this to try to slide by on an outline.

I needed the full shot. At least my sponsor said I did. And consequently, I went for the whole thing.

So what we're going to talk about is is the the work out of this book. I'd also like to read what looks to me like the definition of sponsorship on page 96 in the text. This is in the U chapter working with others and they've been talking for a few pages about a 12step call where someone's gone out to to a newcomer who was willing to talk to him.

They shared a little bit of their story. They've heard some of his. They laughed a little.

They cried a little. He left him one of the books and said, "Read this in the meantime and we'll talk again." Am I doing that? Shame on you.

Okay. So for me, here is the definition of sponsorship in u in two sentences. The the warm-up sentence is suppose you are now making your second visit to a man.

So we describe the first one and then here's the definition I think of someone who's sponsorable. Says he has read this volume and says he is prepared to go through with the 12 steps of the program of recovery. So it looks to me like the definition of someone who's sponsorable.

And then the following sentence to me defines sponsor. It says, "Having had the experience yourself, you can give him much practical advice." What experience? The experience of working the 12 steps.

What advice? Advice on how to work the 12 steps. Now, I use the word work the 12 steps, take the 12 steps, do the 12 steps.

I use those interchangeably. I don't care. Uh to me, it's an action verb.

It it doesn't have to do with what goes on in the mind. And I'd like to quote page 20 and then I'm going to get into the work here. This is from page 20 of the text.

If you are an alcoholic who wants to get over it, you may already be asking, "What do I have to do?" It is the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically. We shall tell you what we have done. I want to note what it does not say.

It does not say, "What do I have to learn?" We'll teach you what we know. It doesn't say, "What do I have to believe?" We will give you a new religion. It does not say, "What do I have to understand?" We will teach you how to interpret.

We will teach you. What it says is, "What do I have to do? We shall tell you what we have done.

I'm going to share with you today what I have done and what apparently some other people who are have some continuous sobriety have done. Also, I'd like to note that the first time I saw the 12 steps in the summary form that we're talking about on a wall, they looked to me like they had been written by a hanging judge who was having a rather bad day. The really the first time you see the steps, those of you are new, don't they look like they're designed to punish you, to make you pay the price for being the rotten person you are?

That's what I thought. That's what it looked like. I was wrong about so many things and that was just one of them.

That the steps were actually designed to help me lay down my burden. And I wouldn't have believed that until I did them. And now I'm certain that that's what it is.

I told my sponsor that I didn't want to do the steps. And he said, "That's okay." And I said, "Good." And he said, "Long as you do them." And I said, "Jerry, I don't think we're communicating." And he said, "Sure we are." That's the definition of willingness. Willingness is when I do what I'm supposed to whether I feel like it or not.

See, and I didn't know I could do something I didn't feel like because it had been a couple decades since I'd done something I didn't feel like. So, here was a definition I could work with. And I wanted to feel like he looked and he told me the way he got it was by doing this work.

And uh he said, "Our program, by which he meant the 12 steps expanded for him, the book, it's kind of like going to the dentist. We got to drill before we can fill. We got to reach inside you and dig this poison out before we can start packing you full of good stuff.

Because if we just pack the good stuff on top, what's inside is going to continue to rot and eventually it's going to detonate. So, we're going to have to get it out. But staying with the dentist metaphor, he says we got I got good news.

The good news is we got novocaane. We call it sponsorship. We call it love.

We call it home group. We call it meetings. And he was right.

And so I allowed him to coach me through the 12 steps and change my life. So I needed to change I needed to be changed. I didn't have the power to change me.

But what I had the power to do was to change my actions on one day. This one that was all. And when I applied that principle to this work, I found it to be fairly easy.

Because you see, people told me all my life that I learned from my that we learn from our mistakes. I never did. I never learned a thing from my mistakes.

What I learned from was living with the results of my mistakes. Unlike the dog that wets on the rug, what has he learned? Nothing.

When did he start learning when his nose got rubbed in it? I'm the same way. And with steps 4 through 10, what I do is I embrace my results.

I insist upon rubbing my own nose in my mistakes. And consequently, I learn not to make the same ones again. Cuz when I'm about to make the same mistake the second time, I don't remember, hey, that's a mistake.

I remember what it was like rubbing my own nose in it last time. That's what I remember. And and that moves me on.

I I like to say, and I'm not perfect, but but living what's in this book today, I am still making mistakes, but I'm making a much finer quality of mistakes than I ever made before. We have a name for that, right? We call it progress.

Too bad. Sure. And the amends are not nearly so difficult.

I hate amends worse than communism. Don't you? I mean, gee, I hate doing that.

So, consequently, I try not to to make the same ones again anyway. I had the privilege a number of years ago getting together with a number of men and we went through the big book not as a book study but as a big book workshop. We decided we wanted what the first hundred people bill wrote it they edited it what they had we wanted and consequently as we came through the book if we came to something they said that they had done or had seen or had observed then we stopped and did it or saw it or observed it.

So, we came through the book and we did the book rather than trying to study the book. I I guess you hear what I'm saying. And we called that little outfit the Bill Wilson Literary Society.

And uh we had a lot of fun with it. It took us about a year and a half. And uh we discovered a lot of of what I'm going to try to show you here today.

The um I heard this in a meeting one time and the girl who said it was not trying to get a laugh. I am, I'll admit. But I think it it described for me the first step so beautifully.

She said, "I'm having trouble getting a grip on letting go." And I've had that trouble. So, I'm going to start with the first couple of steps. I'm going to begin on page 59 with a reading of the summary of the first step.

Says, "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. I thought the word therefore appeared in the first step for a couple of years, and it's not there. That hyphen is English punctuation.

And if you look it up in a dictionary, it'll tell you that that a hyphen connects two unrelated thoughts. And the reason I was confused was because the fact that I was powerless over alcohol and the fact that my life was a disaster, those two facts were related. The the first day I was sober.

Today, a little over 15 years sober, the fact that I'm powerless over alcohol and that my life is unmanageable are not related. They're not related. My my life remains unmanageable.

I can't find any place past page 59 and I have read this that says having achieved this level your life is now manageable tanks full keys are in it have a great time I can't find it I do find some places that promise ma that promise sanity so my life I believe based on that continues to be unmanageable by me that's why I need a god that's why I need a program that's why I need a sponsor that's why I need a home group is because when I'm in the driver's seat things don't work out So unmanageability for me remains. It's what I'm going to talk to you about today is the way I talk to the men I sponsor. And I hope I don't sound like I think I'm an authority because I don't.

All I the only way I know to present this is the way that I presented it to them. So that's I'm presenting it to you. I'm going to start on page 60 with the ABCs.

A that we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives. And I ask a new man, is that true? Is that true of you?

Tell me about it. And I ask him to to explain that. And then when he's finished, I say, "And B, that no human power, probably no human power could ever elude your alcoholism." Is that true?

Who tried? You tried, your mother tried, your wife tried, the judge tried, your cellmate tried. Who tried?

We talk about that. Not God could and would if he were sought. Interestingly enough, it doesn't say found.

It says sought. It is in the action. Item one, God is not lost, right?

So, he doesn't have to be found. And it is in the seeking. And that's the end of what we read from the chapter how it works in most meetings.

Interestingly enough, the next phrase says being convinced we were at step three. Being convinced of what? A, B, and C.

That I'm alcoholic and can't manage my own life. No human power can relieve my alcoholism. And God can and will if I will merely seek him.

And being convinced of that, I am at step three. What I'm going to say may go against a lot of what you believe. That's great.

I'd love to talk about it later if if we have a disagreement. It's a chance for me to learn something. But it looks to me like the third step is about six or seven parts and I'm going to talk about those.

And I want to reemphasize when I talk about the step, I don't mean the one on the wall. I mean the one in the book. So being convinced we were at step three, which is that we decided to turn our will in life over to God as we understood him.

Interestingly enough, the third step is not where we turn our will in life over to the care of God. It's where we decide to. If I could actually turn my will and life over to the care of God at the third step, looks to me like we'd probably have a three-step program.

I what could be left after that? I can't think of anything. And so the question becomes, how do you do that?

Well, it says we decided to and I'll tell I'll tell my story tomorrow morning and you'll hear this a little bit little bit broader. But the difference between an intention and a decision, an intention is followed by more intentions. We all know about that, right?

A decision is followed by action. And it looks to me like the prescribed action to accomplish the decision that's called for in the outline of the third step that the prescribed action is numbered 4-2. And I would point at the first line of the 12 step having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps.

Doesn't say A, which I hear read a lot in meetings. It says the we promise that. We promise that if you will do these things, not believing that they'll work for you, it'll be just fine if you'll just do them.

See, the steps don't know who's working them. They don't care that you will have this spiritual awakening. My spirit awakens to the presence of the real me, not the act I've been all my life and the real God, not the one that was keeping score and it was mad at me.

And that's that's that spiritual awakening. So in the next paragraph, it says, "The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success." I ask a man, are you convinced of that? How did your life work with you running it on your self-will?

And uh we can explore that if we need to. I I think most of you got it. The lady here got it.

I'll tell you right now. It didn't work out that well, did it, ma'am? No.

Uh-huh. Or we probably wouldn't have met this way, would we? No.

Uh-huh. And then there's something else that for me is very powerful in this next sentence. Says on that basis, that's the basis of self-will running my life.

We're almost always in collision. Collision. That's a great word.

collision with something or somebody even though our motives are good. I hear around the fellowship, check your motives. I think the book just told me that even if my motives are good, I'm going to be in collision with people.

Maybe it's the principles that I need to check instead of my motives. Cuz see, sometimes when my motives are good, I get into big trouble and I never could figure that out. And I think it's because I would violate principles with good motives.

If I hang with good principles, I stay in pretty good shape. It's pretty obvious. Um, I'm skipping quite a bit of material, but uh, in I love this on page 61.

Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can rest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well? I continue on occasion to become a victim of the delusion that if I can manage well, I'll be happy. That if I can get what I want, it'll make me happy.

That's a delusion. I got what I wanted lots of times. It never made me happy.

Getting what I wanted gives me a hunger for more, better, and different. getting what I want only gives me an appetite. That there's never enough.

There isn't enough out there. And this God-sized hole, God-sized and shaped hole in me can only be filled that way is with God. So, if I want to be happy, what I have to have is a healthy relationship with God, which for me is kind of what these directions are about.

I got to have a healthy relationship with you. Got to have a healthy relationship with God. Page 62.

Selfishness, self-centerness, that we think is the root of our troubles. That is the absolute best news in the book. Here in the next paragraph, it says it says on the next paragraph, so our troubles we think are basically of our own making.

Isn't that fantastic? I mean, because if it really is the cops in the courts and the Russians and the Chinese and the parole officers and the PTA and the ex-wives, if it really is all of them, I'm beat cuz there's nothing I can do about them. And I think the best news I got my whole life is that I'm the problem because that we can work on.

That we can work on. And this is where we do that. It says above everything we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness and we're going to attack that and there is often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without his aid capital H on his his aid.

And further down that paragraph it says we had to have God's help. So we've discovered so far is one piece of the third step. I've read some other things but it said the first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self will can hardly be a success.

At the bottom of page 60 here's the bottom of page 62. This is the how and why of it. First of all, we had to quit playing God.

So, we have two firsts. And I wouldn't change that for anything. That's our deal.

So, we had to quit playing God. And um a man whose program I respect dramatically talked to me last summer a little bit about what that meant to him. Here's some of the ways that some of us have played God.

One is I try to manage my own life. A second one is I try to manage all of the lives around me. Uh, another very interesting one that's pretty common is being angry at God when somebody dies or how they die because what I'm doing when I do that is I am actually playing God.

I'm deciding who should die and how. And that is clearly not my job. And another one I think is very very clear is that I have a resentment.

It's only one way to get one. Only one way to get a resentment. I must judge someone, find them guilty, be angry with them, and then feel that anger again.

That's what a resentment is. So those are ways that I I've played God. So it says said, first of all, we had to quit playing God.

So I asked a new guy, are you willing to quit playing God? Have you done these things? Are you willing to stop?

I'm not asking if you're able. Are you willing? They say, yeah, it didn't work.

How about that? We're asking, they're asking me to stop doing something that isn't working. Thank you.

Says, next we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our director. He is the principle. we are his agents.

He is the father and we are his children. So there's the decision that the third step references. There's the decision that uh that God's going to be the director and the principal and that that I'm the child and I'm the agent.

And I ask I ask a new man, I want to hear your decision. Tell me if you need to read that in the first person singular, read it. But I want to hear your decision.

We're going to make this decision. I want to hear it. And I said, you can change it anytime you want to.

Just call me up. we'll sit down and uh and you can formally change that decision, but up until then I will have to assume that that decision stands. My third step decision stands.

Some days I implement it better than better than other days, but my decision stands. I don't have to take the third step every day, although I use the prayer frequently. But for me, the prayer is all of these parts that we're looking at here.

And it says, "Most good ideas are simple." And this concept was the keystone to the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom. And I need to be free. Oh, how desperately I needed to be free.

And then the paragraph at the top of page 63, I'm sure most of you are familiar with are the third step promises. And I don't believe I'm going to read those right now. And then it says, we were now at step three.

And and it it gives a prayer. And it says, God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and do with me as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will.

Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of thy power, thy love, and thy way of life. May I do thy will always. There's no amen.

And I asked the man to read that silently because the next sentence says, "We thought well before taking this step, making sure we were ready that we could at last abandon ourselves utterly to him." And I recommend that that if you have not done this that you think well cuz I'm going to tell you something. You do this, your life is going to change. I promise it.

And some of the things that you would dearly love to have and keep are going away. And some of what you wouldn't like to have is going to show up. I mean, if you ask me what I want, if I were really tell you the truth, you know what I want?

I want to take the rest of my life off with pay, right? I don't want any more lessons. All right?

I don't want to be changed anymore. I want it all. I want you guys to all please shape up and then I'll be just fine.

That's what I want. Yeah. Uh-oh.

Caught another one. Guilty. And uh I think it's important to think well because this is important stuff.

This is to me an invitation uh in some measure. I believe I'm about to say not fully, but that my God's a gentleman. Doesn't go where he's not invited.

Doesn't stay where he's not made welcome. And this is a formal invitation of God into your life to build with and do with as he will. And sometimes before we can build on a foundation, we've got to tear down a structure that's already not working.

And I've seen that a lot. Don't take this lightly. This is not like duty stuff.

Not at all. And when someone says they are ready, we kneel down and I ask them to say the prayer. And I usually cry.

I'm a crier. And uh frequently they do. And uh it says at the bottom of the next paragraph, "This was only a beginning, though if honestly and humbly made an effect, sometimes a very great one was felt at once." And I have seen that.

I have seen I've seen huge experiences happen at the third step prayer. I've seen others where it didn't seem like much happened. And that doesn't matter.

That doesn't matter. What matters is action. So I hear raging around our fellowship the question of well when should I take a fourep and some people say don't take a four step too soon you may drink in 15 years I have not yet seen anyone take a four step too soon and drink I have seen several barge loads wait too late I have yet to see anyone take it too soon because the steps are designed to give me relief and the relief begins at the fourth step and that's what we're going to discover is what kind of relief it it is and how it comes Um, the book is not, now please, I hope you think this is funny.

I do. The book is not specific about when to take a fourth step. Some people say take one step a year.

I think that's insane. Some people say don't make any major decisions your first year. We have just asked you to decide to turn your will in life over to the care of God.

Does that sound like a major decision to anyone here? Maybe we need to be careful with these little things, little pearls that aren't in the book. I don't know.

It's just a thought. So the question I I usually have the my uh my victim my uh guy I'm sponsoring read. Yeah, little truth there.

Um and I say the book actually makes two time references about when to make a to do a forep. And then they're two different time references. And I figure when it gives that kind of leeway, we could use either of those two or anything in between.

Certainly seems fair to me. Doesn't it seem fair to you? I said, "Well, yeah, that's fair." I said, "Well, you go ahead and read and I'll interrupt." And they read next.

I said, "Whoa, there's one." So, so the first sentence, the first word in the next paragraph says, "Next, we launched out on a course of vigorous action. The first step of which is a personal house cleaning, which many of us had never attempted." Now, our decision, right? We talked about the decision was a vital vital comes from the Latin word uh meaning life.

That means your life is wagered on it. Was a vital and crucial step. It could have little permanent effect unless at once, Whoops.

at once. There's a time reference. So after you've done your third step prayer, you have leeway.

You can start your fourth step either next or at once or anywhere in between if I sponsor you. Okay. It gives leeway, we take it.

All right. Does that seem fair? Mhm.

And then I think it's really interesting. It's as though our decision was a vital and crucial step. it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face and to be rid of the things in ourselves which had been blocking us.

Interestingly enough, in the fourth step, we are going to be rid. And I would tell you that is my sincere belief that writing it down will not get rid of it. And that the fourep is not about writing.

And I think that's what we're going to find in here. That there is writing involved, but it has for me and the men that I have had the experience of working with very little therapeutic effect. But interesting that we're going to face and be rid.

That's so important. They're going to say it again in the next paragraph. The things in ourselves which have been blocking us.

Good news again. It's the things in me that are blocking me and that we can work on. Therefore, we started upon a personal inventory.

This was step four. A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. Taking a commercial inventory is a factf finding and a fact-f facing process.

It is an effort to discover the truth about the stock and trade. One object is to disclose damaged or unsailable goods. To get rid, it says again, to get rid of them promptly and without regret.

We did exactly the same thing with our lives. We took stock honestly. First, we searched out the flaws in our makeup which caused our failure.

There's the good news one more time. Boy, that must be important. Don't you think?

They sure are hammering on it. Being convinced that self manifested in various ways was what had defeated us. We considered its common manifestations.

That sentence confuses me and I do better if I leave out what's between the commas. Try it once and see how it works for you. Being convinced that self was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations.

That's what we're trying to say here. So, I'm going to give you a little overview of what the fourth step in this book looks like to me. Now, I had the experience of doing one of the psycho babble four steps that the treatment center had about do you look in the toilet before you flush and you still hate your mother?

All that stuff, you know, and that was I got something out of that I need to report. It got me to the fifth step where I did get some relief. But I recommend this fourth step.

I mean, the actual real life sure enough one-of-a-kind only four step on the planet. the real one here that we're going to explore. What I've discovered it to be is a series of lists, observations, and prayers that cover three separate parts of self, which is what we've been talking about is the flaws in our makeup.

And they are resentment, fear, and sexual misconduct. I do not find a sex inventory in here. I find one that inventories only the dark side.

It doesn't say anywhere that I can find. Where in the sexual arena did you do the things that you thought were right? That direction is not in here.

Taking the fourth step out of this book, several of the major things that I did in my life that were the worst things that I did did not appear on my fourth step. And they were not called for. They were called for in five.

In the fifth step, they were called for, but there was no place to write a couple of mine in these directions. So, it's going to be a series of lists, observations, and prayers about resentment, fear, and sexual misconduct. And it is not making the list that helps me.

I make the list so that I can make the observations. That's that's where the therapeutic effect begins. And the observations show me how to pray.

So, that's what the fourth step is about. Most of us, and certainly me included, who read this the first time, when we got to the end of the chapter, closed our eyes, we mentally drew a line under it, we thought we added it all up, and we thought the psalm said, "Write the story of your life, and be sure to include every rotten thing you ever did." Doesn't say that. So, what we're going to do is to look for um the last time I counted, I counted 26 specific directions in this book on how to take a four step.

My count's a little bit higher now because I found something else. Somebody actually I didn't find it. Somebody showed me something else the other day and taken one at a time in order.

This is the easiest of all of the steps and we're going to find that starting right now. So the next sentence begins, resentment is the number one offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else and from it stem all forms of spiritual disease.

I want to try that again. Resentment is the number one offender. It destroys destroys holy mackerel destroys more alcoholics than anything else.

and from it stem all forms of spiritual disease. This must be bad stuff. We must going to have to get rid of this stuff.

For we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady, which is another word for sickness, is overcome. We straighten out mentally and physically.

The word resentment comes from the Latin. The Latin prefix re means again like reload. And century is a verb which means to feel.

So it means literally to feel again. And in English, it means to feel anger again. It's that sickness that that lives inside when I don't let go of something.

So now what we're going to do is to look for directions. It says in dealing with resentments, we set them on paper. That's a generalization.

They're going to tell us very specifically how to do that. Says we listed people, institutions, or principles with whom we were angry. Calls for a list.

Think about the last list you saw. Chances are it was a grocery list. Chances are it was a series of words and phrases that ran down a page.

I do not recall the last list I saw that went across a page. So, taking this very literally, which is what I like to do before we go anywhere else, we need a list. My experience is for those of you who have sponsored and actually helped someone do the work out of this book.

If you take them any further than this, they will work across the page. You can bet your ranch on it. All right?

We're Americans. We work across the page. It's how it is.

So, if you want them to work down the page like the book says, then you need to stop right here. And what I suggest now and I again tongue and cheek I like to say at this point now you're probably wondering since we're going to stop right here what color of paper to write the son will color ink is anyone wondering that no the book is not specific about that either over here on page 67 it says we place them before us in black and white not specific doesn't say black ink white paper could easily be black paper white ink and if that's what you need to do please do I sponsor a guy who had to do that he refused to believe this is going to work for him. And every time we worked together, he said, "I don't believe this is going to work for me." And I said, "That's just fine.

Let me ask you one question. Do you believe that I believe it'll work for you?" He said, "No doubt about it." I said, "Well, that's good enough. We're going to do it my way." He said, "Okay, can you believe that kind of illogic?" Well, of course, there's a new, you know.

Anyway, so he went down to the art supply store and he got Sam himself about an inch of black paper and a three-hole punch and two pens that wrote in white ink and he took it in black and white. All right? And if you need to do that, please do.

Please do it. For me, the easy way is with a spiral notebook that has white paper in it and a pen that writes black ink. And that's the way I do mine.

And I can I've got one at home, an old one at home where I unintentionally, unintentionally picked up a blue writing pen one time and I wrote less than one letter. It scared me so bad cuz that's what the book was. I mean, cuz I want what they had.

And I don't I don't need to be making judgments as to what's important here and what's not and what applies to me and what doesn't. My sponsor wanted me to be thorough. And uh so anyway, so what we need here is now we need a list and I suggest a spiral notebook.

And uh if you will imagine for a moment that uh that I'm holding one up here on on the inside cover of the spiral notebook, you've got a uh a single page on your right and you've got just a um you know the inside cover on your left. And I recommend that you write something subtle on that inside page like this is my fourth step. Please respect it.

If I find you with it, I will kill you and hide your body. Something like that. That's what I recommend.

And then when you turn the page, those two facing pages you're looking at are one page because we're going to do a four column inventory. And so it would look like this. This is the spiral down the middle.

And you write a one up here. That's going to be the first column. Two, three, and four.

And you start writing names. Now, the question is how much and how often and all that kind of thing. I want to talk a lot about that because I think it's important.

There are 168 hours in a week. If you're working 40 hours a week and it takes you a half hour to drive to work, um, that's 45 hours including the drive to work. If you sleep 8 hours a night, that's 54.

If you go to seven meetings and you go a little early and stay a little late, or if you have a long drive, that's 15 more hours. If breakfast takes you 15 minutes and lunch takes an hour and dinner takes 45 minutes, that's another 14 hours. If you talk to your sponsor 4 hours a week on the phone, that's reasonable.

It takes you two hours to cut the grass. If you have a little league team and you're fortunate enough to have a family and you have to do some family stuff around the house, like maybe your share of the laundry or do the dishes or maybe take your wife out on a date, that's probably going to get about another 12. If you help with the grocery shopping and you have to buy some clothes and do some other errands, that's another two.

If you're doing prayer and meditation and you're serious about it, it's probably costing you about an hour a day. That's seven more. If you're reading the big book, the 12 and 12, a little bit, the newspaper, maybe you're reading a book for fun, that's probably another five.

If you do a little recreation, maybe swim a little bit, fish, play around of golf, that's another four. That's 164 hours gone out of your 168 hour week. And I don't think these steps are designed to pound me into the pavement.

They're not designed to take away from any other section of my life. Now, if you have a different lifestyle, maybe you're working a 40-hour job and you got another 15-hour part-timer, or maybe you're wealthy and you don't work at all. So, I vary these things a little bit.

I pray about it and I trust what I get. I trust my God, and I' I've learned uh the information in the 11step talks about this intuitively no thing, and I just trust it. But typically I ask a newcomer for three 30 minute sessions a week because if you give yourself the task of completing a fourep you must hate yourself until it's done.

This makes it so difficult. You absolutely got to hate yourself till it's over. If however I can get a newcomer to agree that I'm an expert on the four step which I've already told you I'm not but compared to him I am.

And that he's not and that if I say three 30 minute periods a week is enough it is. then he can feel good about himself while he's in the process. In fact, a process.

So, I think that's important. I have my newcomers phone my answering machine on Sunday afternoons and tell me when they're going to do their fourstep next week. And Monday and Wednesday and Friday doesn't get it.

Monday from 6:00 p.m. till 6:30. Ah, that's an appointment.

They're made that way now. Yeah. And so all of a sudden, yeah, the the kids little league team made the playoffs and you didn't think they had a chance and you can't do your Saturday one.

Fine. Reschedule it and just do it. It's like anything else on my schedule.

It's important. It is not subject to cancellation. It may have to get moved a little, but it's not subject to cancellation.

So, you feel good about yourself while you're in the process. I think that's very important. I asked them to do the sessions like this.

The f first lay down a watch. Second one is to spend the first five minutes in prayer and meditation. I suggest that they pray for clarity and courage because you're probably going to need them both and whatever else they're comfortable with.

And the next 25 minutes with a black or white pen writing. And the way that I like to have them do that back in this spiral notebook is to write one name, skip one line. That was not an estimate.

One is an actual count, right? One name, skip one line, write another name, skip another line. When you get to the bottom of the page, you must turn the page because we got columns three and four over here.

and they just have you just write them just as fast and as hard as you can. Just just throw them as fast as they'll go. And when they slow down, I recommend they take a look at the bottom of page 65.

It says, "We went back through our lives." So that suggests that I think about the present. Okay, I'm living in Nashville. I'm working at this place.

I got these people in my life. Three years ago, I lived in Louisville, Kentucky, and I worked at this place and I lived here and I went to this church. And so you go back through your life and think about it in segments.

And what we're looking for is institutions or people, institutions, or principles with whom we were angry. If you've ever been angry at them, even if you're sure you've forgiven them, write them down. The question is, well, what about one I'm unsure of.

And the answer is, when in doubt, write it out. Far, far better for us to get further into this process and discover that something you have down there is not a resentment than to leave you with one in there that is literally eating your soul. We're going to later say it's blocking you from the sunlight of the spirit.

On this page, it said it destroys more alcoholics than anything else. I don't need anything inside me that'll destroy me. So, when in doubt, I suggest that they write it out.

And I like to stop right there with them until they have finished the list. Well, how do you know when the list is finished? My answer to that is when you can sit for five full minutes in one of those sessions and not think of another name.

call me and we'll look for the second direction. Because you see, this isn't your fourth step. This is your first four step or it's your next fourth step.

We are not saving a special alcoan at the AA Hall of Fame for your fourstep. All right? You are not going to get the perfect fourstep.

I get my hands on a newcomer's fourstep as soon as I can with this pen and I give him a F minus on that title page because it's an attitude. And the attitude, it's okay not to do it perfect. If you got to do it perfect, you can't do it at all.

That's my situation. So, it's okay not to do it perfectly cuz we're going to have to do it again. I got to do it again.

I'm late now. I have to keep doing it. Now, I know people who believe you do the first nine steps once and stay somewhere around 10, 11, 12.

Great. That's fine with me. Whatever they want to do is okay with me.

But my own experience is on my eighth fourth step, I discovered resentments that were 25 years old that I was unable to see until then because I'm the onion being peeled. So, I have to keep going back through the work. what anybody else does is really quite okay with me.

The other thing that I like to say in regards to this perfectionism thing is I like to tell tell the newcomer that that my home group does not give a trophy every year for the best fourstep, right? We don't. And this is the trophy that we don't give.

Okay? This is the trophy that you are not going to get. Okay?

If you're too far back, you can't read. It says four-step trophy never awarded. Right?

So, you are not going to get the four-step trophy. We're not going to do this thing perfectly. That that's that's not our goal.

Our goal is to do three 30-minute periods a week. You know, most of you know how to eat the elephant. You know how to eat elephant?

One bite at a time, baby. One bite at a time. One of these days that thing is gone.

One of these days is gone. It's amazing. So, when they call me and they say, "Okay, I got my list." They say, "Now, I want to organize it." I say, "No, no, no.

Mm-m. We are pressing on. We're not going to make this thing because you know what's happening?

They see nine coming." And that's scary. That is really scary. My experience has been, Linda and I have talked about this quite a bit.

My experience has been that people who have trouble doing steps 4 through nine, their God's too small. If I find somebody locking up his brakes on me anywhere in that process, I want to sit down and talk about his God. because the chances are somebody's got one that's still angry or that has kept score or has already damned them literally.

And those are the kinds of things that need to be worked on because if I don't have a a large forgiving, friendly God to walk into what my wife calls the dark cave of steps 4 through nine, I can't go. I just can't go. So I think it's important to explore that because for me the courage to do that work came from my belief that God was not having a bad day in the middle of a long losing streak when he came up with me or anyone else.

I believe that and u I think mo many newcomers I know I felt this way when I got here believe they've committed the unforgivable sin. I want you to know that I don't believe that. And if there's someone here, if you're new or if you're not new and you think you have, if you'll come see me after we finish this session, I'll dump my bucket for you.

I'll give my four or five worst ones real quick. Chances are good I'm going to hit yours. Chances are good I'm going to hit yours.

I' I've had the privilege of listening to about a hundred fist steps. No one's ever impressed me cuz you see, I've heard mine. And everybody's got their own their own.

We've all done the worst. We have all done the worst. A friend of mine says, "God forgives me for everything I ever did, and he loved me while I was doing it." That's powerful.

My God got bigger that day. And I thank him every time I see him for telling me that because my God has that kind of power to forgive. And I also don't have the power to make a mistake that God can't turn into something magnificent.

And I didn't say fix, and I didn't mean fix. And uh if you hear me tomorrow morning, I'll I'll be talking about the very worst thing I ever did from the podium. I just started doing it a little while back.

And uh there's a reason for it and it's because I got forgiven and I want to talk about how that happened for me so maybe somebody else can get it. The uh the fourth step is actually an inventory of who I'm not. I'm not looking to see who I am.

I'm looking to see who I'm not. Cuz if that's who I was, it would have worked and I'd still be out there doing it. But I'm ashamed of it and I'm upset about it.

It must be who I'm not. So, what we're going to do in the fourth and the fifth steps is we're going to explore and find out who I'm not. And as I lay that down, who I am will emerge.

And the frightening thing was for me was that I didn't know who that was. I had no idea. And I got back to the idea that God wasn't having a bad day and a long losing streak when he came up with me.

And just that piece of faith because I had no idea who I was. I had not the faintest notion who I was. My friend Don P from Denver says, "I'm like a magnet that's been dragged through the junkyard of life and I've just collected all this junk that's all stuck on me." And as we do this step work, what we do is we very slowly turn the power off from that magnet and these things drop away and this beautiful perfect thing that God created me to be will emerge as this other junk falls away.

And that's for me in large measure what this fourth step is about is the beginning of turning off the power so the junk can fall away. So I get the phone call from my uh my protege I think the book says and he says okay I got my list I sat for 5 minutes I can't think of anybody else. I said all right first thing you're going to do is you're going to start carrying a pencil and a piece of paper with you 24 hours a day from now on because you are going to think of some more and when you think of them you write them down.

Next time you get to your four step just add them to the end of the thing. That's that's all there is to it. So now we'll take a look in the book and see if we can discover the next direction.

So the last sentence we read was we listed people, institutions or principles with whom we were angry. Here's the next sentence. We asked ourselves why we are angry.

Aha. And so we do that. And I take a look at the example on the facing page on page 65.

If anybody has a book, it says, "I'm resentful at Mr. Brown. The cause is attention to my wife.

He told my wife of my mistress. Brown may get my job at the office." I say, "That's great. Count those words." Count them.

Yeah. Count them. Under cause, you count those words next to Mr.

Brown, you're going to count 19. If you don't count 19, start from the back and work backwards cuz you're skipping these and ofs. Okay.

19 words. This guy is messing with this old lady has told her about his mistress and is after his job got 19 words. 19 words.

19 is the limit. It is not optimum. limit is maximum.

We are not going to write books and books and books about what this guy did to you. That is not our purpose here. That's one of the reasons that we are working down the page.

Now, we have a list. We start with the first name, the cause, and you have the rest of that line over to the spiral and you have the line immediate below it and you can get 19 words in there or less would be better. And I said, I'll tell you, I'm not hard and fast on that.

If you think you've got someone who's done more than that to you, call me and we'll negotiate whether you can have the 20th word. I need to I need to tell you that I have yet to give it up. But I'm willing to talk about it because I don't think we need to set any of this in stone.

See, this thing doesn't start out, you know, it was a dreary Wednesday afternoon. Okay? I was feel we're not going to write books and books.

I had a I had a girl in another fellowship call me one Sunday afternoon just torn out of the frame. I'm in most of the fellowships. And she called me on and she said, "I just don't know what to do.

I'm going crazy." I said, "What happened?" And she says, "Well, my boss and I had a fright fight on Friday afternoon, and I've been for stepping about him all weekend. What's she been doing? Been writing all this stuff that he did.

She's just soaking in this anger, and it's just making her crazier and crazier." 19 words. 19 words. That's it.

Stop there. Mine says things like, "Uh, left me for another guy." Left me for another guy. Left me for another guy.

You um Next, a high school football coach didn't play me as much as I deserved. They say, "Uh, screwed me in a business deal." It's brief, right? We're going to work down the page again.

Down the page. It's simple. 19 words.

When they've got that completed, and we're still doing three 30-minute periods a week until further notice, and say, "We do vary that. I'm willing to negotiate it." Um the next sentence says in mo in most cases we found it was our our self-esteem, our pocketbooks, our ambitions, our personal relationships including sex were hurt or threatened. So we were sore we were burned up.

Now here's the direction on our grudge list. We set opposite each name our injury. Was it our self-esteem, our security, our ambitions, our personal or sex relations which had been interfered with?

That is a multiplechoice test. five possible answers. Um, and just because when you look at one, just because say, "Okay, yeah, that's self-esteem." You don't skip to the next one.

Some of them are going to get all five. Some will get two or three, and some you will not be able to figure out. That's why you have a sponsor.

Call your sponsor and ask why. If this is your first one, I'll give you a clue. It's self-esteem.

Trust me, it is. Um, and then then we complete that. It it doesn't take that long.

So that's the third column. Now we're on the other side of the spiral now. And now at the bottom of the page, this is page 65.

Says, "We went back through our lives. Nothing counted but thoroughess and honesty. When we were finished, we considered it carefully." That's a general description.

They're going to tell us very specifically how to consider it. Says, "The first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong." I asked him to stop right there. Is that apparent?

It's a fair question. It said it was apparent to the people that wrote this book. Is it apparent to you?

We always get a yes on that one. Yeah. We're going to refer to that a whole lot later.

Much further down the page. I'm going to read some other things first. To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got.

Hm. That true for you? Was for me.

I'm skipping a little bit. It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. That was plain to them.

Is it plain to you? I asked that for a question. To me, that's a direction.

And one of the most important ones, I'm a salesman by trade. And one of the things I learned early was that you establish value before you name price. Because we were coming, we are coming to a place where you're going to ask you for something you are not going to want to do.

I promise it. If you have not done this work, you are not going to like some of what we're coming to, but it'll work for you and it'll clean you out. So, we're establishing the value.

I think it's important. Do you believe? Is it plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility, unhappiness?

That was my experience with it. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worthwhile? Did you ever sit and just hate them?

Did you ever cost you any sleep? You should have been working. You could have filed your nails.

There was something you could have done besides sitting there and figuring out how to get sugar into his gas tank. Huh? There was something.

But with the alcoholic whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. I think there's some power in there. Tells me what my hope is.

It says the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience. That means I've got to maintain what I have. Means I can't lose any.

And it also means that that's not enough. Maintenance and growth. That means my 1998 program probably won't keep me sober in 99.

I must continue to grow. That's what they're telling me. Um it says this business of resentment is infinitely grave.

Infinitely grave. My goodness gracious. Those powerful words.

They're talking about destroy it. on the page before it says we found that it is fatal. I want to tell you my experience with that.

I went to my sponsor a number of years later and I said what was the difference between me and Bill? And I gave his last name. He said what do you mean what was the difference?

And I said well he and I were within a few weeks at the same sobriety date. We went to meetings at the very same place. I saw him five six times a week in a meeting.

We had the same home group. We both had you for a sponsor. And with a two-year chip in his pocket, Bill drove home from a meeting one night and hit the garage door opener and pulled his car into the garage and hit the opener again and left it running and died.

And he did not drink. What was the difference? And Jerry said, "I could not get him to do a forep.

I could absolutely not move him off the dime. He would not do a four step." And he died of resentment. He was so angry.

And I thought about it. And every time I had seen Bill for the last 2 years, he couldn't wait to run up to tell you what some sob had just done to him and it killed him literally dead. I stand by the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

We have found that it is fatal. I have had that experience. I have seen it kill a man.

It's that critical. It is that serious. It says here, "For when harboring such feelings, we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the spirit." Harboring is kind of an interesting word.

Doesn't say having. I think it's okay if I have resentments as long as I'm not harboring them. And the difference is that when I harbor something, I give it safe harbor.

I I I cuddle it. I uh I nurture it. I give it a safe place.

So when I'm following these directions to get rid of a resentment, see, I don't have the power to get rid of one. I don't do results. It's not my job.

God does results. I do means. When I'm following these means, I'm perfectly safe with a resentment.

I don't know if that makes any sense to you. It does to me. It says the insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again.

With us to drink is to die. Because if I've got something eaten my soul, I have got to do one of two things. I've either got to drink or I've got to get it out of there.

And we're coming to the directions on how to get it out of here. It says if we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm are not for us.

Interesting. The word brainstorm. Many of you have done what we call brainstorming where you sit around in a room and you spit out ideas.

It's a whole lot of fun. The concept of brainstorming came out of the Walt Disney organization at about the time this book was written. That's how they came up with Mickey Mouse cartoons.

And if you can find an old dictionary and if you look up brainstorm, what you're going to find that it says, oops, cuz I want to quote it right cuz I looked one up. Brainstorm, violent transient fit of insanity. We know that is rage.

If you think about it, there are two kinds of anger. There's the grouch or the slowburn and the brainstorm or the detonation, rage. If you hold that in your mind or read this again, it makes a whole lot of sense.

If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm are not for us. I can't afford the price of either kind.

It doesn't mean I don't get them. It means when I get them, I got to get them out of there as fast as possible. I'm not perfect.

We turned back to the list where it held the key to the future. We were Now, that's a general direction. And it's going to tell us very specifically what to do with it.

Says, "We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle." Different from what? Different from the very first one that we looked at, which was the bottom of page 65. The first thing apparent was that this world ends.

People were often quite wrong. When I saw that, I assumed that what we're going to do was look at where I was wrong. And that's not it.

Interestingly enough, also it says we were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle. It doesn't say how they prepared. So, if I'm sponsoring you, I tell you, I don't care how you prepare, but I want to know that you prepared when you get to this direction.

You may want to shake your hands out a little bit. H maybe go wash your face, walk around your chair a couple of times, say, "I'm preparing." They didn't tell us how to prepare. They said they prepared.

You're preparing, right? We're going to take it that literally. And I am now prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle.

Fine. Have a seat. And let's look for the next direction.

Okay? There's no reason this shouldn't be fun, right? Ask this lady right here.

Look at this. Is she having a good time? Does she?

That's my kind of girl. I love that. I married one of those.

That's great. Says, "We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us. One at a time.

I don't care if you got 400 resentments on that list. One at a time." Let's go back and take a look at how this how this dominated you. Did it dominate your thinking?

Did it pull you into depression? Did it dominate your time and you sat and and plotted their demise and hated them? Did you walk did you do things in your life to stay away from them?

Or did you do things so you could be close to them so you could hate him more? I used to sponsor a guy, we call him Big Ken, and Big Ken's gone to the big meeting. And I'm sure he'd be okay with him if I told you this, but Big Ken said when he got sober, he hated everybody and he wished there were more of them.

Oh my goodness. Yeah. And so when you've completed that direction, so you'll note that I said earlier that that a lot of these directions are not written.

Maybe I didn't say that, but a lot of the fourth step isn't writing. A lot of these observations, a lot of what we just covered isn't writing. It's observing.

Let's observe. Let's take the time and observe. These aren't just words on a page.

These are things that they saw. Stop and see them because this is the beginning of the forgiveness process. And I used to say, "Yeah, I forgive." Oh boy.

If you make a mistake in Bolivia, though, I'll be right there. I'll be all over you. I don't care where you go.

You can run. You cannot hide. I will get you one of these days.

But I forgive you. See, I don't have the power to forgive. To me, forgiveness is a gift from God that I give to myself.

And I found the directions here on how to do that because I can't afford the price of hating any of his kids because that blocks me from you. It blocks me from him. And I can't very well practice the presence of God when I'm in a rage.

I can't do it. So it says in that state the wrongdoing of others fancied or real. You know some of these resentments actually just happened inside my head had the power to actually kill.

We covered that. How could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered.

But how do you see that these resentments must be mastered? Tell me about it. Let's take a look at these observations that they make.

We could not wish them away any more than alcohol. This was our course. Maybe the most important direction in the book to me.

I've seen more lives change right here, I think, than everywhere else. Says, "We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick." My friend Don defined spiritually sick as shut off from God or cut off from God. I don't know which one he says.

And the book has already said that these resentments shut me off from the sunlight of the spirit. And I like to tell a new guy as he's sitting there smarting from whatever this is people have done to him, um, want you to stop for a minute right now and think about the two or three very worst things you ever did. Think about it.

You had to have been spiritually sick to have done that. You absolutely had to have been spiritually sick to have done that. If you were walking in the presence of the Almighty, could you have possibly done that?

No way. No chance. These people too were spiritually sick when they did those things.

And that to me is the beginning of the forgiveness. And it's huge because I have to have that in place. I I I've absolutely got to.

The price is just too high if I don't. And I want them to go back one at a time through that list and grant these people spiritual sickness rather than what I call sobism. One at a time.

Ask God to help you. Take your time. Go through the list.

It's important to see these things. And I usually stop right there. By the way, I stop at the first direction.

I stop at the second one. And then I give the rest of what you just heard as as a block. And then we pick it up again at the top of the next page.

Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they like ourselves are sick, too. There's a tough sentence, huh? Let's make that into little pieces and see what it says.

Though we did not like their symptoms. Well, the symptom is what they did to us that left us with a resentment. And the way these disturbed us, well, my resentment is is what my disturbance is.

They like ourselves were sick, too. That must be important. We've said it two sentences in a row.

I have got to grant these people spiritual sickness. If they were walking in the master's presence, they couldn't have done it. They've got to be spiritually sick.

We ask God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. We ask God, "That sounds like a prayer. I believe it is." And so, we have a series of lists and observations.

And now, here's a prayer. When a person offended, we said to ourselves, which is a silent prayer, "This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him?" God save me from being angry.

Thy will be done. There's another prayer. Lists, observations, and prayers.

I think we're going to stop right here. Uh we've got about an hour left. I would like to ask that we take about a 10-minute break.

And those of you who can tough it out, um come on back. We will start again. Uh I've got 510.

We'll start at 5:20 on my watch on the hack. And uh and thanks for listening so far. We'll take a break right here.

on page 552 and what else I just described talk a little bit about there's a girl that comes to my home group that says life is tough is tough first you get the test then you get the lesson then if you don't get the lesson you get the test again and I think that might be right and so at least in part this fourth step is about laying that down and I heard in a meeting in Atlanta when I was sober about 5 years a guy defined freedom and I think he got He said, "Freedom is when I accept full responsibility for all of my own actions." Up until that point, I may have been at large, but I'm not free because freedom includes responsibility. So, steps four through nine have to do with responsibility. They have to do with acting like an adult.

A friend of mine says whenever she's confused and doesn't really know what her next move should be, she stops and asks herself this question. What would an adult do in a situation like this? And I find that helpful for for whatever it's worth.

My my experience with removing my own defects of character. See, I have no power over them. I was at a trade show in Chicago, sober a couple of years, and I was selling hardware and plumbing and electrical kinds of stuff.

And I was at a big trade show in McCormack, and I was removing my own defects of character. I don't know if anybody else in here has had that experience, but you can get a brain hernia doing that. And I was walking and I was working on what I think of as character defect number one.

I call it CD1. You know which one it is, right? Yeah.

Lust is Yeah, that's it. And uh so I'm walking down the aisle and I'm not even going to see these ladies, right? Not even going to see them.

I'm removing this character defect and I come by this particular space and these people make showerheads and they have invented this new shower head that does this pulsing thing and they have got a glass shower stall at about waist level and there's a gorgeous young woman in there wearing about 6 or 8 cents worth of bathing suit couldn't have been more than that taking a shower demonstrating this thing and I'm going to walk by there and not even notice it right I almost hurt myself trying trying to stop those thoughts And I left there and I went to a meeting and I walked out of that meeting still crazy. And I said to a woman standing on the street right after the meeting. I said, "Where's the next meeting?" She said, "There's a men's meeting around the corner and you better go." So I guess it was visible.

So I walked in and I sat down in this men's meeting and this guy told my story. I was astounded where he had done that. And my sponsor tells me that I have no power over my defects of character.

None. And that my defects of character are all self-centered without exception. without exception, they're self-centered.

And self does not have the power to push self out of the center. And if it did, it would leave a vacuum. And the answer to my defects of character is for me to try to become God- centered.

And on the days when I do that, my defects of character just recede. And and I don't I guess that the darkness can't exist in the light. And the fourth step for me is the beginning of the shining of the light onto the truth.

I said before that I don't have the power to forgive, and I don't believe that I do. But I have the power to receive God's gift of forgiveness. See, when I got here, I was like this.

And as I have done this step work and hung out with you people, I have begun to open to receive what's always been here for me as a free and clear gift. And one of those gifts is forgiveness. I have used this program on all of my resentments.

I have one, and it's funny, I never think about it. It never crosses my mind. If he walked into the room, I wouldn't think about it.

I was in a business deal a number of years ago and I was a I'm a commission salesman and the commission on my side was going to be $50,000 a year. That's a lot of money to me. And u that's been 16 years ago.

So I'm about 800,000 in the hole on this one right now. And you know the only time nothing happens in here when I say that nothing goes off inside. I don't have any feelings about that anymore.

I hope that guy does great. I wish him the best. I think he's doing the best he can do and I'm doing the best I can do because I can't afford the price of hate in one of the master's kids.

We pray in the prayer that they close most of the meetings with. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. I'm asking to be graded by my own standards.

I have consequently relaxed my standards. It's pretty clear that I can't afford the price. The price is just too high.

And these are the directions for me so that I can receive the forgiveness. And I have someone pray these prayers through their list one at a time. And I don't care.

The shortest list of resentments I ever saw that I thought was complete was about 40. And the longest I ever saw was 450 and it was incomplete. I'm pretty sure of that.

And I don't care how long. One at a time. Let's go back and pray for these people.

To me, resentment is kind of like black ice around my heart. And as I hold in prayer that black heart up to the sunlight of the spirit, that sunlight melts that ice. And depending maybe on how long I've had the resentment and how much I've nursed it and how big it is, or maybe how close I can hold it to the sunlight, eventually it will melt.

And I can find myself praying for God to give me tolerance, pity, and patience for this person and find that I have it. And then I can hope he has a great life and a spiritual experience and his kids go to school on scholarship and his wife gets promoted at work and you know and I just wish him the very best. And that goes for the man I just described to you right now.

And I don't have the power to do that. I absolutely do not have that power but this program does. The forgiveness process is in the forep cleverly hidden I might add but it's right there.

And that ends the first third of the inventory. It generally shoots about 80% of the time necessary. Um, I'm sorry, I'm I'm ahead of myself.

Uh, there's one more. It says, "Refering to our list again, putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done." Now, that's difficult to do if I'm still mad at them. I think that's why the prayer work and the observations are so important.

So, I got to dig that poison out. And it doesn't say that I look for my part. If I'm looking for my part, I still think they got a part.

So, I need to get to the the forgiveness piece in place before I get to here. Says we resolutely look for our own mistakes. I have made mistakes.

That's what we're going to look for. Where had we been? All right.

Here's your fourth column. Where had we been? Selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and frightened.

I would note that those are all functions of self. They are they are all parts of self. though a situation not been entirely our fault.

We tried to disregard the other person involved entirely. Where were we to blame? The inventory was ours, not the other man's.

So, I'm going to do a fourth column and take a look at whether I had been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, or frightened. And then it calls for another list down here. It says, "When we saw our faults, we listed them." I think that's a separate list.

Sit down and write down what were my faults. They're all self-centered. We placed them before us in black and white.

We covered that. We admitted our wrongs honestly and were willing to set these matters straight. Interesting how the fourth and eighth steps are so closely related, much more closely than four and five.

Cuz here I'm willing to sweep up my side of the street. And that's what a the eighth step is going to be about. And that's it on resentment.

And now we go to the fear portion of the inventory. It says, notice that the word fear is bracketed alongside the difficulties with these folks. This short word somehow touches about every aspect of our lives.

And then here's an indictment. It was an evil and corroding thread. The fabric of our existence was shot through with it.

It set in motion trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn't deserve. But now we ourselves set the ball rolling. Sometimes we think fear ought to be classed with stealing.

It seems to cause more trouble. Hm. Apparently that's going to have to go too.

And they're going to tell us how to do that. Astonishingly enough, the directions are right here. It says, "We reviewed our fears thoroughly." To me, that's not a direction.

That's a general description. They're going to tell us very specifically how to do that. It says, "We put them on paper even though we had no resentment in connection with them." I suggest that if you've got the spiral notebook thing, turn three or four pages so you have room for some more resentments.

If you happen to think of some, dog ear one, and start listing your fears, start writing them down. And and it's everything. And it's fears of uh fear of failure, fear of success.

You may not know you have that. Take a hard look. I was afraid of success.

I was afraid I was going to succeed. And I knew it was dumb luck and they were going to expect me to do it again. I was scared to death of that.

I did much better with failure. Fear of snakes. Afraid of death.

Afraid of flying. Well, not flying. Afraid of crashing and burning in an airplane.

Take an inventory. Take a look. talk to your sponsor about it.

I recommend sponsorship a lot. I'm going to talk about that here in a little while. They say we put them on paper.

It doesn't tell us specifically how and that's the only written instruction that I can find in the fear inventory. So, I just say write one down and just just keep writing. Just start making a list of your fears.

Shouldn't take long. And it says we put them on paper even though we had no resentment in connection with them. So, some of my fears have resentments connected to them and some of them don't.

So that's saying all fears. You got one, put it down. And then it says, "We asked ourselves why we had them.

I am so grateful that they answered that question in the next sentence cuz I had no idea. I couldn't have answered the question." It said, "Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us?" So let's observe one at a time that I have these fears because I rely upon myself. And it it emphasizes that in these next few sentences, all saying the same thing.

Self-reliance was good as far as it went, but it didn't go far enough. Some of us once had great self-confidence, but it didn't fully solve the fear problem or any other. When it made us cocky, it was worse.

Perhaps there is a better way. We think so. For we are now on the on a different basis, the basis of trusting and relying upon God.

We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves. I want to read from page Roman numeral 16 in the text. Um this is from the forward to the second edition.

It's referring to Bill. Though he could not accept all attenance of the Oxford groups, he was convinced of the need for moral inventory, confession of personality defects, restitution to those harmed, helpfulness to others, and the belie and the necessity of belief in and dependence upon God. What I want to point is that la last phrase, the necessity of belief in and dependence upon God.

Those are two separate concepts. I can believe there's a God and not have a higher power. To believe in God and to depend on God are different concepts.

I think that's pretty powerful. It was for me. So it says here, I'm back on page 68.

For we are now on a different basis rather than relying upon myself. The basis of trusting and relying upon God. We trust infinite God.

rather than our finite selves. We are in the world to play the role he assigns. Second half of the first step, my life's unmanageable.

I don't get to pick the role he does. But I'm given a gift and I believe this with all of my heart. Um I was afraid I was going to have to be a missionary in Africa or something like that that I didn't want to do.

And somebody pointed to me, pointed out to me one time that God has this particular animal that he gave a taste for the very tenderest leaves that grow on the top of a particular tree. And he also gave the giraffe the long neck so that he could get to them. The idea is that God's will is a good deal.

There's a there's a secret, huh? God's will for me is a good deal. Hold that one for a while.

But it's a package deal. It's two bowling balls. My will, God's will.

Pick one. It's not 95 and five. We're in the world to play the role he assigns.

Just to the extent that we do as we think he would have us and humbly rely on him does he enable us to match calamity with serenity. The permission to make a mistake is in that sentence. Did you hear it?

It says just to the extent that we do as we think he would have us, I don't have to do what God would have me do. I don't always know what it is. I have to take my best shot.

And when I'm trying to do what I think the master would have me do, like I said before, I'm still making mistakes, but I'm making much finer quality mistakes. And I'm learning by living with the results of them because I insist on embracing my results. Now, that's permission to make a mistake.

We never apologize to anyone for depending on our creator. We can laugh at those who think spirituality the way of weakness. Paradoxically, it is a way of strength.

The verdict of the ages is that faith means courage. All men of faith have courage. They trust their God.

We never apologize for God. There's a rather direct piece of information. Instead, we let him demonstrate through us what he can do.

And here's a prayer. We ask him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what he would have us be. I would like to note it does not say what he would have us do, but what he would have us be.

And once we commence to outgrow fear, there's a promise kind of interesting. We outgrow fear. Fear must be lack of growth.

If I can outgrow it, what kind of growth? Spiritual growth. Growth toward God.

Growth growth toward being the kind of guy he'd have me be. Growth toward dependence on God rather than dependence upon me. Powerful stuff.

That's it for the fear inventory. There was a list. There were some observations.

There was a prayer. It says now about sex. Many of us many of us needed an overhauling there.

But above all, we tried to be sensible on this question. And it's easy to get way off track. Here we find human opinions running to extremes, absurd extremes perhaps.

One set of voices cry that sex is a lust of our lower nature, a base necessity of procreation. Then we have the voices who cry for sex and more sex, who bewail the institution of marriage, who think that most of the troubles of the race are traceable to sex causes, that think we don't have enough of it or it isn't the right kind. I'm going to skip down.

We want to stay out of this controversy. We do not want to be the arbiter of anyone's sex conduct. I don't either.

If they didn't want to be, I don't want to be. And the only time I feel good pointing at it with a man that I sponsor if is if I think he's betting his sobriety on it. I've had the occasion this year of doing that in extremely direct terms.

And I think he narrowly missed a real bad one. He says, "We all have sex problems. We'd hardly be human without if we didn't.

What can we do about them? Here are the directions." It says, "We reviewed our own conduct over the years past." That's interesting. Our own conduct.

I'm not reviewing anybody else's. Where had we been? Selfish, dishonest, or inconsiderate.

Whom had we hurt? What I like to do on that one, and and I do this, I hope, with a great deal of humility, is I like to take the second one first because this will lay out pretty easily in a column inventory if you'll start out with whom had we heard as a column. And the second one being where had we been selfish, dishonest or inconsiderate.

The third column being did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion or bitterness? And then the fourth column said, "Where were we at fault? What should we have done instead?" My fourth column is very simple.

Generally, it says, "I should have left her alone." Or it says, "I should have told her the truth." It's short because we're This is not a a course in self flagagillation. We're not here to beat me up over the things that I've done wrong. It tells me in the next paragraph, well, let me go before that.

It says, we got this all down on paper and looked at it. So, we're going to put this all on paper so we can look at it and observe. We're making the list so we can make the observations.

What are we trying to accomplish? This is what it says here. And it says, "In this way, we tried to shape a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life." So, that's what we're trying to do with this.

Not beat me up, but figure out what I'm supposed to do from here. I'd like to ask the men that I sponsor to write a paragraph which is less than a third of a page on what they believe their sex ideal should be. It's done prayerfully.

It says down here, "We subjected each relation to this test. Was it selfish or not?" It's back to self. The thread runs all through it.

Here's a prayer. We ask God to mold our ideals and help us to live up with them up to them. So, I ask him to pray that prayer, sit down and write a paragraph as to what you believe your sex ideal is.

What would God have you do in the sex arena? And I tell them that you don't have to chase the whatifs. All right?

If if you are currently married, then write it down. You don't have to figure out what it would be if you still loved her, but she was seeing somebody else and you were almost legally separated, but not quite. But the lawyers were talking, right?

We don't need to know that. We're back to a day at a time. Very simply, what is it today?

When your situation changes, we'll talk again. I invite them to share that with me if they want to. Some do, some don't.

It's none of my business. I'm willing to listen to it. I'm not even asking to.

I'm just available as a sponsor to it. Says, "We remember always that our sex powers were God-given and therefore good, neither to be used lightly or selfishly, nor to be despised or loathed. Whatever our ideal turns out to be, we must be willing to grow toward it.

We must be willing to make amends." Here we go again with the amends, just like the eightstep. It isn't that hard. Trust me, it's not that hard.

Some of them don't even remember you. They don't. Isn't that terrible?

That's the worst part of it, I think. Make amends where we've done harm. Um, we treat sex as we would any other problem.

And here we go again into the prayerful things. This time it's meditation. In meditation, we ask God what we should do about each specific master.

The right answer will come if we want it. So, I sit quietly in the master's presence with a question and I listen for the answer. And it comes and I bounce it off my sponsor to make sure.

Suppose we fall short. Does this mean we're going to get drunk? Some people tell us so, but it's only a halftruth.

It depends on us and our motives. If we are sorry for what we have done and have the honest desire to let God take us to better things, we believe we will be forgiven and will have learned our lesson. If we are not sorry and our conduct continues to harm others, we are quite sure to drink.

We are not theorizing. These are facts out of our experience. I can sign that too.

That's true. I've seen that. To sum up about sex, we earnestly pray.

Here we are praying again. My sponsor says, and it came as a big surprise to me, that God knows all about sex. As a matter of fact, he thinks God may have invented it.

That's right. Says, "We earnestly pray for the right ideal for guidance in each questionable situation." That's interesting. I only need the guidance in the questionable situations.

Generally, I know what to do. More specifically, I know what not to do. For sanity and for the strength to do the right thing.

And I just love this. It says, "If sex is very troublesome, we throw ourselves the harder into helping others." I watched this guy that I'm talking about almost and got him heavily active in helping others. And I don't want to be real specific about that.

Got him doing a lot of 12step work and the problem went away for him. The problem went away because it's just a selfishness. It is very simply a selfishness.

It's all it is. Says we think of their needs and work for them. This takes us out of ourselves.

It quiets the imperious urge when to yield would mean heartbreak. I have seen that happen. Having trouble with this one?

Three nights a week, take a meeting into a prison. See what happens to you. Get down to central office and start answering the phones.

Get early to your home group, make the coffee, set up the chairs, stay late, wash the cups, put the ashtrays away, fold the chairs, get out there and get it on the road for the newcomer and see what happens. It will go away. I I have been astounded to watch what's happened on that.

Absolutely astounded. And now we have what what pilots call a checklist. It says, "If we have been thorough about our personal inventory, well, there's an if.

We have written down a lot." Well, if you followed these directions that we have just discovered in this book, you will have written down a lot. It says, "We have listed and analyzed our resentments." Okay, I remember where we did that. We covered those directions.

It says, "We have begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality." We've talked about how feudal they were. We've talked about dying from them. I bet there are other people in this room who've seen that.

We have commenced to see their terrible destructiveness. Yeah, we looked at that. Says, "We have begun to learn tolerance, patience, and goodwill toward all men, even our enemies.

For we look on them as sick people." I remember that. We did some prayers and observations about that. We have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct.

We did that in the sexual misconduct inventory. We did that in the resentment inventory. And are willing to straighten out the past if we can.

Yep. I remember where we saw that. So, it seems to me that if we've done those things, then we've been complete.

I've got some other notes that I want to read from my own experience, and I'm going to go back to fear for just a second. There was a fellow named Johnny used to come to my home group, and he had a tire iron under his under his front seat, and he had a knife in his pocket, and he had a pistol in his in his boot, and he had some shotguns at the house. And he says, "I ain't afraid of nothing." And we've been sober about six months.

He said, "You know what? I'm afraid of everything. That's why I got to have all that." It's funny how little I know about myself until I begin to take these inventories.

A lot of what I believed about me turned out to be untrue. If you had asked me the day before I got sober if caffeine affected me, I would have said absolutely not. And it didn't.

And and if you drink as much scotch as I was, it probably wouldn't affect you either. And it took me a year to figure out that I can't do caffeine. I can have a cup in the morning.

I can have an iced tea at lunch. I have to stop there because if I have a cup of coffee, even decaf with you good people at an 8:00 meeting, I'm not sleeping that night. How many other things are there about me that I didn't know when I got here?

It was important to me because this magnet through the junkyard of life metaphor that we talked about before, as these things drop away, we're going to discover who I really am. And I didn't have a clue. I didn't have the faintest notion who I was because I had been an act all of my life.

I had pretended to be who I thought you wanted me to be all my life and I didn't know who I was. I did not know. I have a a friend, a woman who was held in at gunpoint in a bank robbery.

She's in recovery. And when she came out of that situation, she analyzed it and she said, "You know, my fear was all in the future." Granted, I'm standing there in the bank and this guy's got a stocking over his head and a pistol in my ear holding me like this. But she said, "You know, I was really okay.

I wasn't doing what I wanted to do and I wasn't physically very comfortable, but my fear was in the future." Fear is in the future. There's a fellow named Doug D out of Dallas who who does a wonderful discussion about self and I've changed it slightly but it's that uh resentment and depression are when I wasn't getting my will in the past. Anger is when I'm not getting my will right now and fear is the concern that I will not get my will in the future.

What is the problem? Continues to come back to my will. Isn't it astounding?

Isn't it just astonishing? I'll tell you back on the fear thing just a little bit, too. I had a guy after I did one of these sessions one time say, "Well," he said, "The reason I look both ways before I step off a curb is because I'm afraid I'll get run over by a bus." To me, that's not a fear.

That sounds to me like intuitively, no. That it's in my own best interest to look both ways before I step off of a curb. When we talk about fear, I'm talking about that gut-wrenching, petrified thing.

And I've I've had the experience of needing to get rid of some fears uh on a couple of ex couple of occasions. I had some things that uh turned brown and began to stink rather badly in my business a while back. And I found myself in fear again.

And what fear is is a reassertion of my will. It's the reemergence of ego every time. And what I had to do was a prayer that I discovered was a way to I've heard people since I got sober, they say, "Turn it over to God.

Nobody can tell me how. I found out how. What I do is I take a situation and I discover by inventorying what do I think is the very worst possible thing that can happen here.

Now that's a judgment on my part. I'll give you that. But what do I think is the worst case in this particular situation.

The worst case was I lose the business, I go bankrupt, I lose the house, I lose one of the cars, and I have to get a real job working for somebody else. All right? cuz I'm a self-employed.

That was that's the worst thing I could imagine that could possibly happen. And so I took that as a package to God. And I said, "If this is your will, send it." And I didn't mean it.

See, that was a problem. That was the problem right there. It's cuz I wanted it my way cuz I figured if I could turn over the what I thought was the worst case, I'd turn over everything else.

And I prayed that prayer every time I thought about it. See, my my spirituality had been gone for a couple of weeks. And it took me that long to realize that it was gone.

my spiritual contact was gone. And I prayed that morning and night, added it to my morning and evening prayers. And every time I thought about it during the day, I laid that thing out and I said, "Father, if this is your will, send it on." And I didn't mean it.

And I didn't mean it. And I didn't mean it. And I kept praying it.

And all of a sudden, all of a sudden, one day, I meant it. And what happened is I'd step back into the sunlight of the spirit. See, the first requirement for me to have anything if I'm going to walk this walk is I don't have to have it.

If I've got to have it, I've put it before God and I stand in its shadow. The first requirement is I must be able to hold it in an open hand. I must be held at that time finally I got my job.

My economic situation held in an open hand again. And I'm not saying this is cause and effect, but 3 days later it turned around and took off like a rocket. I don't know.

But the important piece is that I was at peace. It was okay. Because as long as I had this program, this contact with God, as long as I could stay sober and be one of you people, I was going to be okay.

My will, God's will. Two bowling balls. Pick one.

It's not 95 and five. I'll handle money and sex and he can handle the rest. It's not not the deal.

It's not the package. It's not what the third step prayer said. It's not what it said.

It worked for me. >> >> What I discovered was that I'm trapped. When I got sober, I discovered, see this right here?

See that right there? You probably think of that as skin. That's a prison.

I'm stuck in here. You know what I mean? I used to get out all the time.

You know, I go be somebody else. I I did a lot of things I used to be able to do. I'm stuck now.

And the first thing I had to do if I was going to live in here 24 365 was clean it up so I could stand it. And the fourth step is the beginning of the house cleaning. I heard a girl in a meeting at the Mustard Seed in Chicago.

If you ever get a chance to get up there, it's great clubhouse. She said, "My priority is not what I say it is. My priorities is what I do." Priorities what I do.

If I want to know what my priorities are, I don't listen to my words about the future. I take the evening half of the 11 step and look into my past and see what got done. And what got done was a priority.

And what did get not get done was not a priority. And anything that I am saying to the contrary is a lie that I'm telling me. And I did not like that the first time I heard it.

And it's the truth. And I think that's why it's so important for me. So what's my priority?

My priority is what gets done. It's what is accomplished. Important piece.

There's something else to me that's very important. We talk in the third step about God's will. And that was a frightening concept.

So many of us as children were told when Aunt Sarah died it was God's will. I mean, God's will got a bad name. And I had to take my own concept, what I believe that phrase, God's will, meant, break it into two pieces.

And one of them is things like, what am I going to be when I grow up? Where am I going to live? Who am I going to live with?

How much money am I going to make? What's going to happen to my children? Did the communists eventually take over the world?

Every bit of that violates one day at a time. And not being in management, according to the first step, I don't need to know. leaves me with my own concept of God's will.

And that is very simply, what would the master have me do today? And I know what God's will is for me is to act like one of his kids. I'm a citizen.

I vote. I drive a car. Put your blinker on around me in traffic.

I'll let you in. I say please and thank you. Yeah, that's big news in Nashville.

U some days. Um I I try to uh I'm trying to be a good dad to my kids. I'm I'm trying to be a good husband to the to this fabulous wife that I have.

And I act like I'm married all the time. All the time. I'm an alcoholic.

I've got a sponsor. I sponsor some guys. I go to a lot of meetings.

I read the text. I read two pages a day in the big book. Just two.

It's a discipline. I read the big book four times a year. Two pages a day.

That's all. The word discipline and the word punishment meant the same thing in the home I grew up in. The word discipline comes from the same root word as the word disciple.

means follower. So when I discipline myself, I don't punish me. What I do is I choose to follow.

So I know what God's will is for me is to act like one of his kids. I I'm a child of God. I pray, I meditate, and I try to treat you guys like brothers and sisters, loved brothers and sisters.

I know what God's will is. There's an important piece for me in the third step. Really important.

Uh a lady I know in Nashville says that prayer is not a chance to change God's mind. It's not a sales opportunity. It's an opportunity for God to change my mind, which is the one that needs to be changed.

I want to talk just a little bit about sponsorship. My uh my fifth sponsor died in May four years ago and uh Don was a beautiful guy and he had uh I could talk about him for the next hour. I'm going to stifle myself and just say that I needed to be sponsored.

It's over 11 years and I needed to be sponsored and there was no question about it. And if you're new and you're looking for a sponsor, I want to tell you what I looked for. Cuz I had had the five best sponsors any man ever had.

And I asked myself, what were their common characteristics so that I could look around and find one and this is what they were. They'd all been men. I don't sponsor women and I'm not sponsored by women.

They had to be men who had done the 12 steps because the 12 steps are the program. So I need somebody that's in the program who could help me stay in the program. Well, if they haven't at my home group, they say if you can't anymore give away something you ain't got, then you can come back from somewhere you ain't been.

And so, it had to be somebody that had been there. It had to be someone who had a sponsor himself. And there are a couple of good reasons for that.

One is that it means he surrendered to somebody. The second one, more important to me, is that the first time I come to him with a question he can't answer, we got a plan. We know where we're going, we're going to his sponsor.

I'll tell you how good our plan is. I happen to know for a fact that his sponsor's got a sponsor. We got a great plan.

It was important for me to have a sponsor who would tell me the truth. It means it has to be somebody who doesn't need me for a best friend. I need someone who will tell me what I do not want to hear.

That's important to me. It has to be someone for me who's active in service work because I think all the winners are they're taking meetings into prisons and and jails and treatment centers and they're showing up at the detoxes and they're secretary of their group and they're setting up and they're tearing down. They're answering the phone.

You know what service work is? I got to have somebody who's doing that cuz I need a winner. That's what I need.

And and I think maybe the last and probably the most important characteristic is I need a sponsor that laughs a lot. I would not have a sponsor wasn't having a great time because my experience has been that the people who do this step work, who get to the 12th step, who have the spiritual awakening and try to practice these principles in all their affairs are having a ball. Now, there are moments when that isn't true, but overall they're having a fantastic time.

If you ever get to Nashville, look up Ice Cream Steve. He's my sponsor and he is a nutcase of the First Order and I know he's going to hear this tape and he will not be upset when he hears it. He'll think that was funny.

You got to see this guy walk into a prison and walk into a cell with with 78 uh convicts and get in their face. He is not afraid. And he's having a ball.

He's nuts. And I want to feel like he looks I wouldn't have a sponsor that wasn't having a great time. Page 132 in the text.

We absolutely insist on enjoying life. My sponsors need to do that. And so I looked around when Don Roy died and uh there stood at Ice Cream Steve.

And here we are four years later and he and I are still sober and just having a fabulous time. If you're new here, do somebody a favor and let them sponsor you. Do somebody a favor and let them sponsor you.

I need the men that I sponsor and the men that they sponsor, they need them. It's a wonderful thing to have the opportunity to see the light come on in somebody's eyes as they do this work. And I thought that that I was when I asked the first guy to sponsor me, I thought I was saying, "I'm a dead weight.

Would you drag me?" That wasn't it. What I was saying was, "I think you're on the path. May I walk beside you?

We will help each other." And that's been my experience in sponsorship. I believe the easiest men in this fellowship to sponsor are the men who are sponsoring newcomers themselves. their stuff.

See, I'll sit here nodding cuz their their issues vanish. They absolutely vanish. All of a sudden, a guy who was nuts and it wasn't going well at work and it wasn't going well at home.

He had all these problems. He picks up a newcomer and I only get two phone calls from him the next week. One of them is to ask me a question about sponsorship and the other one is to tell me something absolutely hilarious.

This rookie is either said or done, right? And that pattern holds from then on and all of a sudden his issues have vanished. do somebody a favor, let them sponsor you.

I think it's really important. I'd like to say again that I do not consider myself to be an expert on this thing, but I am willing to try to field questions about the four step or anything else if anybody wants to try it. And uh otherwise, we're going to call this a ball game.

We got a microphone. If you would get on the microphone, we still taping, Mark. >> Yeah, we're taping.

>> Yeah, if you'd ask a question. >> Oh, okay. and I will get to the barbecue on time.

I promise it. Go ahead. >> I got a question.

Um, you said you write the name down and then you write 19 words after that. How many times can you write that name same name down? Okay.

First places. That's not what I said. I said you write the name, you skip one line.

You write the name, you skip one line. You're already going across the page. All right.

Make sure you got your full list of names first. Uhhuh. Write them once.

19 words. That's it. Because see, first place, if you work across the page, all it does is feed the resentment.

You get those feelings inside like you got right now cuz you're thinking about whatever this is. And the second thing is if you continue to write about it, it just feeds that. And we're not trying to feed it.

We're trying to get it on paper so we can make the observations, do the prayers, and extract it. That's what it's about. 19 words.

That's plenty. You can say it. Screwed me in a business deal.

Doesn't treat me fairly. beats on me, abused me as a child. 19 words.

That's my suggestion. Whatever your sponsor says, by the way, I agree with. Each has their own experience.

Please go ahead. >> Hi, my name is Jeff. I'm from Tampa, Florida, the Safe Haven Group.

Um, this is the first time I've ever sponsored anybody and it happened last week, and I've got three of them right now. And I left like one open-ended question to these three people, and they jumped all over it. I said, "Hey, if you want to run through the big book, uh, just want to go over a few things, just let me know." And two of them let me know on one day and one let me know on the other day.

And, uh, I'm having a a situation where I'm trying to manage all three. And this is the first time I've ever sponsored anybody. And the only thing I prayed for was one, and now I've got three.

If you got any valuable suggestions, I'm willing to listen. >> Yeah, I got a couple of them. Uh, one is you can do it as a class.

Have them show up at your house at 6 o'clock on Saturday morning. Probably the most important thing I'll say is whatever your sponsor says, I agree with. If you don't have one, get you a good one quick.

U, but but get through the book with them with a dictionary is what I recommend. And uh, and the other thing is is I don't sponsor somebody who's not doing what I ask them to do. And I don't believe it's because I'm arrogant.

It's because I can't help them. I only know one thing. I know that if they'll do these 12 steps and get active in this fellowship, their lives will be phenomenal.

And if they don't, they won't. It's I just I have to be hard-nosed about it because I don't want to be somebody's sponsor record the next time he wrecks a car or goes to jail or kills somebody. I do insist at top of page 96 in the text talks about not working with somebody who won't work with you.

I remember the first time my sponsor told me to fire a guy I was sponsoring. I thought he was kidding me and he meant it. And he asked me a great question.

He said, "Could you stay sober on the program this guy's working?" And I said, "No." And he said, "Well, he probably can't either." He said, "You've got to fire him because you're not his sponsor anyway. You're his fire chief. And every time his tail feathers are on fire, he called you.

He siphons off some of your serenity. We put out his smoldering tail feathers, and he goes off doing it his way again. You're not helping this guy, and he's not helping you, and I want you to go fire And I had to do that because I needed to stay surrendered to my sponsor.

And it was one of the best things I ever did for me cuz that guy did go back to prison. He went back pretty fast after that. And it wasn't because I fired him.

It was because he wasn't do what I was asking cuz I was asking him to do little things like call his parole officer, look for a job, start reading the book, go to some meetings. I mean, it's not like I was trying to run his life. Yeah.

Yeah. I just remember one more thing. Uh, I met you about a little bit more than two years ago and there was one thing that you spoke about when you were in Daytona and it was at the end of the speech.

You said if you see a turtle on a fence post, you know he had help. Thank you. >> Yeah.

That's right. >> That's right. Yeah, Mark.

>> That's good. >> Hi, I'm Mark. I'm an alcoholic.

>> Hi, Mark. >> Member of the Central Orlando group. Um, this is probably uh a question that's got se several questions contained in it.

I don't know how many, but um I'll just uh do the best I can with it. About the uh obsessive perfectionism um thing that some of us can get into with this uh with this fourth step. Um uh I've written maybe eight of them over the last 15 years.

And uh I I did this one that was uh straight out of the big book uh with this men's big book step study group up in uh New England. Um, and it it got to the you you mentioned something about 400 names on this thing. Okay.

Mine I still got it at home had 769 names on it. And but they weren't just names. There were uh principles and institutions.

>> Yeah. >> So um anyway, and this is uh a 28-year-old guy, right, writing this. Okay.

So it's pretty evident that I did not like myself or anybody in this world because everybody I had ever met was on that list. Now is that getting a little obsessed a little obsessive? Um but let me let me let me ask tell you why.

Because in doing this I saw and I'll I'll I'll also mention that um that I got drunk later on but it wasn't just it wasn't just because of that. um uh in in doing in doing this and looking at this unsurmountable task that I've created before me or or seeing it as an uncsurmountable task with having doing the causes, the effects and then the turnarounds later on and then writing where was I selfish to self-seeking or afraid. I saw myself as writing this thing until I became an old-timer, you know, and uh I, you know, for the first time through through the four step um I think I've I I I built a Frankenstein.

So anyway, that was that was what I wanted to put out to you along with the uh the the the just touching on principles and institutions because um I think a lot of fellas they just write out names and stuff and we didn't hear much about that. >> Yeah. Thank you.

I got a couple observations. One of them is on principles and institutions. Things like uh communism, the Presbyterian Church, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party.

What? Marriage. >> Yeah, it's an institution.

Um there are a number of things like that that probably need to be down there. My own experience is I don't see any problem with 700 names on the list and and let's do the deal because it's a question of let's do the work. And I think what you'll find with a list that long is I sponsored a guy who had the California Highway Patrol on his list.

Not patrolman, but patrol all of them. I don't know how many that is, but it's quite a few. And as we began to get further into this inventory, he he wanted to scratch them off the list.

I said, "Why is that?" He says, "Well, I I I don't think they did anything wrong." I said, "Well, tell me about it, boy. You got them on the list here. What happened?" Well, he says, I think maybe if I hadn't been driving drunk and weaving all over the road that they wouldn't have pulled me over in the first place, so I can't resent them for that.

They were just doing their job. And it's at least possible that if I hadn't taken a swing at one of them, they wouldn't have beat me up. And I said, "Okay, you can scratch them off." Because what happens is that so many times these resentments are imagined.

It's things that happen in my head. And I like to go through the list and have them praying for these people until they're sure that they're clean on them, that these resentments are gone and scratch them off the list because I think probably a large number of yours might have scratched as you got further into the process. But I don't think it matters how long it takes.

When you get to that part and start realizing these people are spiritually sick, I watched one guy and he and I could have quit right there on the resentment inventory because we were sitting in a restaurant and I showed it. We we're covering this like we covered it tonight and got to that part about we realized that the people who harmed us were perhaps spiritually sick. And when I said that, I saw him change.

It was visible. It was physical and it was huge. Boom.

He was a different guy. You could see it. Something left him.

And he still talks about it. And he said all of his resentments left at that point when he realized that they were spiritually sick. I've seen that.

And I I think it happens maybe a lot. A lot of times that one direction will clean off most of them and it leaves with just a handful. It's not that difficult to get rid of them.

Hi. Yeah, if you if you wouldn't mind going to the microphone. Thank you.

>> Hi, my name is Sher. I'm an alcoholic. This is my Hi.

This is my 34th day of sobriety. My home group >> I'm so glad you're here. >> And my home group is the Trinity Group in St.

Augustine and I'm so grateful to everything I heard because this has been looming over me. How do I do this? How do I do this?

How do I do this? And I got a sponsor and I'm afraid of my sponsor. And so I've I've really a lot of my fears have been quelled quite a bit.

Um, I guess the fear part about the sponsorship is I was under the impression that like the fourth step and the fifth step are kind of like joined at the hip because but what after the explanation on the fourth step, it seems to me that boy, you should have talked about it probably to your sponsor a little bit. Maybe, maybe not. And you certainly prayed about it and meditated on it.

So, I know this is jumping ahead, but what's that fifth step thing then? because it seems like this the way to do this four step the way that you've explained it so logically it seems like you're doing a fifth step kind of also is am I >> um yeah I think you're maybe a little bit ahead of yourself our uh to me I mean whatever your sponsor says I say again suits me just fine but it's a process I see the 10th and 11th steps run together I see a lot of people that to me they're different but I see a lot of people mix them together that's We have is a process. We have a way to get you cleaned out of your garbage.

For me, the fifth step is a confession. Very simply, where I did my fourth step pretty much by myself, but when I sit down with a sponsor, it is in effect a confession. I can show you the directions there on page 75.

Matter of fact, our directions on on how to take a fist is one sentence. Isn't that astonishing? And we have no directions on how to hear one.

None whatsoever. It says we pocket our pride and go to it illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past. Illuminating means to shine the light in.

And that's what a fifth step is. And we have no directions on how to hear a fifth step. And so all I have is what my lineage gave me.

And in my lineage, we don't listen to fisteps. We exchange. And uh I would not hear your fistep.

I would be unwilling to do that. But if I were here to his, he would hear not all of mine, but the worst five or six things. whether he had done them or not, I'd get them in because I've got to keep them clean.

My experience with my first fistep was that I did not get the fist-step promises, which are the middle paragraph on page 75. Very powerful if you haven't read them. Didn't happen for me because I knew when I walked out of that first fistep that that stuff would never see the light of day again.

And consequently, it was not available for God's use. And about a year later, I was sitting in the old Woodbine Clubhouse in in uh Nashville. And after the meeting, there's a woman sitting at the end of the table just balling her eyes out.

and I and two or three trying to comfort her and she was sobbing and I walked up and said what's wrong and she told me and she had done the very worst thing I'd ever done and I knew what I had to do and I sat down and told her my story and you're going to hear that tomorrow I'm not going to do it now you'll hear it tomorrow morning and I told her how I got free and I walked out of that clubhouse crying and I hadn't learned to cry yet I have learned since then and I walked out of there about 3 feet off the ground and my own perspective today is that I am two things I'm God's caddy I carry all of these things from my fistep. All of these worst parts of my past are available to my God for use. Any way he wants to use them, I still carry them.

But the pain and the weight is gone. I've received his forgiveness. And the thing that keeps them clean is my willingness for him to use them.

And we're going to do that tomorrow. I don't want to, but it's something that I know I have to do because I've seen so many people I helped. And that's why I do it.

So, I have to be available. I'm God's caddy. And the 12step says I'm trying to carry the message.

That makes me an apprentice messenger. I figure if I was a messenger, I'd be carrying it. And when I hold that attitude, I'm a I'm an apprentice messenger and I'm a caddy.

I do pretty good. That's my job. But but you've you've got a big bite here in front of you.

This four step. We have thrown a ton at you here. Get with your sponsor and work in little bitty pieces.

Sometimes the willingness to do the next step comes from the previous step. Don't look ahead at some of this stuff. If I could tell you about my 1998, I had the privilege of coaching four newcomers through the step work.

Started with five. One was unwilling. Four.

They're all sponsoring people today. I watched the lights come on in so many eyes. And I watched them go through the terrifying ninstep of making amends.

I watched a family reunited. I watched miracle upon miracle upon miracle. I heard reports on the phone of guys crying about the fantastic things that happened in the terrifying nights that I saw no one hurt by it.

It was astonishing. I was wrong about so many things. Thanks.

Do you have someone else? Thank you. Does anyone else I I Sid, are you going to talk to us?

>> Are you Yeah. Are you walking out? No.

My name is Sid and I'm a member of the Annie Lens Group in Orman Beach, Florida. I said part of my service work is to work with doc people in a treatment center here in Daytona Beach, the reality house. And one Sunday afternoon I was sitting with a client and we're going over the uh third step.

And I say this because I'm sure other people assume as I do that we understand who or what God is. and we're talking about the God thing and this person said to me, "What kind of thing or person is your God?" I said, "Well, I was brought up in Scotland where we were told, you better be good for goodness sake or you'll be outrun the flames of hell licking at your beehive." And I said, 1952, I came over here and I said, "The American God I found out was a loving and forgiving father. And I've thought that and known that for those 52 years and all of a sudden this person said, "Well, you see that's my difficulty.

It may be okay for you to believe in father in heaven is a loving and forgiving father." He said, "In my case, my father abused me until I left home at 16. What can I do about that?" And I'll listen to you this afternoon. And my answer truly was glib.

And I feel ashamed to repeat what I told them. And I said, "Well, if you die and go to heaven, it won't make any difference anyway. and the story.

Thanks. >> But the point is we just assume that the other person sees a god or whatever it may be as we see them. And I I was wrong.

Thank you. >> Thank you. Yeah.

I think it's really important particularly if someone's been abused in a religion or in some way. I want to make my offer one more time and I'm going to close. No, I'll take this.

Go ahead. >> I'm George an alcoholic. >> Hi George.

I've had three sponsors and uh none of them have pushed me to do the steps or particularly the fourth step. I thoroughly understand one through three. I've studied them a lot.

Maybe I'm just looking for one more tip. I don't know. Um trying to find a sponsor who I feel comfortable with and who, you know, take me through the the fourth step.

Um, I I had 5 and 1/2 years sober and then uh some things happened in my life. I slipped and I've been slipping since. And uh but I now have two and a half weeks.

>> Wow. Welcome back. I'm so glad you made it.

>> Thank you. I don't intend to slip again because I'm going to do the work and >> Yeah. >> and work the steps.

>> Yeah. >> I think it's fair to interview a a potential sponsor to ask the question, have you done the steps? Will you coach me through the steps?

How did you do a fourth step? What do you do in a fifth step? What do you believe about nine?

Tell me about your God. Those are fair questions. You know, all of my life, all of my life, they assign me teachers.

All of my life. >> They don't do that here. >> Mhm.

>> I get to ch to choose my mentors here. Choose well. And I don't need a sponsor I can relate to.

I never needed that. I need a sponsor I will obey. >> And I will only obey one that's having a great time, that is carrying the message.

And I think if you'll if you'll take a look at what I talked about, a guy who's done the steps, who has a sponsor, who will tell you the truth, who's active in service, and who laughs a lot, you probably find the guy you're looking for. You may not like him, you know, don't need to like him. I just need one I'll obey.

And I got one, and I am so blessed, but the lights on. The lights are on. And the people have done this step work.

It's been my experience. I want I'd like to say something else. I'll probably say it tomorrow.

Thank you. Uh, and that's in my tenure. I have not yet seen anyone in and out of the program.

I ain't seen it yet. I've heard it, but on on close inspection, I haven't seen it in and out of the fellowship. You bet you.

I've seen train loads. I have not seen anyone do these 12 steps, take the TW steps, whatever you want to call the action verb, and stay active in this fellowship and drink. Have you seen it, Sid Murphy?

I haven't seen it. Don't expect to. This program doesn't fail.

We failed to do it. We have a tradition that says the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. That is not the only requirement for sobriety.

That's why I'm so glad to see you all here because those those who there's a guy in in Nashville that says, "If I could give every newcomer coming through the door one thing, just one thing be 500 cc's of desperation right in the butt. Just load them right up." Those who are desperate enough to actually do this work are going to live a phenomenal life. That has been my experience and I have not seen exceptions to that.

Hi. Hi, this is Jeff again. I'm double dipping.

Um, you were mentioning something before about willingness and as I mentioned before, I'm sponsoring three people. Two of them I'm not spending very much time with, but they're picking it up right away. This one guy I'm spending hours upon hours upon hours.

He comes into the club the next day. Whoops, I slipped again. And this has been going on for a period of about a week or so.

and he'll listen to this tape because I'll get it. Would you please give some advice to him? >> No, I'd give some to you.

>> Okay. >> My sponsor does not allow me to work with losers. As soon as I we can establish that someone's not doing what I ask him to do, I'm instructed to drop them.

He says he'd rather have me on the golf course. It's better for my program. It's pretty harsh.

Uh Miss Lind and I did a couple hours on sponsorship in Mississippi. I don't know whether Lee's got it or not, but we talk about that rather in depth. And I and we're going to run out of time.

I'll be glad to talk to you in depth about that tonight. And I'd love to, but but I can't drag somebody. It's not good for them.

It's not good for me. As a sponsor, it's my responsibility to give assignments. I had the privilege last year of picking up a man who had 27 years of sobriety.

I am very impressed with how much sobriety he has, but I can't afford he can't afford for me to be impressed by it. Man needs a sponsor. And he asked me, and I'm honored, and I only know one thing to do.

I took him through the book. That's all I know how to do. and he hadn't seen the forep like this.

And you ought to hear him talk about I got goosebumps all over me. The ones who do the deal are the ones I need to work with. I'm sponsoring a lot of guys.

I got room for one more winner. That sign's always hanging out. I'll take one more winner because they're so easy to work with.

But I ain't got time to drag anybody that's not doing the deal. I want to make good my offer one more time. If somebody feels like they've got committed the unforgivable sin, please see me and let me tell you about mine and uh and maybe we can get you some relief.

And I really mean that. If you're if you're holding something that you think is just the end of it, please see me and let's talk about it. I know a God that can handle it.

If uh and I'd like to say thank you all for the opportunity to pass on what has so freely been given to me. I have seen the light come on in so many eyes at step four where we faced and were rid of the things in ourselves which had been blocking us. Isn't it astounding?

The fourth step is not about writing. I thank y'all so much. And let's uh let's just uh close with the Lord's Prayer.

Thanks a lot, Mark. >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message.

Until next time, have a great day. >>