Month: August 2020

Ezra 4:24-6:22, 1 Corinthians 3:5-23, Psalms 29:1-11, Proverbs 20:26-27

Today is the 7^th day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bile I’m Brian it is wonderful to be here with you today as we round the corner now and head into the last…the last part of this week. And this week has definitely brought us into some new territory and some new things to talk about. So, we’ll continue the journey. We are reading this week from the Christian Standard Bible. And today from the Old Testament, Ezra chapter 4 verse 24 through 6 verse 22.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the letter, known as first Corinthians, the letter of Paul to the church at Corinth we’ve basically been talking about the same issue from the beginning. We’re kind of at the beginning of the letter. But it's…it’s division that is happening in the church based on different people kind of preferring the teaching or leadership of different people. And, so, it’s kind of come to the point that there are like different camps within the church. Some claiming that their supreme leader is Paul and others saying, no, the main leader for them is Apollos, others are like no, that’s Peter for us. Others are like, no, it’s Jesus. Christ…it’s Christ for us. And the way that Paul has been dealing with this issue is really interesting and so profoundly needed even now, because what Paul’s dealing with here, that…this behavior has continued on until today and is still happening. And what Paul is trying to do is tell them all that they are all correct. Like, in this case somebody doesn’t have to be wrong for somebody else to be right, which is what causes the division. So, Paul’s like, “when…when some of you are like, I’m for Apollos and others of you are like I’m for Paul, aren’t you just acting like everybody else in the world? And heaven we just discussed that…that there is a bigger thing going on that you need to become aware of? Who’s Apollos? Who’s Paul?” And I’m quoting…I’m quoting Paul here. “They are servants, through whom you believed, and each has the role the Lord is given. I planted, Apollos watered, God gave the growth. So, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything. It’s God who gives the growth.” Paul’s essentially lifting everybody’s viewpoint to say, “we are all in this together” or quoting Paul, “we are God’s coworkers, you are God’s field, you are God’s building.” So, we kind of talked about this when we started this letter. There have been lots of divisions in the Christian faith over the years, which has allowed 40,000 different Christian denominations to exist in the world. And we could look at and go like, “what's…what’s the rub here? What’s the problem?” The problem isn’t diversity. We…like…by default the Christian faith is all over the world in all different kinds of cultures. We are a vast and diverse body. That’s the nature of it. It’s just that we kind of like…we kind of like get our own team and then, over…overtime, like we like this style of worship, we like this kind of message, we like this kind of stuff. And “O, they’re saying something a little different and O they are deceived, and O they look at it from a different perspective and O what they’re missing out on.” And it just kind of builds into this team mentality where at some point our teams the right team and…we’re the ones actually have the truth. And, so, then we try to build an identity in that. And this is what Paul’s trying to lift the Corinthians out of…like to look higher, raise the bar, look further. We are all in this together and doing things like the world is only gonna give you a result like the world. Ahhhh…you know, like that should linger there for a second. And what Paul is saying is, “can’t you lift your eyes and understand that you have the mind of Christ within you, all of you?” Or to quote Paul, “and don’t you yourselves know that you are God’s temple and that the Spirit of God lives in you?” Or continuing to quote Paul, “let no one boast in human leaders for everything is yours, whether Paul or Apollo’s or Cephas of the world or life or death or things present or things to come, everything is yours and you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God.” So, Paul is lifting the Corinthian readers, but he’s lifting us to say, “it’s all yours already. Are you not aware of that? Can you not open your eyes and understand that trying to segregate yourself so that you can be right, like what are you trying to gain here? You have it all already. And if you became aware of the mind of Christ within you then you could see this. But if you’re just gonna look through your own mind then this is what’s gonna happen. It’s all gonna devolve into nonsense.” So, we’re left today just…w’ere left to ponder where we are getting our spiritual identity. Like where is that coming from? Is that coming from Paul, Apollos, Cephas? Like is that coming because we’re part of a movement and we’re affiliated with it? Is it because we’re following a specific person? Or are we actually in love with Jesus, like are we actually in a relationship with Jesus, the only place we could ever receive spiritual identity like the one Paul is talking about? And, so, yeah, some things to think about today.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit we invite You into those things. What are we following and what are we hoping to get? How have we lost sight that as new creations we are righteous before You. You are the most-high God, Creator of all things. We are Your children and heirs to Your kingdom. We have nobody to fight against to get an identity. It’s all ours already, Come Holy Spirit and let us see this we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobiuble.com is home base, it's…its home base for everything that’s around here, everything that we are as a community, everything that the Global Campfire is. This is where you find out what’s going on around here. It’s where to get connected.

Check out the Community section for that. It’s where to get resourced for this journey. Check out the Daily Audio Bible Shop for that. And then just find out what’s going around here. Check out the Initiatives section for that.

If you want to are a partner with the Daily Audio Bible, thank you profoundly, truly, humbly, thank you thank you beyond words for…for these day after day after day for these 15 years that we’ve been doing this every single day. If that has been part of your story and part of your journey and meaningful to you than thank you for your partnership. There is a link it’s on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you are using the Daily Audio Bible app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if you prefer, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the red button at the top or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Ezra 3:1-4:23, 1 Corinthians 2:6-3:4, Psalms 28:1-9, Proverbs 20:24-25

Today is the 6^th day of the month of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is wonderful to be here together with you today as we gather around the Global Campfire and have God’s word come into the story and intermingle with our stories and advise and guide and correct and direct us and what we need for today. So, let’s dive in. We are reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week and moving into these new books that we have encountered, the book of Ezra in the Old Testament and the letter to…the first…well it’s not the first letter to the Corinthians, but it is known as first Corinthians, a letter written by Paul to the church in Corinth. And we’ll get there soon enough. But first, Ezra chapter 3 verse 1 through 4 verse 23.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the letter to the Corinthians, known as first Corinthians that we’re reading through now from the apostle Paul, we are getting glimpses into the Corinthian church and the kinds of questions that they’re asking because they’re the things that Paul is teaching and talking about. And, so, we can kind of deduce that from their questions they’re rational people and they’re thinking things through and some of them are people of means and have power and other are not highborn. This is a mixed Jew and Gentile church and invariably questions are arising about what’s happening to them. Like this transformation that is happening to them is something that they can sense, it’s something that they can see among their community. But how to live this out and what is happening here are the kinds of questions that they’re answering…are asking. And Paul is talking about how the gospel is nonsense, basically, if you approach it in a worldly way trying to use ultra-rationalism. So, I mean let’s just go there so that we can kind of get ourselves in that headspace. What Paul is saying is that God had a plan to redeem the world and that plan was very ancient and very hidden, like up until that present time  but then was revealed, the plan was revealed in Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, but you couldn’t recognize that or become aware of that unless in following Jesus you began to have eyes to see and ears to hear. Okay. So, like everything that I just explained this is definitely basic Christianity and we could all be just like, “yeah…got it. I know of it.” But If you backup and step away from like looking at this through a spiritual lens and just look at what we’re saying here, it sounds like nonsense. If you are rooted in…in your five physical senses and what your mind can process and then to be told, “God had an ancient plan. It was hidden up until now. Jesus revealed this plan by the power of the Holy Spirit” and you never heard of any of this before, you’re like, “who’s the Holy Spirit. Like what’s going on here? How do I have eyes to see and ears to hear?” It sounds like nonsense. It doesn’t make sense. However, once you felt the truth of what’s being say…said, once you become aware of your spirituality and you are awakened to that and you feel this love from…from the heart of your Father as it floods in, then you can’t really  see the world any other way, which is really hard to describe to a person who has…who isn’t trying to look through the world through spiritual eyes. And this is the kinds of questioning that were happening in the Corinthian church. Like how do I make this spiritual awareness part of my every day awareness, part of my all the time never off always on kind of experience of life? So, quoting Paul from first Corinthians, “we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who comes from God so that we may understand what has been freely given to us by God. We also speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people. But the person without the Spirit does not receive what comes from God’s Spirit because it is foolishness to him. He is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually. The spiritual person, however, can evaluate everything and yet he himself cannot be evaluated by anyone. For who has known the Lord’s mind that he may instruct him?” Okay. So, what Paul’s saying here…and this is kinda gonna be a bad analogy probably, but it will…it’ll work. We understand what an antenna is, and whatever that antenna exists for it is to receive signals from somewhere to do something, right? And the signals are there whether the antenna is on or not. But if the antenna gets turned on, then the signals that are already there can…can be gathered and deciphered and used. And Paul is saying when we are made new creations we basically receive that equipment, we become aware that there is a lot more going on than we had previously been aware of and we are awakened to a deeper understanding of reality, one that includes spirituality. So, again using this bad analogy, if your antenna is on and you are in this awareness trying to explain it to somebody who doesn’t have the antenna or its shut off then what you are describing doesn’t make sense, they’re not getting the signal. So, in effect what we’re being told here in this letter is that our mind alone, and our experiences alone, our awareness of the world that we live in and how it works alone is not capable of deciphering an understanding the ways of God. We would need something…we would need a bigger antenna…we would need something greater than our own mind in order to step into that arena and become aware. And I confess, this is true. I confess in my own experience this is true because I live in my mind. Like, that’s where I spend most of my life and I have done my dead level best to hold God in my mind. And God doesn’t fit in my mind. He blows it. None of it does make sense without a belief in…like a firm faith in the fact that Spirit…Spirituality…like we are more than our bodies, we are more than what we can experience with our physical senses equipped for this world. There’s more going on. If we can’t get there, then it is all nonsense. But even if we believe it and we try to get there by holding God in our mind…like in other words, “I’m going to learn everything there is to know. I’m gonna read everything anybody has ever said. I’m gonna study, study, study, study, study, study, study until I know all of the thoughts about God that have ever been issued in this world, then I will know God.” That's…that’s not how it works. Knowing someone is not just knowing all you can know about them. Knowing is deeper than that. A good analogy would be love, right? You can't…you can’t rationalize why you deeply are committed to someone for the rest of your life through thick and thin. Like you can’t rationalize how you love someone, you just do. But since this is a part of our experience, we accept it. But if we have to sit down and explain it then we’re gonna need the language of art, like we’re gonna need language that speaks of something greater than our experiences. So, if we can’t rationalize all of this, we can’t hold God in our minds. And this is something that the Corinthian people were wrestling with. What to do? Like what to do? And this is where Paul gives us something that we quote all of the time, but now we see it in its context and have a better understanding. Yeah, you cannot hold God in your mind. So, God gave you His mind. We have the mind of Christ, according to the apostle Paul and it is available to us if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, if back to the bad analogy, if the antenna is on and we’re receiving the signals then the mind of Christ can open in us allowing us to see the world through His eyes. That’s what one of the primary goals of our faith is. When we look at the world through the mind of Christ, while then we are seeing on earth as it is in heaven, we are seeing God’s goals and desires for humanity, we are seeing His love and compassion on us, we are seeing his long-suffering and mercy for us as a species and us as individuals for all of the missteps that we make every single day. We see things as they are and not with the limited equipment that we have to navigate this planet on our own. It’s a bigger story that we need tune into in order to navigate as a new creature upon this earth that is fallen. We are here to be a part of the restoration and we have been given what we need in order to do that, the mind of Christ.

Prayer:

And, so, Jesus we invite You fully - mind of Christ open within us. Make us aware. Give us spiritual site that we may see what’s really going on and what Your hopes and desires are for our lives, our families, our communities, this world, and how we might participate because we are awake and aware and seeing clearly. Holy Spirit, well up from within. Lead us deeper into Jesus today. Give us this mind we pray in Your precious name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base it is where you find out what is going on around here around the Global Campfire. So, check that out.

Check out the different sections. The Community section is…that’s where the Prayer Wall is. It’s where to get connected. The Daily Audio Bible Shop is there. Resources for this journey through the Scriptures in a year are there. The Initiatives section, that’s some of the things that are going on around here. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link and it’s on the homepage and I thank you, thank you for your partnership. Very, very grateful that we are here and that we are here because we are here together as a community and that we have this desire to take this journey through the Scriptures in a year and what difference it makes. And if it has been a life-giving thing, if it’s making or made a difference in your life then thank you for your partnership. There’s a link on the homepage. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if you prefer, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the little red button at the top or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Ezra 1:1-2:70, 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5, Psalms 27:7-14, Proverbs 20:22-23

Today is August 5^th welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is…it is a joy, like every day, to be here with you as we just come in out of the…out of whatever’s going on and center ourselves, quiet ourselves, just come around the Global Campfire and just allow a moment of serenity as God’s word speaks into our lives for the day. So, it is a joy and an honor to take that next step forward with you. And here…here we go at the Old Testament, at threshold of reading the Old Testament today and we find ourselves opening a new book, the book of Ezra. And, so we finished second Chronicles yesterday which leads us to the threshold of Ezra.

Introduction to the book of Ezra:

And what we’ll find is that Ezra generally, at least historically, picks up where second Chronicles leaves off. The children of Israel have finally gone into exile, completely, northern and southern kingdoms with the southern kingdom falling to Babylon and the people being carried off into a foreign land for their rebelliousness against God. And this book of Ezra that we are about to encounter, it’s gonna cover a period of about 80 years. So, we’re slowing things down. We’ve been moving through Kings and Chronicles and reading of all the different kings and all of the different things that they did both in the northern and southern kingdom. But, kind of more rapidly so that we can move centuries in one…in one reading. So, we’re focusing now on a period of about eight years. There are three kings involved, none of them are Israelite kings - Cyrus the Great, Darius and then Artaxerxes. And what we’ll find is that these foreign kings all give favor, and even cover for a remnant of Israelites who are being allowed to go back to their ancestral homeland. And it’s Cyrus the Great that begins the process. He has a desire actually to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem for the worship of God. And he’s got…I mean…in his mind he rules the world, all the known world. And, so, he wants…he wants all the God’s that may be upset to be appeased and he wants the God of Israel to have a temple. So, about 42,000 Israelites that have been exiled in Babylon and they have been weeping and they have been crying and longing for the day that they could be restored, they finally get to make the trip back and their leader is somebody we’ll meet. His name is Zerubbabel and their going back to rebuild Jerusalem. And we’ll watch that…they don't…it’s not just a joyous parade that they go back from captivity and then they just clear the foundation and just rebuild everything. They’re gonna face all kinds of trouble, all kinds of opposition, intimidation from those who are in the region, political maneuvering but we’ll also watch them not lose sight of what they’re trying to do, that they’re gonna stick to the specific task. And that gives us so much for our own lives as we stick to the thing God has given us to do, no matter what the voices are saying, no matter what the maneuvering is, no matter what the intimidation is. And, so, in many ways we can see the book of Ezra as a…as a living historical metaphor for…for our own lives. So, let’s dive in. We’re reading from the Christian standard Bible this week. Ezra chapters 1 and 2.

Commentary:

Alright. So, yesterday in the book of first Corinthians Paul was calling for unity. And remember we talked about this because some of the people were saying, “I am of Paul” and others were saying, “I’m of Apollo's” and others were saying, “I’m of Peter” and then others were saying, “I am of Christ.” And this was causing rivalry and division about “who are we supposed to listen to?” Like, “who’s supposed to tell us…who’s supposed to teach us? Who’s authorized to teach us? And who should we be following? And we see in today’s reading Paul’s trying to lift their viewpoint, like “that…that's…that’s not the right question.” And he does it by saying, “all of what we believe to those who don’t believe it, it’s nonsense. It’s foolishness. It’s foolishness to say strength is found in weakness or spiritual wisdom is found in what the world would consider foolishness.” And Paul uses the Scriptures here is his defense by quoting from the book of Isaiah, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and I will set aside the intelligence of the intelligent. And, so, we ask, ‘who is the one who is wise? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the debater of this age?’ God made the world’s wisdom foolish.” So, he’s saying, “you’re like trying to pick your camp, you’re trying to pick your favorite preacher, your favorite teacher and follow this person but if you’re gonna go about it from a human perspective, it’s all foolishness.” Paul says, I’m quoting here, “for the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.” And, so, we get clues here that there are Jews and Gentiles in this faith community in Corinth. And Christ crucified for a Jewish person is a stumbling block because the Scriptures say who…“cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree”, right? Like, just right out of the gate. And Paul will address this later, but for…for the Hebrew people, like this…this is something to just dismiss - Paul outright. And then Gentiles, the Greeks, they’re seeking wisdom. They want to understand and yet trying to understand what Paul’s preaching, that…that the son of God came to earth in human form and allowed Himself to die in order to reconcile the world to Himself, this is like a wisdom or an understanding that seems like foolishness to them. But Paul says, “those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God because God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” This is Paul pulling people from this faction “us and them” kind of argument to look at the bigger story, that if you’re gonna look at this faith through human understanding and human wisdom it's…it’s gonna seem foolish, but like most of the rest of the world things are backward. And when we can see, when we have eyes to see and ears to hear we can see what’s really going on. And that is a bigger story, a way bigger story than saying, “I’m of Paul. I’m of Apollo’s. I’m of Peter. I’m of Christ.” And, so, then he rounds out, “brothers and sisters, consider your calling. Not many were wise from a human perspective, not many powerful, not many noble from birth.” And we can deduce from there that in this church some were, like some were powerful, some were of noble birth, some were wise from a human perspective, but not all. And, so, this is a mixed community and an urban center and a melting pot city in the Roman Empire. And, so, lots of people think lots of things and that’s why they’re trying to figure out what it is they’re supposed to do. And what Paul says is God has chosen what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen what is weak in the world to shame the strong. In other words, if you think you’re one of those, then you…then you better pay attention because God is doing a new thing in the world or just to quote Paul, “God has chosen what is insignificant and despised in the world, what is viewed as nothing to bring to nothing what is viewed as something so that no one may boast in His presence. It is from Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom from God for us, our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption in order that, as it is written, ‘let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.’” This is Paul responding to “I’m of Cephas. I am of Christ. I am of Apollo’s. I’m of Peter.” He’s saying, “you can’t get an identity that way, you can’t get prideful that way. You are lucky to be here at all.” This is not the last time we will come across this theme, but it is a good time to remember what he is saying because it still applies. It’s not an irrelevant notion that has of fallen out of context because the world has changed so much. This is just as important now as it was then.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit, we invite You into all of the ways we try to be right and we allow fear to come in because we’re afraid to be wrong or that we need an identity by who we’re selecting to…to lead us or what denomination we’re a part of or however it is that we are finding a way to distinguish ourselves from another believer so that we have a separate identity. May we understand that it’s foolishness if we try to go down that road. It’s only going to seem like foolishness. But if we have eyes to see, we can see the wisdom and the strength of Your hand in it all, making us aware that those are somewhat irrelevant arguments. We are fortunate, so, so fortunate that You are even aware of us, that You even care who we are. And, so, may we be humbled by that as we try to release our unbelievable desire to be right and force everyone who doesn’t see it our way to be wrong. Come Jesus we need You and we ask in Your name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, it is home base, and it is where you find out what’s going on around here. So, be sure to tune in and check it out. Certainly, check all these things out in the app as well.

But at the Initiatives section, Check out the Daily Audio Bible Shop. There are just a bunch of resources in there for this journey including the entire Global Campfire line of things - some fun things and some serious things, ways to…well…like our journal, our journal 2.0 and all the writing things that we have for…for journaling our way through the Scriptures. That's…that’s something that we…well…it’s, I mean, it’s part of a pattern in my life but it's…it’s important. Isn’t crazy how we can hear something really important to our lives and kinda carry it around but the next day can come around and we can be like, “wait a minute. What was that again” when it was really important for us to remember. It’s important for us to write these things down because we’re…we’re writing the story of our spiritual journey and we need to be reminded. That gets foggy sometimes and we can see God’s faithfulness in our lives when we write down the things that His word speaks to us and the things that He brings us through. But it’s also…it’s also a beautiful thing to write the story of your life in your own hand knowing that future generations somewhere someday may see your own hand, that you wrote your own story of God’s faithfulness in your life. And, so, yeah, we have all of these resources in the Daily Audio Bible Shop for this purpose. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There’s a link on the homepage. Thank you profoundly. I say it every day, humbly. It’s true every day. We wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t done this together thus far. So, thank you for your partnership as we continue to move through the summertime. So, there’s a link on the homepage. If you’re using the app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if you prefer, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the Hotline button, the red button up at the top. If you have the app be hard to miss it. So, no matter where you are in the world you can hit that button no matter what time of day or night it is or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

2 Chronicles 33:14-34:33, Romans 16:10-27, Psalms 26:1-12, Proverbs 20:19

Today is the 3^rd day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is a joy and an honor to be here with you for another step forward, another day together in God’s word as we make this journey. I said yesterday we were going to be concluding second Chronicles and Romans today. I misspoke. We are going to be concluding the letter to the Romans today, but we’ll be concluding second Chronicles in tomorrow’s reading. And, so, as we continue our journey through this week, by the end of this week we will be in completely new territory than we’ve been camped out in here for the last several weeks. So, we have a couple more steps in second Chronicles and one more step today to…to the conclusion of the letter to the Romans. And we’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Second Chronicles chapter 33 verse 14 through 34 verse 33.

Commentary:

Okay. So as we go into this new month, the voice of wisdom, and remember when we met her voice, right, back at the beginning, how she was at every crossroads calling out to everybody to listen to her, like at every decision, like at every fork in the road she’s there calling out. Well she’s calling out today, greeting us as we come into this new month and enter into this new week fully with…with things she’s reminded us of before. “The one who reveals secrets is a constant gossip. Avoid someone with the big mouth.” If we’ll remember the…the last time we came this way on this topic, we were told that gossip, these are tasty morsels but they go down into our innermost being and we just…we wondered about how much of that we want in our innermost being. There is a reason that our words and the way that we use our words is a recurring theme in the Bible. And that primary reason is because it matters. It matters how we use our words. Our…our Father, our heavenly…the most-high God…our Father the creator of all things, speaks and creates. And we know that, like we can accept that, but we need to understand we are created in his image and when we speak we create…now we…we can’t call things that don’t exist into being, like matter, but our words create the atmosphere of our lives. Our words tell the story of our lives. We create our lives through the things we say. And if that sounds like heady and esoteric, like just think about it. You walk in the door after a long day at work and the wrong thing gets said. The atmosphere chills, darkness descends, and it’s either silence or war, right? Like, the things we say create the atmosphere of our lives. And gossip is insidious. Like, it goes down to the depths of our being, it shapes…allows us to pick up offenses that don’t exist toward people that we may or may not even know. And then convictions get shaped out of thin air, like created out of nothing or created out of something very incomplete and partial. Lile when we really just slow down for second because we hardly ever do, but if we slow down a second and think about this, it’s scary how powerful our words can be. Its…it’s also glorious how powerful our words can be. It just depends on which words we’re stringing together and what motivates the words we are stringing together. And an environment of gossip is one we are repeatedly told to avoid. And I guess it’s easy enough to go like, “what’s the big deal? Like what’s the big deal? Why such…why such drama?” Because of the drama that it creates in this world and in our communities. It tears things down…like when have you ever been gossiped about and it was just a joy? It…it just brought you so much life? You just loved it that you found out the behind your back people have made judgments and assumptions about you and you never got to be a voice in that conversation? Did that just like lift you into the highest heavens? It was just…you’re just so full of joy and peace in life and goodness? Like that is not the result of gossip. Destruction is the result of gossip. Gossip drives us underground. It pushes us into isolation. It takes us where we should not go. And we should not be dispensaries of gossip. We should not be the ones with the big mouth as the proverb says today. And there are many, many reasons, but our faith tells us that we are supposed to confess our sins to each other and that we are to pray for each other so that we might be healed. We’ll find this in the letter from James when we get there. Gossip eliminates that possibility because there is no safety to do that. So, if we’re gonna dispense gossip, we should probably bite our tongue at least long enough for the Holy Spirit come and direct what we’re about to say. And if we’re listening to something and we realize, “hey, wait a second, wait a second, this is gossip and this is going inside of me and this is going to change the atmosphere…this can change the trajectory of my day. This can birth…this can shackle me. I can pick up offenses that I didn’t know I had because I didn’t have them before. These words are creating an offense that I don’t need.” Then we would be heading the voice of wisdom that is at every crossroads calling out, “this is the way you should go. Go this way. Not that way.”

Prayer:

Father there’s a lot of information that flies at us on a continual basis, faster really than we can process but so much of it goes inside and sits there and grows like weeds and we need Your help. We need to weed the garden. We need to clean things out. We need to get these offenses that aren’t real, these stories that are partial, this stuff out of the way. It’s creating things that only cloud our vision. And if we ever needed to see clear, if we ever needed eyes to see, it’s now. And so, come Holy Spirit help us to rid ourselves of these practices of dispensing and consuming gossip that we might see clearly what is really going on by the power of Your Holy Spirit. Come Jesus we pray. We ask in Your mighty and powerful name. Amen.

Announcements:

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If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There’s a link on the homepage. If you’re using the app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or if, you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the red button at the top or there are some numbers you can call. If you’re in the Americas 877-942-4253 is the number. In you’re in the UK or Europe, you can call 44-20-3608-8078 or if you are in Australia or that part of the world you can dial 61-3-8820-5459.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian and I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

2 Chronicles 35:1-36:23, 1 Corinthians 1:1-17, Psalms 27:1-6, Proverbs 20:20-21

Today is the 4^th day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you today as it is every day, every day, day by day, step-by-step. And our steps will take us back into the book of second Chronicles today. We’ll actually conclude the book of second Chronicles today and move forward in the Old Testament tomorrow and then in the New Testament. We will begin a new letter, known as first Corinthians. And we’ll talk about that when we get there. But first, second Chronicles chapters 35 and 36 and we’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week.

Introduction to first Corinthians:

Okay. So, yesterday we concluded Paul’s letter to the church at Rome. So, also known as Romans. And that leads us to the doorstep here of first Corinthians which is another letter from Paul to another church, the church in Corinth. Corinth was a city, a large city in the Roman Empire, an influential city in the Roman empire, cosmopolitan, a hotspot, a destination place, a huge hub of trade and commerce. This is…this is the fourth largest city in the entire Roman empire. So, lots of people, lots of ideas. Lots of spirituality, spiritual ideas of idolatry. Basically, everything that you would find in a large secularized society is in Corinth. And many biblical scholars think first Corinthians gives us like, bar none, the best glimpse into what early Christians in a urban area were thinking about or questioning or trying to live into or trying to understand and…and fundamentally, they’re having spiritual experiences by the power of the Holy Spirit. Like, this is what’s drawing them together, right? So, like if Paul comes to Corinth, preaches the good news, people believe it, and then they start to worship together, but it’s just a dud, then they would just kind of fade away, right? Things were happening. The Holy Spirit was leading these people. It was drawing them together and pulling them together as a spiritual community, but they’re wondering like, “how does this translate to everyday life? Like how does these spiritual experiences…like how is this supposed to transform the way that life is lived?” And, so, some of these…some of these questions are asked of Paul, probably a letter sent to Paul. Like even in first Corinthians, Paul refers to a previous letter that he had written that to them. So, there’s correspondence going on among the Corinthians and Paul. So, he answers some of these questions, among other things. But fundamentally, you’ve got a bunch of people in an urban center following the leading of the Holy Spirit and they don’t have a Bible, right? Like they could have the Torah, but they didn’t have the New Testament as some sort of baseline for what’s going on. They don’t have that. And, so, it’s easy enough to come up with a number of ways of looking at things. We have a number of ways of looking at things even though we have the…the Bible, the New Testament now. And, so, Paul fundamentally is trying to look at everybody who’s looking at things, and in a number of ways, and bring it all back around to unity. And again, not uniformity, but unity. And that makes his words in first Corinthians as poignant now is as they would’ve been then. And, of course there are portions in first Corinthians that are very, very famous, like, “seeing through a glass darkly.” “When I was a child, I spoke like a child.” And then very, very famous is first Corinthians chapter 13, which is known as the love chapter, which is…which is beautiful, and we’ll see that when we get there. But let’s dive in and take a look into the early church, listen to what Paul’s…I mean we can kinda tell the questions that they’re answering by the way Paul is answering the questions. And some of these are questions we have. And, so, let’s enjoy as we enter this new territory. First Corinthians chapter 1 verse one through 17 today.

Commentary:

Okay. We just…we just talked about first Corinthians as we entered into it. And now that we have some verses under our belt here, we can kinda see this…this call to unity by the apostle Paul. And, so, it's…it’s safe to point out here that this…this idea that the early church was a completely harmonious thing, it was like perfect and then it just got worse and worse and worse until we are here today trying to wrestle through all the stuff, that’s not true. We’ve been wrestling through the stuff from the very, very beginning. So, like in this day and age there are some 40,000 Christian denominations of believers in the world that all have slightly different theological positions on different things that are very, very important to them. And we sort of see some of this evolving and being present in this letter to the Corinthian church. So, Paul says, “it’s been reported to me about you, my brothers and sisters, by members of Chloe’s people that there is rivalry among you. And what I’m saying is this, one of you says, I belong to Paul or I belong to Apollos.” Now Apollos…Apollos was an early believer contemporary with the apostle Paul, whose reputation is that he was very, very educated in rhetoric and very, very good at communicating with words, a very good speaker. There are scholars that would argue that Apollos is the one who wrote the book of Hebrews. Of course, we’re not to the book of Hebrews yet and nobody knows that, but he just kind of like fits a certain profile. So, Apollos has been to the Corinthian community and spoken. And then there are others who say I belong to Cephas, which is the apostle Peter. So, it also seems that the apostle Peter has come through Corinth and visited with the church at Corinth. And, so, some of them are saying like, “well, I belong to him. He was a disciple of Jesus. He actually walked with Jesus. I’m going to follow what he has to say.” And then there are others who are like, “I belong to Christ”. I don’t belong any of these people. I belong to Christ. The Holy Spirit is leading me. This is…this is who me and mine, this is who we belong to.” And, so, we can see even in the early church, this is an attempt to get an identity by who our leaders are, who we are following. And then by very nature then saying, “we are separate from those who are following this other teaching.” And, so, there’s an “us and them” happening that Paul really, really doesn’t like because it creates, as he said, “rivalry among you, divisions among you.” So, here in one of the earliest churches, like the earliest churches following Jesus that have been established this is going on. “I belong to Paul. “Well I am of the Apollos camp. I follow Peter. I follow Christ alone.” And Paul’s response to that is, “is Christ divided then? Is that what’s going on here? Is Christ divided? Was I, Paul, crucified for you? Were you baptized in my name?” And then he kinda goes on to try to think it through everyone’s he’s baptized so that there’s a very select few people that could ever claim to be baptized in Paul’s name. We’ll get into this further as we get further into this letter and as we continue to move through the letters that are found in the New Testament and what we can learn about our brothers and sisters who were right at the beginning first, what they were thinking about and what they were going too because it helps us to realize, like most of the stuff that’s going on that’s like frustrating or that we can’t quite figure out, this has always been going on. It’s not some kind of new phenomenon in our lifetime. And we’ll see Paul working toward unity even while acknowledging that people have different viewpoints on different things. What he will do though is invite us, invite his readers, which was them and now is us basically to think…to think…to raise the bar, to think hire, to understand that there’s a bigger thing going on than us just trying to find our camp. There’s a bigger thing going on that God is doing through Jesus and that bigger thing unites us.

Prayer:

Father, as we go through this letter and all of the different letters and all the different things that we have to talk about and all of the different things that Your word will illuminate inside of us, that will become a mirror into our own convictions and are our own postures, we invite You. We see that there was…that there was disunity or disharmony in the earlier church and that those things needed to be wrestled with and wrestled through and realize that is still today the same and we realize that our hearts, like our clothes may change and our technology may change, but our hearts, what we’re looking for, what we’re seeking, these things remain the same. And we are seeking You and we are asking the Holy Spirit, lead us into all truth as we continue our journey through the Scriptures. Come Holy Spirit into all of this we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it is home of the Global Campfire, its where you find out what’s going on around here, it’s how you get connected so be sure to check it out.

Check out the Community section. You can do all this in the app as well but check out the community section. This is links to get involved in different groups on social media and get connected that way. The Prayer Wall is there. Constant prayer happens at the Prayer Wall. You can always ask for prayer. You can always pray for one another there. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if the mission that we share in common to bring the spoken word of God to whoever will listen to it wherever they might be on this planet, whatever time it might be and to build community around the rhythm of the fact that we’re taking a journey together day by day step-by-step, if that is life-giving then thank you for your partnership as we continue to navigate through the summer months. There’s a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you are using the app, and why wouldn’t you be, you should…should be, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if you prefer, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

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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.

2 Chronicles 32:1-33:13, Romans 15:23-16:9, Psalms 25:16-22, Proverbs 20:16-18

Today is the 2^nd day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian and it’s great to be here with you as we step into a brand-new week right here at the top of a brand-new month. It’s all out in front of us this next month and this week that we have to live into. And it’s just a joy that each and every day we can reach these thresholds together marking another week in God’s word as we take the journey of a lifetime through the Bible. So, yeah, great to be here with you today. We’re gonna read from the Christian Standard Bible this week and continue our journey through the book of second Chronicles and the letter to the Romans. And before this week is out, we will have concluded both. In fact, we’re gonna be concluding both at the same time tomorrow, but today is today. So, we’ll read second Chronicles chapter 32 verse 1 through 33 verse 13 today.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word and we thank You for this new month and we thank You for this new week. And we…we find ourselves right here at the threshold of both month and week and so we take note of that. All things are new. This is a new month to live in. This is a new week to live into and we need You now more than ever and that’ll probably never not be our cry. We need You now more than ever, because the more we become aware of Your presence, the more we desire and know that we have no hope without You. And we thank You for Your word because it leads us into this posture where we can open ourselves to become aware of Your guidance and Your leadership and Your comfort in our lives. And, so, we consecrate this week to You. We dedicate set apart this month to You. We want to live into this with all of our hearts fully, fully embracing everything that You lead us to do so that we were Your hands and feet, so that, as we learn from the book of Romans, we…we became a living sacrifice available to You for Your service every day. So come Holy Spirit, we open ourselves to You. Well up from within us and lead us we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it is…it’s the website, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here. And everything that you find at the website you can also find in the Daily Audio Bible app by pushing the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner, but this is how we get connected.

And, so, check out the community section. This is a place to get connected, especially on social media. Check out the Shop. There are resources there that are…I mean some of them are meant to deepen the journey, some of them are meant to be like partners on the journey. And check it out. Check it out. There resources there for this journey.

If  you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link on the homepage. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner, or the mailing address, if that is your preference, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement you can hit the Hotline button in the app or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you there tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi this is Daniel calling in from Singapore and today I’d like to pray for America. So, if you’ll allow me. You know, there’s this really old song, this beautiful song that goes like this. It goes [singing starts] oh beautiful for spacious skies for amber waves of grain for purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain. America, America, America God shed his grace on you and crown your good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea [singing stops]. America, we all love you around the world, we all love you and we are praying for you. Dear Lord, I just pray that You will pour out Your grace on this nation of many nations and these people made from many peoples. You pour out Your grace on them afresh and bind them all together with gentle __ of brotherhood of Your love. May they always be the nation that proclaims Your glory. I pray this in Jesus’ name.

__ righteousness. Dear Jesus, our Lord and King we praise You and thank You for by God’s doing we are in Christ Jesus and You are to us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Lord please reveal to us anything that could hurt or lead us away from pleasing Your Father. Protect our heart, body, and soul so that we are armored against the enemy’s lies and attacks. Lord we believe in Your perfect righteousness. Only You Lord are perfect and Jesus perfect righteousness and work on the cross covers us. He paid all our debts. Lord thank You for helping us to be humble, gentle, loving, patient and to remember to think of others first. You take care of us and You give us the opportunity to be Your hands and feet and comfort and love others. Help us to be humble and appreciate everyone, to be You to them, full of love and forgiveness. Lord it is doing Your will not just reading Your holy word that matters. Lord may we remember what the Holy Spirit’s help that Your courage is given to us to put on Your breast plate of righteousness, to empower us to take off selfishness and put on kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, trust in You, peace joy and self-control. We pray this all Your precious prayering warriors. Amen.

Morning everybody this is God’s Smile here. Well I had a rocky night again like most nights. They’re pretty horrendous sometimes and I can do nothing but cry out. And I’m so thankful for the gift of Peter who prays through the night with me. This poor man who is my beautiful husband is up and he has to go to work too and he never moans, and he never complains and I’m so thankful. And, you know what? After a couple hours sleep, I woke up so fresh. Isn’t God so good. I’d like to pray for Soaring on Eagles Wings and for anybody who is in pain and especially nerve pain. Father God we thank You for Soaring on Eagles wings. We thank You for Jesus. Lord we can come to know of it, but You, Your name is written in our hearts. Lord Your name and Your blood covers us and heals us in mind, in emotion, in spirit and in body. Father God we lift her up to You and we would ask that You would touch those nerves Father that are fizzling away that are hurting, causing pain. Dear Lord, would You keel, would You touch, would You kiss away the pain Father God, that she may know Your comfort when she cries out Your name and Your name alone Lord. May that name be powerful in that moment and would that name minister Your will to heal her. In Jesus’ name we pray. Lord Jesus, give her peace to cope while she waits on You, while she waits upon Your precious name in the mighty name of Jesus we ask. And we thank You for Your love. Goodbye everybody. Kiss kiss.

Hi this is a prayer for Mike and his daughter who is a heroin addict I believe and he’s…she’s expecting, and she has already lost two other children. And this is also a prayer I have for the anonymous father who I believe is hearing about abuse that’s going on with his child possibly by the mother. He doesn’t say who Lord but both these men I am praying this prayer. It’s Psalm 25. To you Lord we lift up their souls. In you they trust O God. Do not let them be put to shame nor let their enemies try and __ them. No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame. The Lord confides to those who fear Him. He makes His covenant known to them. And it goes on to say, turn to me and be gracious to me for I am lonely and afflicted. Yes, dear Lord these men have such heart and a passion for their daughters, and we ask You Lord to honor that and heal them, whatever has to be healed and protect their daughters. And this one woman whose expecting that little baby, Lord we ask that You would protect it. And the troubles of their hearts have multiplied. And we ask You to free them from their anguish. Look upon their afflictions and their distress and take away all their sins. See how my enemies have increased and how fiercely they hate me. Guard their lives and these children’s lives Lord Jesus and rescue them and do not put them to shame for I take…they take refuge in You. May integrity and uprightness protect them because our hope is in You. Redeem Israel of God and redeem these children and these fathers Lord Jesus and protect them and guide them. We thank you Lord for hearing our prayers. In Jesus’ precious name we pray. Amen.

Hi Daily Audio Bible this is My Joy is Full from London and I just want to pray for __ Jackie I just heard you on the community prayer line just praying for joy and I am here agreeing with you. So, heavenly Father I just want…I’m just praying that You give her back her joy Lord. She’s seeking You in this time. She knows that she’s struggling, she knows that she’s supposed to seek You and that’s what she’s doing Lord. And, so, with each day that she spends time with You, comes closer to You, may You fill her with joy. May her joy be so complete Lord. May she be a light to everyone in her life, everyone around her Lord. Give her sense of peace, that anxiety, depression will not overrule her life in Jesus’ name. That the peace will overcome, that she will not stress, will not worry but she will take each day in stride knowing that You are God and You are her Father Lord. And I just ask that You be with her and continue to help her, heal her, heal her mind Lord, heal her feelings, heal her worries. And, yeah, just transform her so that she then becomes a light to other people. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.