Ezekiel 10:1-11:25, Hebrews 6:1-20, Psalms 105:16-36, Proverbs 27:1-2
Today is the 4th day of November welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is a joy, it is an honor, it is a privilege, it is a gift, sometimes I even think it’s a miracle that we can be together like this today, right now, around the Global Campfire just coming in out of the chaos of it all finding a place to sit, it’s warm, friends are here. We look across the fire, we see each other, and we know that we are united in spirit, we’re after the same thing - to let God’s word speak truth. It is one of the joys of life to be around this campfire with you and take the next step forward. And, so, let’s do that. We are reading from the EHV, the Evangelical Heritage Version this week and continuing our journey through the book of Ezekiel. Today chapters 10 and 11.
Commentary:
Okay. Let’s go back to the Proverbs again. The Proverbs are giving us these, you know, one or two sentences yesterday and today again that are just so penetrating and so now and so immediate and so much of a mirror into our own souls, and so much of a light shining into the world around us, So, today we had two verses, two sentences, and they say a ton. “Do not boast about tomorrow because you do not know what a day may produce.” Right there…I mean right there should bring just a generous dose of humility. No matter what eventualities we have prepared for we have no idea what is coming in our direction. And the humbling thing is that our Father does. We are under the shadow of His wings for us but for us to be out there running our mouths about what we’re gonna do tomorrow, like what’s coming is ultimately not certain. No matter what kind of certainty we say it with there is no way that we can know that outside of walking with God. And in a lot of ways this entire year has been that kind of a metaphor, all kinds of unexpected transitional things in our lives and in our world that we’ve had to adapt to and kinda fight against and accept and all kinds of disruption letting us know how fragile the whole thing is. And we’ve spent so much of our energy just trying to figure out how to get back to how it was when God is only going forward. We’re being invited forward not backward. But then on the heels of the confidence and the boasting about what we’re gonna to do tomorrow, like about how confident we are in our strength and whatever may come we have this second sentence right on the heels of it –“let someone else praise you, not your own mouth, a stranger not your own lips.” You know people who are just…just…like…like their selves are the only thing they think about, apparently, because that’s the only thing they talk about? You know what I’m talking about, where somebody…you can be sharing your day, you can be sharing something deep in your life, but one way or another all they seem to think about is themselves? And, so, they’ll flip the whole thing back around, they’ll acknowledge you, but what they really want to do is just talk about themselves. And you know how challenging it can be to be in a relationship with that kind of a person because it’s only about them. And, so, ultimately this kind of self-promotion, this bragging constantly, the boasting, the praising of self continually out of their mouths, they are awesome and their spouse is awesome and their children are awesome and their everything is awesome…ahh…that just gets repellent after a while. That kind of person ends up alone eventually because…well…for a couple reasons. First of all, it’s a front, it’s that layer of falseness that we were talking about yesterday. So, eventually it all comes down like a house of cards. Nobody is as interested as one might have thought and people begin to back away because really this person doesn’t want to be in a relationship with anybody else. They just need to be seen by other people. Like, they’re on the stage and everybody else in the world is in the audience. So, the world is there stage and everybody else is a bit player in their story. And eventually there’s like no life there. And, so, people retreat and back away when all of this fronting. all of this boasting, all of this drawing attention to oneself really is exposing something very needy underneath, that this person needs to trust, this person needs to find a true friendship, one were the fake…like the Halloween costume comes off and what’s real is really exposed to somebody trusted. And ultimately this leads us to the fact that…yah…it can be dangerous to be in relationships, but you have to start with a foundation of trust in God. God already knows you’re faking. You can’t fool God. He already knows everything that’s going. He can’t be duped. And He still loves you as you are right now with the deep desire and hope that you will enter into relationship with Him where these broken things can be healed and you can be utterly transformed, transformed so much that you begin to resemble Him. You become Christ like. That’s what’s going on here. That’s the goal. And the more layers of falseness that we apply to this, the more difficult the challenge until life one day confronts us and strips it all away. And then we find that to be such a difficult process but then we reflect back upon it, we realize that was the moment we became free because all that we had feared finally happened and it wasn’t as bad as we thought it was and now we’re free to be who we are and to delight in who everybody else is because we don’t need to be better, we don’t need to compare, we’re not in a competition. There is no game going on. There is no cosmic God game where He’s looking to see which one of us human beings is going to achieve the most to be the number one human being. We’re His children. We’re His kids. That’s not what you do to your kids. So, why are we doing it to each other? Because it only leads us into falseness. So once again, “do not boast about tomorrow because you do not know what a day may produce. Let someone else praise you, not your own mouth, a stranger, not your own lips.”
Prayer:
Father, we enter into that acknowledging, even though we don’t live like this most of the time, the thing that we need is You. It…it's…it’s Your words of praise, it’s Your words of encouragement, it’s Your drawing year that we need. It’s being seen by You that we long for and we exchange it and we try to compete with each other and we try to live in a very, very backward way that is never gonna work, which is essentially what You were saying Jesus in the Beatitudes – this is a backward world, this is not gonna work, it’s the opposite of what You think it is. And, so, help us Holy Spirit to get our minds right, to get our minds in alignment with Yours, the mind of Christ on things, to get our Spirits right, to know that we are inseparably intertwined with You, to get on the same page that we might actually be free. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Our Father who art in heaven ancient of days
omnipotent and omniscient worthy of all praise
Jehovah raphe Jehovah jireh our healer our provider
we come to you open with our hearts and minds hoping
that you are still willing to bless as we humbly confess
that you’re worthy of all honor though we’ve given you much less
wondering in confusion because we buy into illusion
greedily gulping down a great big slice of the devils pie
exchanging your wonderful truth for a lie
and we need you to heal us both outside and in
strengthen us father revive us again
Jehovah nisi our banner our fortress our friend
please help us heavenly father we love you Amen
blindtony1016@gmail.com like to give a shout out to David Michael, Dice and Darlene Dice. Matthew Fouts it was good hearing your voice again. Know you are all loved and on my prayer list daily. And once again Brian and the Hardin family thank you for this wonderful podcast for God’s Holy Spirit to flow. Keep it flowin’ y’all. All right. Bye-bye.
Hey this is Jared calling from Duluth Minnesota it’s day 555 in my journey since April 26, 2019 in the Daily Audio Bible renewal time where God wakes me up every morning early in the morning to spend time with Him. What a great time it was today in Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12 saying for the word of God is quick and powerful sharper than any two-edged sword. And then going on that God has been tempted in all points like as we are yet without sin and we lay naked before Him. He knows us better than what we know ourselves and yet we can come boldly to the throne of grace to find help in a time of need. And there’s a time of great need and all of our lives right now. The world is turned upside down, full of turmoil. I know personally I appreciate your prayers for my son Steve as we’ve been estranged from him for now year as he got mad at us and disowned us and hasn’t spoke to us now for almost…almost a year. On the fourth is his birthday. He’s coming up from the cities, Twin Cities, tomorrow and I’ve reached out to him to see if we can get together and…and…and talk and chat and for him to…to be reconciled with him. I appreciate your prayers that that might happen. But in any case, we know that God is in control through all the trial and turmoil of what’s going on right now. May God give us grace, mercy, help in time of need. God bless.
Good morning DABbers this is Running Desperately to Jesus also known as Staying Connected Desperately to Jesus which right now that is definitely my filling, running desperately and staying desperately connected. I am…have always struggled with depression and was on medication and therapy for some time. My therapist retired in 2016 after she was able to get me stable from being sexually assaulted. Today I’m feeling quite depressed. I don’t know if it’s this Covid or what’s going on but I am in definitely a dark place now and what is crossing my mind a lot lately for the past couple days is suicide and I know that is definitely Satan’s work and I’m having a difficult time hearing of God’s word and His voice. So, I’m asking all my DABbers to lift me up to pray me through. I don’t want to go back into therapy because since my…as I said earlier…my therapist that I was formerly with who is very good retired, and I don’t want to start over again. I know that this can be fought with word…with God’s word but right now because I am in a dark place, I cannot even call upon His word. So, DABbers I’m just asking again that you stand in the gap for me to lift me up and to help pull me through this dark space, these dark thoughts, especially the source idle thoughts. I don’t have any friends that really call to check on me. So, I’m actually in this by myself. Running Desperately to Jesus.
Hello, it’s John from Bristol in the UK again. I called a couple months back about my father. He has mental health issues and it’s causing a separation between him and my mother. So, he still has the same delusions. He’s adamant he doesn’t want to go home, and they had such a happy marriage before he had this psychotic episode. But…and he’s still in hospital but he’s…he’s much more stable than he was which is an improvement but mom and dad have a meeting on Wednesday this week. So, if you guys would just cover that in prayer for reconciliation of their marriage that would be wonderful. Thank you so much. God bless.
Hi,
DAB it’s Emmy from Illinois just calling in with continued prayer requests for
my marriage. I’m struggling right now. Things are a lot better than they were
but I’m feeling extremely lonely. Just…I miss…miss having relationships with
people, especially right now when the one person in my life doesn’t really want
a relationship with me. I know God’s at work. I know that He’s still called me
to stand for my marriage but I’m really struggling right now to just want
something to be done either finally ended or create a breakthrough. And I don’t
know what’s happening and I’m just getting lonely. And as we get closer to the
holidays and my 40th birthday it just makes it even worse because I know
I won’t be seeing friends or family. So, if you could just continue to pray for
me, I would appreciate it. Thank you.