Numbers 4:1-5:31, Mark 12:18-37, Psalms 48:1-14, Proverbs 10:26
Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am not Brian. I am Jill, Brian’s wife. It is an honor, as Brian always says, but it is. It’s truly an honor to be here with you today on the 5th day of March. The crew is back from Israel. Brian is resting and I think that even God Himself took a day of rest after creation to look back and call it good. So, Mr. Hardin is resting today. And man, is it good to be together. So, I’ve got my coffee, got my Wind Farm coffee and my favorite More mug and Jesus is here. So, let’s read the word together in the New International Version continuing this week. Starting in Numbers 4, reading through Numbers 5.
Commentary:
You know, every time I come to the gospels and I re-read this passage of the greatest commandment, I just kind of sit with it and I just kind of reflect at the simplicity of the message, that the greatest commandment…Jesus himself answers the greatest commandment…the greatest thing that you can do, is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength. And I can’t help but wonder what it would look like if we could really, truly focus on loving our Lord God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. If that became our pursuit, if that became our main objective for the day, if we could, perhaps, lay aside arguing systematic theology, if we could forget about political differences, if we could stop thinking about how we’re going to get back at the people that hurt us and wronged us, if we stop focusing on what we don’t have or what we didn’t get, and if we just simply focused on loving the Lord our God with all that we are capable of doing. And then the second commandment is simply, love your neighbor as yourself. And this one always gets me because I look around where we live and I don’t know some of my neighbors. I know some really well and some I couldn’t even tell you who lived there. And I don’t know if this means the literal sense like your neighbors, but maybe it does. Maybe if we could love them the way that we loved ourselves, which then further complicates it because how many of us can say we truly love ourselves without holding ourselves in self-contempt? But this would mean that there’s no room for self-hatred. Ladies, this means that we cannot despise our bodies and love ourselves. We can’t live in a constant state of past regrets. We have to apply a forgiveness of Christ to ourselves, love ourselves first so that we could love our neighbors. Man, we could complicate it, can’t we? But if we just come back to the basics, if we just take Jesus at His word of begging the question that is already presented to Him in the gospels in saying, God, with all of the things, with all of the things in Your Word, the ones that we don’t know which ones apply and which ones do apply, but what is the one that You would say matters the most? What do we need to work on to get this right? And it boils down to love me, love your neighbor, love yourself. Love the ones you know, love the ones you don’t know, love the ones you disagree with as much as the ones you agree with.
Prayer:
So, Jesus, as this community of people who long for something more that return to Your word every single day, would You show us what it looks like to love You with our whole heart, our whole soul, our whole mind and our whole strength? Would You deepen and widen our capacity? Would You show us what it looks like to love our neighbor as ourselves? Would You teach us with looking in the mirror and learning to love ourselves, knowing that we’re not the same person we were yesterday and we are not quite yet who we are fully becoming to be, that we could extend Your forgiveness to the places of our hearts and our lives that we need to forgive ourselves? Would You let regret propel us to repentance? And repentance is where true change can come in and the work of the Holy Spirit can begin and reform our hearts, renew our mind. You are love and You are a loving God. And it is Your perfect love that casts out fear. So, Father, we need Your perfect love and we want to extend it to a world in need and we want to extend it to ourselves. We want to extend it to our neighbors. Would You help us simply do just that? I thank You for this community, who loves each other so beautifully, so well. I pray that every single one of them would know the love of their Father, a reckless love today, every day, tomorrow, in the night. And as we feel loved, Father, would it spill over and flow out and be reciprocated to everyone we come in contact with. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Announcements:
So, I have the mic. I guess I get to talk about whatever I want to. And boy, I could talk about a lot of things. But I want to talk about what I’m most passionate about and obviously that is the More Gathering that’s coming up, in gosh, just a little over a month.
You know, every year I say that I am even more excited, which once you have a word of reference, like a word like More, you just start…you just start like becoming so aware of its content. So, I don’t mean to be
pun-ny, but I am more excited every year. And every year we pray, are we supposed to even do this? Does it look the same as last year? Does it look different? That the team, you know, is the team going to change? And I ask them to pray, are you supposed to be involved? And every year the changes are pretty much made known before we ever leave the camp for the year that we’re doing. I pretty much get a sense of the change for going ahead the next year. And just some minor changes, some major changes, but every year I get more and more sense of responsibility. And what I mean by that is the weight that this carries. That this isn’t just how many women we can get to show up so that they can have a beautiful time away on the mountain and get served beautiful hot delicious food and have unmatched scenery and make these beautiful lasting friendships with perfect strangers that live across the country but might become the most treasured friendships that you have in your life. And there’s nothing wrong with all of those things. Those are beautiful things. But the weight of responsibility that I’m feeling is…is the sacredness of what Jesus intends to do in the hearts of women that come. So, I can’t look at it as another woman’s name on a registration sheet of someone that I may or may have not met yet, but I’m feeling the weight behind it of this is a woman with a story. And every woman has a story. And, unfortunately, every story is laced with pain and suffering. And sometimes we just get tripped up by the pain and the suffering and we just can no longer live from a place of life and life more abundantly. It just becomes existence. It just becomes daily maintenance and that is no way to live for anybody. And, so, I feel the weight of that story behind the woman. And I'm…like I’m already getting stories of what women are coming and facing and leaving behind. And I’m overwhelmed sometimes. I am most humbled where I can just sit at the feet of Jesus and wash His feet with my tears, that we get a first-hand view of the healing that takes place, of the purpose that He speaks to these women of a story of nothing is wasted. I waste nothing and I will redeem everything if you let me. In my way, in my time, not yours, which is so hard for us to do. But, I mean, I could go on and on and on, but that’s it in a nutshell. This is where I have boiled away all of what More Gathering is. And this is the content. This is it in a nutshell on my silver platter that I bring and say, if you are after more in a sense of life is not over. Life is not over. Your worst days are not in front of you. Your worst days are behind you and your best days are yet to come. Because Jesus who comes to heal the brokenhearted and set the captives free, that makes all things new can make all things new, including you. And, so, I’m excited about More Gathering 2018. That’s all I’m going to say. There’s still time to register and we so hope that you do. My team and I meet monthly and we are praying specifically for every heart that is supposed to be there, that every heart would be open and receptive to the more that Jesus has for you. So, there’s still time to register, moregathering.com. Unfortunately, all of our deluxe rooms are sold out. They sell fast. There’s usually a waiting list, but we do have some other options for you as well. And, of course, if you have any questions, you can email me - jill@dailyaudiobible.com and I’ll be happy to answer any of your questions.
Okay, I’m going to get out of here for today. I’ll be back with you tomorrow, one more day as Brian rests, rejuvenates, because you know what? We are people that are horrible at resting. I think just as a society as a whole life has gotten so fast that we are terrible at resting. And then you have somebody like Brian, whose mind never turns off. And, so, he can’t sit still and he’s got to be doing stuff, but this is so good for him, to just relax. Because you know what? Restoration can only happen when we rest. Rest is the root word of restoration. There’s a reason for it. We must rest to be restored. And, so, we’re praying sweet restoration, rejuvenation to every cell of his body, mind, and soul, and spirit as he rests.
If you have a prayer request, the number is 877-942-4253. That is in the USA. And if you are calling, obviously from a different country, we love that, but those numbers are listed, I believe, on the website. The website is www.dailyaudiobible.com.
Okay, that’s it. I really need to be done. This is me peace-ing out. I will be back with you tomorrow. Until then, love one another.
Hi I’m Borrowed Wisdom. Heavenly Father I pray thee for Brian well he’s out on his mission. I ask You Holy Father God in the name of Jesus Christ to keep them safe and sound from harm and danger, him and his family. I thank You Lord that You have blessed them boldly to preach thy word and to teach others oh God. I thank You Lord that he’s equipped Father God to give understanding clarity, Father the Lord. I pray thee for traveling mercies oh Lord and that he have victory over all circumstances and situations. I pray holy Father God to give him flexibility and a discerning spirit with everyday matters. I thank You Lord that though have blessed him bountifully to make this journey every year and to live boldly and courageous to teach thy word every year faithfully. Thank You Lord. Blessings, glory, honor, dominion, authority and victory in the mighty name of Jesus Christ before him. And I pray thee with much praise, supplication, __ and I thank You in my heart for him and his family. In Jesus’ name. Glory glory, glory.
Hey folks. To be a Blessing in California calling. Wanting to encourage you to pray always. Don’t stop praying. A friend was sharing with me about an accident that his brother…that his brother’s friend had that was life-threatening. There were no brain waves taking place. And people getting ready to say it’s not going to work, it’s not going to work. Distraught family spoke with my friend. My friend asked if he could pray with them and prayer happened and brain waves started. It doesn’t always work like that. God knows what’s best. But the point being, prayer connects us to God. It draws our heart to Him. It helps us to know what is His plan and gives us assurance to know we’re in the best hands ever, the Creator of the universe. Be encourage, be blessed. Have a great day.
Hello my beloveds. This is Candace from Oregon. And, so, it’s still the season of Lent so I need to tell you my lead story. In 2017 the first day of Lent was March 1. And about a week before that I had been listening to a lot of you talking about giving up this or that for Lent. Well, I’m not from a liturgical tradition. I’ve been in church faithfully since I was 16 and much really as a small child. I was never in a liturgical church. But just out of curiosity I just happened to say the Lord, Lord you want me to give up something for let. It was almost like an audible…as real as an audible voice…although it wasn’t. He said to me in my heart…it was as though he smiled and put his arm around me and said…how about I give you something for Lent. You know, you don’t have to listen to the news. And it was just a delightful thing for me. And, so, I said okay, because I had been really faithful to hear the news every day. I wanted to be a responsible citizen, a good voter, and that prior year was just brutal. And it was really bad for me. So, I did not hear the news again until Easter. Little did I know that 11 days later, March 11th, I would lose my husband and really need all that emotional space that this allowed me. So, this year something just as amazing happened in regards to the first day of lent. So, I’ll tell you about that next time. Our God is just so tender toward us. Blessings.
Hey DAB family this is Byron out in Florida. Could use all’s help. Next week is going to be a very pivotal week for me because a lot of pivotal things are happening. It’s strange, because I didn’t arrange it like this but it seems like each day next week something very important is going to happen either in my professional life, in my actual job, in my calling vocation, in my ministry, and my personal development, my work with civic organizations. Like every day next week something big happening that I am either in charge of or the something that I do very well it’s just going to bring things to a whole new level. And usually when things get this intense I start getting overwhelmed, I start shutting down, that whole self-sabotage takes over. I’ve got a different feeling about this, which has to be the Holy Spirit because it’s going to be a big week. But I could definitely use your prayers, that I can look forward to into this and be prepared to just execute on a flawless level. And I know it God is calling me to these things. And I want to run into it instead of away from it. So, I really do appreciate your prayers and your guys friendships over the years have brought me to this point. And thank you guys so much. Love you all.
Hi everyone my name is Nora. I’m calling from Canada. I had recently made the decision to get to know God. And the day I got my Bible or the day after was actually when I started getting a lot of anxiety about death and death of loved ones and the end definitely. I attempted to stop my journey in getting to know God as I struggled with thoughts of wanting to end my life so they don’t have to deal with death, which is ironic. But I’ve come so far. It’s been three weeks and it’s been the most potent three weeks of my life. And having been raised on a completely different…a completely different religion, Islam. I am struggling with trusting God without doing anything. So, I guess that’s called legally exempt. And really the struggle is with what can I do…what if I do something wrong…will Jesus leave me? And you know will the enemy have a hold on me if I swear or if I sin in any way, if I gossip. So, I just would love all of your prayers for me and I just…if God could turn my life around I’d want that to be a source of faith and a testimony for other people that…even though I’m crying right now…it’s is been such a joy to get to know Jesus. And He is really peace. Thank you.