Leviticus 7:28-9:6, Mark 3:31-4:25, Psalms 37:12-29, Proverbs 10:5
Today is the 19th day of February. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian, sounding a little more chipper than I feel. Jetlag is not my favorite, but welcome from the land of the Bible here in Israel. We’ve made it safe and sound and are getting all set up to take the journey around this entire land and tonight for the first time we’ll have our opening dinner, and everybody will get to see each other for the first time. I mean, lots people are on the same flights, that’s the thing of it, flights from all over are landing in the land of Israel today and everyone will be collected and we’ll all be together for the first time as a group tonight. So, thank you for your prayers over all of it. A lot of travel is happening today. Jet lag is being experienced today and there are a lot of logistics that are all to be put in place for this journey. So, thank you for your prayers and for the first time this year we will read the Bible from the land of the Bible, which will take us back into the book of Leviticus. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Leviticus 7:28 through 9:6.
Commentary:
Okay. So, in the gospel of Mark, Jesus is talking about agriculture, he’s talking about seedtime and harvest and planting and types of soil and then paralleling that with how people respond to the word of God. So, Jesus talked about a farmer who sowed a lot of seed and the seed itself was all uniformly good, right? Like the seed wasn’t the problem. And the seed had been scattered evenly over the ground so that the dispersion wasn’t the problem. However, after having done all of that, the hope of the harvest for the farmer had a lot more to do with the soil that the seed was planted in, right? The seed and the soil are equally important in the story revealing the collaboration that’s required between the human and the divine in God’s kingdom. And then Jesus kind of unpacks it, talks about the different kinds of soil that this seed fell into and then what happened to the seed because of the soil that it was planted in. So, I mean, we’re like a month…over a month and a half into our journey since the beginning of the year and we’ve been daily interacting with God’s word and we've…you know…we’ve established a rhythm to do this every day for the rest of this year. And, so, the obvious poignant question for us is, what kind of soil our hearts are becoming? None of us don’t want the harvest in our lives, right? We all want the harvest in our lives, but if the seeds only gonna be on the surface it’s gonna get snatched away. If this seed is going to be planted in our hard and stony hearts there is nowhere for the word of God to take root, and if we’re distracted continually by worry or seduced into chasing any other number of desires than the soil of our heart is thorny and it’s gonna choke God’s word out. So, we’re about to take a journey all over the land of the Bible and it will be interactive and it will be fun and I we’ll have a good time and there’ll be lots of pictures posted and lots of conversation about what we’re seeing but since we’re right out in the front of this we can make this very poignant for ourselves. Whether we’re here or whether we’re doing this virtually, maybe it’s time to tend the garden of our hearts. Like, maybe it’s time to intentionally become good soil and not just say, “well, I got what I got”. I mean, the soil back on the other side of the ocean where I live in Tennessee, there’s a lot of rock and there’s a lot of building going on over there, a lot of subdivisions are being built. So, I’ve watched huge, you know, earthmoving machinery smash and pull out and smooth over rocky ground to make it suitable soil for building otherwise, you know, the builder or whoever the developer was to go, “well, the soils rocky, we can’t build anything here”. But instead they kind of tended it and made it what they wanted it to be so they could build on it. We have to tend the garden of our hearts. We have to maintain the soil of our hearts so that it’s good and ready to receive the word of God and the seed that it plants in our lives so that it can be cultivated and become the fruit of the Spirit.
Prayer:
Holy Spirit, we invite You into that by first just taking an assessment of what kind of soil is in our hearts. And the truth probably is that we have all these kinds of soil in our hearts. There are hard places, there are stony places, there are thorny places, but there are good places too, and we want more and more of our heart to be good fertile soil so that we might produce a harvest of 30 60 or even 100 times as much has been planted. So, Holy Spirit show us how to cultivate the soil of our hearts. And we do this in part, by the way that we act and behave toward each other. So, give us an understanding and patient heart Father, we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.
Announcements:
dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here.
Of course, what’s going on around here is that we’re about to begin this is journey all around the land of the Bible and we’re here trying to get acclimated. It’s a drastic difference when you’re moving eight hours into the future because that’s enough time to get your days and nights mixed up and that is what I experience and I don’t like it because I don’t like that disoriented feeling of not really knowing where I’m at and that takes a few days. Thank you for your prayers over that. I know I’m not the only one who experiences it. We’re all in this together. And, yeah, I’ve got my remedies. Every time I mention jetlag on the Daily Audio Bible I get some new ones. Some of them are good. I mean, I’ve tried lots of things, but the bottom line is at some point or another when you’re just getting into the…into the shift your bodies like wait, it’s supposed to be dark and it’s light, we’re supposed to be sleeping but we’re awake, or vice versa and its just part of the journey. So, thank you for your prayers. Tonight, we will all have dinner together and it’ll the first time that we’re all in the same place at the same time and we’ll just set pray into and go over all that will be happening and then tomorrow morning we’ll be loading up and off we’ll go and I will be giving you updates every day about where we’re going, we’re seeing, we’re thinking about, we’re experiencing. And we just ask you to pray for us as we do this journeying. We’ll be leaving in the morning and heading into the wilderness.
Of course, there are other things going on at the Daily Audio Bible at dailyaudiobible.com. The Prayer Wall lives in the Community section. And if you need prayer or if you want to pray for your brothers and sisters, that’s a really good place to reach out. All of our social media channels can be found in the community section of dailyaudiobible.com. This is where we will be posting videos and photographs etc. about the journey and what we’re seeing and experiencing as we’re seeing and experiencing it. So, if want to follow along there. In a few days, this weekend, I believe this is scheduled for Saturday and I’ll get all…I’ve gotta actually get a little bit beyond this jet lag and kind of look up all the different time zones and blah blah blah but we will be broadcasting live once we arrive at the sea of Galilee, and that is always a fun experience because we can take questions from brothers and sisters all over the world who are kind of going on this trip virtually, kind of bring you right in with us where we are at the sea of Galilee. So, I’ll be mentioning that as we get a little bit further.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link, it lives on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. Thank you for your partnership, profoundly and humbly.
If you have a prayer request or comment, there is a number you can dial, 877-942-4253 is that number.
And that’s it for today. Signing off for the first time from the from the land of Israel. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Hey everybody this is Pelham from Birmingham, from Alabama calling. I’m always calling in for myself, it’s always selfishness and I’m working on that. I’m sorry. There’s so many people that I pray for on the line that call that come through. I forgot your name, soccer player that’s gonna be like standing like he’s on the cross every time he scores a goal, the young man that’s waiting to find a club to hire him to get him recruited. Praying for that guy. I’m praying for so many different women going through so many different things. I’m calling today because…I miss my wife. It’s Valentine’s Day. I haven’t talked to her in almost 2 months. She hasn’t said a word to me and she called today, she called this morning. I don’t know what to do. She won’t listen to me. She thinks that the God that I worship is not the right God. She thinks that we serve a different God, that she believes in a different God than me. I don’t know what that means. There’s one God and she knows that. I don’t understand. Please, you all pray for my family, pray for the Morris family and Anderson and Molly and Pelham. Thank you.
Hello Daily Audio Bible, my name is Kevin and I’m reaching out for support as I embark on my quest for a righteous life in the name of the Lord. I feel I have many sins to repent for and I am coming back into my faith after many years away from it. In my 20s __ had kept in contact with the Lord but only through spirts of troubled times. And I’m just calling for support as make my way back into this life and the life God has called upon the. I’ve struggled with the thought that I’d made a family without marriage and I’ve struggled with a past addiction of alcohol and the destruction it caused upon me and others. I hope the Lord will forgive me and I pray to stay in the narrow path He has. May the wisdom of God follow me. Lord keep us safe. Thank you.
Hi guys this is Tito Ramirez again calling from Southern California. I was just calling…I was listening to the community prayer line and I was just drawn to call in. I love you guys so much, and that prayer line is so amazing. I listen to it a lot just like Slave of Jesus, you know, when I commute back and forth and stuff in the car. And Rebecca from Michigan, I know you called a while back asking about how it is that our relationship with the Lord, God’s relationship with the church is like marriage. And I was listening today and I’m not sure what the ladies name was but she called in and was tearful and sad because she was going through a difficult time in her marriage where she had been betrayed and her husband was a sex addict and it sounded like they were trying to work through it but there was a lot of pain and a lot of hurt. And this came at the same time when we were listening to Brian read to us about the children of Israel betraying God in the wilderness and worshiping the calf and the amount of hurt. And God, God kind of, you know, the kids that I treat always say they kind of wore it, He kind of just exposed His emotion and His hurt. And I think that’s one way. And I think that as we go through the Bible and we learn more about God and how He responds and how He actually feels when we do certain things we can understand more about how His relationships are like, you the relationship of a parent and child or a relationship of a marriage with the church. And, you know, just think that how much God loves us when you hear somebody hurt like that, like she was hurting. I always think like, okay, you’re not alone, God knows that or Jesus knows that. It’s the hurt of betrayal and it makes me want to be better because I love Christ and I don’t want to hurt Him like that. I don’t want to hurt God like that. If God loves us perfectly I don’t want to betray that. And, so, I hope that helps to shed some…
Hi, DAB this is Kathleen in Mount Zion Illinois and I’m just calling in for Much Afraid who, I just heard your message on…today is February 15th and you just couldn’t give us a lot of detail on what to pray about. And anyway I just first of all want to thank you for the service to the Lord that you have been doing for the past 15 years there in an Asian country, in a Buddhist country. I can imagine the opposition that you face every day. Whether physical or spiritual, I can just imagine. And you are saying…you weren’t able to really say what was the issue, but it sounded like you are having some spiritual battles. So, I just wanted to let you know that I am praying for you. In fact, let’s just pray right now. Dear Lord Jesus, please give strength of mind and body to Much Afraid, that she can call us another time with her other name that she had mentioned. She said I should Overcome. Lord Jesus I just pray that you give her strength. Whatever battles she is facing just pray that the whole body of DAB listeners right now, thousands and thousands throughout the world pray throughout the world pray. We pray right now for Overcomer, for Much Afraid who will be overcomer and pray that she will strengthen her and thank you again for her heart of a missionary that What she has done I admire that so much…
Hi everyone at Daily Audio Bible, my name’s Megan, I am in London. __ to be calling, this is my first ever call. I first started listening just towards the end of last year but then I decided to restart everything on the 1st of January. Basically, the only reason I’m able to call today is, I, unfortunately had a migraine earlier and was sent home early from work. And its weird how God works in mysterious ways. It means I’ve managed to come home, I’ve got the house to myself for a couple of hours. I was listening to the prayers on the way home and already my head is feeling tons better. So, yeah, prayer is powerful. I can’t quite remember his name, but I think it was something along…Christ is the Light or The Light or The Light of Christ. You called in a couple of weeks ago and you’ve been in my thoughts ever since and I think you’re having a really, really tough time to say the least, but I want you to know that I’ve been praying for you every day and, well, I don’t know if things are better for you yet, but if they’re not I just want you to know God is with you, we’re all with you and I hope you feel His presence and the strength that He gives you. And I’ve got a request myself. Unfortunately, my cousin is estranged from her mother. She’s currently living with my own parent’s. I don’t live there anymore and __ and everything, but it’s really having a really strong impact on everyone. I’m not going to go into the details, it’s not my story to share but I know it’s kind of breaking up everyone’s hearts. So, if you could just pray for them. I know there are some good things coming out of it. I mean I’ve managed to reconnect with my cousins who I haven’t been out to see for years and that, just to be honest, if it weren’t for this whole situation then I probably wouldn’t have found this app. So, I am grateful to the Lord…I mean…wouldn’t it…