Isaiah 37:1-38:22, Galatians 6:1-18, Psalms 65:1-13, Proverbs 23:24
Today is the 21st day of September welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today. It’s great to be here with you any day and every day as we take steps forward. That’s all we…that’s all we do. We step forward every single day and we are always moving forward in our lives and in the Scriptures. And, so, let’s move forward. We’re reading from the Contemporary English Version this week. Isaiah chapters 37 and 38.
Commentary:
Okay. So, we concluded the letter to the Galatians today, which means we’ll be moving into some new territory tomorrow. And Paul’s kinda been landing this plane, this letter to the Galatians basically by outlining some paths, especially in yesterday’s reading when…when we came to be the fruit of the Spirit which is a famous passage…passage of Scripture. And Paul is contrasting the fruit of the Spirit as one pathway, a pathway that leads to eternal life. He contrasts that with other choices, with another path that we can choose, a path that leads to destruction. And he ends up saying, “look…the fruit of the Spirit, like love, joy peace, long-suffering, kindness, gentleness, like there are no laws anywhere that would forbid you from the fruit of the Spirit. Like doesn’t matter what kind of rule you live under, nothing is gonna outlaw the fruit of the Spirit in your life. Like, where do you find a law against kindness or perseverance or long-suffering or patience?” And, so, in today’s reading, as we…as we conclude the letter, Paul’s saying like, “here…here’s the posture, here’s where you should center yourself.” And I just…I guess…let me just read this section. Let me just quote Paul rather than try to put it in other words it’s very clear. “You obey the law of Christ when you offer each other a helping hand. And if you think you are better than others when you really aren’t, your wrong. Do your own work well and then you’ll have something to be proud of but don’t compare yourself with others. We each must carry our own load. And share every good thing you have with anyone who teaches you what God has said. You can’t fool God. So, don’t make a fool out of yourself. You’re going to harvest what you plany. If you follow your selfish desires, you’re gonna harvest destruction, but if you follow the spirit then you’re gonna harvest eternal life. So, don’t get tired of helping others. You’ll be rewarded when the time is right if you don’t give up”, right? It’s a…it’s a theme of endurance that becomes more and more and more hard to get away from the further and further and further we go into the New Testament. And then he says, “we should help people whenever we can, especially if they’re followers of the Lord.” Okay. So, the beauty of some of the…some of the writing style Paul is that we’ll get these concise kinds of paragraphs or sentences or…that we can almost even make a list and go, “okay. how much of this describes me? Like is what he…did…did what he say here in Galatians have…does it resemble me? Like, do I believe I’m obeying the law of Christ when I help…when I give a helping hand? And do I think I’m better than somebody else or am I always lost in comparison? So, this gives us some things to consider and meditate upon today. But probably primarily, one of the things that we should meditate as we leave Galatians behind for this…this year is the fact that the law of sowing and reaping shows up here. Like what you plant is what you get. It’s a natural law that we all accept, right? If you throw corn out on your field, then you do not expect pole beans. You expect corn. If you’re going to pick some fruit and you come to an apple tree then you do not expect strawberries, you expect to yield what was planted. And we just sort of get disconnected with the fact that that is a spiritual law as well. That is the truth of our lives. We are living the harvest that we planted. Our lives are as they are because of what we planted previously. And, so, in so many ways what Paul is trying to encourage any he encourages in this direction in many letters, “like what if you started planting the fruit of the Spirit and didn’t stop that so that season after season after season this is what you were reaping. This is going to lead you to the harvest of eternal life but if you’re gonna plant the fruit of the spirit, like this row over here is for the fruit of the Spirit…this little section of my life I’m gonna plant through the fruit of the Spirit of here, but the rest of the field of my heart, it’s going to be a mixture of things.” Well then, that’s what you are going to harvest. And, so, what if we did plant the fruit of the Spirit systematically over and over, season after season after season? Then the truth is we would always be harvesting the fruit of the Spirit. We would have left over to give away, which is the point. It would be bursting out of us into the world. We would have a pantry full of canned fruit of the Spirit that we can go get any time…like we would be abundantly immersed in the fruit of the Spirit. That’s available. That’s the thing of it. That’s available. It just depends on what we’re…what we’re gonna plant. And the choice is ours.
Prayer:
Holy Spirit, well up from within us, make us aware of Your presence in our lives. We become aware of the shape of our lives. We look out across the fields of our heart and we see what’s growing there and we may have some work to do. And we can’t do that work on our own. We need You. And, so, as harvests come and go, as harvests come that we didn’t want. And as they go when it’s time to plant again in their place, we plant the fruit of the Spirit, which means we’re gonna have to live according to this. And, so, make us aware, make us present to what we are putting into the soil of our hearts. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen
Announcements:
dailyaudiobible.com is home base, and that…yeah…website, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here.
Its where things like the Prayer Wall live. And…yeah…that is a fantastic place to be aware of always. You can always reach out for prayer. You can always offer prayer at the Prayer Wall no matter what time….what time of day it is, no matter what time zone you are in, and no matter how different our time zones are from each other because we’re all over the world. So, as I speak this it’s tomorrow somewhere, you know, and the Prayer Wall is…it just isn’t paying attention to what time zones we’re in. It’s paying attention to the fact we’re reaching out. And, so, beware of that. Check it out in the Community section.
Check out the resources that are available in the Daily Audio Bible Shop for taking this journey deeper. And, of course, you can get to all the things I’m talking about within the Daily Audio Bible by pressing the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner. But check these out. Stay connected in any way that you can.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible that can be done at dailyaudiobible.com as well. Of course it can be done within the app also by pressing the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174. And I thank you humbly, deeply. I mean how many times have I said it already this year? It's…it’s in awe inspiring thing to do what we’re doing together. Like that we show up every day and we take the next step and it doesn’t really matter…like the time zones we were just talking about…it doesn’t matter. No matter where we are, we’re never listening to this alone. Someone somewhere is in the is with us. And that is a remarkable thing to know that each day we gather around the Global Campfire and take the next step. So, I thank you that this even exists because it exists because we’re together. We’re in it together. So, thank you.
And then of course, if you’ve 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 is it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Hi DAB family this is D also known as A New Day in Florida and I had called in at the end of August feeling really lonely. Have lost my husband four years ago and my mom three years ago. Don’t have children and it’s just been really difficult. And I listened to the Community Prayer and I heard a woman mention me. She did not give her name, but she definitely understood that I did not stumble onto this and I’m so grateful for this app and for Brian and the Hardin family. And thinking of Mike from Missouri who also mentioned me and praying for me. There’s a particular backdrop to the story that I didn’t give the day that I called to pray, and I hope I can finish it before the two minutes. But I’m a September 11th responder and my husband was a responder and we came here so that he could heal up and he actually was killed here in Florida and a motorcycle accident. So, that’s kind of the backdrop. And I think all the loneliness I was feeling is because it was leading up to September 11th. And I also want to thank a woman who took the time to mention September 11th and pray for those who were affected. I didn’t get her name, but she was on the Community Prayer podcast as well. Okay, my time is running out and thank you guys so much. I love you.
Hello, my dear Daily Audio Bible family missionary in Mexico. I had been missing you. Oh, my goodness it’s good to be back and hearing the community prayers and catching up. So good to be caught up again with the Bible reading. My husband has been doing a lot of ministry flights just like Margot’s husband, my husband too is a missionary pilot. And anyway, yeah, so he was gone and I was kind of holding down the fort and very busy with our family and home schooling and all the stuff going on. But oh my goodness it’s so good to hear all your voices and I’m not gonna even try because there’s so many of you I just go, “it’s so good to hear his voice, her voice” and I love you all very much. I’m calling in today because a coworker of ours, a wonderful lady named Barbara has a tumor and she has been a huge blessing to so many different people in so many different countries. She’s worked in Columbia, in the Philippines, here in Mexico, and…well…before she became a missionary, in Australia. She’s just kind of been everywhere and knows everyone. She’s one of those kinds of people. She was our daughters, our oldest daughter’s kindergarten teacher way back when she…when our daughter was in kindergarten. She is going to be going in for surgery and we’re just really playing that she can use the surgery that uses the gamma knife, which is a much less invasive surgery rather than doing the more invasive surgery that might end up messing with her nerves in her mouth and her cheek and stuff. So, please be praying for Barb. But we love her so much. She is a blessing here. She’s one of our…she’s a neighbor of ours here. We live in a community outside of town and…and she just loves everybody, and everybody loves her and she has helped so many people come to know Jesus. And, so, I appreciate your prayers family. Thanks.
Hi beloved DAB this is God’s Life Speaker. And for someone who always wants to be speaking life words because I believe them, and their God’s words, and He calls us to hire places I feel like I need your prayer. I have called in before for our 20-year-old son. I don’t even know where to begin. He’s… he…he is lonely. He is depressed. He’s everything negative and everything of the opposite that I would desire him to be, right? And I know God doesn’t desire him to be the way that he is choosing right now. And he talks about just wanting to be dead though I’ve asked him directly if has plans to hurt himself because when he was a teenager, he did threaten to kill himself. And that was a hard time, but we got through that by God’s grace, but now he’s away at school. Even though he’s only a little bit from our house, he stays there and he’s just in this deep place. And I ask him if…if he’s inviting God into this place. And he practices a different religion than us. And we believe the Bible and he believes the Bible plus all these other documents. And I just feel that his head is full of knowledge and I want this relationship with God to occur, to lean on Him. And all I can do is pray. And all I can ask is for your prayers. And I will continue to speak life into my son believing that God will bring this family back under one roof so that we can worship him together in the house of God. So, I just ask for your prayers. My son’s name is Joshua. Thank you, DABbers. I’m praying for all of you. I love you.
Hello DAB family or maybe I should say greetings to the DAB nation. You are a holy people, a royal priesthood, a people set apart. This is Louise from Arkansas. I called about a month and half ago to ask for prayers for my son Peter Thank you so much for the people that prayed. It meant so much to me and hear somebody else pray for my son other than me. But today I’m…and I wish I had a wonderful testimony about great things that God had done in his life but so far as I know everything remains the same. So, today I’m calling about my daughter Melody. She’s going to be 35 on the 20th. I figured a good way to celebrate was to call and ask for prayers since I can’t really celebrate with her. Please pray she will turn her car heart back to Jesus. Once she walked to God but life has been hard and she has turned her back on God. Thank you for your prayers.
Good morning DABers this is __ from Juba in South Sudan. I’m…I’m basically calling to ask for prayer because for the first time I am traveling from Juba for the first time this year, traveling from Juba to Nigeria. I will be in Nigeria for about a month and a half before coming back to work. I need your prayer for travel mercies and for continued protection from the coronavirus and also that whatever the reason I have to travel to Nigeria that God will continue to use me for His glory there, that I will continue to make impact for the kingdom of God when I get to Nigeria. The airspace is just opened and making it possible for me to be able to travel. So, thank you once again and thank you for being there. Thank you, Brian and Jill and China and Ben and Simon and Ezekiel, all that is behind DAB. May God bless you. May God keep you. May God strengthen all of you. May God meet you at the points of you need. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Hello
DAB family it’s Tim from Edinburgh in Scotland in the UK. I phoned a couple
weeks ago for prayer about some eye surgery for a detached retina. I’ve been
really calm and…post-surgery…just resting in Jesus. And as I said to some
folks, we needn’t pray for physical healing or the job offer or the lost nc-nak
to be found but sometimes we just need to pray and to hear Jesus say, “it’s
okay. I’ve got this. I’ve got you. Your safe. Rest easy.” So I’ve been resting
easy and today, which is the 18th of September I was heading into
the eye hospital for the follow-up appointment and I just had time to listen to
DAB and a verse from Scripture which just leapt out at me was Isaiah 29:18, “eyes
of gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind will see.” So, I went in for my
appointment and the consultant was very happy. My vision is just wonderful. I
can still drive. I can still cycle. I can still work. So, thank you for your
prayers and most of all, Jesus, thank You for Your love and healing. Amen.