Steps 2 and 3 at the Men Among Men group's conference in Reykjavik, Iceland

Good morning.

My name is Larry Scott and I'm an alcoholic and I'm free this morning. And I really mean I'm free

Iceland.

Wow,

yes, you heard the story. I'm wearing four day old clothes. There are things living on me that didn't come to Iceland with me,

but I'm very happy

Chris did a great lead in on the information that Sam and I are going to present to you. Did a great job in step one and I'm going to be a bit redundant with some of that information leading into two and three.

I have a partner back in the States named Christian and we tour around the country the world presenting the Joe and Charlie style book study and our Home group is called We Are Not a Glum Lot. We meet on Thursday nights in Atlanta

and it is a Joe and Charlie style book study. In the beginning of each one of those studies, we do a thing called the alcoholic puzzle, and I want to do a little lead in with that and then we'll move on. If I can get this mic out,

very cool.

Chris alluded to a lot of this information, but this puzzle,

I need graphics. I don't know about you, but if I can see it, if I can read it, if I can touch your experience and I'm going to be better adapted at the information. Thanks, Mark.

The first part of this puzzle is the problem. That's why we're all here.

This is what Chris told us about earlier this morning.

This problem is broken into two parts. The first part of this this this problem is the obsession of the mind. And I'm a real big word merchant.

If you look up the word obsession in the dictionary, it'll tell you that it's a thought that overrides all other thoughts. It's basically insanity.

I've got a great life back home.

I love to ride motorcycles, I love my dogs. I got a great little business, a cute little house on the lake, lots of great friends.

But once this obsession to drink alcohol,

it becomes fully established in my mind.

It overrules all other thoughts. Obsession. It's a thought that overrules all other thoughts. I don't think about you. I don't think about my bikes. I don't think about my business. I think about one thing

and it's drinking. And what happens is if I'm obsessing about a drink or a drug,

I'm driving down the road and we got these signs in our country that say in front of a bar, let's say the coldest beer in town,

I'm done. You know, I'm, I'm in. I mean, that was, that's the deal breaker right there. But what happens is once I pour this first drink into my body, it sets into motion the 2nd component of this disease and it's called the allergy of the body

allergy. Abnormal reaction to something.

Anybody have an out allergic reaction to anything here?

What do you have?

Lactose intolerant. So when you put something with lactose in it, what happens to you?

Bad things? Your guts? Yeah. Anybody else?

What do you have?

What is it? Yeah. What happens?

Yeah, Yeah. I have an allergic reaction to paper tape. If you put paper tape on my body in an injection site or a place where they've drawn blood, if you leave it on my body for 5 minutes and you pull it off, my skin comes off. Well, that puzzles. Nurses, medical practitioners, they don't get it.

But that's what happens to me. It's an allergic reaction to something. And what happens to me is a real alcoholic. Once I induce alcohol,

the allergic reaction sets up and I can't stop drinking.

My my history tells me that I stop on two for two reasons. Either I get locked up either in a spin dry somewhere or I get locked up behind bars. Separates me from the drink.

And the other reason that I would stop is if I die in the street.

Now there are some people that attend our meeting on Thursday night and they say, well, I stopped when I run out of money. Well, you didn't drink like I did. Because if I run out of money, I'm going to take a brickbat or or a tire urn and I'm going to break the windows out of your car, your business or your home. And I'm going to take what belongs to you and turn it into what I have to have, not what I want, what I have to have to continue that run

you with me here. I don't have a choice as to when this is going to stop.

I run until the bloody end and money is not a good a sufficient reason to stop. Chris talked about the the problem drinker and the hard drinker. There are several different types of drinkers. There's a social drinker back in our town. There's a little community called Dunwoody where the upper crust live, and I have this picture of a of a Dunwoody housewife sitting by the pool drinking a glass of Chablis

and tipping it over and going, oops, I need to go to treatment.

Well, that's a social drinker, but they've heard that the treatment's a good idea for that.

Then you got a problem drinker. And they may have a problem if, let's say, for instance, they're late for work a few times because they watch football a little too late. Or they they were making whoopee with the wife a little too long. Or they just had one over the limit the night before and they were late coming to work and they get threatened in their job security problem drinker. They can cut back, they can moderate.

Hard drinker looks an awful lot like an alcoholic, but given a sufficient reason

can stop

the difference between a problem hard drinker and me. The real alcoholic is a good example is

a hard drinker goes to goes to court and and he's been pulled over for driving while intoxicated. The judge says. Mr. Smith, if I see you back in my courtroom again, driving while while drinking, you're going to go to county for 90 days. This guy just stops. He stops drinking and and driving an automobile.

Now I go to court for the same offense. Judges. Mr. Scott,

I've got a citation here says that you were over the legal limit drinking and operating a motor vehicle. If you come back in my court again with these circumstances, you're going to go to county for 90. Hell, I start wondering what it's going to be like in jail because I'm going. I mean, I'm, I'm going. I don't have a choice because I I can't not drink. I can't not drink.

Second part of the puzzle is the solution. Thank God

solution is found in a spiritual nature

which we're going to get into.

It's the only thing that we've found since man started crushing gripes

that will combat alcoholism to arrest it. Where do I find the spiritual solution? Find it in the third part of the puzzle. Practical program of action outlined in detail in the 1st 164 pages at a ugly book. We thought around you with me here. So this is the alcoholic puzzle.

We've identified the problem,

did that with Chris a while ago and

he he asked those two questions that are found on the first page of Chapter 4. And we agnostics,

you know, if when you honestly want to, and there's the caveat

you find you can't quit entirely or if when drinking, you have a little control over the amount you take, you're probably an alcoholic. That's me.

Step 2 says that we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, which implicates that, you know, we're probably crazy. Insane.

The step doesn't say that we came to have faith.

It says we came to believe

my experiences that I came to believe once I walked in your rooms and I followed you around and I watched you. I I saw you, how you responded to life,

not reacted. You laughed a lot. You drove your own car. You had you had a happy family, had a good job. I wanted to know how I could acquire that. And you took me by the hand and you guided me down this path. But when I walked in the rooms, I had a brother, which you'll hear about tonight in my talk. My brother was older than me and he had found you

and he's the one that did the 12 step work on me and

he put my hand in yours.

But when I walked in the door the first time, I walked in with a hope that maybe, just maybe, you would have the answer to this thing that was killing me.

So I walked in and I followed you around and I paid really, really close attention to you because there was no door #3 I'm a dumpster diver like this guy. There's no insurance. There's no way to get into a detox. Just didn't have just there was no path to that door. You were the last stop on the block.

I hoped

that through this

regimen, I could find a way not to Drink and Die

followed you around and I watched you and I listened to some of the things you told me and I, I followed some of the direction that you showed me.

And I came to, to, to believe that maybe, just maybe, I too could achieve this. And then I did the work as you outlined for me early on. And, and all of a sudden, somewhere on that path, this faith popped up. It was a progression. I didn't walk in the door with faith. It's not what the the book says. It says we came to believe

I have a young man that I'm sponsoring in Atlanta and I've been around 22 years. Chris and I sobriety dates are 30 days apart.

I've worked with a with a legion of people.

This young man popped up on the radar little over 90 days ago. He's 22 years old and I want to share my experience with this guy.

His name's Hunter, Hunter Dean, and he's just on fire. How you doing now? I'm absolutely great. I said, oh God, this is going to be fun because he doesn't have a problem. Everything's fine. Well, we're riding around it. It's time to get into the work. And, and he's been through a dozen spendrides, jitter joints and, and he just cannot not use.

So I got him in my car. I don't sit in a room when I do the work. This is the way I do it. I get a guy in my car and we drive, we drive, we talk, we read, we drive, we talk, we read, we stop, we pray, we drive, we talk, we read, we do the work. So we're riding around and, and step one was real evident. I mean, 12 spin drives. Come on, this guy's dying. He's powerless over alcohol and drugs.

So I'm wondering why this guy gets to a certain point of this dryness and he can't not use.

So I said, Hunter, do you tell me about your faith

in this glazed look came over his face and I said, so no faith. Well, my mom and dad's Christian upbringing, blah blah, blah. And I said this ain't about them. What do you believe? Well, and he had this glazed look. We're sitting at a red light and on the right hand side is a decorative Stonewall

going into an office complex. At the base of that wall is a beautiful flower bed full of pansies. Beautiful pansies, brilliant colors. But it had snowed and iced over big time in Atlanta. I mean, we had a really sucky winter in in my state,

but these little pansies are sitting there and they're and they're there. They got snow and ice all over them. And I said,

Hunter, look at those pins, he said. Yeah, man, they're beautiful.

I said, why don't we do this? Why don't you jump out of the car, take all your clothes off, just throw them in the back seat, and you run over and set down with leaned up against that wall. It's about 3:00. I'll come back tomorrow about this time and pick you up,

He says, what are you talking about? I said, just get out naked, lean up against the wall, sit down in the snow. I'll come back in 24 hours and get Jesus. Well, I'll freeze to death. I said. Really? I said, does Pansy seem to be doing wonderfully? And he goes, wow. I said, would it be safe to assume that those pansies have a little more power than you right now? He said, well, hell yeah. I said, cool, we got something to work with.

So we run around and we talked a little bit more and I told him, I said, you know, the downside of that Pansy deal is if I got him in the car and ask us to drive him, drive us back home,

you know, probably wouldn't workout too well, but they're doing wonderfully in the snow.

I have a brother that owns an automobile store in Atlanta. And we were near that location at that time. And it was time to, I mean, we, we've done one, we've done 2 and it was time to get into the work. And I said, we got to get on our knees because we, that's how we, that's how I take my guys through the third step. Prayers on our knees. So we went into the car store and I asked my nephew, I said, is there a building? I mean, is there a room in this building that that we could use for a few minutes that that we can have privacy says, well, what do you want to do?

And I said, we want to pray. Well, this guy used to run with me and he got sober another method. But anyway, he said, well, there's a business center down there. Just go down. If there's anybody there, run them out, lock the door. So Hunter's looking at me like we're going to do what?

So we go down there, and again, this guy's been around the Fellowship long enough. He's got this, the vital information in this book memorized, but it's all knowledge. He's never applied any of it.

So we get on our knees in this in this business center and, and we took the third step prayer together.

Now the end of this story about Hunter is he's 98 days sober today.

He's in the 12th step.

He led a meeting last night at a treatment center that he went through. I got an e-mail from him this morning,

98 days since he since he had a needle in his arm. And he goes, man, it's so cool to walk in that room and look into the eyes of the people that look just like I did 98 days ago. Now that's power.

Because today he knows that he never, ever has to use again. He's free.

I get these same looks at our Home group. We have 150 to 175 people show up every Thursday night and this is the page we're on. Get in here, get the work done, get free and get out there and help other people. Now this guy lives in a in a sober living home in Atlanta.

He was in his ninth step of men's process and the treatment center or the house said, Oh, well, you're you don't have enough time to be out making amends.

Well, as long as he's there and he's paying them this rent,

his life belongs to them.

So I said, well, make the amends you can now.

And as time moves on, you can continue to make the amends. The book says, you know, that we became willing. It doesn't say that we went out and knocked them all out. So this guy's sitting on some amends and it's OK, but he's doing the work. He's doing a tent step. He's he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's employing the 11th step in his life and he's out helping others.

Second step is nothing more than than an observation,

coming to believe that there is something more powerful than me

and a conclusion of the mind that can restore me to sanity. Observation, conclusion of the mind.

So

Step 2 is

Step 2 is pretty doggone simple. It's a strong suspicion

if nothing else.

Most people, when they come into the rooms, they start thinking and they read the stuff that says we came to have faith. No, it's not what it says. It says we came to believe.

I go into, I take, I take, I take the message into into treatment centers on a regular basis. And I see that, look, I had a chick Stonewall me one day and she says, you're going to start talking about that God shit, aren't you? I said, yeah, we are. She says, well, I'm out of here. I said, whoa, hold it, hold it right there. I said, do you believe that? I believe She says, well, yeah, it's pretty obvious. I said, great, we got something to work with, sit down. And you know, you got to start somewhere.

It's a suspicion,

how arrogant to believe, And we've done it for years, walked around thinking that we were the most powerful things that ever took a breath.

Seriously. We laugh, but it's true.

You know, my brother called me up in September of 1987. He says, I understand you're dying and if you don't get some help, we're going to bury. And I, you know what I said, now I'm homeless using like a dog. And I said, oh, no, Bob, I'm good. I got this one

dying.

I got that ego going and I can't let you know I'm living in a dumpster.

There is a guy named Christopher Columbus back

a little back and he, you know, the book talks about.

About this guy, it said that

some of the contemporaries of Columbus thought of a round Earth preposperous

and Chris was a neat guy. In this book study that we do, we've come to believe that that Chris was probably an alcoholic.

And there's, there's some good evidence as to why we think that

Chris is maybe the only guy on the planet thinking that this, that this, that this planet is round instead of flat. But it was a strong suspicion he had No, no, no, he had it was a theory and he didn't have the means with which to prove his theory true. So being a good alcoholic, he was, he went to the king of Spain. He said, hey Ferdinand, how about hooking me up with some ships and some some guys and some food and

let me let me prove my point. And Ferdinand says you're nuts, get the hell out of my office.

well-being a good alcoholic he is. He went to the chick, you know. Queen Isabella says. Hey, baby,

you know how we are. Isabelle's probably a good alanine, she says. He says, he says, What can I do for you there, Chris? She says. Well,

if you'll hook me up with some ships and some some guys and some food, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'm going to go to this brave new world and I'm going to find this, these beautiful jewels and precious metals and furs and that and I'll bring them back to you. She says you got it, dude. So she hooks him up with these three boats. Well, we believe he's alcoholic because the first thing he did is he hired a special sailor

because he's going over on a strong suspicion

and a theory. And this special sailors job is to get on the lead ship on the bow and hold a Lantern. He told him, he says, man, he says, if we start, if you if, if we're cruising along and you see the edge of the sucker, he says, you start hooping and hauling and waving this Lantern and we'll turn these boats around.

Well, Chris has asked was real safe on the back boat. You see, he wasn't on that lead ship because he wasn't real sure about this idea.

Well, we further think he's alcoholic because Chris believed that you could sell W to get East.

Pretty wacky.

When he left, he had no idea where he was going.

When he got there, he didn't know where he was,

and when he got back he didn't know where he'd been.

So Isabel says, hey dude, where's my stuff? He says, damn,

he says, I forgot. It is. He says, I tell you what, though, if you hook me up with some more boats and some guys and some food, I'll go back because I've seen the Brave New World and there's much more abundance there than I originally thought.

She says, all right, but this time you better bring me my stuff.

So this time, here's the difference. He left the first time on a strong suspicion, on a theory, on a belief.

The second time he went with complete faith because he had been there. He had the experience. Now, this time there was no special sailor on that lead boat. Chris was up on the on the ballot, that lead boat like I'm the man. And when he came back, well, when he got there, he knew where he was. He knew where he was going. When he got back, he knew where he'd been. And he brought all those things to Isabel. Same thing happened with the Wright brothers. The book talks about him. These two guys were bicycle mechanics out of Ohio,

bicycle mechanic and all these aeronautical engineers, all these physicists had already proved that man could not fly. All these contraptions they built had failed. People had died trying to trying to fly bicycle mechanics.

They had a strong suspicion. They had a theory that they could string some wood and some fabric together

and make this thing fly. We'll see men's minds, our minds are fettered by the things that the things that we've been taught since we fell out of our mama's womb.

Suspicion.

So the Wright brothers call up the Charlotte of The Charlotte Observer over in Charlotte, NC, and said, hey, guys, we're about to fly this thing over here at Kitty Hawk.

So this reporter goes out to the beach and these two bicycle mechanics get this contraption off the ground and it flies.

The reporter goes back to the publisher of the of The Charlotte Observer and says, dude, I saw this thing fly. These two guys actually man flew at Kitty Hawk. Publisher says you're not putting that in my paper

because if you do, society will read it. They'll come burn this joint down because man can't fly.

The book talks about scientific proof is not always the best proof.

Great example that we use there is the bumblebee. Back before computers and, and and, and these high tech programs, scientists and physicists used a slide rule and years ago they took the bumblebee. You got bumblebees here, Cool. They took the bumblebee and they put his little fat butt in that slide roll and they did all the math on it. It came back and they said the bumblebee can't fly.

They did. They said his body is too bulbous and his wings are too stubby and this little critter can't fly. The problem with that theory is nobody told the bumblebee and he just flies around and stings our ass and he's any place anytime he wants to. So

that's the that's the deal with. It's a suspicion. It's a strong suspicion that maybe, just maybe there is something greater than me that can restore me. Does that make sense to you?

But we fight it.

So

we've come to believe. I mean, it's, it doesn't take a lot of intellectual discussion. It's pretty simple math actually. I'm powerless. I can't stop drinking. I'm living in a dumpster and I'm thinking about putting a gun barrel in my mouth because I don't want to drink. But I can't continue to breathe and not drink. I have I no longer have a choice. But the only way I know to end it is to is to just off myself. And I didn't walk in here an atheist or

I've walked in believing that there was a power greater than me. I believed in God. But I had used up all my get out of jail free cards because I've been a pretty bad guy. I've heard a lot of God's kids in my life. And I didn't deserve a second break. So we blasted through this, this step two things, step one and Step 2. And now it's time that we make a decision in the third step says that we made a decision to surrender or to. Yeah, says we we

decision

to turn our willing lives over the cure of God as we understood them.

Alcoholics don't read that. Typical Alcoholics read this. It says

we we turned our will in our lives out of the cure of God. No, you didn't.

You made a decision

probably 9 months ago. Chris was in our town and he he came to speak and we're sitting there and he says let's go to Iceland.

That's OK. Nine months ago. So

right then and there, sitting with Chris, I made a decision and I'm gonna come to Iceland and hang out with you guys.

Now, that decision required some some effort on my part.

I needed to call the airlines, I needed a contact owner and smarty, and I needed to do some stuff in order to get here today.

Some of my stuff didn't make the same decision I did. Because it's, you know,

ain't funny. Samantha. Yeah, it's OK.

So I had to do some stuff. So when you make this decision, it has to be followed with other stuff.

You with me here.

The step doesn't say that we turned anything over. It says we made a decision to and the way that we turn that will and life over is by doing some stuff.

And in doing that stuff, God shows up and and and the desire of the obsession is removed. It's gone. I don't know when it happened for me, sometime between step three and and and step nine, it just was gone.

There are two, there are two wills. We talked about turning our life and our will. Your life

is your thoughts and wants. Your will is your actions. Make sense here?

So

there are two wills. There's there's there's God's will, which we believe to be pretty much divine. Have a hard time living in that all the time, but that's the goal. And then there's man's will. When God made us these two luggage. We're the only creatures on the planet that have self will free will. We can we we, we make decisions on what we're going to do or not. Do

we get ourselves in trouble? The two big ones for me is money and sex.

Don't mess with my pocketbook and don't mess with her, because those are two things that just make me a little wacky.

But animals. Animals are God driven. Horses, cows, dogs, cats, fish.

A little story I'll tell you about about this animal thing.

I'm sleepless one night and I'm watching Discovery Channel or Animal Planet or whatever the hell it was. And, and when I turn the TV on, the camera was on this little still glassed over mirror kind of a pool in the upper levels of a mountain area. And it was just beautiful. A little mirrored lake kind of a thing. And all of a sudden the camera goes below the water line

and there are these big salmon and they're swimming around in this pool.

And all of a sudden they zero in on the female and she starts spitting out these little salmon babies and they're swimming around in this pool.

Little time lapse goes on and these little babies

get into the into the stream that's running down the side of the mountain during a spring thaw. And the water's running pretty good and it's going over rocks and twisting and it's crazy. But these little fish, the ones that make it spill out into the ocean and when they hit the ocean, they do this

and they swim out for thousands and thousands of miles.

You ever been offshore in a boat, anybody when you're out there and you're outside the, the, the side of land,

that little fear thing, that little fear meter starts going off. You're going, damn, I can't see land. How are they ever going to get us back? Well, they got a thing called Lorentz or GPS, whatever, and they put the heading in and what they bring us right back to where we left. These little fish don't have that. It's just them and they're naked. They're out there swimming around thousands of miles away. But when when God made that little critter, he put Agps little garment inside them,

he also put a little God clock in there. And at some point in their maturity, this God plot goes off. Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding. It's time to go make

little salmon sacks,

you know I'm saying. And you and they turn their little salmon butts around and they swim back to the mouth of this little Creek from where they came

thousands of miles because God said it's time to recreate.

Now, getting back to the mouth of the Creek ain't the big one. It's a spring thaw. These bears, these big Grizzlies, they've been asleep all winter long. They're hungry. They just woke up and they're hanging out on the rocks waiting for lunch to come by.

Will these salmon come back up in the mouth of that Creek? And they start swimming up against this raging this, this, this raging water. And they're skyrocketing over these rocks. And as they do, the bears are snagging them.

Some of them will skyrocket and hit another rock and they die. But the ones that make it back to the pool from where they were born,

they go back and they mate, they recreate, they they do the same thing that their parents and their parents and their parents before them all dead. And here's the kicker,

after they have sex and give birth to the next generation, those two roll over and die.

I'm going to do a lot of stuff for sex, but come on, it's a pretty stiff price,

you know?

Come on baby.

So

turn your will, your thoughts and wants, and your life,

your actions

over to a power greater than you. Sounds like a tall order, but you know what? My thoughts and wants have been pretty twisted.

They ended me up in a A, you know,

and my actions, for crying out loud,

you know, I need something that has done a better job with this than me. So I show up in a A and we've done Step 2 and we, we, we, we open the book to Chapter 5. We've done everything up to that point. And after we've read the three pertinent ideas,

the very first paragraph after it says that God could and would if he were sought. It says being convinced.

You ever wonder what that means? Being convinced of what

1st 2 steps that you're powerless over alcohol. Your life is unmanageable,

that you've convinced that there is a power greater than you that can restore you to sanity. Now if you're not there,

you may not want to go forward. You may need to, you may need to go back and re revisit that that work in the first two steps. Because I've had some guys that want to be the star pupil and they'll say whatever they think it is that I want to hear.

But I'm a pretty damn good judge because I'm a beat down alcoholic,

Chris alluded to it. In that first step. I've qualified these guys. I'm convinced that they're a real alcoholic.

Being convinced we're at step three and it says which is we decided to turn our will and our life over the cure of God as we understood them.

Just what do we mean by that?

I can't

the step. What it really implies is is I'm I'm. I'm agreeing to do the rest of the work.

It's all it is. It says we made a decision to do the rest of the work is what that step really implies. But I can't do that work without it, without a higher power's help. Without God's help.

I gotta swallow some huge chunks of truth about myself. And then I got to sit down with some guy

and share this information.

I got some work to do and I need God's help. I can't do this by myself.

So

the book goes on and it talks about this actor and it talks about the different relationships, the actor and the director, the employer and the employee and the actor. I mean the agent and and the principal and all the the father and the son, father and the child. I get that.

I need God in my corner to guide me through this work,

and Sam's going to visit it in the next session. That four step observations, writing prayers, it's a series of that kind of that stuff, and I need God in my corner. So I've made this decision

and

the first requirement is that that we'd be convinced that any life run on self will can hardly be a success. That's step one.

And it goes on to say, you know, again, it talks about this actor and the and the director thing. And I've always wanted to run the show myself.

I'm very strong willed,

very strong willed and I don't know anything about how women think. I wish I did, but I don't.

I I'm a guy. I was raised in the South. I'm a good old boy and I'm taught that I ain't supposed to cry. I ain't got to rely on nobody for nothing. And nothing could be further from the truth.

Today I can cry

cleansing. For me, it's healing

and I can actually practice humility. I tell you what, leave have your have all your belongings being a being a weird country, a different country.

Well, it's weird when you live in the same clothes as long, but it, you know, you get a, you get a, you get a, an adult dose of, of humility.

I mean, Chris offered me this shirt this morning. It was like, shit, man, it's Christmas, you know, Christ.

But

what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna I'm gonna run through this, this third step prayer real quick. I'm gonna break it down and I don't the first thing I had to do when I looked at this prayer, this prayer is written in King James. I don't speak King James. If I ever walk up to you and I say, how art thou today? Slap me because I've taken leave of my senses. I don't speak in King James. I don't get it. So I have in the book gives me permission to change the wording. OK. But it says you're at you're at step three. And again, I do this step on my knees with my guys

in the book study back home, 150 people on that night. We get on our knees and we take this step individually. That's what we do.

Do they all proceed into a four step? No, not necessary. But we take this step together, it it unifies the group.

It says we're now at step three. Many of us said to our maker as we understood him, God offer myself to you. It doesn't say I give myself I'm offering.

You know, if if if I walk down to Omer and I say, here you go and he grabs this glass of water, I'm offering it to him. He may go, no, I'm good. You got cooties. I'm not thirsty, but Ioffer it. So I'm offering myself to God. And what is God going to do? I want God to build with me and to do with me as He sees fit.

Takes me out of the equation because my the thing that I've built got me here.

The thing I built is broken. Built with me and do with me

as you see fit. And then it asks, relieve me of the bondage of self bondage.

You know when you're real submissive

handcuffs,

that's bondage. I know where you guys are thinking,

don't go there, but

if you've ever been in cuffs, if you ever been tied down, don't go there. But if you've been in a place to where where you didn't have any control, that's a bondage. And I've been bondage at my own. I've been in bondage at my own hand. I've done things that I really didn't want to do

to God's kids and His creation, and I've done things that have placed me in horrible in horrible positions. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do your will.

I gotta abandoned my will. My will got me here. My will is flawed. It's broken

and then it says take away my difficulties.

What difficulties? You think they're talking about a new way of life. It's much easier for me if you ask me what time it is. In reality, it's 11:45. It's easier for me to say, well, it's actually 630.

Truth doesn't come easy for me,

it's easier for me.

It's just so much easier for me to live that old way of life. I've been sober 22 years and living this way of life still has its challenges for me.

Take away my my difficulties, that victory over them, that's kind of a promise that God is going to take them away. And through that, I got this victory. To do what?

So I can show others

that that you're going to put in my in my path to help them

and I'm going to show them

your power. It ain't my power. I'm just a guy. I'm powerless. I, I, I covered that one back in step one, your love. Obviously this power loves me more than anything on this planet because I'm a dog. I'm a sorry son of a bitch, man. I burned it all to the ground, but yet I'm like that Phoenix, man. I'm coming up out of those flames and I didn't do it on my own.

God's love and and God's way of life.

I don't do it perfectly,

but the very first thing that I do when my eyes, as soon as I gain that first conscious thought in the morning, my sponsor has taught me the very first thing I do is I go, good morning, God, what can I do for you today? Now that that sounds real grandiose, but here's the deal. That's my first conscious thought. If I can hook up with God right out of the gate, before I pee, before I get coffee, before I do anything, I got a better chance of getting through this deal because I got to deal with you all day.

You know what I'm saying? I don't understand a damn thing you ever say in here. It's OK, though.

I got a feeling that, you know, runners always talking about me

and that kind of what do you think, Chris? You know, you ever watch American football that, you know, when they, you ever watch American football, any of you guys? Yeah, no. Well, they do a thing called the huddle in between plays. And when they're all huddled up down there, I'm convinced they're talking about me in that damn huddle.

So the prayer ends by saying may I do your will always.

And if you notice, there is no Amen at the end of this. Amen means an end to something. This is a beginning, a beginning of a brand new way of life. You're about to embark on something that's foreign. It's it's unknown, but you now you're not doing it by yourself. You've invited divine power and to guide you through this to comfort you. And it says that it's funny, Bill, such a