Video Transcript: The Serenity Prayer

Hi, my name is Steve Elzinga and I want to welcome you to this mini course on  the Serenity Prayer. I have a little slide I want to show you this is this was sort  of a retreat center, my brother and I worked on this past spring in Georgia. And  this was the first morning I woke up and I took this picture of the sunrise out of  

the back door. And I thought, This is a picture of serenity. So we're gonna look at the Serenity Prayer. And this is how it goes. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom  to know the difference. Living One day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time  accepting hardship is the pathway to peace, taking as he did the sinful world as  it is not as I would have it, trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender  to His will, that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with  

him forever in the next. Amen. All right, the author of the Serenity Prayer is  Reinhold Niebuhr he was a theologian in the 30s in the 40s, and 50s. And I  thought, you know, I can I can maybe bore you with some of his life details, or I  can sort of help you understand the man. And I thought, you know, I'm gonna  just give you a few quotes of Reinhold Niebuhr and you'll get a sense of who he  was. Nothing that is, he writes, nothing that is worth doing, can be achieved in  our lifetime, therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing, which is true or  beautiful or good makes complete sense. In any immediate context of history.  Therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous can be  accomplished alone, therefore, we must be saved by love. Another quote, There was a time when I had all the answers. Remember that? Maybe in your teenage years, you had all the answers. My real growth began when I discovered that  the questions to which I have the answers, were not the important questions.  You find some of you that as you get older, your questions become harder. You  know, when you're young, it's sort of a simplistic view of life, and you start  thinking you figure things out. But as you get older, harder questions come to  mind questions that aren't so easily figured out. Another quote, ultimately, evil is  done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know  themselves and do not probe deeply. Another one, it's always wise to seek the  truth in our opponents error, and the error in our own truth. I think this one is  very appropriate in our we live in this information age, so called information age, it's often the misinformation age. The internet is a wonderful tool. You're you're  taking this class by the internet. But the internet spews out information. As if it  was all true, then of course, it's not all true. And how do you know, and people  will watch something on the internet. And then now they think they're experts on  whatever it is that they learned. And often, it seems to me that that people have  become more, more sure of themselves or a little bit presumptuous in what they  think they know. People have become very opinionated. And they let their  opinions be known. And they're often feisty about any opinion that is different.  And so people have a hard time having a discussion, I think, especially when  when people disagree, it becomes often a conflict. We have conflict in 

marriages, conflict in families, conflict in churches, conflict in communities  conflict, globally. It seems like our world is filled with conflict. And there's no way  often of coming together, even as a husband and wife. Husbands and wives end up fighting over the same things for decades without making any progress  whatsoever, and in part because of what Reinhold Niebuhr is saying here that  we that we often are satisfied with our own particular view. And we think our  opponent, the person that we're talking to, that we're arguing with, we think that  their view has no merits of any sort. It's sort of all or nothing. And therefore, how  do you ever resolve anything? How do you ever meet in the middle? Always, it's  always wise to seek the truth in our opponents error. In other words, you believe that the person you're talking to is an error, but is there some truth to what he or  she is saying? And then you have your own opinion about things. But is there  some error in Could you be wrong about one particular aspect of what you're  talking about? If people had this attitude, we can actually have more profitable  discussions. All right, so he wrote the Serenity Prayer in the 1930s. I think it was for some convention, he just, you know, he's one of these kinds of authors that,  that he sort of writes profound things. And he did it for some convention, but  didn't really go anywhere. Until the 1940s. In the 1940s, the AA people,  Alcoholics Anonymous was started by two men who are trying to help people get past the addiction of alcohol, they wrote what is known as the 12 steps, the 12  traditions, and one of the traditions, if you go to an AA meeting, even today, one  of the traditions is to end the meeting, or at some point in the meeting, say, the  serenity prayer together. And because of the popularity of AA, this prayer,  became known by a wider audience. So what we're going to do with the eight  sessions that follow is we're going to look at each piece of the Serenity Prayer.  And we're going to discuss it from two points of view, one, one point of view, is  how the Serenity Prayer can help you in your life, how it can be applied to your  day. And secondly, how the Serenity Prayer can be used in ministry. As you go  out in your day, and people are hurting or going through things, the Serenity  Prayer might be one way that you can sort of bring God into the conversation,  prayer into the conversation, hope into the conversation. And in order to help  you do both of those things. We have several serenity prayer merchandises a  cup with the whole serenity prayer on it. We have some jewelry, here's a  bracelet, here's a couple of pendants, necklaces, that all have the serenity  prayer. So you know, as you go out in your day, and you're drinking your coffee,  it's like you're taking this prayer with you in your day. So it's a sort of a subtle  reminder to you that that that God is, is worth trusting that even though things  might be difficult, there is hope. Or maybe you're wearing the Serenity Prayer,  it's just a reminder to you, but it's also a reminder to the people that you deal  with. And it's a reminder for you to share. the Serenity Prayer was someone who is going through a difficult time and needs a word of hope. So it's, it's for you, 

and it's for helping others. So glad you're on board. I look forward to spending  the next eight sessions with you