July 4 - Faith Awakens

Faith isn't always built from scratch. Sometimes it was there all along — buried, ignored, waiting to come back to life. On Independence Day, Pastor Mike and Cristi talk about the faith that awakens from within. Faith is not always created from nothing. Often it is uncovered. What has been buried or ignored can come alive again. Cristi opens with faith born of desperation — raising two boys with times where all she had was faith the size not of a mustard seed, but a watermelon, because she needed something to move, and it did. She learned not to dismiss what she couldn't explain, because it was real to her, and that faith carries into her daily life today. Mike grounds the theme in Big Book page 55 — deep down in every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God. We're created for communion, born with an idea of God already in us. He connects it to the childlike faith Jesus calls for, and to his own story: a faith he was born with, then tried to bury under relationships and alcohol, that began to reawaken when someone asked him the question he couldn't answer — why do you think you know more about this than billions of people who've ever lived? That, he believes, was God getting the attention of his rational mind. Cristi shares as a preacher's kid who never physically strayed from church but whose actions didn't always match — and the God who kept whipping her back into shape, reminding her you still belong to me. The season of watching siblings flourish while she struggled, and the lesson that landed: get your eyes on the right thing, and He'll take care of the rest. When she did, everything else was taken care of. Romans 6:23 closes it — the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. And a word for anyone not there yet: be patient with yourself, don't compare your walk to anyone else's, and know you aren't where you were yesterday. Over time, faith becomes as natural as breathing, steady and sustaining. Christian recovery | 12-step faith | sobriety devotional | faith awakens | childlike faith | born with God's idea | testimony | addiction recovery | AA and faith | sober living | daily reflection Daily entries at dailyripples.com — [email protected] Daily Ripples connects recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day.