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Writer's pictureSober AA Member

Pause and Consider - The Upper Room

Pause and Consider

Jennifer Kingsley (Alabama, USA)


All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. - 2 Timothy 3:16 (NIV)


A friend was visiting, and we read The Upper Room together. The passage that day was the parable of the unmerciful servant, and the prayer focus was “Someone I need to forgive.” We talked about the devotion, but I did not think much about it. Later that day, we were...


TODAY'S PRAYER Heavenly Father, help us to listen to your promptings through your word and those around us. When we face obstacles, help us to trust you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.



Ephesians 4:29-32


29 Don’t let any foul words come out of your mouth. Only say what is helpful when it is needed for building up the community so that it benefits those who hear what you say. 30 Don’t make the Holy Spirit of God unhappy—you were sealed by him for the day of redemption. 31 Put aside all bitterness, losing your temper, anger, shouting, and slander, along with every other evil. 32 Be kind, compassionate, and forgiving to each other, in the same way God forgave you in Christ.


THOUGHT FOR THE DAY Today I will listen carefully for the ways God is speaking to me.


PRAYER FOCUS A friend whose example has encouraged me



Gottawanna find love and peace thank you God, thank you Al-Anon, thank you Alcoholics Anonymous


The Upper Room was the original devotional that early AA Members used and read.


they also used The Upper Room, a Methodist publication that provided a daily inspirational message, interdenominational in its approach.


Usually, the person who led the Wednesday meeting took something from The Upper Room [the Methodist periodical mentioned earlier] or some other literature as a subject. S


“Then there was that little nickel book The Upper Room,” she recalled. “They figured we could afford a nickel for spiritual reading. They impressed on us that we had to read that absolutely every morning. There wasn’t any well-equipped bathroom in A.A. that didn’t have a copy. And if you didn’t see it opened to the right day, you immediately began to suspect them.”



Bill Wilson remembered a time when four drunks, still shaking and not knowing what it was about, were staying with Wally and Annabelle. “They would start out in the morning reading from The Upper Room and say the prayers,” he recalled. “



Thank you for your love and prayers - thank you for reading this - thank you God bless you for the healing by being here you are blessing us.


The Books And Materials Early AAs Read

By Dick B.

Early AAs were readers. The Bible was the written word of God. The daily devotionals were written guides. Oxford Group people wrote. Sam Shoemaker wrote. Anne Smith wrote. And there were a great many books available for reading. Dr. Bob was an avid reader, and so was his colleague Henrietta Seiberling. Every pioneer A.A. meeting had tables set out in T. Henry’s house where literature was available. Dr. Bob recommended and circulated many books. He kept a journal which recorded the books loaned, and he quizzed the alcoholics on the Bible and on the written materials they had borrowed from him. Whatever their proclivity for reading, early AAs all attested to the presence of the Bible and The Upper Room. They mentioned The Runner’s Bible. They mentioned E. Stanley Jones books. They mentioned Henry Drummond’s The Greatest Thing in the World. They mentioned My Utmost for His Highest. They mentioned James Allen’s As a Man Thinketh. They mentioned the popular Glenn Clark books, Emmet Fox books, and Harry Emerson Fosdick books. There were religious books, and almost every one elaborated on some aspect of ideas AAs were borrowing from the Bible and the Oxford Group for their basic principles.

There was plenty of material on the Bible, prayer, healing, divine guidance, the Sermon on the Mount, 1 Corinthians 13, and the Book of James. There were Oxford Group/Shoemaker materials on finding God, changing lives, conversion, the guidance of God, fellowship, witness, and the teachings of Jesus. There has, perhaps, never been a fellowship with such diversity of subject matter at the immediate beck and call of its participants. Nor with such encouragement of its study by the “leadership.”





KDTAHGSDRSG


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