The Daily Ripples Podcast

Growth isn't a destination — it's a lifelong unfolding. In this episode, Pastor Mike and Corey dig into what it really means to stay teachable, and why "just not drinking today" is a starting point, not a finish line. Growth is a lifelong discovery. The more we walk faithfully each day, the more wisdom, clarity, and purpose unfold. Mike opens up about coming into recovery as someone who was convin...

Happiness isn't the goal. Contentment is. And those are very different things. Today Corey opens with one of his most raw and honest moments yet — from a closet with a gun to running over 12 mailboxes on purpose, to finding out years later that one of those mailboxes belonged to his boss. And rather than dread, his first reaction was opportunity: a chance to make amends face to face. That's what t...

This is not a self-help program. It's a spiritual one. And that distinction matters more than most people realize. Today Corey and Mike dig into what it actually means to admit your limits — not just intellectually, but in the gut-level, can't-white-knuckle-it-anymore way that opens the door to something new. Corey lands on one of the most liberating lines in the Big Book: our troubles are basical...

We're all born with a God-sized hole in our hearts, and we spend a lot of years trying to fill it with everything but God. Today Mike and Corey dig into one of the more vulnerable topics the Daily Ripples has touched — loneliness, and the unhealthy patterns it drives. Controlling others. Depending on them too heavily. Chasing relationships to quiet the emptiness inside. Both men get honest about h...

No single method solves every struggle. Not the steps alone. Not church alone. Not therapy alone. Today Mike and Corey dig into something the founder of AA himself put in writing — AA is not a cure-all, even for alcoholism. That kind of honesty takes humility. And humility, it turns out, is the whole ballgame. Mike shares how it took being broken down completely before he could even consider askin...

Change doesn't announce itself. It starts with a small realization — something someone says in a meeting, a quiet thought about calling someone you haven't talked to in a while — and if you pay attention to it, something new starts to take root. Today Mike and Corey dig into what it means to nurture those small moments instead of letting them pass. Corey's old sponsor Doug had a line that stuck: y...

They're back. After a week of wonderful guest voices, Pastor Mike and Corey reunite for April 21st — and it feels like picking up right where they left off. Today's ripple is about faith as a practice rather than a possession: something you tend, quietly, over time, like a garden. Corey shares the index card system he's been carrying in his pocket — working through one word a month from page 84 —...

Actions tell part of the story. Motives tell the rest. Today Pastor Mike and his wife Cristi are back for day two, and they get into something most of us don't like to examine too closely — the real reason we do what we do. Cristi brings a sharp and honest take: she used to give financially expecting God to return it double, that same week. Mike calls it transactional faith. She calls it growth th...

Two people who met at church, both broken, both in need — and found each other there. Today Pastor Mike brings in his most personal guest yet: his wife Cristi. Together they unpack what real connection actually requires, and it turns out it's not having it together. It's being willing to admit that you don't. Cristi brings a perspective that's easy to miss in a recovery-focused podcast — she's not...

Deception rarely starts as a big lie. It starts as a small one — like a kid on a scooter faking a scraped knee to draw attention away from the friend he just hurt. Today Corey goes solo and gets bracingly honest about honesty itself: how it doesn't come naturally, why self-appraisal alone is never enough, and what it actually took — the steps, a sponsor, another human being willing to sit with him...

Fear doesn't always look like fear. It shows up as anger, resentment, control, isolation — and if you've been carrying it long enough, it starts to feel normal. In today's solo episode, Pastor Mike gets personal about what fear actually is — not just an emotion, but a soul-sickness that distorts the lens through which we see God, other people, and ourselves. The good news? You don't have to be fea...

There's a difference between a reaction and a response — and that gap is where freedom lives. On Larry's final day as guest co-host, he and Pastor Mike land on something worth sitting with: when you react to someone, they're actually in control of what you say and do. But when you pause and respond from who you truly are, your words belong to you again. Mike adds a recovery room classic — a 33-yea...

Anger is almost never really about what it looks like on the surface. Today Pastor Mike and Larry — two United Methodist pastors working through it like the rest of us — dig into what anger actually is: a secondary emotion, usually rooted in fear. Larry brings a simple but powerful tool: get curious. Ask what's going on in you before you react to what's going on out there. And Mike adds a recovery...

Holding a resentment doesn't hurt the person you're holding it against — it hurts you. And here's the thing nobody tells you: you might be the only one still in the room. Today Pastor Mike and his friend Larry — two pastors, two perspectives — dig into why releasing resentment is less about the other person and more about putting down luggage that was never yours to carry in the first place. If so...

Today's a special one — you're getting a double episode. Corey, Zach, and Bill recorded their take on the ripple, and Pastor Mike sat down separately with another friend named Larry to do the same (apparently, he only knows other elders named "Larry"). Two conversations, one stone. Because self-pity deserves to be surrounded. The stone for today: Self-pity feels comforting at first, but it slowly...

When destructive patterns rule your thinking, you don't even realize the choices you're no longer making. Today Corey, Bill, and Zach dig into what it actually means to pause before acting on impulse — and whether our patterns are better understood as destructive habits or simply the past experience we keep running on autopilot. The conversation goes deep on the gap between thoughts and actions, t...

Blame feels powerful. It just doesn't actually do anything. As long as someone else is responsible for your condition, nothing can change — because you're not the one holding the lever. Today Corey, Zach and Bill continue their guest run with one of the rawest conversations yet, including the story of sitting in a suicide cell after a SWAT team raid, still blaming everyone else, and the moment som...

Nobody gets a trophy for doing what they were supposed to do all along. Today Bill and Zach are back with Corey, and they dig into one of the more uncomfortable truths in recovery; that real maturity shows up quietly, in the unglamorous moments when nobody's watching and nobody's clapping. They share the moment it clicked: doing the dishes for his wife purely out of love, no audience, no score-kee...

Whatever masters you, confines you. Pride, resentment, obsession, indulgence — any one of them can quietly take the wheel while we tell ourselves we're free. Today Corey is joined by Zach and Bill, who step in for Pastor Mike and bring a fresh perspective to the ripple, digging into what it actually means to stop living by self-propulsion and start trusting that something greater can supply what w...

Desire isn't the problem. It's what happens when desire bends inward — twisted by ego, fear, and control — that things start to go sideways. In today's episode, Pastor Mike opens up about 17 years of atheism and what it actually took to face himself honestly enough to find his way back to faith. Corey unpacks how even recovery itself can become another stage for the ego if we're not careful. The w...

Nobody gets here alone. Behind every step forward there are people who prayed, sacrificed, and held things together when we couldn't. Today Pastor Mike and Corey turn gratitude into something more than a list — they ask what it actually looks like to honor the people who showed up for us. The conversation takes some unexpected turns, including a question Corey's been sitting with: did I ever reall...

Growth is not an event. It's a process — and most of what we're working through runs a lot deeper than the surface issue we think we're dealing with. In one of the most personal episodes yet, Corey shares the story of meeting his birth mother for the first and only time — three days before she died — and how grief counseling years later revealed he'd never actually processed the loss. Sometimes he...

There are really only two moves ego makes: rise above everyone, or disappear beneath them. Today Pastor Mike and Corey unpack why both of those postures — as different as they look — are just two sides of the same isolation. Real connection only happens when we stop competing and stop hiding and just stand among. Pastor Mike's old sponsor Steve Davis put it simply: he was just another bozo on the...

Pride and insecurity — they look like opposites, but they share the same root. Both are chasing something outside of ourselves to tell us we're okay. Today Pastor Mike and Corey get personal about what that chase actually looks like — from Corey's story of a 13-year-old kid who found belonging in a bottle, to the quiet freedom of doing good and not needing to tell anybody about it. The moon doesn'...

It's easy to see everyone else's contribution to the problem. It's a lot harder — and a lot more freeing — to look honestly at your own. Today Pastor Mike and Corey dig into what it actually means to stop rewriting the story to protect yourself, drawing on the Big Book's "director of the play" analogy and a therapist's well-timed truth bomb about letting go of the old you. As Corey puts it: how fr...