Jeremiah 4:19-6:15, Colossians 1:18-2:7, Psalms 77:1-20, Proverbs 24:23-25
Today is the 6th day of October welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today and every day for that matter. It’s great to be in your presence is great to be in…in one another’s presence, and in the presence of the Lord as we let it all go, spend a few minutes here focusing ourselves, orienting ourselves to God, allowing His word to speak and preparing us for the rest of our day or evening. So, let’s dive in. We’re reading from the New Living Translation this week. Jeremiah chapter 6, verse 16 through 8 verse 7.
Commentary:
Okay. In the letter to the Colossians we’re seeing Paul respond against some teachings that had kinda come in and come around the church, angel worship and this sort of thing but in the process of doing that he is stating or even restating because these things have been stated before in other letters, they’re fundamental, foundational pieces of our…of our understanding of our faith. So, we kind of get yet again another opportunity to take the basics that we take for granted and look at them and marvel at how mind-boggling what’s being said is. So, Paul’s saying, “everybody that has put their faith in Christ, their reality is a different reality than it used to be.” And we could say, yeah…well…yeah…I mean Jesus changes everything, so things look different.” But Paul’s like, “everything is different because everything that happened before that moment is dead, it died so it no longer has any claim, it no longer has any anything, it’s dead, it no longer can influence us, it no longer can overshadow us, it’s gone, it died, and Paul restated that, “in Christ”, and I’m quoting, “in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body.” Okay, once again reiterating, Jesus is God, is one with the Father, is God. In Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. And, so, Paul’s like, “that’s the…that’s the thing. So, any other thing that kinda comes in and nuances that away from that stark reality isn’t true and any other reality being described beside this baseline reality isn’t reality and living into this reality forces us to understand that we are not who we were. We were transformed and we continue to be transformed and that transformation is leading us away from the fragmentation of life as we knew it and leading us on the path toward and into restoration and complete wholeness where our identity is in Christ, in whom the fullness of God dwells and that same Christ dwells within us now.” Okay. Again, like that’s kind of the basic understanding of things, but it is absolutely mind blowing when we stop and think about it. When we stop and think about anything that we believe about our faith and live into it we realize most of the time we are living significantly…significantly like fractionally of what is available to us. And what Paul’s saying basically is that anything that will erode your understanding of who Jesus is and the fact that when you believed in Him your previous self ended and you were reborn into this new thing that God is doing. Anything that would try to steal that from you is something that you can identify as false, which is not to say anything that disrupts you or makes you think or takes you deeper or takes you wider, like that’s not the point. The point is anything that would steal what is yours, your understanding of your Savior and your understanding of yourself in Christ is a false reality being spun out before you that you can go into, but it will be a false reality. Your reality has completely changed and in the reality that Christ offers you, you are continually, whether waking or sleeping, like no matter what you are doing, when you are in Christ, you are being sanctified, you are being made whole, you are being made perfect. And once again we get this description of why this is good news.
Prayer:
Jesus, this is such good news that it offers us, no matter where we’ve been, no matter what we’ve done, a complete and utter restart, like a…not a restart of what was but a brand-new rebirth, born again and we are…we are stunned at Your mercy and kindness and grace and we worship You and we thank You because this is such good news that it changes everything and there is no way for us to do this on our own. And, so, we put our faith in You. We trust You. Holy Spirit, may we be aware of Your continual work in our lives transforming us as we move forward. We pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.
Announcements:
dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it's…it’s where the Global Campfire…it’s us, it’s home base for a virtual community. So, be sure to check in. Check in…it’s, as I’ve said before, it’s pretty simple to navigate around.
There’s a section called the Community section. Be aware of that. That’s where to get connected to other people. That’s where the Prayer Wall is to pray for other people or to ask other people to pray for you. So, just knowing that, like just dive in there, visit the Prayer Wall. As I’ve said…I don’t know…many times, sometimes when we’re feeling pretty much at our low points it’s really, really easy to get very very focused on our struggles and it pulls subtly into isolation because we’re focusing on fixing whatever it is that’s broken in our world and all of the sudden we feel like we’re totally alone walking this path when we’re not, we just got isolated. So, going to the Prayer Wall and just praying for others and realizing, I’m not the only one, maybe my circumstances are unique and specific to me, but other people are going through all kinds of things. We are all in this together and when we reach out in prayer for each other it changes the atmosphere. We know we’re not alone and we can start to turn…to turn outward instead of increasing our self-absorption in some way and it makes a huge difference. So, just knowing that the Prayer Wall is there all the time is a great thing. You can always reach out and ask for prayer or offer prayer. So, check that out.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if the mission that we share to bring the spoken word of God read fresh every day and given freely to the world for anyone anywhere anytime to listen to and to build community around it because it’s a rhythm of life so that we know as we go through each and every day we’re not going through this solitary kind of endeavor. We are on a journey together through the Scriptures. If that matters to you, if that has brought life into your life than thank you for your partnership. We wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t be able to do this if we didn’t do this together. And, so, thank you. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner, or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.
And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement 877-942-4253 is the number to dial or you can hit the Hotline button, the little red button at the top in the app. No matter where you are you got a hotline and you can share from there.
And that is it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.