Steps 5, 6 and 7 at the Fellowship of the Spirit in Dublin, Ireland

Alright, everybody. Settle down now. We're gonna get going again and, Myers is, gonna take this off this this afternoon. Anytime. Whenever you're ready.

Alright. So, let's just give a hand for Myers. Well, buckaroos, how was lunch? This is good. You know, I got this grilled vegetable thing for lunch and and I'm dodging the onions and the last bite, there's a great big old piece of onion laying right underneath that piece of lettuce and I got it.

And so, if we're talking in a minute and I'm offensive, sorry. I gotta I gotta tell you, I I worked hard to dodge them, but I just couldn't do it. This is so good to see you guys and it's just an amazing deal how many of you guys are already on the page, already doing exactly the same stuff and it's it's, it's great. It's kinda like being in a room with a bunch of kindred spirits. In the states, we'll do, I'll do a conference sometimes at at like a round up or something like this and you'll have 2 or 3000 people at these round ups and but you only have about 30 people out there that are on the same page that you are.

Everybody else is, you know, they want the jokes. They want the this. I can tell you some jokes, guys. I'm I'm okay with the jokes, but the the my frustration is is that in the in the these years that I've been doing this, we buried lots and lots of guys that didn't wanna do the work. And and and after a while, that becomes fairly tedious, and then it becomes really sad.

And then it's the stuff that you think about in the middle of the night. Hundreds of men and women that have been buried because they refused to look at this thing from a different perspective. They were okay in their own skin. They're okay. They're okay right up to the point that they're not okay.

And then it gets really devastating how fast things begin to unravel. The stuff we were talking about a little bit this morning. How many how many times have you experienced this thing where you felt like a spiritual giant one moment, and in short order, you you leave a meeting feeling okay and you get home and you have to step over the dog or the house is not as clean as you'd like it to be. The the the there's dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and all of a sudden you're grinding your teeth and you're looking for somebody to spar with. I mean, it it it just can go south so fast when we're not doing the things that we're supposed to do.

This book was about a way of living. It was about it was about a process that we could it wasn't about just not drinking. I I get I get so sick and by people that talk about a a is just about not drinking. The stuff that Peter was talking about. Well, I'm a success today because I haven't had a drink.

I don't you know, I wanna I always wanna take it one step farther. I'm delighted that you haven't had a drink today. I'm delighted, but I also wanna know how you are in your own skin. When you got up this morning, was the first thing on your on your thought was was it a smile? Were you thinking about some cool guy that you can see later on today that you could help?

Were you thinking about what you could pour back into that stream of life? Or were you just a pathetic little taker? And that's what a lot of us are. That's mine. That's my middle name.

These guys down here, they're takers. I can tell right there. But just for a short distance because we're gonna get this fixed up real quick here. That's what we do. I mean, we we just take, excuse me.

The stuff that we were talking about this morning that that Peter was talking about around step 4, let's let's let's tie up a few loose ends about this stuff around step by. Daniel, our sick little guy, remember him? Daniel comes walking in. We get him through 123, and he's doing pretty good. Now at the at the moment that everybody takes on the assignment to be somebody's sponsor, what's the first thing you think about?

Most of us think about the time I'm gonna have to spend and that's that thought is quickly quickly moved over for a brand new thought. Oh, there's that dang fist step. It's gonna be a beating. And to the degree that we say that is the degree that will hold this kid away from that op that that opportunity to do his fist step. And and, guys, I mean, I I'm I'm not talking like this like I'm being judgmental.

I'm just And most And most of this was that they simply they were lovely men. They were just they loved me to death, but they just didn't really understand the process of the inventory and so it became kind of a a beat. How many times have we said in meetings and either said or heard this statement? Well, I'm working on my 4th step and, and then the next guy will be sharing, he says, well, you know, when I did my 4th step, it was 8 hours long. And then it goes to the next guy like this and he goes, well, my 5th step, it was so long we had to stretch it into another day.

It was like it must have been 10 hours. And we just go around the room and it's just like this like this and so because I don't understand the inventory, that's my opinion and my attitude about the inventory and about listening to somebody's 5th step. And I carried that and carried that and carried that with no experience whatsoever. I just carried that as my doctrine. Well, they said it.

It must be true. There's the danger of the oral tradition that we were talking about. This thing being passed orally, and it's not their fault. It's not their fault for saying it. It's my fault for believing it because some knucklehead said it.

If you met that same man in a bar and he said that, you discount him as a piece of crap. You just say, well, he's an idiot. And you turn around and walk away. But because he's sitting in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, we assume that it's truth. And there's where we get into trouble, and that's why this all gets kind of kind of convoluted and weary.

You see? Let's talk about this inventory. Okay. Let's talk about I had a guy one time that I that sponsored me told me to write my life story and I did. It was a dandy.

You'd have you'd have wept when you read it. It was just a it was just that kind of story and and, and I had another guy that we we we wrote a bunch of stuff and and we talked about it. It was just mainly my life story in verbal form and rhetorical form. I'm gonna regurgitate in front of him all of the things that I had done, and it was confessional. It's basically what it came down to.

There's nothing wrong with that guys. Okay? We clear there. There's nothing wrong with confessional. It has some therapeutic effect.

However, there's nothing about confessional that will guarantee my recovery. The book is real clear on this stuff. Look and see what they said. They they were talking about looking at our mistakes and that's key. It's important that we do this.

The problem we get into is that we get too drawn out on this thing is the the my experience over the last bunch of years of doing inventories with guys. I was talking to a guy a minute ago, and for for a period of about 5 years at a treatment place that we used to go carry the message to a whole bunch, for 5 years I was listening to 3 5th steps a week, every week for 5 years. You better figure out a quicker way to go through that than the way that we would have traditionally done it. This thing of sitting down with a big log car coffee pot and sitting there for 6 hours while this guy tells you all of his stuff. But finally, somebody told me, they said, you know, I don't know.

I'm not sure why you do that. Why do you go through that whole process of doing that? And I said, well, that's the way they did it with me. And they said, but is that what the book said? They said, we're ready for a long talk.

I I I go there. I'm I'm with you there. But remember the first part of that thing, they likened it to what? A commercial inventory. Look at your book, and we'll read this real quick.

Flip over. Excuse me. Look at, halfway down on page 64, A quarter of the way down. Therefore, we started on a personal inventory. This was step 4.

A broker which takes no regular usually goes broke. Taking a commercial inventory is a fact finding and fact facing process. Period. It's an effort to discover and the truth about the stock and trade. Okay.

So here it is. We're sitting down in a room all by ourselves and Daniel's starting to talk me, and Daniel starts out just like everybody else's inventory started out like this. I say, okay, what's the first what's the first thing on your inventory? And he says, the the Dublin police. Okay.

And so he starts telling me this story about the Dublin police. He says, well, see, I was at work and I it was a bad day at work and, you know, I was coming home. I was going down this street and then I decided to cut over to this street because there was construction over here. And then we're gonna you dig where this is going? And because we are sponsors that wanna be loving and giving and caring, we're gonna sit there and listen to this guy talk about this stuff.

Now, I don't give a rat's rear why he had problems with the Dublin police. I don't. It's all story. It's important at another time. It's important if we're sitting out talking someplace if we wanna do that, but it has no bearing on the inventory.

Guys, this is a commercial. It's like it. They liken it to the commercial inventory. This will be the biggest single area where you and I probably diverge and go off in different directions. And it's okay if you wanna keep doing them like you're doing them.

But if you get on this bandwagon and you decide to do this thing and you're sponsoring 30 men, if you're a man or 30 women if you're a woman, pro I promise you, you're gonna be looking more and more towards the way I'm talking about doing this thing. Read the memoirs of Clarence Snyder and watch how quickly they work these guys through the work. 30 days, 45 days at the most, and their inventories were quite short. They just didn't get into this stuff. We were looking for mistakes on the stuff.

In a commercial inventory, let's say I owned a little grocery store and I'm gonna do this inventory. The inventory would look like this. Milk, sour. See, I don't give a rat's rear. It doesn't make any difference why the milk was sour.

To the inventory, it doesn't make any difference. You understand what I'm saying? It's like it's like okay. The the then the cooler's broken and then the milk guy, well, he was late. He couldn't come that day with the milk, so he came 2 days later with the milk and it and I'm just wanting to go, shut up.

I don't we don't need to know that. Milk, sour, that's it. Next, and then we go on down the deal. Now some do you need to share stuff with your with your sponsor? Yes.

But it's your sponsor's job in this situation. It's my job with Daniel to make sure that Daniel stays on track. And when Daniel strays and it's his nature to stray because we're getting ready to talk about things he doesn't wanna talk about, dig. He's gonna stray, and I know he's gonna stray going in. So as he strays, I just tell him going in.

Daniel, if you stray off the path, I'm gonna pull you back, buddy. Because we're trying to look at the cause and effect. We're looking at the big picture of what's going on in your life so that you can see these things. Okay. It's a process of unlearning all the stuff that we've been picking up in these meetings about these lengthy deals.

Having done them both ways, I've done lengthy 4 steps. I've listened to lengthy 4 steps, and I've also done it the other way where we're much more much more concise into the point about looking at these pieces of this inventory. And I can assure you there there is no there is no benefit that I've ever found to taking a bunch of time. The bottom line on this discussion for this thing, the bottom line is is that if your guy is going on hour after hour, droning about his inventory, you've let him speak too long, justifying his bad behavior. And that's usually what it comes down to because we will try to, at all cost, justify to another man or another woman why we did the goofy things that we did, and we make all kinds of excuses.

The less a man says about why he did something, the better the inventory will turn out. That's been my experience. It may not be your experience. I wouldn't argue with you for a second if you wanna do it the other way. But there's nothing in the literature, there's nothing in the book itself that tells us that we're supposed to take a lot of time going through all the detail of this stuff.

Any of you guys remember when you did your inventories and remember how relieved you felt through that process? Some of you felt relief and some of you felt like me, you felt devastated. There was 2 diff distinctly kind of things. I've done 2 inventories before I got hooked up with Cliff. And those 2 inventories, I did feel relieved.

I shared a bunch of stuff. I I confessed a bunch of stuff and I felt better having done that. And I it was a relief that I had it all done. Then I got into a deal with Clifford. We did the inventory took exactly 1 hour to go through the stuff.

We were done with it in an hour. And I gotta tell you guys, when I was done with the inventory, I wept. I sit there and wept like a little kid because I was devastated by who I saw. I had sold myself this bill of goods that booze was indeed my problem and that the booze was the reason I did all this goofy stuff. Everything drew back to the booze.

But in the reality, what the inventory showed was everything didn't come back to the booze. Everything came back to my selfish and self centered nature that demanded that you see things my way. That demanded that you do what I wanted you to do when I wanted you to do it. I am indeed the director of this show, and you will indeed do what I say. And because you don't wanna do what I say, we're always in conflict.

Always. That's the reason my relationships were bad. That's the reason my kids were just like, oh, god. Here he is. And we just everybody was goofy around me because of that deal.

I am so adamant that you do things and and I have a preconceived idea how I want my friends here to treat me, and when they don't treat me that way, I'm resentful. You see? Another little aspect of this that I wanna talk about real quick before we move on is this deal about, not everything is a resentment, guys. Not everything is a resentment. A lot what I find on inventories more than not is, is that you didn't really resent that guy, especially like in relationships.

I hated that bitch. Oh, you did. You did. Well, let's look at this. And then we work through a little piece of the thing and then all of a sudden, you know what we find out?

You don't resent her at all. You're guilty and remorseful and you disguise that guilt and remorse as a resentment. You see? You are guilty and remorseful how the relationship went. I didn't want that relationship with that woman to go south, but it did.

And now I'm embarrassed, and I'm and I regret the whole deal. But I can't see it from that perspective. I would rather cloud the picture and make her a a sister of Satan than I'm doing battle with. You see? And and that's not that's not good.

But it's these pieces that we're trying to pick out and we're trying to pull out. And when you look at a completed inventory, sex inventory, fear inventory, and and, resentment inventory, and you look and see how much of the drama of your life was caused by your selfishness. I want what I want when I want it. All fears seem to stem from the same deal. Tell you what, forget what I'm saying for just a minute.

Those that might still be listening that that aren't looking for something to throw at me. Forget for a minute and think about for just a moment. Think about, this idea of how much of your drama was caused by fear and selfishness. These are huge motivators. Aren't they guys?

They are. I mean, driven driven from fear, I make all kinds of decisions. I'm gonna quit that job. They're they're gonna fire me anyway, I'll quit. And I mean, we just well, she's gonna dump me, I'll just dump her.

See, all of this is driven by fear. Had nothing to do with booze, right? This is just fear. I'm afraid and so I'm gonna make this decision. And the same thing goes with selfishness.

I'm afraid that I'm not going to get what I want. I'm afraid that I'm about, I I'm either afraid I won't get what I want, or I'm afraid that I'm gonna lose what I already have. Her, it doesn't make any difference. Same thing with money, same thing with either I either already have it and I'm afraid of losing it, or I haven't got it and I'm afraid I won't get it. Either way, it all boils back down to selfishness at the end of the day.

It all shakes out the same way. And so the so that this convoluted mess of crap that's all up here is slowly but surely this piece of clean, clear cut inventory. And it shows some distinct things. I'm a selfish, self centered, little you know what? And driven by that, I harmed and hurt lots of people.

And it makes you feel really really uncomfortable. No longer am I selling myself that bill of goods that it was all about the boobs, that it was all about her, that it was all about him. It was It's not. It's about me. The image Every one of us in here have a dad or a mom that was on our inventory, or most of us do anyway.

You know what? Your dad may have been a gold plated SOB. He may have been the Satan himself. But let me tell you something. You don't resent your dad because he was Satan.

You resented your dad because he didn't follow the path that you assigned. I want Gordon June Cleaver for parents. I want a mom in pearls and high heeled shoes cooking dinner. I want I I want I want that. And that's not what I got.

You see? But I'm that's why I resent them. I assigned a path that I wanted my dad to follow. You will be this dad. I've got the preconceived idea and every day he lets me down.

Every day he disappoints me. He's not what I wanted. And that's just pure selfishness. But see, when I look at it from that perspective, it becomes much clearer. The problem is mine, not my dad's.

The problem is mine. It's a problem of perception. It's a problem of attitude. We're gonna get clear of it. That's what this whole thing is about.

So we spend an hour and a half and we get all Daniel all through this stuff and and, and he sees it in the end and he's all tore up inside and he's not feeling very good. And if we were left with a program right there, we would be in some some distress. I think most of us would have a real problem. It is it is not it is ugly just to have your nose rubbed and how vile your life has been especially when it's mostly been a deception and you were the biggest one deceived. That kind of truth that Peter was talking about earlier today.

That kind of truth that we uncover all of a sudden when I'm looking at myself, warts and all. Guys, when I did my inventory with Cliff Bishop, I went back and I could not look at myself in a mirror. I simply could not look. I'd look that's the reason I had my beard to be all trimmed, all crooked. I'd have part of it up here and part of it up here because I just shaved looking like this.

I didn't ever I just couldn't stand who I was because it was not lovely. And I had sold myself this bill of goods that I'm a stand up kinda guy. I'm the kinda guy any woman would want and any kid kid would love to call dad. Are you believing that? I'm a fruitcake times 10.

I am. So so it brings us to this point of 6 and 7. Turn over You know, that's not true. So So so it brings us to this point of 6 and 7. Turn over to the bottom page 75 top of page 76.

Before before we get into this thing real quick, I wanna, well and and when we do some questions and answers in a minute, this is gonna come up anyway, so I wanna address it now, especially because it connects with well, it sort of connects to this inventory stuff that we were just talking about. I know that in in in Europe, things are different the way that they are perceived in terms of working this work and I know it's an uphill battle in a lot of club houses talking about working the work quickly, I know that and, a lot of guys work them in 4 months or 5 months. I don't know, I've seen in Denmark, they seem to wait for like a year and a half before they get into it. And, some of this stuff has some devastating effect on people, and and I have no argument there. I don't fight anybody about any of this stuff.

If you wanna take a year and a half to do the work, take a year and a half to do the work. It's your deal. I would I would just like to ask the simple question. If somebody could show me the rationale behind waiting, perhaps I could change what I'm saying. I'm not I'm not above changing all of this.

I'm not emotionally attached to anything that I say here guys. Tomorrow I would change my stance on certain things if somebody could show me that what I was saying was not correct. But the historical data of Alcoholics Anonymous and my own personal experience in carrying 100 and 100 of men through the work do not bear out that process. It doesn't. My experience has been that if you get a fire lit under a kid's ass and getting going in the right direction, there's a momentum that builds itself and if you don't impede the momentum, they will indeed finish the work in short order and walk out the other side completely rearranged and changed.

And it's a magic thing to see. It's pretty cool. This stuff about 6 and 7, doctor Bob and Bill and these guys all thought that this thing was this is the stuff that it's been said that this was the stuff that separated the men from the boys. It was like and it's the stuff that so many of us in the fellowship discount is just part of the steps that there's not somebody standing on me, so I don't do it. And we just but but let's let's look at the proposition.

Daniel, for the very first time in his entire young life, realizes that he's a nutcase, that he is selfish and self centered, that he stepped on a jillion people, he is not a lovely man, and he needs to do something about it. And he says, Well great, what I'll do is I'll just change. Well, good luck. I bet you right now, if we went around this room and collected every self help book that we own, we'd have stacks that this stage couldn't hold. We all buy them.

We all try everything. Doesn't everybody have a little catch of self help books at home? Think and Grow Rich and all these other kind of thing like that. There's nothing there's nothing wrong with any of them. I'm not even going there like this.

I'm just saying the process of trying to think my way out of selfishness is about as effective as me thinking myself into being good looking. It just happen. You see? And there's the rub. The it's the it's this self will will never overcome self will.

It's gotta be something magical. I said it. I meant it. It has to be something magical. It has to be something so special and unique, and and that's what step 6 and 7 was all about.

It was about process by which we could go to God with a set of specific character defects name. It's not in the big book, it's a personal piece of information from my standpoint, it's just an opinion. But it's my opinion that this is the reason why a lot of us failed in church. I think that God likes the the the t's crossed and the i's dotted. I think that all those years when I said, God, I wanna be a better man.

I could just imagine God sitting back there going, Meyers, what the heck does that mean? What do you what do I don't understand a better man. A better man than what? Compared to what? What?

What? I'll have to get back to you on that and then he goes to the next guy, you see? It's it's like that kind of deal. Imagine the situation, Daniel now sees clearly what his character defects are. He sees them.

I'm a bigot. I'm a predator. I'm He's not. Trust me, he's not. But I mean, he just like, I'm selfish.

I'm I'm all I'm frightened. I'm all. He sees the defects there. And so then, specifically, when we go to God and we ask God and say, God, these are the defects that I have illuminated in this inventory. These are the things that I see that are blocking me from the sunlight of that spirit.

These are the things that I must get rid of or it's gonna kill me. I'll never ever make it if I don't get rid of this. It's important guys. It's huge. It's it's it's it's as immense as any other piece of this program that you do.

But because it was written in such a way and in such short form that you can just read it off one of these lampshades shades that hangs up in the meeting. I don't even have to have my big book. I can just sit there and read it in the meeting. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Did that 6 check. That's a nice prayer. 7, I did that in 2. We could do it just like that, and most of us do.

Not very effectively, but I'm telling you, that's why so many of us glaze through this part of the part of the process and we don't reap the benefits of this stuff. Looking down range, let's say that as we get this inventory, as we get this whole process done, Daniel starts unraveling on down the road. He starts doing poorly. He's manifesting all kinds of weird things going on. And everybody's gonna say, well, it's the inventory stuff.

He needs to go back in inventory. Or it's the amends. He just didn't make all of his amends. It's just Let me tell you what my my experience has been. When on down the road, if he unravels, the very first place I go is 6 and 7.

The very first place I go. Either this guy is not convinced that there's a loving God that could fix this stuff, or, or something else. I mean, but but that's the first place that I'll go. And yet, there are thousands of alcoholics who would never think about going there because we all collectively, as a fellowship, trivialize the work in step 6 and 7. Guys, this is the this is where the magic comes in.

This is where we began to ask God to remove these defects specifically and as we do, this gets clearer and clearer and clearer until I'm seriously standing in the full sunlight of a loving God and it is an amazing place to be. And once you are there, you will protect it at all cost. Most of us tend to jack with it a little bit. We get it all cleared up and then we go 2 or 3 weeks with no prayer and no working with anybody else and we watch how quick the patina forms again and how quickly we get shut off from that sunlight of the Spirit and then we wonder why we're goofy inside and why we're snapping at our wives again and why we're doing all this crazy stuff. It is so dramatic and so tangible that you'll experience it.

It's like black and white. There's no gray area. There's no ambivalence around it. You'll see it themselves. At one moment, you're standing in the full sunlight of the grace of God and it is and you know that you're okay.

You know that you've been put in that place of neutrality and safety. You know you were there. That is what recovery is all about. And the only thing that can change it, the only thing that can take it away from you is your own ego and your own arrogance standing four square there telling you, you, I don't have to pray this morning. I'm a busy man.

I don't have to apologize for her. She had it coming. She shouldn't have treated me that way. You see what I'm saying? I have a little few words with the guy down at the grocery store.

Now, I can't go to that grocery store anymore. I have words with the guy at the cleaners. You call this clean? See, now I can't go to the cleaners anymore. Pretty soon, my world has gotten real small again and I start looking around and realizing, you know what?

I'm 10 years sober and and I'm standing in my garage and it's the only place I feel comfortable. Because I got half the world looking for me and I and I can't you see what I'm saying? There is no sunlight of the spirit. I'm standing in the absolute cold looking for a light that is not there anymore because of all the stuff that I've closed in between. It's ugly.

It is. I'll tell you a quick story and then I'm done with this. I know standing before you is a spiritual giant. You wouldn't believe this, but I used to love strip joints. Some of you guys have heard me tell this story before, but I gotta tell you, it's just like I love I'm talking in sobriety.

I'm talking 7 years sober. I love strip joints. And this is before I got to primary purpose and got on the page doing what I'm supposed to do. And I tell you this for one reason. It's just this was, the most graphic illustration I could make of the way that I was and the way that I am today and what happened.

See, left on my own devices, I always knew this is not the good place for me to be and obviously my wife's not real thrilled with the idea that I'm here at the strip joint. I I just but I like being there. I'm not drinking. I like being there. And so I just justify this whole goofy thing.

Okay? So when I got hooked up with Krusty Cliff and he carries me through the work and I do my inventory and I see this stuff and I see the character defect, this insistence that I do things, we would underline it and label it defiance. We would underline it and label it defiance. Defiance is a great one, guys. You're gonna see it in a whole lot of stuff and yet we ignore it a lot of times.

Defiance. I won't do this. Let them do it. I won't do this. I don't need this.

It all comes from defiance. And so in this in this in this situation here, I finally came clean with it and said, this is what I'm doing. And he says, you know, you're gonna have to deal with this. I said, yep. I sure do.

We're gonna have to fix this. And then so in my prayer, in my in my 6 and 7th step prayer, my 7th step prayer, these were the things that I brought to God. As I reviewed this thing, I took the book down for an hour and we sat there and we talked about this deal. And as I go through this thing, I just said, God, you know, there's here the defects of character as I understand them. And I listed them.

And one of these things that's kicking my rear end is this this love affair with these strip joints. I can't It's just killing me. Strip joint. And This script door and and I get I get out of the car and I walk to the front door and I walk in. And just as I walk in, guys, I'm telling you it felt like it felt like the difference between walking from a hot room into an air conditioned room.

It was like it was like I took a step in and I'm holding the door. I took a step in and then I took a step back out and I felt warm again. And I took a step back in again. Come on. This isn't funny.

There's some girl standing there, she says, are you coming in or are you going out? And I said, I'm going out. And I stood at the door of this goofy strip joint for 20 minutes just standing there. People are just like, what is it with this guy standing at the door? But I'm trying to figure out what's going on here.

I'm just I'm just, what is going on? And I take a step back and I felt better and I take a step back and I felt better. And as I got closer to my truck, I was okay. It was fine. The following week, I had to deliver a job in Dallas and I ended up back in that same parking lot.

And I got out of the parking lot I mean, out of the car and I'm standing in the parking lot and all of a sudden that cold was there. And I went, oh, come on. I can't even go to the door anymore? I can't wait. What is this, man?

Just the simple act of getting out of my truck in the parking lot of that place and I just said, God, I understand. I'm I'm done. And I crawled back in my truck, it got warm again, and I left. It was that simple. I'll tell you a funny part of that story was that a full year later I haven't been in another strip joint since then, except for one night.

I went and had a guy that got drunk in there, there was one of the guys that I sponsored and I had to go get him out of the strip joint, but I didn't look. I was kinda like I didn't I had a reason. I just went in jerked him out of there, and we we were gone. But the the the about a year later, I drove through that parking lot to see if I felt the same way again, and I did. I did.

It was still there. This ain't a good place for you to be. If you wanna stay in the sunlight or the Spirit, stay away. Cause it was a big problem. You see?

And it's been like that ever since. And I've seen thousands of cases of men and women walking free and clear of of all kinds of crap, simply because they were willing to, a, admit the problem existed, and then, b, be willing to let God do what He said He was gonna do. God doesn't want us all hampered and held back by our own character defects and the things that we think that we want. He doesn't. He wants us free and ready to get out there and kick butt and take names because there's work that needs to be done.

It is. I think it would be a good time to smoke a butt and then when we come back, Peter's gonna do the rest of this. Thanks, guys.