AA Step 11- prayer

0:00Greetings. Welcome to today's meeting. I'm Fernando Ocaholic. Let's go ahead and open this meeting with a moment of silence, followed by this serenity prayer please. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen. Welcome to Fernando's hideaway. Fernando's experience, strength and hope through what I have learned in AA and my life experiences. I am not associated with AA in any fashion. All I am is a listener. I listen and I conclude it and this is my conclusion. Today's reading we're going to center on the book 12 and 12. It's called and on step 11 which one is one of the three that hooked me. When I

1:01entered Ocaholic, now I miss the three that hooked me where the first tradition, our common welfare came first, personal recovery dependent upon AA unity. I call it the compassion of the group. I value the group so highly that without this group, without listening to these people's experiences and reading the material and explaining it to me, I will not have a chance in life. I will not be a good employee. I will not be a good father to the children, son to my mother, brother to my family and uncle. Only through the process of counsel and good men and women in the group of Ocaholic became so valuable. I can express it so much. All people are lonely at home and they drank at one time and they try to stop but the reeling of the mind is still happening. I was going to pay the

2:02bills, the situation, that situation. You got to have counsel and my opinion my experience is you got to have a lot of literature with counselors, with other people that have read the same literature. Our literature saves lives. Our literature produces good results, the literature that we find in the rooms of any 12-step program, any of them and there's about 60 of them. Whatever you have, marijuana, anonymous, gossip anonymous, credit card anonymous, everything that will bring counsel and good advice to us to our hearts. We come in with prayer and we close with prayer and the glue that holds us together of course is this magnificent power of God, our higher power, our individual tapping into God's power. That is the beauty of the program that we focus and give things where

3:07this power of life is coming from. All of us different understanding, different levels, different association that we call that power of God. To me is simple. The same thing as the writer says, how about if we call him God? What a simple concept. Oh, make it easy. All right, in the second was come to believe, step two, that hooked me and the third was this step, step 11. I didn't have to go to another continent to find the will of God. I can consistently ask for the will of God on a daily basis and turn things over. Amen. So all right, step two is I came, I came to, I came to believe. That's exactly what happened to me, folks, as that says. And then step 11, we sought through prayer and meditation to improve our

4:13conscious contact with God as we understand him, praying only for knowledge of his will and the power to carry that out. I don't know about you folks, but man, when I heard that, I said, wow, I didn't have to go to two years of Bible college to see, it's all right here. All these steps are so valuable. It's what he, this human yearns for. I wanted to high five my higher power in an easy manner and help my fellow man in an easy manner. So I can get out there and pay for my keep. Get out and go to work and be happy, joy, and free. And that's exactly what happened. I've got to restructure it in the format of the 12 steps and 12 traditions of our testimonies. And then they have 12 concepts. If you want more and you have service and there's everything you can possibly need in this life. And with good words to produce a good, a good results is their simple,

5:19is simply outlaid for us. There's not complicate this thing. Life is simple. It rains on the grass, grass grows, feeds the cows. It gives us oxygen. Life is simple, folks. There's not complicated. Life wants us to be happy, joyous, and free. And that's the objective of the tall step program. In my opinion, all right, let me reach to you something that I like and step 11 and today's reading for the 18th. It says, those of us who come to make regular use, page 97, of prayer would no more do without it than we would refuse air food or sunshine. And the question before that is that almost the only scoffer at prayers, those who make fun of prayer or meditation are those who never tried it enough. When I came to alcoholic anonymous, I didn't have a choice. That's what they did. I sat down

6:24because it was a rough group. People that have drank like I drank, lived like I lived, and we're doing the deal of hanging on to their jobs or their families and they were squared away in their thinking and mannerism. And I was in prayers. I sat there and sat in my shaking hands, sweating tequila, sweating out nonsense. I was there with a core core. It has been well said that almost the only scoffer at prayer are those who never tried it enough. So I tried it through us most and being in the room so alcoholic anonymous. It just came in me and my life started to change so easily and happily. So let me go ahead and read this one paragraph on the bottom of page 97. Those of us who have come, hey, welcome to the meeting. Are you an alcoholic? Yes. Who are you? And I want this joke. And either hear you loud say, I am an alcoholic. I am an alcoholic.

7:29Welcome to the meeting. Thank you. Those of us who come to make regular use of prayer would no more do without it than we would refuse air, food or sunshine. And for the same reason, when we refuse air, light or food, our body suffers. And when we turn away from meditation and prayer, we likewise deprive our minds, our emotions, and our intuitions of vitality needed support. As the body can fail its purpose for lack of nourishment, so can the soul. We all need the light of God's reality. The nourishment of his strength and the atmosphere of his grace to an amazing extent, the facts of a life confirms this ageless truth. Man, this is amazing writing, a compilation of incredible words that give

8:32the soul, strength and forget out there and give them heaven, you know, get out there and do life. We all need the light of God's reality. The nourishment of his strength and the atmosphere of his grace. To an amazing extent, the facts of a life confirms this ageless truth. And that's exactly what happened to this cat. An amazing extent that the facts of a life confirm this ageless truth. I changed careers. I purchased houses. The wisdom came in and started helping me straighten out my life and to have good communications with all brothers and sisters and the people all around me to get a hatred and resentment and indifference and anger out of me or a recid. Like my alcoholic attitude was a recid,

9:36the disease. So is all these other troublesome character defects that I had. They all have been put in check sometimes. Sometimes they come out. Anyway, let's go ahead and close out. Let's get out there and do the work that we need to do for this day. This is a good meeting. This is the best meeting in all the world because you're here and I'm here and God is listening to us. Our higher power making the difference in our lives. Let's pray out with the third step prayer, please. God, I offer myself to thee to bill with me and to do with me as though will relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do that will. Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help with thy power, of thy love, of thy will of life. May I do thy will always.

10:38Amen. Thank you, everyone, for coming on to today's meeting. Appreciate it. See you tomorrow.