Religion Told Me to Pray — AA Gave Me Nine Conditions to Fulfill First – Bob W.

I would like to welcome all of you here this morning to our final meeting of this Tar Heel Midwinter Conference.
I don't know about you, but I've had a wonderful weekend, and I hope you have too.
I'm like Brian. I've been up here many times and didn't know what to say about the speaker
because I was afraid if I said anything I'd be telling a lie.
Can you hear me now?
Yeah. But this man this morning, my only problem with introducing him is that instead of having too few words,
I got too many words. And Dave told me many years ago that my function up here,
if I was ever asked to chair, was to introduce the speaker, sit down and shut up.
He wanted me to talk there to ask me, but I'm going to say a few things this morning
because this man and his wife have meant so much to me and my sobriety.
I met them when I was here.
I met them when I was here probably about two years for the first time.
And at this point in my life, I had stayed sober purely on the fellowship.
And I know that now. I didn't know it then.
And as God has done so many times in my life, He put the right people in the right place at the right time.
These people and another lady that was with them were the right people.
And all I heard that weekend down at the little retreat down at Camp Monroe was,
big book steps, big book steps.
And it somehow penetrated my fog that this was what I needed, was the steps and the big book.
Now, I'd read the big book, but I'd never studied the big book.
And they told me it was a text. It was something to use.
I have not been in contact, direct contact with these people for the last few years,
but I have never failed when anybody's been to Texas and I don't say,
did you see Marcia and Bob?
How are they doing? And what are they doing?
And I've gotten always such wonderful reports about what they're doing in their lives.
And I love this couple and this man very much this morning.
And I know you will, too, after you've heard him.
And he's a delightful person. He has a beautiful sense of humor.
And he is just, in my book, a beautiful person.
Help me welcome Bob W. from Quitley, Texas.
Good morning.
While seated up here a moment ago, or about five minutes ago,
I observed in your faces a...
I say, while seated here about five minutes ago,
I observed in most of your faces an attitude of love and compassion
and an expectation about what you might hear from me this morning.
And Dave screwed it up and made everybody that I can see mad.
We...
One person made so bold in Texas recently as to discuss smoking in an AA meeting,
and I have never known what became of it.
He has...
obviously just disappeared.
And... but I do appreciate it.
My name is Bob White, and I'm an alcoholic.
And by God's grace and because this program does work
and continues to work one day at a time in my life,
I've not had a drink since August the 12th, 1954.
And for this period of sobriety, this morning, I am indeed grateful.
You observed that we were from Texas,
get to our dry date right off the bat.
And you folks up here slip yours in quite slyly,
but you never fail to give it.
And I just wonder if there's some particular reason.
Down where I came from... down where I come from,
any time a fellow gets up and says,
My name is Joe, and I'm sober today,
you hear someone say,
Uh-oh!
And he rarely has been sober very long.
But that's the tradition that I was brought up in,
and I continue to do it.
You know, we were talking last night in Dave's room,
and just a handful of people about...
Someone said, What are you going to talk about?
And I think I startled everyone,
and I said, I will have no idea until I'm standing behind the podium.
About what I'm going to talk about,
other than about myself and the direction that I'm going to take.
And I really don't know what all it is that I'm going to say,
but the direction I'm going to take,
I'm going to talk about the power and the lack of power,
as it is given to us to understand in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I certainly hope that I don't get involved in anything
that you can't reconcile in the big book.
Let me see how I can start.
I think,
maybe the very...
Oh, one thing I want to do first.
You know, that speaker that we had last night.
Oh, God, I love him.
We've been friends for so long.
I heard something about that dude last night that I didn't know.
And I related something about myself that he didn't know.
He said that he was caught up for a period of time in a fantasy
that had to do with being shot from an airplane,
or his plane was shot down.
And he was made a prisoner of Germany,
and escaped and got with the Russians,
and it made one hell of a story.
And it was a big lie.
.
Now, let me tell you a story.
I was a first pilot of the B-24 in World War II.
Oh-ho!
Another one of those dum-dums.
I was shot down over Germany
and remained a prisoner of war for 15 or 16 months.
I escaped and got with the Russians.
Boy scout honor.
Mine's true.
He couldn't believe that when I told him.
Oh, let me tell you how I was brought up,
or raised up.
I was raised in a family and caught up in an atmosphere.
That any reference made about the human anatomy,
particularly that portion of it from your knees up to your neck,
was always referred to as down there.
My mother would say,
Take your hands out of your pocket.
What are you doing down there?
You go in there and take a bath and wash good down there.
But don't you wash too long down there.
And that ought to tell you all you'll ever need to know
about my upbringing.
I don't know whether I was a happy kid.
I don't know exactly how much unhappiness
that I experienced in adolescence.
I know I experienced a bunch of it as I got a little older.
But I came from a crackerjack family.
I really did.
And there was quite a bit of love,
usually in evidence in our family life.
And I, like nearly every other speaker that you'll ever hear floating around in AA,
always remember my childhood as being one that has to do with a state of unrest and dis-ease.
I just never did quite get with it like I felt others were.
I just didn't do it the same way or it didn't work out the same way.
Or something of that nature.
But I didn't have all that bad a childhood.
I just seemed to be set apart just a little.
In describing a little of my childhood,
I want to tell you about the direction that I'd like for this morning to go.
Early on in the Big Book,
it tells us these words.
It says,
The lack of power is our real dilemma.
There was a time in my life I thought that everyone external to myself,
in all circumstances external to myself,
was my dilemma.
I thought therein lies the problem.
After I had been sober or dry in AA for quite some time,
I thought that drinking whiskey was my real dilemma.
And I found that that was not so.
Drinking alcohol and the things that were created as a result of it
were only a symptom of what my real problem was,
and the lack of power was my dilemma.
A number of pages on past this particular reference
about power in the Big Book of AA,
it says these words.
Further on, clear-cut directions will be given,
and this has to do with the location of the power necessary
for people like you and for me.
And wonders to behold.
A number of pages on past this reference
are these words.
It says,
And now the power has been added.
And that's the story of sobriety
in Alcoholics Anonymous as I know it.
I, like most other AAs that I have ever heard talk,
I think the only people who didn't get sober when they were sixteen,
that means to take their first drink when they were sixteen,
are people who do not talk at convention.
I suspicion that among you,
some of you had your first drink at eleven and twelve,
and some, you know, hung in there pretty tight
and didn't drink until you were twenty-two or three.
But all convention speakers started drinking when they were sixteen.
Everyone I ever knew.
So I, too, took my first drink when I was sixteen.
I'll tell you about taking my first drink.
I love to tell about my first drink.
Marceline says she's bored with it.
She's only heard it nearly twenty-nine years.
But I like to tell about it.
The first drink that I ever took
happened at the same time I had my very first date.
When I was going up to sixteen,
when I was sixteen I was still playing marbles
and
digging caves
and going barefooted in the summertime.
And I was a boy, you know.
And I acted like a boy.
And I really had wanted to have a date.
I'd heard about dating.
I had asked about dating.
And I had observed people who did date.
And I figured out that I wanted to do that, too.
But I did not know how to go about it.
I used to go down to Doc Fanning's drugstore
and sit and observe some of the local
gym dandies take their dates
and go down and get a Coke.
And I would watch the nonchalance,
this air of worldliness.
That's a little tiny town that only had one drugstore.
But some of these dudes could really lay it on.
And they would drive up in their little cars
and roll the window down,
honk the horn,
and
A.B. Cole with a little white hat on
would come running out and ask them what they wanted.
And he'd bring a couple of Cokes on the tray.
And this is as vivid in my memory as yesterday.
How these dudes would lull back in the seat
and drink their Coke
and slide their arm up around the back of the girl.
And I thought that was the slickest thing I'd ever seen.
And I wanted to get with it,
and I wanted to do it, too.
Well, a little time went by,
and I still had not found the starting place about having a date.
But I kept thinking about having a date.
And, you know, I really thought a little beyond just dating.
And sometimes I thought a whole lot
about just what's over the hill from just dating.
And I read an expression not too long ago,
and it said,
You might as well not itch
unless you can find a place to scratch.
And that was my dilemma at that particular time.
I couldn't find anything to scratch.
But anyway,
one time a miraculous thing happened to me.
I found myself with the loan of my older brother's Model A Ford Coupe
and a five dollar bill all at the same time.
And that was big time stuff.
He had an older friend,
a guy about ten years older than I would have been at the time,
who found that I had the loan of my brother's car and five dollars,
and there was an instantaneous friendship developed between us.
And he wanted to know
if I would like to go out on a party with him that night, Saturday.
And I said, By all means.
And then started this questioning that just nearly ruined the whole show.
He said, Are you going steady now?
And I said, Not right now.
And he said, Well, what do you do?
Just date one girl and another girl?
And I said, That's it.
But it seemed that there wasn't one available at that time.
To shorten his story up,
he got me a date with his girlfriend's older friend.
And my very first date was with a girl
that I presumed to be at least 25, 6 or 7 or 8,
and quite large.
And there are,
I can tell just by the hair,
who remembers Model A Fords.
Particularly Model A Ford Coupes.
Honor bright. Deceited in that way.
Anyway,
I was scared to death.
Now I want to tell you something about
this power business.
I know today why I was so terribly apprehensive.
So ill at ease
is because I didn't have the power
to be different than what I was.
I had no means
to be anything other than 16 years old.
Frightened,
nervous and apprehensive about having a date.
I had no background
to support me in any manner
so that I could have been different.
The lack of power
was my real dilemma.
Not the circumstances,
but the lack of power.
Anyway,
we,
arrangements were made and we got in the car.
And boy, howdy,
it was a tight fit.
It was so tight
that this other dude's
girl had to sit in his lap.
And you know, I thought that was pretty keen.
It just looked like a,
pretty smooth thing.
This girl that I was supposed to be dating
mashed right smack dab up against me.
And it felt like molten lead running down my leg.
I do believe her temperature was 135 degrees.
Model A Fords have a gear shift
right smack dab in the middle of the floor.
When it's night
and you're trying to shift gears,
you just run into all kind of oddities.
The most amazing thing of all
is what I discovered when I turned right.
I had never dreamed they'd be that soft.
.
We had not gone two miles in that car
until I was a nervous wreck.
.
You see, I didn't just,
I honestly didn't have the power
to be any different than what I was.
.
I was,
everything that was said
created an embarrassment for me.
They said,
well let's go get a drink.
And I went,
you know,
and whizzed off down towards Doc Fannin's drugstore.
They thought it was hilarious.
They meant the bootlegger.
And God,
it just crushed me
that I had gone driven to the wrong place.
I didn't even know where they had a bootlegger.
But we went to the bootlegger and got,
I shall never forget,
two pints of slow gin
with my money.
Incidentally,
after this particular evening,
I found myself in the same financial condition
as I was in
nearly 25 years later
when I had my last drink.
Man,
they flushed me out on the first one
and I just stayed that way all those years.
They got this liquor.
We drove out to the cemetery.
That seemed to be,
I did not know this at the time.
I later practiced this thing,
but it seemed like the cemetery
was just a crackerjack place to go.
And we drove out to the cemetery
and they snatched one of these two pint bottles
out of the sack.
Let's all have a drink.
Those people insisted that I drink first.
And there again,
I don't ever remember
a feeling or an attitude that I have
where I was totally and completely defenseless
as I had at that moment in time.
I just didn't have the power
to be any different than what I was.
And I had no background that would support
a change in what I was.
You see,
I didn't know whether each of us
were to get one drink apiece
out of this bottle
or each of us would take
twelve drinks apiece out of the bottle.
I really didn't know how to do it.
And they insisted that I drink first
and after a little interval,
I threw all caution
to the wind.
And this pattern was established
at that one split second in time.
Throw all caution to the wind
with no apparent fear of recourse.
And I took a big drink.
Gosh, I don't remember today
at all about that drink.
It just went down.
The brief memory I have of it,
it wasn't too bad,
it wasn't too good,
and it was a great big slug.
And they drank,
and in a little bit,
they all wanted to drink again.
And of course,
I had had this previous experience
in drinking.
So when they said,
you drank first,
well, it was a little easier this time,
and I took another big drink.
And I do not remember
whether it was the second,
third, or fourth drink.
But somewhere
in that brief interval,
I heard this voice.
And it was a voice
which,
one like I had always wanted to use.
It was a voice that had no fear in it.
It knew what it was doing.
And it said,
let's all have another drink.
And it was me.
And the power had been added.
For the first time in my life,
as I remember it,
I felt whole.
All of the things
that I was apprehensive about
seemed to fall away.
And I was made whole.
You know, we talk about the damnation
and self-destruction of alcohol.
But I do believe today
that there are people who need it.
And this brief interval of time,
this interval of time
that brings this blessed relief,
it's like a spiritual experience.
But you and I today know
that it was not a spiritual experience.
But it was the closest thing
that I had experienced at that time.
You see,
the lack of power was my real dilemma.
And I did not know how to gain the power
to be different than what I was then,
and most certainly,
what I would later become.
I think that I'm no different than most of you.
My early on drinking was controlled
by my parents
and the lack of money to buy liquor.
You know,
that is,
I was a great big boy
in the middle of the Depression,
and no one had money.
But this I remember.
I remember that I knew,
and this was a real knowing,
that any time I drank,
something special was going to happen to me.
And there was going to be
a good feeling connected with it.
And when I first started the drinking,
you know,
the good feeling lasted a little while.
And it seemed to be worth
every experience that I later came to,
regardless of how bad.
You know,
it appears to me
that my alcoholism,
and possibly yours,
could be weighed on a set of scales.
And when we first start drinking,
it appears that the good
that comes from the drinking
outweighs
the bad or harm
as the result of it,
that the scales are just like this.
The good stuff just totally outweighs the bad stuff.
And as time goes by,
as we continue,
and possibly slip over that invisible line,
it separates social and pathological drinking,
and it gets to be about right here.
I want to tell you about a second line
that I believe
that some people in AA have passed.
I know I did.
I don't think the percentage
of all AA members
is very high
that includes those
who passed this second line.
I don't know that it has a name,
but it is an experience.
It's when,
that just possibly,
you finally got to a state of
being even.
The fun,
the joy,
the inner security
that it appears to bring,
drinking.
That drinking appears to bring.
And all the related things that go with it.
It seems as if there's a power added
that makes us
appear whole.
And then one day we take one more drink.
And the scales go pink.
And they will forever be there.
Never again will they tap back.
Not one time of all the thousands of people
whom I know today in AA
and have known in the past,
do I know of one human being
who has brought the scales back.
Once they pass the halfway mark,
they're there forever.
Now there's this second thing.
And that's when we live in this existence
for years and years and years.
When the good continues to dribble away,
this feeling of security
and inner release that comes from drinking,
the support system seems to shatter.
The support system that alcohol brings.
And there's nothing but more misery,
more shame,
more embarrassment,
and more other things.
And more other things that degrade us
as a human being.
This becomes our daily experience.
There is a second line
that some people in AA pass.
It's when they're given the insight
to recognize
their real problem.
Alcohol will surely kill me
if I continue drinking.
I must and I will do something
about this condition that exists in my life.
I'll quit drinking.
And one finds they can't quit drinking.
The chains that bind us are never felt
until it's too late to break them.
And that was my experience.
I recognized approximately two years
before I took my last drink,
the nature of my problem.
My real problem or my dilemma
was my lack of power.
The nature of that particular problem
as it exists in my life
is that I was alcoholic.
And slowly and surely,
I was going on a course to destruction,
not only to myself but those about me.
And I recognized this condition in my life
and was absolutely powerless
to do anything about it.
I could not be anything different
than what I had become.
And the reason why
was the lack of power in my life.
I swear that I do believe
that that two-year period was a...
It was hell.
I suffered.
And suffer is a good word.
It is applicable in this case.
I usually look askance
at someone tells me
when someone tells me
about their suffering.
Hurt, I understand.
But this is a suffering.
It really is.
It's an inner anguish.
It is a soul sickness.
It's a cancer of our very being
when we recognize the nature of a problem
and are powerless to do anything about it.
I was told to have faith
and everything would work out.
I was told to pray
and there would be results.
Let me tell you the difference
in Alcoholics Anonymous
and religion as I understand it.
And oh my goodness
don't any of you even suspicion
that I'm not big on religion
because I am.
But there really is a difference.
It is a difference
that saved my life
and I suspicion yours.
They said,
son if you'll just have hope
it really will work out.
If you will have faith
these things will come about in your life.
And if you pray
there will be answers.
And I said,
how do you do it?
I did not know.
And they gave me their answers.
Now listen to this.
These answers work for them.
So never should we criticize.
Those answers represent a movement
among peoples of all time
that's been the grandest experience
in the human experience.
One of these is called Christianity.
There are many of them.
But did you know
that was not
and it would not be
by experience that way.
The difference in these two
is subtle
but it does exist.
When I came to you
no one said pray.
No one said have faith.
No one said have hope.
They really didn't.
And I do not tell people today
to pray.
I do not tell people to have faith
or hope.
I say here are the things we did.
And if you do them
then you will learn to pray.
And your prayers will be answered.
There are certain conditions
that I had to fulfill.
Before this
there didn't seem to be
any particular conditions.
I needed to do those things first
and then it would all work out.
It's not the way A does it.
A said there are conditions
that you have to fulfill
if you want to be able to pray.
And quite quickly
that's step one through step nine.
And by George
it worked out exactly
like they told me
by the time I had worked my way around
to some of these steps.
In fact
listen to this.
I was amazed
before I was halfway through.
I am a living example
of every promise
that I can find in the big book
being a daily experience
one or the other
a combination of many of them
or in some few instances
every one of them
have been my daily experience.
Since the conditions
have become fulfilled.
And you know sometimes
I think it's an injustice
to new people in AA
to tell them
if they'll just come on in here
and everything's going to work out.
And then we wonder
why we have so many slippers
in our group.
Personally
I think it is better said
some rough sledding ahead
but boy howdy cowboy
it's a lot easier
our rough sledding
than your best time.
Here are the things we did.
And guess what
the very first one
they talk about is.
We admitted
we were powerless.
Way back there
you remember
in the early on pages
of the big book
it says
the lack of power
was my dilemma.
And then we gain
an insight
about what to do
so that we recognize the power.
Every trouble
every bad experience
all sadness
all things of this nature
that are recognizable
by a review
of my past.
Not only my immediate past
but back to my first conscious memory
up to this one moment in time.
Every trouble I have ever experienced
was immediately preceded by
a decision
based on self.
I don't know about you
but there is not one exception
to that in my life.
Later in my drinking
I experienced a lot of trouble.
For whatever my memory is worth
and you know
you can add to Mars Lane's
which is pretty good
in some of these things.
The last year or so that I drank.
I drank enough
to become unconscious
every day.
Every day of my life
I drank enough
to become unconscious.
And I could not understand
why things were as they were
in my life.
But today
I know.
You see
I didn't have the power
to be anything different
than what I had become.
I think one of the most hateful things
that a poor old drunk hears
is hey
you don't have to be down there.
Why don't you get up
and straighten up.
It's as if
you think
he might like
being where he is.
You know.
I heard
I don't know
that there is an expression
that I didn't hear
about my condition.
You know
straighten up and be a man.
All of those things.
Every one of them.
And you know
while they were saying those things
I was thinking to myself
my God almighty
I hate being what I am.
Why can't I be different?
Why can't I be different?
Why do I have to do the things
that I do?
And then daily sit
and look at tears flow
from their eyes.
And the one that I just
God almighty
I couldn't stand it.
I couldn't stand it
was silence.
Silence that was directed
toward me.
And they were hurt.
They weren't putting on.
Their hearts were breaking.
They lived in despair.
And really
it had a lot to do
with my behavioral pattern.
And I like them
wanted me to be
something different
than what I had become
and didn't have the power
to do it.
I had every suggestion
made to me
that I have ever heard
by preachers
mothers
wives
kids
brothers
friends
all the gamut.
They all wanted me
to be something different
than what I had become.
I even in some instances
was totally willing
I felt that I was
to cooperate with them
but I couldn't be
anything different.
I was just exactly
what I was
because I didn't have
the power to do it.
You know I know today
beyond all knowing
that there really
isn't any good people.
There aren't any good people.
There aren't any bad people.
It's like Chuck C. says.
They're just the people
who know
and those who don't know.
But no good and no bad.
Do you know what I know today?
I know that I have available to me
any time I want to plug in
the power
to be different
than what I am
right now.
And each time I'm caught up
in the company
of people like you
there's an inspirational effect.
And you know what you do for me?
You make me want to be better
than I am right now.
And the result of me being here
is that
since I know there is a power
is that you will have contributed
to making me better
than I am today.
And I'm grateful for that.
I truly am grateful.
I don't really want to get carried away.
I have a little more to say.
How do you think I fulfill
the role of spiritual speaker?
They would have a fit
in my home group
if they knew that someone
had designated me
the Sunday morning spiritual speaker.
There's one old man
that doesn't have a tooth in his head
and he would go hollering
and he would go
ha, ha, ha.
They talked to me
about the second step of A.
See, it's all power in it.
I had been in A a long time
before I even knew
the word existed.
I came to believe that a power
greater than ourselves
could restore us to sanity.
Have you ever considered
who ourselves is?
The step says greater than ourselves.
Who is ourselves?
I think we need to know
who ourselves is
before we understand
the depth and the meaning
of that one particular step.
I do believe
that the original ourselves
was the writer of that step
plus the other people
with whom he kept company.
Such as Bill Wilson
and 99 other men.
It says we came to believe
that a power greater than ourselves
could restore us to sanity.
It doesn't say one thing.
Now, let me tell you something.
Man, you can't get much higher
in my group than to be
a volunteer, you know,
washer of cups.
And that's big stuff.
That's a particular kind of food
that when we take of it,
we become better people
as washing coffee cups
in an AA clubhouse.
That's big stuff.
But that isn't what
they're talking about
in the second step.
It doesn't say anything
about going to seven meetings a week,
although that's good stuff.
What the step says
that we come to believe
that a power greater than me
and all of you
can restore me to sanity.
Now, this does not mean
by any stretch of your imagination
that it's not a very good thing
to come to AA,
wash coffee cups,
come to seven meetings a week
and be the official greeter
and stay in a state called
not drinking and be kind of dingy.
Now, that's okay.
But there's something
a little bit beyond it.
And that comes as the result
of addressing ourselves
to a power greater than me
and all of you people here today.
And then I can be restored
to two things.
Sobriety and sanity.
Everything about our program
relates to power.
I have found that I have tapped
a previously unknown source of power
as a result of coming
to some degree of sanity
and sobriety in my life.
And this has to do with
the recognition of the power
and possibly
where in it lies.
You know,
have you ever seen
the look on a little girl
like three or four years old face
when she first sees a kitten?
Or the look on a little boy's face?
When he's three or four years old
when he first sees a dog?
You should have seen the look
that came upon my face
the first time I really
kissed Marceline.
You should have seen the look
that was about me.
The very, very first time
that I saw our firstborn.
I've seen it in others.
I see it in A.A. clubhouses
all across the nation.
That's where the power is.
You see,
my belief is that I do not have
an individualized power,
a Bob White power
that has the capacity
to generate anything
as soft and tender
as a child's smile.
I don't think that
me, my face,
my facial expressions
are constructed in such a manner
that will allow a look
to come over me
or be about me
when I'm talking
to a drunk
that says in essence to me
there's something so badly wrong
in my life
I do not want to be
what I am
and I don't have the power
to be different.
And do you know
I know
I take on
a different appearance
when I do these things.
This power
is so amazing
that it gathers people
like you and me
together
every day
across the nation
in meeting halls
and in conventions.
The third step
of Alcoholics Anonymous says
and it talks about
turning our will
and our life
over to
the care of God
as we understand God.
The thing that I needed
above all else,
all things to know
in AA
was what my will was.
And as a result
of good sponsorship
and a lot of time
in the big book of AA
I discovered
that my will
was the thing
that had got me
in all of that trouble.
You remember
a while back
that I mentioned
that every problem
and every trouble
that I had ever experienced
was immediately
preceded
by an expression
of self-will.
And inevitably
they led to bad trouble.
The most apt description
of an alcoholic
that I have ever read
is in the big book of AA.
Self-will
run right.
And with good sponsorship
attending lots of meetings
it came to me
that the thing
above all things
that I needed to be rid of
in this life
was my will.
And AA
gave me a step
to come to an understanding
of it
that I could make
this transition.
The transition
that has to do with
my will
and giving it to God.
And the life
that they talk about
in the third step
is my direction.
I need a place to go.
I later need a place to be.
Although this is the day
that I express in.
It's the only time
I've ever had
or ever will have
to express myself
is right now.
But I need direction
in my life
so that I will not
ever again get lost.
So if I turn my life
and my direction
over into the care
of this power.
This is the miracle
of the program of AA.
I will always be
at home.
Isn't that nice?
I'm not going home.
I'm home.
I'm not looking
for a place to be.
I'm there.
I'm not urging you
to locate
someplace else.
You're home.
You're home
and you're
and I'm home
and I do believe
it will forever
be that way.
Later on
quite soon
we're going to hear
as we stand
and hold hands
these words.
We're going to end
the prayer
with
something like this.
For thine is
the kingdom
and the power
and the glory
forever.
You know when I think
about kingdom
I think
for maybe
the very first time
I know today
where it all is.
I think that maybe
for the very first time
not just today
but some days past
this has come to me.
That if there's a kingdom
then there surely
is a king.
And I know beyond all knowing
that I am His son.
And as so
I have inherited
and I am a prince
I really am.
I am a prince
of His kingdom
my Father's kingdom.
And in this prayer
that is my recognition
this is
when I certify
that He's the king
and I am
His kid.
The kingdom
and the power
and even the Lord's prayer
that we use
to close
AA meetings
recognizes the fact
that never ever
again
will you and I
be in a position
caught up
in circumstances
of life
where we find
that we do not
want to be
what we want to be.
What we want to become
and be helpless
in the face of it.
For thine is the power
and He has given
us the use
of this power
so that we might do
certain things.
And the key
to me
has to do
with just one word.
It's nothing
that I do
and I can't
make brownie points.
I believe
with every fiber
of my being
He loved me
just as much
at the very
worst
of my drinking
as He does
this morning.
I don't believe
that I had any more
to answer for
then
than I do
today.
Because you see
I have become
a knower
and I might
be more answerable
today
than I was
then.
I know
and I know
that you know
the power
and the glory
forever.
You know what
I think the glory
is this Sunday
morning?
I think
it's mine,
it's my recognition
and your recognition
of the source
of the power.
Do you believe it?
I believe it.
For thine is
the kingdom
and the power
and the glory
forever.
And ever
and ever
and ever
and ever
and ever
I sure do love
you people.
Thank you.
Well,
I think
that's enough
for me
I wanted
to say
thanks
to you
all
for helping
It's just a small token of our love for you.
Again, I want to thank all of you for being here this weekend
and hope all of you have a safe trip home.
And we'll be looking forward to seeing each and every one of you and a friend next year.
Now, will you all stand and help me close this meeting with the Lord's Prayer.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
But deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.
Amen.