Guilt can guide you or trap you. This episode is about the difference — and what the ego has to do with both.

Guilt can either guide me or trap me. When it leads me to change, it serves a purpose. When it lingers without action, it becomes a burden I was never meant to carry.

Mike opens with Romans 8:1 — no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus — and the God he grew up with, who couldn't wait to send him straight to hell for any misstep. That's not a theology Mike rejects intellectually. It's one he still has to actively counter, verse by verse. John 3:17 is the one he keeps tattooed on his arm: God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He has to go back to it regularly. The childhood lessons don't just leave.

Corey's entry point is three letters written in capitals: EGO. Before the first drink, before anything, his ego was already separating him from everyone around him — from kids with two parents, two siblings, cousins. He had none of that. Then at 13 he took his first drink and for the first time in his life, nothing separated him from anyone. He was one. He calls it a spiritual experience. It was. It was also the beginning of the destruction. Page 75's perfect peace and ease, walking hand in hand with God — that's the same feeling, he says, without the cost.

The theological centerpiece of the episode comes from page 20 of the Big Book: if what we have learned and felt and seen means anything at all, it means that all of us, whatever our race, creed, or color, are the children of a living creator. Corey noticed the double "and" — learned and felt and seen — and mapped it: learned to the Father, felt to the Son, seen to the Holy Spirit. Then race, creed, and color mapping back to the same three: creed as what we've learned, race and color as what we've felt and seen through our own experience of the world. A Trinitarian structure buried in a 1939 sobriety text.

It still worked, Mike tells him afterward. It more than worked.

Find every daily entry at dailyripples.com. Reach out anytime at wave@dailyripples.com.

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

There is no waste in God's economy. This episode holds that phrase up to the light and asks what it actually demands of you.

Failure is not the end of growth. Often it is the place where deeper understanding begins. What feels like a step backward can become a step upward.

Corey gets a text mid-episode, his son graduated elementary school today. His son's grandmother sent it. There was a night when those two were both intoxicated and fighting. Today he sends her Bible verses in the morning. His biggest defect is now their greatest asset. Page 124 puts it plainly: the alcoholic's past thus becomes a principal asset of the family.

Mike frames it with Psalm 119:71 — it was good for me to be afflicted — and Job 23:10 — when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold. If he was never knocked down, he'd never have come off the high horse.

The episode closes on the harder edge of the phrase. Corey pushes back on how it gets misused: newcomer walks in, no one reaches out, they leave, and the room says there's no waste in God's economy. He says that's wrong. There's a responsibility the group carries. 2 Corinthians 12:9 closes it: my power is made perfect in weakness. Broken is where willingness starts.

Find every daily entry at dailyripples.com. Reach out anytime at wave@dailyripples.com.

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Gratitude that stays inside isn't gratitude yet. This episode is about what happens when it gets hands and feet.

Gratitude is more than remembering. It is responding. What I am thankful for should shape how I live today.

Corey opens with the person not yet in the room. He and Bill have been building their new meeting — structure, format, what kind of group it should be. Bill was on the fence about whether Memphis would even respond to a Big Book format. Corey sent one text: it's not about them, it's about the person that's not there yet. Bill texted back that the first meeting would be July 8th. That's gratitude in action.

Mike makes the theological distinction that drives the whole episode: thanksgiving is a feeling, gratitude is when the feeling moves. You can say thank you and still be passive. Gratitude is when what you've received starts shaping how you live — Isaiah 58:10, spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, and your light will rise in the darkness. Service is what converts night into noonday. That's not metaphor. That's the mechanism.

Corey takes it home — literally. The first place he practices this isn't the rooms. It's his house. It's easier to show up for strangers than for the people who see both the good and the bad. Mike follows: the dopamine of public service is real, and that's the ego test. When you do it at home with no applause, that's where you find out what you're actually made of.

1 Thessalonians 5 closes it — be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Corey calls it "First Theologians." Mike corrects him. Both of them like the history anyway.

Find every daily entry at dailyripples.com. Reach out anytime at wave@dailyripples.com.

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Misery is often self-made. This episode is Mike, Corey, and Cristi asking the old Methodist question — how is it with your soul? — and actually answering it.

Misery is often self-made. When I cling to old patterns, pride, or control, I create the very weight I carry. God's desire is not to burden me, but to lead me into life.

Corey takes three minutes to say his soul is good — which Mike clocks out loud. The longer answer involves trusting God not just with himself but with his family, and what it felt like when prison was the plan. Cristi's answer is shorter: she has two young Black sons, the world is what it is, she prays for them every night and truly lets it go. She has done her part as their mother. The rest is in God's hands. It is well with her soul. She hasn't always been able to say that.

From there: John 10:10, Big Book page 133 — we made our own misery, God didn't do it, avoid the deliberate manufacture of misery, but if trouble comes cheerfully capitalize it as an opportunity to demonstrate His omnipotence — and the serenity prayer, which Cristi quotes correctly and completely without being prompted.

Corey lands the episode's best moment with the Lowe's parking lot story. He and his significant other were deep in it. He was ready to sleep in the car. Sponsor said, did you grab your books for morning meditation? He had to go back inside. Next day he called wanting to rehash the whole thing. His sponsor said we already talked about this. Cristi names it without hesitating: you want that misery to be validated.

Closing thought from Cristi: joy comes from the inside out, not the outside in.

Find every daily entry at dailyripples.com. Reach out anytime at wave@dailyripples.com.

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Outward calm is its own kind of hiding. This episode is Mike and Cristi working through what it actually means to guard your heart when life shakes everything loose.

Outward success can hide inward struggle. Real health begins beneath the surface where pride, ego, and self-reliance are addressed.

Cristi opens on mental health as an inside-out process — you can't build it outward when the inward is unaddressed. People struggle with this because the world rewards the performance. Admitting weakness is easier said than done, and it depends entirely on who you have to admit it to.

Mike makes it concrete. For three or four months after leaving his city manager role last November, he was employing what recovery calls fake it till you make it — outward calm, outward peace, hiding the inner struggle. He knew he wasn't going through it alone — God first, and Cristi as the safe space that held things steady. July 1st is when full-time ministry formally kicks in. The shake-up, as he puts it, is the reason this podcast exists.

Proverbs 4:23 lands it: above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. And then John Wesley — Mike's nerd-out, recovered mid-sentence — the early Methodist class meetings, where every gathering began with the same question: how is it with your soul? He wonders if that question belongs back in recovery rooms and churches. When you lay your head on the pillow at night, that's all you've got.

Tomorrow: one from the Bible, one from the Big Book, and Cristi.

Find every daily entry at dailyripples.com. Reach out anytime at wave@dailyripples.com.

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

You can be surrounded by people and still be completely isolated inside. Cristi and Pastor Mike explore what it actually takes to let people in — and why the quality of your circle matters as much as having one.

Isolation strengthens struggle. Healing begins when I step out of self-focus and recognize that I was never meant to do life alone.

Cristi opens as a self-identified introvert — isolation is where she naturally gravitates, where she feels safest, where she thinks she thrives. And she knows exactly where it leads. She makes the distinction between community that pulls you upward and community that just keeps you company in the valley. Building a circle isn't enough. The question is what you're coming to agreement on.

Mike connects it to the rooms — early on, he had no idea whether the person next to him was a CEO or homeless. Didn't matter. They made it to the same meeting. That leveling is something recovery taught him and he's carried into everything since, including a marriage across racial lines that works because of shared love, not shared demographics.

Genesis 2:18 anchors the theology — the very first "not good" in all of creation wasn't suffering or sin. It was aloneness.

Find every daily entry at dailyripples.com. Reach out anytime at wave@dailyripples.com.

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Gratitude is not a feeling. It's a discipline. And like most disciplines, it doesn't mean the same thing to everyone in the room. This episode is about the difference between gratitude as emotion and gratitude as proof.

Gratitude shifts perspective. When I focus on what is lacking, life feels heavy. When I remember what has been given, my outlook changes.

Mike opens with the Psalms — almost every one begins with some variation of bless the Lord, O my soul. These aren't theological arguments. They're outcries of gratitude from someone who couldn't help but say it out loud. He draws the line between feeling grateful and practicing it as a spiritual discipline. His example is the laundry. His wife loves doing it, he hates it, and he knew the moment she told him that he'd found something rare. His response was to start cleaning up after dinner — not because she required it, but because that's what gratitude actually does when it's real. It finds something to give back.

Corey admits he never liked gratitude lists. He challenged a friend in the program to show him where the Big Book says to do one. The friend couldn't. But sitting with it now, he wonders if his resistance was just his nature — not the woe-is-me type, going into action instead of staying stuck — and whether the list itself is the wrong question. Emmett Fox, Sermon on the Mount page 80: whatever the mind dwells upon will sooner or later come into your experience. If you keep looking for things to be grateful for, maybe you eventually start showing gratitude toward them. Maybe that's the flip.

Mike gives the gratitude list its proper context: it's for a specific person at a specific time — someone stuck in resentment, depression, or self-doubt, going through the motions. He was that person once. A sponsor told him to write it out. He thought it was stupid. It worked anyway. And 12&12 page 130 frames the whole thing: at first he must go along because he must. But later he discovers a way of life he really wants to live.

The episode closes on prayer life — Corey's prayer notebook, the names that never quite leave it, and a pattern he's noticed: praying for people has turned into praying for himself to put action into their lives. Mike: his prayers are almost entirely for others, or for removal of whatever is blocking him from being of service. First Chronicles 16:34 closes it — give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endures forever. If he got what he deserved, he wouldn't still be here.

Find every daily entry at dailyripples.com. Reach out anytime at wave@dailyripples.com.

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

The mind doesn't wait for permission to start running. This episode is about what you do in those first few minutes before it gets away from you.

The weight of a lifetime can overwhelm, but today is manageable. Focusing on the present brings clarity and steadiness.

Corey opens with what happens between the alarm and the coffee. Mike meets him there with the wild stallions — those racing morning thoughts need to be lassoed and brought into the pen.

From there, Exodus 16 — God raining manna from heaven in the wilderness, forty years of daily provision. The Lord's Prayer echoes it directly: give us this day our daily bread. Today is all any of us can actually do anything about. As soon as a word is spoken, it's already in the past.

Mike closes with something personal. A year ago he was bringing five or six times more money into his household than he is today. Same house, no missed mortgage payments, hasn't lost anything — and has gained peace.

Find every daily entry at dailyripples.com. Reach out anytime at wave@dailyripples.com (Corey would love for us to get email, after all).

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.