Joshua 24; Luke 21:1-28; Psalm 89:38-52; Proverbs 13:20-23
Today is the 22nd day of April. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. Here we are stepping through the threshold into a brand new week that is unlived, right? So it’s brand new, shiny and sparkly. It’s a gift that we get to unwrap slowly day by day as the week unveils itself. And we get to choose how we’re gonna live it. And one of the ways that we make wise choices is to continue the rhythm of the Scripture in our lives and allow God’s word to speak into this week. And so that’s what we’ve come to do. This week we’ll read from the God’s Word translation. And today we will conclude the book of Joshua by reading the final chapter. Chapter 24.
Commentary
Okay, so as we begin this new week, we concluded the book of Joshua. And in concluding the book of Joshua, we also had to say goodbye to Joshua, who lived faithfully. And he lived an incredibly adventurous life but all the way until he was 110 years old. And then as his final days approached, we watched what he did. He followed in the footsteps of Moses who had mentored him into leadership. And he had his own final declarations to say, reminding the people who they were, where they’d come from and the path that was in front of them. Moses did all of this on the other side of the Jordan River. And that is all captured in the entire book of Deuteronomy. Joshua essentially followed in those footsteps from the other side of the Jordan River in the promised land as a reminder. And at the end of Joshua’s life, he told Israel’s leaders to choose, right? To choose whether they would serve the Lord and forever reject anything else, renewing the covenant. And the people affirmed their allegiance to God. And then Joshua dropped the bomb kind of. And this is the part where it’s all of the sudden no longer a story that’s ancient history. Now it’s a story about our own lives. Joshua asked the people to choose who they were going to serve. And of course, he said the famous words: As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And all the people were like, of course, who else would we serve? And then Joshua said something striking. You are a witness to your own decision. What makes this powerful is that the people were agreeing that their lives would serve as a witness against them if they were untrue. It wouldn’t take anyone else’s verdict. The way they lived their lives would be the witness, which makes it a fascinating way to look at our own lives. We are the witnesses for or against our faith based on the way we actually live our lives, right? Because we can present an image of just about anything. But underneath all of that is the truth. And the way we live into our relationships today, the way we conduct our conversations today, all of the thoughts, words and deeds of our lives will be a witness for or against us. The words we choose to say today will be a witness. When we lay our head down to rest this evening, we will have testified to what we really believe about knowing and walking with God. So let’s take this to heart as we move into this shiny sparkly new week. And understand that our lives are the greatest witness for or against what we say we believe. And may we come to the same conclusion the children of Israel did so long ago: we will serve the Lord our God. We will obey only him.
Prayer
And Father, that is our declaration. And we won’t be able to stay true to that without a collaboration. Without the guidance and counsel of your Holy Spirit that is always available. And we collaborate by opening ourselves and paying attention. Slowing down enough to walk with you. To be with you in all of our choices and decisions. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In Jesus name we ask. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian. I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise
Hey Daily Audio Bible family. It’s James the teacher in LA. And I’m actually calling in to respond to Margo in Australia who called talking about your relationship between believers and unbelievers. Really, it’s not a response so much as it’s a testimony. And I’m agreeing with you. Gosh, I don’t know how many years ago now. I was not a believer and I met someone in college who was or she claimed that she was and say that she was. But (inaudible) and we started a relationship. And, honestly, for a long long time I believed that no one was ever going to have a relationship with me. And so I clung to that thing for dear life. It became my idol. (inaudible). And she got advice from a Christian friend who happened to be my best friend telling her to break it off because I’m an unbeliever. So my best friend told my girlfriend to dump me. And if it hadn’t have been for that, I wouldn’t have gotten saved. I wouldn’t have been driven into the arms of Jesus. I wouldn’t have been broken enough. And seeing the genuine love in her eyes and the tears when she told me that she needed to let me go because she didn’t know where I was going to end up in eternity, it triggered something in me that I don’t think anything else on earth would have. So guys, you just may save someone’s life. Obedience, yeah. Alright, I love you guys. Talk to you soon. Bye.
Hey everyone. This is Mel. M-E-L from central Florida. And I wanted to call in today and read to you a prayer that I recently received and found out about two weekends ago at a church retreat that I went to and it’s called the Prayer of Transformation and I know a lot of you… I hope this helps a lot of you or cause I know change is hard and transformation is not the most easy thing to go through so I’m gonna read the prayer and I hope you guys enjoy (it).
Loving Father, Here I am. You made from the (inaudible) that I am right now. I trust that you have an incredible plan for me. Transform me. Transform my life. Everything is on the table. Take what you want to take and give what you want to give. Transform me into the person you created me to be. The very best version of myself. So I can live the life you have envisioned for me. I hold nothing back. I make myself one hundred percent available to you. Lead me. Guide me. And show me what it is you are calling me to. And fill me with the courage and grace to do it. Amen. Well I hope you all can take something from this as I have. It really helped me. I read it everyday. I’ll post it on the Daily Audio Bible friends (page). DAB Facebook friends page or whatever it’s called. And I hope that… Like I said, I hope it helps somebody out there. I hope you all also have a blessed day. Thank you.
Hi. This is Vicky from Arizona. And I’m calling because my husband was diagnosed with cancer. Right now he’s at the end stages of lung cancer. And he has never cried out for Jesus yet. I’ve been believing for this man for 37 years. He got saved when we first were married, but does not walk with Jesus. And I just want prayers that he would when he takes his final breath that he will go home and be with the Lord. That’s the cry of my heart. And if everybody could just lift him up. (inaudible) going through a lot of intense suffering right now. And our whole family is just watching him slowly succumb to this disease. So when Brian was talking this morning about hope deferred makes the heart sick I thought that that is me because I have hope for his salvation and deliverance. For these years I have seen the fruit of my prayer. And I just want that reassurance that God is gonna take him into his arms when he takes his last breath. So if you could pray just peace for our family as we walk through this. Somehow we’ll have the miracle but I don’t even know what the miracle is. And I just want God’s will to be done in our life. And I thank you all for praying. Thank you.
This is Dave from North Carolina. I wanted to thank you for your message where you shared with us Ezekiel and his simple faith the other day. That was so awesome. But mainly I wanted to call because of what you said today Brian about hope. This truly was something that God was speaking to me through you. And that verse, hope deferred makes the heart sick but when desire comes.. That is something I’ve heard many times through the financial peace class with Dave Ramsey. And there was a time when I did not have hope financially but today or recently I’ve had fear and anxiety related to different issues with my personal relationships as well as with my work. And your message really helped clarify where that fear’s coming from. It truly is coming from deferred hope. And I’m just appreciative so much. And II just encourage everyone who didn’t hear the message on the 19th who has any anxiety or fear about anything to listen to that - Brian’s comments about hope. Because putting all our hope in God truly is the answer to any anxiety or fear we have in life. So appreciate you all. Have a great day.
Hi family. I am Grateful To Be A Mother and I’m calling in today to encourage my sister anonymous. I’ve been married for 40 years. I’ve made a lot of mistakes and I continue to make mistakes. But I’ve had a lot of wise people to give me advice. Sometimes our marriages are balloons and fireworks and sometimes it’s just work. Because marriage is just like many other things in our lives. It goes through phases and there are seasons. So sometimes you’re in the season of winter. But be encourage because spring is next. Sometimes the thing that attracts us to a person becomes the very thing that offends us. And I believe that somehow that is the work of Satan. I want to pray for us, family. Father God, we thank you for all things. We thank you for being all things in our lives. We thank you for blessing us and giving us direction. I pray, Father, for the people in our lives that get on our nerves. I ask you Lord to let us see them through fresh eyes. To let us see them the way that you do and that we can see their redeeming qualities. And I also pray, Lord, that you give them a fresh look at us because there are probably things that they can see in us that they don’t appreciate as well. Thank you, Father, for giving us a fresh look allowing us to cherish the people in our lives and to learn more to love…
Good morning DAB family. This is Joyful Noise from Southern California, I’m gonna talk really fast because I heard a couple of women call in and crying out for their marriages and I just want to share with you, that was so me. Between years seven and like ten, I spent entirely too much time looking at what was wrong with my marriage. We will be celebrating, by God’s grace, 25 years of marriage this summer. And we are not perfect. My husband and I decided to work through a lot of things through prayer and supplication, making our requests known to God. There is a poem that…it’s not a poem but but it’s just a little letter to, an open letter to husbands that I shared a couple of weeks ago and I just wanna encourage you, anonymous. And then the other lady that was calling in saying you’ve been married seven years and your heart is breaking because you feel abandoned. Your husband I guess is choosing a different church and there’s some conflict around that. But I just wanna encourage you the mystery and the beauty of marriage is God’s will. (He’s) there to reconcile if we will only humble ourselves. Humble ourselves. So I know that I don’t have a lot of time, but one thing that Lisa the Encourager brought to my attention a couple of months ago is we kept going through these Scriptures about God’s outstretched arm. Is God strong enough? I dunno. Is he strong enough? Do we believe that he’s strong enough? And Brian called it out as well. So I just want to share with you these Scriptures. I’m gonna be praying for you because on the other side of this, God’s gonna be glorified, his plan is reconciliation. That’s why he sent his son to die to reconcile a dark world back to a glorious saviour and a glorious Father in heaven. So God’s strong enough to get you through this. We just have to discern God’s will, right? So Psalm 136:12: with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, his mercy endures forever. His mercy’s over you and over what you’re feeling about your marriage