04/22/2020 DAB Transcript

Joshua 24:1-33, Luke 21:1-28, Psalms 89:38-52, Proverbs 13:20-23

Today is the 22nd day of April welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you as…well…as we gather to take the next step forward in the adventure that we’re on through the Bible. And today…today is going to be a final day. We’re going to conclude another book, the book of Joshua in the Old Testament, and this will end in era. Actually, things will be very, very different after Joshua, as we’ll learn in the days ahead as we continue our journey forward. But this is one of those kind of apex moments, one of these moments in the history of ancient Israel that we’re reading through in the Bible where things were good and had reached kind of zenith. And following in the footsteps of Moses, like we’ll remember that the entire book of Deuteronomy was the last things that Moses needed, wanted desired, must communicate to the children of Israel before they would cross the Jordan into the Promised Land. Joshua has reached the end of his life as well. These are the last things that he has to say. And, so, we’re reading from the Amplified Bible this week. Joshua chapter 24.

Commentary:

Okay. So, as we concluded the book of Joshua, we have a pretty riveting, pretty impassioned plea from Joshua and these are the final things, this is the final charge of his life to these people that he’s led across the Jordan River. And his plea is that they would serve the Lord, that they would serve God with all their hearts, they would not return to false gods, that they would serve only the Lord God, the one true most-high God. And he is warning them like, “if you deviate from this you will destroy yourself”, but he also brings something starkly clear because he’s telling them, “if…if you’re not going to listen to me you’re not going to be able to be with God but also with the other gods that you’re turning to for life or prosperity or whatever. God’s not going to share you. So, if you…if it’s unacceptable for you to serve the Lord, then choose who you’re going to serve.” And that’s when he says the famous words, “as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” And something rises up within us when we hear those words doesn’t it? Like something…like we’re like, “me too. As for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” It’s fantastic declaration. It’s a beautiful moment in the Bible, but Joshua presses into that. “You will not be able to serve the Lord if you serve any other gods. He’s a holy God. He’s a jealous God. He demands what is uniquely and rightfully His.” He’s pressing in on them. This is not just something that they can declare it’s something that they have to be. And then we find ourselves in the stories like we always do. We can say those words. We can say, “as for me and my house we will serve the Lord”, but inside the walls of that house can be utter and complete chaos. It can…it’s not enough to say it we have to be it. So, Joshua presses in on them and they respond, “no, no, no, we will only serve the Lord.” And then Joshua says something that is really riveting because it is no less a factor right this second than it was when he spoke the words out of his mouth. “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen for yourselves the Lord to serve Him.” We live in a world where, you know, kind of diverting blame funneling it away from ourselves and onto somebody else or under some other circumstance where nothing’s really “our” fault. I mean that’s kind of the norm, but that all starts to fall apart when you hear the words “you are a witness against yourself. Like you will affirm or deny by your own thoughts, words and deeds, whether what you are saying is actually the truth.” So, if you’re gonna say, “as for me and my house we will serve the Lord”, then we must also realize that we are witnesses against ourselves about whether or not that’s the truth, right?  That takes it out of the ether and makes it a tangible thing sitting square in our lap. And that’s good. It’s like cold water that gets thrown into your face. You don’t like that. But you’re awake. That’s like getting slapped across the face and you might be really really angry about that until you realize that the house is burning down and somebody’s trying to save your life by smacking you across the face and waking you up. We are witnesses against ourselves. We will affirm or deny not just with what we say but by who we are. And, so let’s live into that today. As stark as it is it is so needed and is so helpful. Are our words for show or do our words reflect who we are?

Prayer:

Father, we invite Your Holy Spirit into that question as we meditate upon it today. This gives us an opportunity to confront what is false within us. But in order to confront the darkness, in order to confront what is false we have to see it. And, so we invite Your Holy Spirit to show us these areas where we might be saying “as for me and my house we will serve the Lord”, but in practice we are turning to so many other things to give us life and to give us hope. And we acknowledge Father that the road ahead in the Scriptures is gonna show us how that can disintegrate, how You can have this statement, but if it doesn’t become who You are, how things over time begin to fall back apart again. And we know this because we’ve lived it and we’re tired of it. We actually want to plant the flag, “as for me, and as for my house we will serve the Lord.” And, so, we begin Father by simply asking, “where are we not? Where have we gone astray?” Come with Your comfort and guidance, come with Your correction, come with Your rebuke, come and lead us back to the narrow path that leads to life, we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, and that’s home base, and it’s certainly where you find out what’s going on around here. So, absolutely stay tuned, stay connected in any way that you can.

Be familiar with the Community section. That’s where the Prayer Wall lives and that is an ongoing, always on, never off place to reach out for prayer and to offer prayer. So, if you’re in the middle of the night just sitting there staring at the ceiling…yeah…I mean grab every phone or whatever and go to the Prayer Wall. There’s…there’s nothing…nothing really that…that sooths sort of the…the bigger questions and the anxieties that can come at us, then…then actually trying to reach outward out of ourselves beyond our circumstances toward each other. And, so, this is always available, always on. So, check that out.

Check out the Daily Audio Bible Shop. There are resources there for our journey, lots of different kinds of resources. I haven’t spoken in a while about the resource called, “The God of Your Story.” I don’t know why. I mean it was like one of the most difficult uphill climbs of a project that I have ever, ever, ever been on. Like on paper it was like. “of course, trying to write down maybe some of the best thoughts, the best things, the best path that we’ve taken through the Bible, to write that down should be easy because this is what we do every day”, but it wasn’t. And just…just…to write down the things like in written form really, really trying to dig into offering in written form the gold of the Daily Audio Bible over these last 15 years, that was difficult. But it is out, it is available wherever you can get a book, including at the Daily Audio Bible Shop where the proceeds, all of the proceeds of the Daily Audio Bible Shop support the Daily Audio Bible. So, it's…it’s a good place to go. But “The God of Your Story”, you can get that anywhere you can get a book. It’s just…it’s a tangible written 365-day journey through the Scriptures like the one that we’re on but in written form, which communicates in a different way. And having that tangible form, you know, like if the Internet’s out or whatever, then you just keep on going. But if you’re listening to the Daily Audio Bible and you kinda wanna regroup and end your day, and kind of look at the same passage of Scripture maybe from a different perspective, it is a fantastic resource for that. That’s what it was made for. So, check out this latest written resource, “The God of Your Story at the Daily Audio Bible Shop.

if you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, thank you with all of my heart. We are in this together and that is why we are here and that makes all the difference. So, thank you for your partnership. 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 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 and begin to share from their 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.

04/21/2020 DAB Transcript

Joshua 22:21-23:16, Luke 20:27-47, Psalms 89:14-37, Proverbs 13:17-19

Today is the 21st day of April welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it’s great to be here with you for another day, another step forward in the adventure that we are on, the one that takes us all the way through the Bible in a year, day by day step-by-step together in community. And I’m glad that we can be together today. So, like every other day we’re picking up where we left off and where we left off yesterday in the Old Testament is in the book of Joshua and there’s some drama because there’s two and a half tribes that were given land on the west side of the Jordan River, provided that they would cross the Jordan River onto the east side into the Promised Land and help their fellow tribesmen settle the land, which they did. And then they were dismissed. So, they were headed back to the other side of the Jordan, and they built an altar that has caused a lot of confusion and that’s where we pick up the story. Joshua chapter 22 verse 21 through 23 verse 16.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we have almost completed the book of Joshua, which is the first book that tells kind of what happens after Moses becomes a part of history hen Joshua takes leadership. And, so, Joshua’s now telling us that he’s old and he’s about to die and we’re gonna be finishing the book of Joshua tomorrow, but this story that we’ve spent the last couple of days working our way through in the book of Joshua has some really, really important advice embedded in it for us now in the times that we’re facing, for that matter for times anybody’s ever facing but it’s appropriate for us now. So…so, we remember being on the other side of the Jordan River, right? We remember wandering around in the desert for all that time and finally getting to the Jordan and finally getting to crossover and we remember that the tribes of Ruben and Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh, they loved the land that was on the eastern side of the Jordan River. It was perfect for shepherding. It was perfect for what they did. And they went to this whole thing with Moses about, “could they have this land?” And Moses telling them, “you’re gonna…you’re gonna not cross over?” This whole negotiation happened, and it worked out that if they would cross over, fight with their brother tribes, settle the land, then they could come back and have the land that had been conquered on the east side of the Jordan. And that happened. They…they were faithful, and they were true to that. They did that and they were given their leave. Everything was good until they got back to the Jordan River and erected a replica of the altar of God. What it looked like was that the tribe of Gad and Ruben and half the tribe of Manasseh were going to go back over on the other side of the Jordan and that was gonna become a boundary and they were turning away, like they were rebelling. They were turning away from God. They had made their own altar, which got all the tribes in the Promised Land on the western side of the Jordan River together to go like, “if we let this happen then all of us are going to be destroyed.” So, they all got together and they’ve all been battle worn, like they have been fighting and are used to combat and they’re…they’re gonna go attack their brothers, their gonna go attack these two and half tribes because it appears the two and half tribes have rebelled against God, which will bring judgment upon them all and they’re ready to go. Thankfully they went, thankfully they sent somebody to find out the other side of the story, to find out why they would build this altar, why they would have rebelled against God. If they hadn’t done that they would’ve raced down, and the Jordan River would’ve run red with blood. It would’ve been awful Civil War. But they went down and asked and the two and half tribes were like, “absolutely! We would never turn away from God. We built this replica because we’re…were worried that the Jordan is gonna be a border and someday in the future the people on the east side of the Jordan are going to say to the people on the west side, “you have no place with God.” And, so, they built this this altar as a memorial, as a witness for future generations about who follows God. Here’s where this gets personal. The tribes on the east side of the Jordan River who were settling this newly conquered Promised Land, heard a rumor. They heard a story about an altar and about a rebellion and they took that bit of information, that rumor and started fabricating assumptions about what it meant, creating this plausible understanding, this plausible reality, and then began to live into that plausible reality created by a rumor to the point that, like the militaries being called out, to the point that the plan to attack their brothers who had fought alongside them was being hatched. That’s what can happen with a rumor and assumptions. That’s what can happen with disinformation and this kind of stuff happens personally individually, like we make up assumptions about things all of the time and…and we’re not very good at it. And, so, our assumptions invariably are flawed, but we’re making up realities about people that might have some truth in them but are not true. In the case of the story that we’re reading it was true, an altar had been erected. It was not true that it had been erected to rebel against God and offer sacrifices to false gods. The fill-in the blank part, the assumption part could’ve caused bloody Civil War. So, now you can see how we do this to each other and we suffer the consequences of doing it to each other, whether it’s just like a personal fracturing of a relationship are the disintegration of a friendship or whether it’s on national or even international levels. This stuff happens and these rumors and false assumptions, like the fabrications of reality that we then live into and believe can have us attacking our brothers and sisters for no reason. If we want to take the lesson from the Bible here, is that there was a moment of pause, right? Wisdom was at the crossroads. And they’re like, “yeah, before we go down there and start swinging swords, we should send an envoy to go find out what in the heck, like what’s happening? Why the altar? What is this about? Once the story was corrected, once the assumptions were exposed, once the rumor fell apart then things made sense. That is so often…so often the case in our personal interactions. So, let’s take a lesson from ancient Israel and apply it to modern life today.

Prayer:

Jesus, we invite you into that. We confess and it’s not like you don’t know, it’s not like you haven’t seen us take these missteps so often that it’s embarrassing. We have made assumptions. We have listened to rumors. We have listened to chatter. We have formulated plausible explanations. We have made up false realities and lived like they were true. We are all guilty of this. And if we would pause, if we would slow down and meditate upon us, just think back over our lives, we would see the chaos and destruction that it has caused in our rearview mirror, but our rearview mirror isn’t our windshield. What has happened does not have to continue happening. We don’t have to consume rumor and gossip and assumption like it’s some sort of delicious delicacy. We can see it for the putrid disease-ridden poison that it is. And, so, Holy Spirit we ask that you help us to stop making things up, to actually go find out what’s really going on in our relationships. We need you in this. Our default is usually to go to dark and negative places when we need the default to be light and life and good news and hope and charity. So, come Holy Spirit into all of this as we meditate upon it today, as we catch ourselves going into those dark places. Stop us. Give us the opportunity to go wait, wait, wait, wait, “I’m not going there. That doesn’t go anywhere good.” Help us Jesus we pray in your mighty name, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it is the website, its where you find out what’s going on around here and there’s, you know, usually something or another going on around here. We’ve been…I guess all of us in one way or another have been…well…we’ve been working on how to…how to work through this virus thing. And now the language is like, “how do we come out of this virus thing?” And I have had interactions with lots of people who have, you know, like introverts and extroverts have been dealing with this in very, very different ways. But introvert or extrovert I’ve talked to all kinds people who have this feeling like, “I want to get out of this, but I don’t want to be the same. Like I don’t want to go…I don’t want to just try to go right back to where I left off. I want to be…I want to be different. Like, this is shifting some things and giving me a chance kind of look at the disruption and see like that treadmill that I lived on was also not getting me anywhere. And I…I mean I don’t like going through this anymore than anybody else does, but I do like to hear those kinds of things because that’s really why we come to the Bible every day, right? Is to let God’s word wash over us, to sort of inform where we’re going, and even in the day that we’re gonna live, like how we’re gonna live this. That’s how change happens, little by little, day by day, step-by-step. So, in lots of ways we’re thinking about new normal. And that can sound ominous, like, you know, some…something really bad happened and now this is a new normal or we can just understand like, “I’ve been disrupted and it’s given me an opportunity to reset, to find new normals that are more healthy across the board.” So, I guess that’s some of what we’re all going through around here but around the Global Campfire, you know, we’re always here, we’re always talking about these kinds of things. This is the kinds of stuff that the Bible brings up in us. And, so, this is…yeah…stay connected to this rhythm as we continue our journey forward.

Check out the community section. That’s a great…there are great ways to stay connected there, including the Prayer Wall.

Check out the Daily Audio Bible Shop. There are resources there specifically for the journey that we’re on as we move through the Bible.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bile I don’t know what words I can use to express the gratitude other than awe and gratefulness that the Global Campfire burns, like that every day we’re throwing logs on it, every day it’s here. And that is because we’re in this together. So, thank you for your partnership. There’s a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app…and by the way if you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app…I mean you know that we released a very very massive update to the app last week. And as is normal, when somethings that big of…of an infrastructure shift happens then there’s gonna be little hiccups here and there. And, so, worked all last week to update the update, like you find out immediately certain things that you couldn’t know in any kind of other environment and update those things. So…so make sure you stay to the most recent update, which is now 1.1.60 that fixed pretty much all of the little issues that different people were experiencing. Actually, for the most part everybody was…everything worked perfect, but there’s always different phones and there’s always different environments and circumstances and settings and stuff like that. So, make sure your updated. Everything should work really great and the badges, the achievements, the progress that we’re making as we move through the Scriptures, as we check off the days that we’re listening to, that’s working great. But anyway, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner of the app screen or 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, 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.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Alisha here from Pennsylvania just calling to pray for all of those healthcare workers out there, the doctors and people taking care of other people. And we just pray Lord that You keep them safe and help them find peace in this time where they’re witnessing so much Lord. We just want to lift them up to You. Lord I pray for all the college kids that are turning to online classes, just help them to hang in there and to continue to feel motivated and connected. Just help them to continue to learn Lord, to know that they can do this with You. Lord I want to reach out, pray for all the teachers out there that are…whether their teachers just learning how to move online or if they’re mothers and fathers teaching their children, just be with them, give them patients, give them understanding and give them the tools that they need Lord to make it a successful semester for everyone. Lord, I pray for those graduates or undergraduates that are working on different things like research and development or people that are trying to student teach online Lord. I just pray that You’ll keep them…that You’ll keep them in Your in Your hands Lord. Lord I just thank You so much for my family, I thank You for everybody that is healthy, and I thank You that this whole thing is not as blown out as it could have been. In Your name I pray Lord. Amen.

Good morning DABbers this is Still Waters calling in from the Netherlands. I’m a new DABber I started back in January. I found the Daily Audio Bible in December last year and I thought, “okay. Let me have a look at this.” But then when I started, I couldn’t stop I kept being drawn back to it. So, thank you very much Brian. And I just want to encourage everyone because today on the 18th of April we read from Luke 19 and the story of the __ just reading __. The __ was a chief, a chief tax collector which meant he was very rich. And look at him, he had no reputation to keep anymore, he was short, he was a tax collector, a chief tax collector __. And he wanted to experience Jesus, so he had to climb a tree. And when Jesus called out his name, my goodness, I can only imagine how he felt. The great joy, excitement that he was filled with, I felt it, that excitement, that every human being, every believer should feel once they say yes to Jesus Christ. And salvation my friends, I like to encourage everyone that salvation is a life lived with great joy and excitement. And let us all just enjoy…enjoy the love of Jesus Christ with great excitement, with great joy and share His love for the world. Thank you, Brian for Sneezing Jesus it was lovely to listen to. Thank you. Bye-bye. Have a lovely day.

I just want to give a shot out to Scott who just accepted the Lord, that You just accepted the Lord and I just praise God for the wonderful way He has brought You before the throne of grace. Lord God I just thank You for Scott and for his willingness to…to accept You as Lord and Savior and I pray Lord that You would help him to grow and mature as he reads Your word and that he would keep his eyes focused on You and through all things and all things and because of all things. We just praise You Lord and thank You for Scott once again in Jesus’ name I pray. Way to go Scott. I’m so proud of You. This is Susan from Canada. Just praising God.

Hi this is Helen in Durham North Carolina I would like to share a personal lesson I received from today’s reading, a rebuke from a friend, from Jesus. In the passage in Luke about the 10 minas, the one servant buried his mina because he was afraid. He said you take what you did not deposit and reap what you did not sow. Well that hit me. I recalled elsewhere in Scripture we read that God makes a way in the wilderness, streams in the desert, He makes something out of nothing. As I heard Brian read this parable the Lord told me a woman who has named herself in the past as miss much afraid that I am guilty of often hiding what he’s given me to invest in the world. My testimony, what I know about Him, just speaking up because I’m simple afraid I’ll say it all wrong. I might be inept, but He can take what I do have and say and use it for His glory for his purposes and the other person’s lives. So, the sweet Lord spoke to me this morning, gave me a rebuke and also encouragement. I said thank you, I hear you and I’ve asked Him to sink this deep into my soul so that I can share whatever I have with others and let Him take care of the results. I’m praying for my two sons to find Jesus, one with emotional issues of anger depression and selfishness. He has a four-year-old son that is suffering from his dysfunction. Please pray. And the other is chasing the world of financial gain and sensuality. I love them both so much. Please pray. Thank you, Brian for being faithful for so many years to walk this calling of reading the Bible to us. God does speak through you.

Val from Vegas I’m so excited for you. Thank you for calling in and sharing your praise report on what’s happened with you. Like, what a quick turnaround. It seems like just a week ago when I heard you call in like super sick, destitute, ready to give up and look at you now. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing that with us and all of you out there that are feeling like that, hang in there. God’s got something for you.

Shabbat shalom, today is Saturday, April 18th and I had very good holy week and I pray that you had a holy week that was very special to you. During this time, I have been battling and trying to understand what am I supposed to do with this time. So, I do pray, and the Holy Spirit does help me pray for others and the Holy Spirit is sent out to help others in need just as I am in need. My name is Danielle I am in Maryland and at this time I do a little bit of checking myself to see what is it that I’m supposed to do, what do I need to do and I’m left but one thing at this time, I have an addiction. And, you know, I am honored by God that God had taken another addiction away from me and I’m praying for the Spirit of God to break and break and break the chains of addiction in my life and for others who have been struggling with addiction and to be set free, to be set free and to just enjoy each day without curdling back to what feels comfortable. I’m asking the Daily Audio Bible family to pray with me and to pray for others who have addictions…addictions and ask for those things be broken by the blood of Jesus. Thank you for your prayers and thank you for praying together and the family and by the campfire because God hears us, and God sees…

04/20/2020 DAB Transcript

Joshua 21:1-22:20, Luke 20:1-26, Psalms 89:1-13, Proverbs 13:15-16

Today is the 20th day of April welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today as we continue our journey through life and through the Scriptures together. And it’s a joy, as always to come around the Global Campfire and be together and know that we’re not alone and know that we’re stepping forward together. So, we’ve been reading from the Amplified Bible starting yesterday and that’s what we’ll read from you in the days ahead here and throughout…throughout this week. And today we’ll pick up where we left off yesterday. Joshua chapter 21 verse 1 through 22 verse 20.

Commentary:

Okay. So in the book of Joshua basically we remember being on the other side of the Jordan River and the two and a half tribes saying, “this is perfect for us, can we have this?” And ultimately, they were told, “if you’ll go with your brothers across the Jordan and help them win the land for themselves then yes you can.” And, so, that time has come and these two and a half tribes now who have been across the Jordan helping the other tribes settle the land have been given leave to go home. So, they are on their way and they’ve gone all the way back to the Jordan River and then erected an altar to God before crossing over the river. That seems to be patently against what Moses said to do. And, so…and the children of Israel have learned the lesson like, “yes if God goes before you who can stand against you but if God doesn’t how can you stand at all?” So, they’ve gotten together now because they’ve heard about this alter that’s been erected and they’re trying to figure out what to do because their brothers have just helped them kind of clear the land and settle and now they’re going back home, but it seems like they’re going back home in rebellion, which should cause the other tribes to rise up and go to war with them and like it’s looking like a bad situation. And we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to continue that story and see how things play out.

Then, in the New Testament we also kinda got a bad situation. I mean have…like we all probably know, like, what a mouse trap is, right? You set a mouse trap to get a mouse or whatever it is you trying to trap or catch or get rid of, whatever rodent, whatever. But have you ever stepped into a word trap, right? Something you’re supposed to step into because it’s supposed to get you to say something that maybe don’t even mean, but to trap you, to ensnare you so that it can be used against you. That is basically what it has happened to Jesus and the reason that it’s happened to Him is that He continues to call into the light what is in the darkness. And this is making the religious leaders, because He’s mostly focusing His attention on them because they are continually questioning Him. So, it creates a lot of tension. They’re asking Jesus, “who gave you the authority to do what you’re doing?” He knows what they’re trying to do so He asks them a question about John the Baptist, basically “was he from God or not?” An that is pulling into the light what is in the darkness. So, they have to get together and go like, “if we say he’s from heaven then Jesus is just gonna go like, ‘why don't…why didn’t and why do you not believe in him? Like why don’t you believe that God sent him?’” But if they were to say like, “you know, he was just from…he made all this up in his head” then they’re going to be in trouble with the people because the people believe fully that John was a prophet. So, all they can do is say, “I don’t know.” And, so, Jesus turns the whole thing back on them and is like, “then I don’t know. I’m not telling you who gives me the authority to do what I do.” He’s basically exposing that they’ll do the same thing to him that they’ve been doing to John. And he illustrates how this has been an ongoing systemic thing by using this parable of the vineyard owner. So, this person who owns a vineyard leases his land to tenant farmers and then goes away in at harvest he sends somebody to get his…his share, but they beat this person and send them away. And, so, the master then sends another servant to get his share and they beat that one too and send him away. And then he sends a third one and they do the same thing again. What Jesus is showing in this parable is the prophetic voices that God has sent all along to the people and how the religious leaders have ignored these things, that this is an ongoing thing. So then, in Jesus story the master sends his own son to be his representative to get what is deserving of the master because there is no higher representative. And they decide this is…this is the heir so let’s kill him, which they do in Jesus story. Then they realize He’s telling the parable about them. And, so, they’re just…they’re just trying to find a way to silence Jesus. Thus, the word traps. And, you know, if Jesus were to say something that was against the religious order or whatever, that could be called blasphemy, that could be called any number of things but that isn’t going to be able to get Jesus killed. Like that’s not good to be able to get him executed. The Romans don’t really care about that unless it’s causing unrest. To get Jesus actually in trouble He’s gonna have to do something against Rome, which is why they set this word trap - “Should we pay taxes”, basically. What we should notice is that Jesus, He…He kept His cool. Like He slowed things down enough to see what was actually going on and then responded appropriately. He wasn’t aggressive toward them or anything. He used wisdom to drag into the light what was in the darkness. He didn’t get into a debate, He didn’t get into a yelling match, there wasn’t arguing, there wasn’t a big fight. He…He just drug into the light what was in the dark and after that nobody had anything more to say about it. They just privately went and continued to plot against Jesus. And, so, let’s remember that. Let’s remember that posture. We have seen it over and over and over since the beginning of the year since we’ve been traveling with Jesus. We watch him calmly move into these situations. He’s not intimidated, which would be normal. He’s just there calling into the light what is in the dark. He’s not trying to prove anything. He’s certainly not trying to draw attention to Himself. Like we don’t have any examples of these exchanges where Jesus then, you know, leaves the situation and goes into a private place and self congratulates or gets His disciples together and says, “look at how awesome I was in that situation.” He’s just moving through life being light in the darkness.

Prayer:

Jesus, there is never a shortage of darkness but there’s no shortage of light either if we have eyes to see it. And this is what we’ve been focusing on, how we see things, our vision in this year. And, so, again, You know, we’ve seen this story before as we cross through this territory again, we are reminded. So, come Holy Spirit, help us to slow down and know that at every crossroad wisdom will be there and if we will walk in wisdom then we will walk in the light and that may disrupt the darkness, or even get the darkness to plot against us but what we’re seeing when we watch You is someone simply being completely true. And this drags into the light what is in the dark. So, in imitating You we’re gonna be walking that same path. So, our prayer today Lord is that You would come with Your light and expose what is dark within us, that we might first to deal with our own issues before…well…before trying to pull the speck out of somebody else’s eye, that we pull the beam out of our own. So, come, Holy Spirit, thank You for these words of correction today. Thank You for this example, once again of what the narrow path actually looks like. We invite Your Holy Spirit to cause us to meditate upon this today. We ask in Your holy name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base and that’s the website, its where you find out what’s going on around here. So, all you need’s an Internet connection to get dialed in. And that’s the beauty of this community that we share. It doesn’t really matter where we are geographically in the world, we’re not separated. But…which is an interesting thing because that’s, you know, so much of the world is kind of in that circumstance right now, but it's….it’s amazing and beautiful that we can come around the Global Campfire and know that we’re not alone. We’re here with our brothers and sisters. No matter what time of day or night while listening, we’re here with our brothers and sisters. I mean, we can be listening to this in the middle of the night and simply become aware that brothers and sisters on…in a different part of the world are having breakfast and as we’re kind of in loneliness or isolation and kind of feeling the weight of the middle of the night upon us and all the thoughts that come in the night we can just become aware, it's…it’s morning somewhere else and I’m not alone. My brothers and sisters are here having their breakfast and getting ready for their day. It's…it’s…it’s really remarkable when you think about it. It…it…it awes me that we’re doing what we’re doing. So, I’m so grateful that we have a community and we have a place to come together in community and at primary place is around the Global Campfire at dailyaudiobible.com and there’s a Community section there with further ways to reach out and social media channels and there are resources there in the Shop, all that have been crafted over the years that aid in encouraging us on the journey that we’re on as we move through the Scriptures. So…so to check it all out and stay connected.

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, and I thank you with all of my heart. The Global Campfire wouldn’t burn, it wouldn’t even exist if we weren’t in this together. And, so, so grateful that we are. 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 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 and share from there 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.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello family this is Dimitri from Portland Oregon calling back. Just wanted to thank you all for praying for me. Just wanted to give you an update. My wife and I are still struggling in our marriage. Like I said last time, she is ready to get divorced and move on with her life. And I know that’s not God’s will and I’ve been praying about it. I let it…I let God take over the entire situation and I received peace in my heart that now God is in control and I rely on Him to do the rest. So, I pray you guys that you guys can pray for me to continue with this, to continue being strong and for my wife to do the right decision. And pray for me guys. And it’s going to be alone hard road but I’ll…I’ll be thinking about you guys and I wanted to thank Brian for this amazing platform for always reading the Bible every day. It’s what’s keeping me alive in this struggle, keeping me alive the past five years that I’ve been listening this…to this platform and I thank you all again. Stay blessed and I’ll see you guys next time.

Hi everyone at the DAB family I’d like to ask everybody to please pray for me. For the last five months or more…I don’t know…I don’t even…I stopped counting I’ve been dealing with pain, but it hasn’t been physical pain. I’m not sick or anything. I’m not sick or anything. It’s just been emotional turmoil. It’s just been…I’ve just been in…in emotional turmoil and I’ve never felt like this before. It’s…it’s the most pain…emotional pain I’ve ever experienced before and I’ve been praying to God every day and I have been trying to be hopeful and I’ve been trying to be just seek God and trust in Him and believe in Him and know that it’ll eventually end, but I’m in so much pain every day and I can’t continue being in so much pain…

Hi this is Kim from recovery I just wanted to pray and lift up the lady on Friday that called in and said she just lost her dad. Let’s go to prayer. Jesus, I know in the word You say that You’re always close to the brokenhearted and You save those that are crushed in the spirit. Lord I just want to lift this lady that has lost her dad and kept from California. Lord just have her feel Your comfort, have her understand how close You are with this Lord. And sometimes that when we get in those moments that we feel so alone in that…that loss. Lord just have people come around her. Give her the peace that You…You give us so greatly Lord. Give her comfort, give her Your arms around her, surround her with Your love and thank You for Your willingness to take every part of this life with us Lord. And we just want to thank You and we pray that You’ll be with all the people that are going through this grief, that they know You are close. And we pray this in Jesus name.

Hi this is Andy from Birmingham I’d like to leave a prayer for Susie from Colorado who runs an orphanage for a child named Junior who called on the 17th of April. __ I prayed, and I could see this tear in her eye and remembered Psalm 56:8 says, “He collects tears and hurt.” So, my first prayer is that our Lord will be so close to Junior that he see this…see the compassion and I pray that he would not be consumed by what’s happened in his life. Lamentations 2:22 says, “because of His great love we’re not consumed for His compassions never fail.” And finally, Jeremiah 8:10 says, “don’t grieve for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” So, my final prayer will be that Junior would learn to draw his strength from God, not rely on his on strength. And I’ll keep praying for Junior. God bless you.

Hello DAB family this is Greg and Beketa from Sweden. On behalf of both myself and my wife Begeta this is to say a big thank you for your prayers which sustained us during our move to our new country. My wife, she is Swedish. We had heard Jesus days before moving assuring us before everything will be fine. He prompted me to put our flight forward when we realized that we could still be in the UK because of lockdown. On the day we moved standing in line and just about to board our flight an official came up to us informing each British person that only Swedes their immediate families and medical personnel will be allowed to fly. I was informed that I could not fly but my wife was allowed to go. All our belongings had been advanced to Sweden ahead of us. The Lord’s necessary reassurance enabled us to not to give up upon receiving this downer. It took the airport several calls to Sweden and us producing evidence of a tenancy agreement before we both were fortunately allowed on board. So, we thank Jesus that we’re now in Sweden. We ask him to detail His plans for us going forward. I now need to quickly learn Swedish and start earning since my wife is caring for her elderly health challenged mother full-time. We do thank you for and we appreciate your prayers. Our abundant Christ can assure that no prayer goes or went unanswered by the Lord. Thank you, Father in Jesus’ precious name. May we blessedly and joyfully hear and obey you when you speak, after all we’ve just been answered by our creator the God of heaven. We’re really grateful to Jesus and everyone here at Daily Audio Bible. Goodbye for now and thank you. Greg from South Sweden.

Hey Daily Audio family this is Becky in Orlando. I just wanted to call and let you know that I just listened to today’s podcast, it the 17th of April and my heart goes out to the mom whose daughter wrote the letter about how…what it was like…how the gentleman with COVID-19 died under her hands as she was giving him compressions. I feel so sad for you and for your family and all the doctors and the nurses and for all the family members that have lost somebody due to cCOVID-19. And, so, I am glad that you shared that with us and the importance of social distancing and those poor young girls who are not going to get to see their father again. So, my heart goes out to everyone in…in the world who is dealing with this. And thank you so much Daniel from Singapore for calling us and letting us know how you’re doing. I do remember praying for you and for everybody in Singapore. And at that time, I did not ever expect it was gonna be like this in the United States. So, I’m just gonna continue praying for our world and I love all of you so much. So, thank you. Thank you for being my family and being there for me every day. Thank you, Brian for reading the Daily Audio Bible. So, alright guys. I love you. Bye.

04/19/2020 DAB Transcript

Joshua 19:1-20:9, Luke 19:28-48, Psalms 88:1-18, Proverbs 13:12-14

Today is the 19th day of April welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is joy to greet the new week with you. And like we always do, just to consider the fact that we’re steeping through this threshold into this week and it’s in front of us. And, so, at the beginning of each week we take this moment to realize the story hasn’t been told yet. We’re gonna tell the story with the decisions that we make and the words that we form and the thoughts that we think. And, so, as we…we take this moment to notice that the beginning of most every week we take it to heart because the story is ours to tell and it needs to be a story of redemption in these times. So, we’re gonna read from the Amplified Version this week and let’s pick up the story that we’ve left off in the book of Joshua. Right now, I mean the…the tribes are giving…being given the allotments of their inheritance in the land so we’re reading a lot of…well…we’re finding out the cities that are involved and how the borders work between the clans. Joshua 19 and 20 today.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for this new threshold every week, that we walk into a brand-new week and realize that it’s all out in front of us and we take this proverb today to heart because it is…it is solid truth, “hope deferred makes our hearts sick.” And there’s been…there’s been plenty of reason to have hope deferred but there always is. And, so, we understand now if we’re feeling heartsick, if we’re feeling low, if our thoughts more resemble the Psalm today from Heman the Ezrahite then we only need to know that we’re at a crossroads and wisdom is telling us, “maybe Your heart is sick.” And Father, we can’t heal that, only You can. We can chase after all kinds of things to distract it but only You can heal it. And, so, we invite You in this week, to come, to where our hearts are sick, to where we’ve conceded hope, to where we’ve let go of it or lost sight of it because this explains a lot. Restore our hope in You God. Show us the way, the narrow path that leads to life we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website its home base, its where…its where you find out…its home base…that’s where you find out what’s happening, around home base. So, be sure to stay connected.

Visit the Daily Audio Bible Shop. There are resources there that have been created and crafted for the journey that we are on, everything from a great option for journaling, great options for journaling, through great coffee options for just having your morning coffee with the Scripture, great tea options. Just, all of the resources there are created for this community that lives around the Global Campfire moving day by day through the story of the Bible. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link on the homepage. I thank you with all my heart. Thank you for your partnership. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer the mail, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, just hit the Hotline button in the app and you can share right from there, no matter where you are in the world or you can dial 877-942-4253 as the number if you are in the Americas. If you’re in the UK or Europe, you can dial 44-20-3608-8078. And 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 I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello, everyone this is Scottish Tom from the Cleveland Ohio area it’s April 15th and I’m just listening to today’s podcast. Thanks, Brian for going over all of the things in the app. To be honest, haven’t really use the app that much but now I know more about it and I know that I can download the podcast on there and listen to them in the car wherever I am. I’m going to start doing that. And I’ve been listening for probably eight years now and it’s always been on the…the Apple podcast. So, I’m excited to start using the app more and I’m using the app to make this call rather than calling the phone number. So, thanks for that. Just wanted to say I’m still praying for everybody as we go through these strange days and hope you all had a very good Easter. As I think it’s Slave of Jeuss said I was telling people people, “make it a good one” because the day was what you made it. We still had our Easter dinner at home here and we put on our Easter clothes we’d have done it if we were going to church, watched Easter mass online and made it feel as much like Easter as we possibly could. So, hope you all had a good one and I continue to pray for you all. Take care. Bye.

Hello, my DAB family this is Mark Street from Sydney Australia today is Wednesday the 15th of April and I just wanted to call for a praise report. I don’t…just to let everybody know, I’m still around I know I haven’t called haven’t been calling in as much as I used to. I will try to call in but I’m still believing that God is in this world and is helping everybody. Like a lot of people, about 20% of my income, but I will survive. The praise report is I bought one of Brian’s journals and I’ve been journaling conversational history since the 1st of January for about 30 mins every morning. And out of that I’ve been praying…talking to God about my children William and __ and praying for Him to bring their hearts bac. And I’ve got a shorten this up because I’m running out of time, but this morning, faithfully I’ve been asking God, “please change…stir their hearts…stir their hearts and bring them back to you Lord.” And this morning I was talking to William and he was watching me journaling and he says, “I have a theory on what you’re writing in there dad.” First he thought it was work stuff and heard me saying it was personal stuff for my older son and then he said, “I think it’s your prayer.” And then I said, “well it’s more than his prayers, William it’s my conversation to God.” And then it sparked conversation with me and him about God. And he was saying that he wanted a God that would talk to him and I said, “He would.” And now, I know I’m running out of time but look, please pray that William, this spark in Williams heart will continue. And I’m praying…I’m still praying for you all. I love the DAB family. Talk to you soon. Mark Street from Sydney Australia. Bye.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family this is Rosie in Oklahoma today is Wednesday, April 15th and I’m gonna have to call back again because I want to give you a praise report this time. I ask you to pray for my son Charles. And I hadn’t seen or talked to him for so long and I was about to give up on the whole thing because I…I was just so hurt but I was in the bedroom a while ago and I saw a picture of him and I just started crying and I played praise and worship to help me stop thinking about and then my grandson knocked on my door and opened my door and there was my son. So, I just want to let you guys know that God does answer prayer and I just wanted to make sure that you knew about it. But please continue to pray that God will restore my relationship with him and make it even better than it was before. I appreciate your prayers and I’m still praying for all of you. I love you DAB family. Bye.

Hi this is Garfield here and I’d like to thank you guys so much for the things that __ for a while through the months and I’m just blessed by the daily devotions and Bible readings and the…the different prayer request that go out. Praying for everyone. There was one that got my attention, especially praying for the…the mom who was praying for her children. I think her two daughters were suicidal and definitely my prayer group and I, we’re praying for those young ladies as well. And definitely love you guys. Love hearing your postings and especially the…the…the Bible stories. Right now, in the end of…the middle of Deuteronomy and…and getting into Joshua. __ lessons learned there. Caleb…85 years old and still fighting. And as a reminder that we can too, be strong in the Lord and follow His might and definitely have a __ walk with him __. It’s my wish for everyone that’s blind. Alright DABbers. Love you.

Hi DAB family it’s Hopeful it’s been a while since I’ve called them. We are doing great, still not pregnant but I wanted to share something about faith that I thought would be important for some of you listening. I really felt like God has placed this on my heart. So, my journey with infertility has been pretty heartbreaking over the years. I really felt like the Lord was telling me to stop praying to get pregnant. And I realized that in my prayers asking for this for so many years I was never okay with the answer being no. And I finally just completely surrendered, and it was so freeing. And I really felt like He was telling me to focus on my blessings. And in doing so it is been just so life changing. Every day that I walk my dogs it’s an hour to an hour and a half and I run out of time because I can’t even make a dent in the list of things I am so grateful for including my two dogs and our cat who are fur babies for now. But I wanted to remind everyone and encourage those whose prayers are not being answered that God hears you and loves you and for reasons maybe we don’t understand they’re not being answered in the timeframe that we have. But those of you who are being attacked by Satan and feeling like you don’t have faith, please remember even Jesus’ 12 disciples who he warned many times about His death and resurrection, they were not there when He rose from the dead on the third day. They didn’t believe. They didn’t have faith. So

04/18/2020 DAB Transcript

Josh 16:1-18:28, Luke 19:1-27, Ps 87:1-7, Pr 13:11

Today is the 18th day of April welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s wonderful to be here with you as we bring another week to a close, continue the steps forward, day by day. So, we’ve been reading for the English Standard Version this week, which is what we’ll do today and we will continue in the book of Joshua with chapters 16, 17 and 18.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for another week. Another week has gone by. They go by quickly it seems. Sometimes it feels like that time is dragging on and sometimes it’s like flying by and when we consider like how quickly we move through a month it feels like it’s flying by and yet day by day step-by-step You are there guiding and instructing us through Your word, drawing us together in community. And, so we thank You for that. And as we release this week and it floats away and becomes a part of our history, we are grateful, and we are longing to see all that You have in store for us in the coming days and weeks. So, come Holy Spirit we pray. As we move into the end of this week may Your spirit hover around us in everything we do and say. And we ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website and that makes it home base for the Global Campfire, that makes it home base for a community like ours that’s wrapped all over the world and we come together virtually. So, just knowing that, knowing that that’s home base is a good thing to know, it’s where you find out what’s happening.

So, the Prayer Wall lives there. That is a place that we can always reach out for prayer and always reach out and offer prayer. It’s always going, it’s continual, you never have to be alone. You can reach out there for prayer. So, be familiar with that and aware of it. You can get to all of this within the app as well by pressing that little Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner. So, lets continue to stay connected as we always have over all of the years. No matter what’s going on in the world let’s remain connected in heart and Spirit as we continue our journey through the Bible.

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. I thank you profoundly for your partnership. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible 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, 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.

Community Prayer and Praise:

This is Silver Lining Cindy from Seattle and my good friend Kristi Walker whom I met at the Moore conference a few years ago had some fantastic quarantine advice. She said at this time the best thing to do is to praise God. And, so, I followed suit and I came up with a list of phrases. Number one, so many dishes equals washing hands, very clean hands. There’s no parking tickets. CO2 emissions are down all over the planet and it is causing for some great views in different places. Very inspiring. From homeschooling I get to hear some really interesting stories from my kid that is…they’re very good and they’re very funny. My other kid is actually making use of a science kit that has been collecting dust for a few years. And, so, I’m excited about that. I’ve learned that by golly I can cook. I am donning this silver crown of wisdom atop my head from my undyed roots. I’m getting in touch with long-lost contacts. I found that wearing a robe to work is finally okay. Necessity breeds invention in so many ways, especially when you run out of ingredients in your kitchen. Jill, you did not have the Moore conference this year and just the foresight around this and what a blessing from God that it wasn’t…it didn’t happen. And Brian I’m so grateful that you and everybody got back from Jerusalem before everything got really crazy. Discoveries - eyes that can see. I’m learning a lot about the things that happen at my house when I’m normally at work, like all the crows that fly up to my roof. This is very interesting. And I’m also enjoying the lovely submission that we have no idea what God has in store for us and I pray that He feeds all of you in different lovely beautiful surprising ways every day. I have a certification exam that I am doing on Friday morning at 8:15 AM Pacific Standard Time. I’m really hoping for your prayers that I will pass my exam on Friday. I love you all.

Hi this is Scott Campo from Olean New York and I enjoy the Daily Audio Bible. Brian you do a great job and your daughter does a great job too on Chronological. And I just accepted the Lord and I’m a new Christian. And, so, have a great day.

Good morning DAB today is April 15th staying true to my calling on the 15th of the month for this entire year. This is your friend Val in Vegas. This is a praise report y’all, a stand up for Jesus, the Lord Almighty is strong and powerful praise report. This time last month I was in the hospital with double pneumonia, a ton of other health issues. I had just lost my job and felt so low that I believed God was mad at me y’all. And today just 30 days later I’m out of the hospital feeling amazing despite the doctor’s reports. I started my dream job last week working from home. You cannot tell me that our God is not able. Please, if you are out there like me on the edge in horrible health, hospitalized, unemployed and you feel like giving up, please, please, please listen to me. Listen to my words right now. God loves you. And my sister and my brother if He will do it for me, He will do it for you also. Thank you to everyone that prayed for me. This community has saved my life on more than one occasion and it can be done for you also. If you need prayer or have a praise report, please call in and share with us. There is power in the prayer circle of believers we have. We’ve got the most valuable tools here in this resource. Thank you, Brian thank you Jill, thank you Hardin family. Please call in and share…

This is Bonnie and this is for Victoria’s Venessa the respiratory therapist in Maryland. I heard you call in and I felt a connection to you because I also live in Maryland and my son who too lives in Maryland is a respiratory therapist. I want to call and in pray for you and I want to tell you how much I esteem you for coming out of your retirement to help your fellow respiratory therapists and patients. Heavenly Father I ask that You and Your great love and mercy, that You will keep Vanessa safe from the coronavirus and You would honor her dedication to these sick patients that she would come out of retirement to help him. What a great sacrifice of her time and talents that she is giving. I also pray for safety for my son Michael and his wife Sarah who is an ICU nurse. I pray for all medical personnel who are taking care of these patients and putting their own health at risk. I pray that there is enough PPE for all of them to keep them safe and enough medication and ventilators for the patients. I pray that more people would come to help in the hospital settings where there is so short staffed and overworked. I ask that You give wisdom to President Trump and the whole coronavirus task team and all the governors and leaders of all the states and all the countries on the best way to handle this pandemic. And most of all Lord I pray that Your will be done in the situation and that You are bringing people to Yourself through this. That’s the most important thing of all. And also, that You will be with the world as we strive to recover financially when this is over, and people would be able to return to work. And Father be with those who are sick and dying without family members, that is very heartbreaking and be with the family members who are grieving and can’t be there with their loved ones. Help us to trust in You because we know that You are in control of this and give us the peace that only You can give. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Good morning DAB this is Blessings Flow in Pennsylvania. I was just calling in to say hi. Today’s April 15th and I am lounging here with my…our six-month-old who’s just kicking and enjoying life. But I was just calling in to say hi and just sitting here grateful. I believe it was Stanley in Maryland shared today just how we have a rhythm and every day we can listen and partake in the word and listen to each other’s prayer requests and praise reports and feel connected whether in quarantine and before the quarantine. So, I just want to call in with gratitude and also to thank the Hardin family for the app, the app that has been and…and all of the new updates. Thank you, thank you for your tireless work that many people like myself and thousands around the world you’ve never met are able to reap the benefits of your labor of love and also to give back. So, I want to thank you for that. And I also wanted to shout out Kingdom Seeker Daniel and Lady of Victory, back in early March I think it was listening to the February 25th Community Prayer and you had talked about jumping over to the DABC. And that day I really didn’t feel any impetus to start that but for some reason the next day it was just in my heart to start listening to the DABC. So, I have been doing that and I’m a double DABber now. So, I just want to thank you for your faithfulness and encouraging us to do that. May God bless everyone. Blessings Flow in Pennsylvania…

04/17/2020 DAB Transcript

Joshua 15:1-63, Luke 18:18-43, Psalms 86:1-17, Proverbs 13:9-10

Today is the 17th day of April welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is awesome to be here with you today as we…as we take the next step forward here around the Global Campfire where it is safe. No matter what is going on out there it is safe here and we are safe together and this is one of the places that we have in our lives where we just kind of come in, sit down, and know we’re not one not alone and exhale, and just allow peace to reign in this space as God’s word washes over us. So, let’s just take a deep breath and exhale it…ahhhh…and allow peace to come into our hearts and lives. We’ve been reading from the English Standard Version this week, which is what we’ll continue to do. And we’ve been working through the gospel of Luke and the book of Joshua, which is what we’ll continue to do. Today Joshua chapter 15.

Commentary:

Okay. In the gospel of Luke today we find Jesus in the city of Jericho. And Jericho is basically a desert city in the Judean wilderness. And, so, we have to remember that Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River outside of Jericho according to the Scriptures. So, in…in that story of Jesus baptism He then goes into the wilderness and is tempted by the evil one before He makes His way back into the Galilee and announces His ministry. And this was one of the well-known pathways. Once you get down into the valley, then you have kind of flat, although arid, although doesn’t like, you have flat road basically, roadway, pathway to move, whereas just trying to cut down through the center you’d just be going through the mountains up and up and up and up. So, a lot of times they would descend out of the Galilee down into the valley and make their way down south and then make the trek up to Jerusalem. So, when Jesus was baptized after His temptation then He went up into the Galilee. Now He’s basically done that pathway in reverse, come out of the Galilee, down into the valley through Jericho, where He will then be heading west up to Jerusalem, and…and to His death. So, there’s a blind person on the side of the road and we’ve passed this story before but now as we pass it in the gospel of Luke like…it would….it should…like it’s so poignant for us right now. So, this blind mans on the side of the road and he’s just begging, right? Like he’s got a hat out or something. He’s just asking for…for any help he can get. A crowd goes by and although he can’t see the crowd, he can hear the crowd. And, so, he’s wondering what’s going on and people are telling him “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” And Jesus reputation has grown so this blind man knows who this is and so he starts screaming for Jesus and everybody’s telling him to shut up, like he’s kind of marginalized blind person off to the side just begging, “just be quiet.” But he just keeps screaming for Jesus, he just keeps calling out, and Jesus hears him and has him brought to him. And here’s where our lives intersect with the story because Jesus has compassion on this man and asks him, “what do you want me to do for you?” And the man says, “basically, I would like to recover my site. I would like to see again.” And Jesus says, “fine” basically. “See. Open your eyes and see. Recover your site. Your faith has made you well.” It’s a beautiful story of the compassion of Jesus, who is on His way to His death in Jerusalem. I mean we wouldn’t blame Him if He were preoccupied with that fact that He’s gonna walk this last stretch up to Jerusalem and die, but he had compassion on this man we find ourselves spiritually in this story because we are that blind man. We have been calling out to Jesus this whole year for eyes to see. And we’ve been through this story before, but we’ve faced some significant challenges along the way since then and that is one of the most beautiful things about this rhythm of life that we have in the Scriptures. The Bible brings up the things that we need to focus on and it has a profound way of doing that when we need it.

Prayer:

Jesus, we come to You and we hear Your words out of the Gospels again, “what do You want me to do for You?” And we could have a long list of things that we would like You to do for us but like this blind man, the one thing that he needed to most was his site and that’s where we find ourselves spiritually. The one thing that we need is eyes to see and ears to hear, especially the voice of wisdom at the crossroads. And we believe this is completely available. This is what the Scriptures tell us. And, so, even as we look at this story in the Gospel of Luke Your response was, “recover your site your faith has made you well.” Holy Spirit, please as we surrender to You may our faith arise and well up within us. May we see with more clarity than we have ever seen before, the way that Your kingdom is in and among us and moving forward and moving and pulling us forward. Give us eyes to see this so that we might collaborate with You rather than working against You. Come Holy Spirit we pray in the mighty name of Jesus this is our request. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here. It’s hard to believe that last week…a week ago it was Good Friday, it just…it just keeps moving by even though we’re in, you know, more sequestered times. It’s just so interesting how things move. Anyway, dailyaudiobible.com is the website, it is home base, and it is where we stay connected to what’s going on around here.

So, the Community section of the website is a great place to find those connection points, including the Prayer Wall. All of these things can be accessed from within the app and we’ve done some talking about the app this week. Just click the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner of the app and you can access some of these things like the Prayer Wall. So, stay connected. It’s one of the beautiful distinctive things about the Daily Audio Bible community is that we seem to be willing to love one another where we are and pray for one another where we are and just walk with one another where we are. And that makes all the difference. So, stay connected.

The Daily Audio Bible shop is also there on the website and in the app. And there are resources that have been crafted and made for the journey of a lifetime that we are on through the Bible in a year. So, check that out.

if you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that dailyaudiobible.com. 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 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, the little red button at the top no matter where you are in the world you can reach out from there or there are a number of phone numbers you can use. If you’re in the Americas 877-942-4253 is the number to call. If you are in the UK or Europe 44-20-3608-8078 the number to dial. If you are in Australia or that part of the world 61-3-8820-5459 is the number to dial.

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

04/16/2020 DAB Transcript

Joshua 13:1-14:15, Luke 18:1-17, Psalms 85:1-13, Proverbs 13:7-8

Today is the 16th day of April welcome to the Daily Audio Bible, I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you as we move into the back half of another of our weeks together and ease our way toward another weekend and of course another week beginning, but that’s in front of us and we are here now around the Global Campfire together. So, let’s take the next step forward in the Scriptures. We are working our way through the story of Joshua and the conquest of the Promised Land. We’re reading from the English Standard Version this week. Joshua 13 and 14 today.

Commentary:

Alright. Let’s talk about the book of Proverbs today and immerse ourselves in its wisdom for a moment. Probably…probably we all know people that we consider to be…like we know their life and we know what they are portraying their life to be, and we know that there is like dissonance there, there is like a disconnect. So…so, they, you know, curate things on social media. And we see a lot of this be tested because it’s a house of cards, right? Like when a whole society is doing the same thing then it’s kinda all a house of cards. And, so, when hardship shows up and it becomes more and more difficult to keep the act up. But we…we all are aware of this kind of behavior. In fact, it's…it’s in us, it’s in all of us to some degree and a lot of times it comes out of in as an insecurity. Like we’re looking around at what everybody else is curating and then just deciding that they have a better life and that we gotta keep up. And, so, we just keep up the pose. And Proverbs kinda gives us a riddle today to work through. “One pretends to be rich yet has nothing. Another pretends to be poor yet has a great wealth. The ransom of a man’s life is his wealth, but a poor man hears no threat.” Okay. So, like, let’s work through the scenarios. A poor man hears no threat, right? So, a poor man who is not pretending to be anything other than he is, isn’t threatened, isn’t taken for ransom. The rich person in the riddle has the resources to perhaps extricate themselves from the scenario, they have wealth. So, both the rich and the poor have a way out in this proverb. What is the scenario that doesn’t? The one who pretends to be rich but is actually poor. The one who is pretending to be something that they are not. If that person is pressed or taken for ransom or whatever then the illusion falls apart and they have no way out of it. It all falls down. So, the ultimate thing that the voice of wisdom is bringing up here then is, “are we being true?” And that is an important question in the trying times that we’ve been going through. Are we becoming more true or are we becoming more false?

Prayer:

Holy Spirit as we move into this day, this is what we will meditate upon. This is what Your word has brought up today. And, so, we invite Your Holy Spirit into that. It’s been plenty of chaos. There always is. There’s always something that invites us to either pose and hide or to be true and be light. And, so, Holy Spirit show us the areas that…that we are shining but also shows the areas that we are hiding. We invite You as we walk through this day and as we become aware of Your presence that we listen to what You are saying. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you stay tuned and connected to what’s going on around here. And, so. I mention it most every day because of that. Stay connected. Stay connected in these times. But, you know, even if this…all this stuff wasn’t going around to kinda keep us separate, isolation…like there’s no shortage on isolation in the world. It’s funny because actually have more time to be together. We just need to be apart. Usually the world is moving so quickly that we’re just overwhelmed by it all. And, so, we’re in a different kind of isolation and staying connected, as we always have is helpful as we take this journey through the Bible and through life. So, yeah, stay connected.

There’s a Community section at the website and this is available in the app as well by pushing the Drawer icon in the upper left.

And by the way, if you weren’t here yesterday, we did like an overview of the Daily Audio Bible app yesterday, the main things that you need to know to navigate it and it’s not a lot, it’s very simple, but if you didn’t get a chance to listen to that go back to yesterday’s episode and listen through.

But anyway, the Community section shows you the different places that we interact on social media. Like for example, if you are a woman and you’re not part of the Daily Audio Bible women’s group, you’re missing out on a sisterhood. And if you’re like a professional social media expert and you’re not a part of DAB friends, then you’re missing out on community. If you are on social media and you’re not following Daily Audio Bible, then you may be missing out on announcements and even encouragements. So, stay connected. We are all here on the same journey achieving the same quest to make it through the entire Bible in a year and to know what the Bible says with our own ears and our own minds and our own hearts. We’re in this together. We’re on that same page and makes a world of difference. So, yeah, stay connected.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if what’s happening here is life to you, it brings encouragement, and helps you move forward then thank you for your partnership. We can’t do this if we don’t do this together. It has always been the story and I’m so grateful that we are in this together. So, there’s 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, if you prefer that, 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, 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.

04/15/2020 DAB Transcript

Joshua 11:1-12:24, Luke 17:11-37, Psalms 84:1-12, Proverbs 13:5-6

Today is the 15th day of April welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian and welcome to the bull’s-eye I guess, the center of another month as we keep passing day by day through time and allowing God’s word to wash into our lives each day. It’s great to be here with you in the middle of another month, the fourth month of the year. So, we’re reading from the English Standard Version this week and we’re working our way through the book of Joshua. And we finally got across the Jordan River. It’s a place that we’ve been heading for most of the year, we finally got to cross into this mythic Promised Land, and we’ve seen it’s been nothing, but battle and it’s been nothing but disruption since they came into the land. They’ve had to fight. And kings have been making alliances to create greater and greater armies to fight against the Israelites and Israel keeps winning. So, like in yesterday’s reading the kings that would be in the central like Jerusalem area on the lowlands and all the way to the coast, gathered to fight against Israel and lost. Today even more powerful kings in the north are gonna create alliances to try to get these Israelites out. Joshua chapters 11 and 12 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, as we’ve been traveling through the Gospels, where in the third of the four Gospels now, the gospel of Luke we’ve been chasing this kingdom of heaven that Jesus is announcing, the kingdom of God. And according to Jesus those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, can see it, can hear it, can sense it. But where is it? That’s the irony because we often even think about it, as maybe a new Jerusalem coming out of the sky, maybe a time when Jesus will rule and reign forever on the earth, a time where maybe we’re absent from the body but present with God. Like It’s something that’s yet to come, it will look like something, but of course it doesn’t look anything like anything that we look around and see now. It’s yet to come. The people that Jesus was ministering to including the religious leaders wanted to know the same thing. When? When is it coming? And Jesus most explicitly answers this question in the Gospel of Luke. So, I quote Jesus here. “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed nor will they say, ‘look, here it is,’ or ‘there’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” Okay. If you’ve 10 people and you’re all standing together where would, “in the midst of you” be? It would be in the middle. It would be around wherever you are. But what if there’s only you? What…where is in the midst of you? Well, in the midst would be in the midst…it would be in you, right? So, you’re not going to be able to observe a big building going up that will at some point at the very top have the kingdom of God imprinted on the top of it. No other building. No other movement. No other thing that can be boxed and labeled. Jesus said, nobody’s gonna be able to go, “look, here it is”, or “it’s over there. You’re looking in the wrong place waiting for something to come that not coming because it’s already here. It’s in the midst of you.” So, eyes to see and ears to hear this kingdom means that we understand that the kingdom is within us. If we want to find the kingdom then we don’t look to buildings or products or movements or boxed items that we can sell or books or music, we look at other people. It’s within us, it’s among us, it’s in the midst of us. So, if that is the case then for us to move toward the fullness of God’s kingdom means that we have to move in that direction. We have a role, a collaborative role to play because the kingdom is within us, which means that wherever we go, so goes the kingdom. If we let that sink in it’s pretty overwhelming. It’s pretty huge because that means we have a role to play in bringing out and bringing about the fullness of the kingdom. And this gets real personal when we understand that the choices, the thoughts, words, and deeds of our lives today are going to either affirm or deny that the kingdom of God isn’t buildings, is not nationalism, is not a big strong military. That’s the kingdoms of the world. God’s kingdom is within us and is very powerful within us according to Jesus. Even faith the grain of a mustard seed is enormously powerful according to Jesus. So, if you we want to look for God’s kingdom, we don’t look for it in closed borders and hysteria, we don’t look to our politicians for it, we look within, we look around at each other. We are it. Think about that today. How could that change the way the rest of this week gets lived?

Prayer:

Jesus, it’s somewhat shaking. It's…on the one hand we’re looking for this great display of amazing power and yet we acknowledge that You are always in the understated. The great power comes through the understated. At least that’s how it mostly happens in the Scriptures. That’s certainly how You conducted Your earthly life Jesus, as it’s portrayed in the Gospels. But to get our minds around the fact that we’re already in it, it’s already happening is…is…is like trying to understand eternity. That’s also something that we defer, like it’s something that begins when we die when eternity encompasses all of time and it is beyond time. We’re in it right now in the same way that we are in and are the kingdom. Give us eyes to see. Awaken us. This changes everything. If this gets to sink into our soul, this changes everything. It makes every moment a vital moment. It means that although we may be waiting for the fullness of this kingdom, we are participating in that. This is happening. Show us how with our very lives, we can go into the world and announce this Good News because this is the Good News of the gospel. Come Holy Spirit into this. Help us to meditate upon this. Help this to sink deep into our identity, into our soul we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, it is home base, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here. So, certainly stay tuned and connected to each other and to what’s going on around here.

I mentioned yesterday some of the story of the Daily Audio Bible app and its development, the fact that we’ve retired the previous edition of the app. We’ve kind of had two simultaneous apps running at the same time for the last year and a half just as we build our own infrastructure and our app and just all of the…just all of the learning curve involved. We’ve kind of reached a point now where we are achieving some of the big…the big goals. We call them big rocks, but big goals that we’ve been working toward for a long, long time. And, so, I thought, you know, it’s time…it’s time to just kind of walk through the app for second to give those who are experiencing for the first time just a little bit of a flyover and those who have been using it maybe for a long time just a little bit of insight. It’s pretty simple but just a couple of small things will go a long way and I thought I would just do that altogether. So, I don’t have the benefit of a video screen, but this should only take a couple minutes. So, if you have your phone, your device, your tablet, your or whatever and you have the Daily Audio Bible app and you launch the Daily Audio Bible app the first thing that you will see, likely, especially if it’s your first time will be the login screen. You log in, because then your personal journey and all that’s associated with your personal journey is available to you from like the checkmarks of the days that you’ve read to the achievements that you will achieve as you go through the Bible to your favorited episodes to your journal entries to whatever. You login to get to your personal stuff. You don’t login, you can use the app as a guest but can’t…it doesn't…I mean it doesn’t know who you are, so there’s no way to keep track of anything for your benefit. And I have found over 15 years of this, any encouragement, any encouragement to keep going is a good thing, any sense of accomplishment as we move to the Scriptures, the ups and downs that life brings us in a year is a good thing. So, anyway. You login. You have an account already with the Daily Audio Bible, you login and you can do it from any device and all of your devices will work. For example, you could check that you’ve listened to a day on your phone and go back later on your desktop computer or tablet device and all the data…like your checkbox is there. It happens instantaneously. You can…you can have like two devices up at the same time and check one of them and watch the other one check off. Like it happens instantaneously. And that cloud-based technology is pretty complex, and it’s taken us a long time to get there but we’re there. Okay, so once you’ve logged in and you see the channels screen and you can pick, you know, you’re listening to Daily Audio Bible or you’re listening to Daily Audio Bible Chronological or it’s the Proverbs or the Psalms or one of the other languages. That’s your channel selection screen and once you’ve selected your channel then you will see all of the episodes associated with that channel. That’s all pretty straightforward and intuitive. But let’s talk about that Episodes page of that Channel page that shows you all the different dates and all the different episodes that you can listen to. On that page, or that view just above where you see all the different dates, you’ll see something that says “All Episodes” and then you’ll see to the right of that three little dots. If you click those little dots. There are some settings, settings that you can personalize. For example, you can filter out things, you can filter to only the favorited episodes that you have for the year. If you’re looking back for something that you wanted to hear again and you favorited that, you can narrow it down or you can narrow it down to days that you wrote in the journal and try to like find those things a lot easier. At the bottom of that settings page you’ll see off-line episodes and that’s where you tick the box if you want to download the episodes in advance rather than just straight up streaming them. If you tick that box, then you instruct the app to download the episode in advance to your device. Okay. So, if we get out of that settings page and go back to the Episodes page and we’re just looking at the different dates we can listen to. Up at the top and kind of the upper left-hand corner you’ll see three lines, it’s like a little drawer icon, very top left. If you click that that does open a drawer and the first thing that I want to point out to you on that drawer page is at the very very bottom. You’ll see that your logged in and you’ll see your name or whatever unless you’re not logged. If you’re logged in, you’ll see that your logged in and to the right of your name, you will see the little Gear icon. That’s a Settings page. Click that and you will see all of your user settings. And most of those are very very self-explanatory. But one setting says Listening. And it’s called Off-line Episodes. If you click that button. This is where you can decide how many days you want to keep downloaded, one day, two days three days, or a week. And you can also instruct the app whether to keep those downloads or if you want them to be deleted from your device after you’ve listened to them. So, that’s basically kind of how you control the different things on the app. Now, in that Drawer…in the drawer that we’re talking about you’ll see other things like the channels page, which is the page we came from, you’ll see Achievements. This is brand-new. It’s attached to your account. It keeps your personal progress as you move through the Bible. That is attached to the fact that you’ve checked off the days that you’ve listened to which you be able to see your progress as we move through the different sections of the Bible. The other things that are in that drawer menu, they’ve been there so you may or may not be familiar with them, but now you…I mean the pretty self-explanatory, just play around a little bit. Okay, let’s go back to the episodes page, the one that shows the date and all the different episodes throughout the year that…that we listen to, the…kind of the main screen that we use. Before we go into an episode let’s just look at that screen for minute. It’s showing us all those different dates that we could listen to. Now if we pick one of those dates and swipe to the left, we’ll see that we can favorite that episode or we can mark that episode as completed right from the episodes page. So, that’s a good thing to know. Now let’s click a date and go into the Episode screen. That’s where we see the play icon and how long the episodes gonna be and we can skip forward and skip back and all that. So, probably somewhat familiar with that screen. At the bottom of that screen is a “Mark as Listened” checkbox. So, you can check the box from there as well. So, I showed you two different ways to check that you’ve completed an episode - swipe right or be here on the play screen and click it at the bottom. Now also at the bottom to the left you’ll see a Star icon. That’s favoriting an episode. If there was an episode that the Bible spoke to you in a specific way at a time that you needed, that happens to every single one of us pretty much. Happens me all the time. But if it’s something that you’re like, “I need to not forget that”, you can Star that episode. That way you can filter back and find the ones that you’re looking for. Okay to the right of that is like a little screen with an arrow. That’s a common thing. That’s how you can, you know, throw the audio to a Bluetooth device or something like that. And then to the right of that is another little icon with points connecting to each other. That’s a Share button. You can share any episode to anyone that you want, however you want, however your phones set up to do it. So, that’s how you get around and navigate there. Now at the top of that screen, and again this is the Play screen like where we’re listening to a specific day. The very top you’ll see, “Listen”, you’ll see a tab that says “Read.” If you click that tab, then you can read along with today’s reading and the translation that we’re using. And to the right of that is a button called Journal. If there’s something that you need to jot down real quick, something that the Bible is speaking to you, something that you need to remember, this is a place that you can jot your notes and they can follow along with you on that specific day. Like if you favorite an episode and you’ve written a little journal entry about why that’s important to you and three months from now, you’re like, “what was that thing again?” Now you can see how you can find out the episodes that were favored it, the things that you wrote down and find what you’re looking for so that you can be reminded along the way. Okay, at the very, very top of the screen you’ll see kind of the header, that’s where you push the Drawer icon to get the drawer to open but on the other side of that you see the little Hotline button and I talk about that little Hotline button all the time. That’s the button that you push in order to share right from within the app and that is a hotline. You got the app and you got a phone no matter where you are in the world you have a way to reach out. And then to the right of that is the Give button. If you want to throw another log on the global campfire and help us to continue to develop this technology and build community in ways that we have no blueprint for. Okay that is a very very brief flyover, but we’ve been working really really hard to not make it a complex app. We’ve…we have tried, and we continue to try to make it as simple and as intuitive as possible so just kind of listening back through what I’ve shared here, along with the app then you pretty much know how to do whatever you want to do inside the Daily Audio Bible app. And if you don’t have the Daily Audio Bible app, this is…this is a good time…this is a great time. This is a time of rejoicing. We’ve worked really, really hard to get here and we released this version last week. There’ll be an update to this version before the week is out here just a small kind of maintenance one. What happens is you…you do a big release and you’ve tested it for weeks and you’ve like done everything possible to break it until you have it like working right, and then you release it into the wild and you find all kinds of ways that things can be done or used on different phones and devices and different kind of connections and then you know, kind of learn some different areas that need to be tightened up. And, so, there were thankfully just a couple of things and those are being tightened up this week but we’re really really excited, honestly, honestly, really excited about where this is all headed because this is finally turning a corner in some of the dream that’s been dreamed for years just seeing the light of day, like the introduction of this achievements and where we earn badges as we move through sections of the Bible and where at a glance we can kind of see where we are as we move through these sections of the Bible. This is a dream come true. It’s something that I’ve felt in years, like five years ago, like if we could do this, if we could…anything that will encourage us forward is a good thing. So, super excited to have this see the light of day. Super excited for you to be familiar with the Daily Audio Bible app and to be able to use it successfully as we take the journey of a lifetime through the Scriptures.

Okay, if you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, I cannot thank you enough. We literally would not…there would be no Global Campfire if we were not all here together and we were not all fueling it in some way. And, so, thank you. If what we’re doing as we navigate the Bible and navigate a year of life together in community, if that brings life to you and encouragement then thank you for being life-giving back. So, there’s a link on the homepage. If you’re using the Daily Audio app that we just went through you can push 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 prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, 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.

04/14/2020 DAB Transcript

Joshua 9:3-10:43, Luke 16:19-17:10, Psalms 83:1-18, Proverbs 13:4

Today is the 14th day of April welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian’s it’s great to be here with you today as we move further into this week, further into the Scriptures, further into the stories that we’re learning about. And I guess we’re passing through the center of another month. It’s great to be here with you no matter where you are, no matter what time it is, it’s a pleasure and an honor to. So, let’s take that next step. We’re reading from the English Standard Version this week and we’re in the book of Joshua and the Israelites, they’re making waves in this new land and all…all of the powerful kings of the area are freaking out about it. So, they’ve banded together to try to wipe Israel out, to push them out. Some others are just trying to figure out how to make peace in some sort of way. So, we pick up this story today. Joshua chapter 9 verse 3 through 10 verse 43.

Commentary:

Okay. In our reading from the gospel of Luke today Jesus is being quite direct. And we see this, it’s almost like waves. Like there’s these waves of unbelievable compassion on the people but once the thing shifts into becoming an attraction, like some sort of show that the people are flocking to then He has things that are very, very direct to say. Like He will not let this be turned into a gimmicky show, He’s announcing the kingdom of heaven. He’s announcing that it is here, that it is happening, and if you had eyes to see, like if you could just open your eyes you would see it. And, so, when the thing shifts, and it becomes like a show than He redirects. So, there are several postures, several things, like if we look below the surface, they challenge the depths of ourselves. First, He tells the story of the rich man and the poor man, and they both die. One goes to Abraham’s side. This is an interesting thing because Jesus is talking about an afterlife, and in this story this afterlife puts this poor man at Abraham’s side. So, he goes Abraham, he goes to Abraham’s side, and the rich man goes to Hades. And there’s an exchange, you know, “can I come over there? Can he come over here? Can I just have a glass of water? Can…if nothing can happen can he go…can this poor man, Lazarus, go back from the dead to my family?” And Abraham’s like, “yeah, they have what they need. they have the…the law of Moses, they have the prophets. They have what everybody has to hear. And the rich man’s like, “father Abraham, the thing is, if somebody goes back from the dead, then they will repent.” And we could say, “yeah, like I get that. That would be true, right? If somebody came back from the dead then they would repent, right?” And then Jesus speaks, “if they do not hear Moses and the prophets neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” A foreshadowing of the reality facing Him because Jesus would go to the cross, would die, would rise from the dead, and that would set off a flame that is still burning until today. But until today the religious leaders still do not believe that. And then Jesus turns His attention…His attention to temptation. “Temptations are sure to come” He said, “but it’s the one whom they come through that needs to be concerned.” And not…let’s not confuse this. Like we can immediately turn…like when we think of temptation a lot of times we just turn to like sexuality or something. Like He’s not saying if you’re a seductor or a seductress, He’s talking about temptation to sin. “If you and your life invites someone into sin, especially a young person, you should be very, very concerned” according to Jesus. And Jesus gives the antidote. “Pay attention to yourselves. Pay attention to what you’re doing.” And then He turns to forgiveness. “If you’re brother sins then rebuke him and if he repents, forgive him.” A lot of times we love a verse like that because it’s like we’re getting permission to manage other people’s sin, we’re getting permission to pry into other people’s lives. That’s not at all what Jesus is saying. He’s saying, “pay attention to yourself.” Like if your brother sins, like if your brother trespasses against you, if someone does something that offends you, you can call it out. If they repent, then you must forgive them. And if they keep doing it, like if they keep doing it seven more times in that day, and you’re so angry but they turn to you and say ‘I repent’, they repent of it, then you must forgive him.” So, it’s at this point in our reading when the apostles are like, “increase our faith.” Like they’re hearing what He’s saying and are like, “we need more faith. Increase our faith so that we can live into this.” So, we see that Jesus is being the disruptor here. He’s kind of clearing the decks. He’s like, “this is how it is. You might’ve come here because a crowd was gathering, because it’s festive and because there’s miracles, but this is how it is.” So, the apostles, kind getting it going, “increase our faith.” And then Jesus says something else profound. “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed you could say to this tree, ‘be uprooted and planted in the sea’ and it would obey you.” In other words, “this…it’s just a tiny…like look how powerful faith is. Like if you just had a tiny bit of it then the possibilities are infinite.” And then He brings in this last posture, the posture of a servant, the posture of a disciple. And He’s talking into his culture. So, like if you have a servant, somebody working for you who’s out in the…out in the field and they’re plowing or they’re keeping the flocks and the days over and they come in, their expectation shouldn’t be to be able to sit down at a table and be served. They’re servants. They will continue to serve until the master has been cared for and then they can sit down and eat and drink and finish their day. And, so, Jesus suggests that’s the posture we are to have. When we have done all that we were commanded our posture should be, “we’re unworthy servants. We’ve only done what our duty was. It’s a very, very different posture than the world that we live in where we…especially in our spirituality, “while I obeyed you Lord and now you must come through for me by pouring out whatever it is that I was trying to be good in your site in order to get.” That’s a very different posture than what Jesus is suggesting, which is that “you’re lucky to be here at all and all that you will ever do is simply your duty before God.” This kind of eliminates a quid pro quo kind of arrangement that we think we have with God sometimes, “if I do this, then you will do that”, a posture that says, “man, I have no right whatsoever to be anywhere near your presence and yet you have enveloped me. I have no right whatsoever, in and of myself to ever utter a word that you would ever hear, and yet you sent your Holy Spirit to counsel and guide to me. I have no right whatsoever. I’m lucky to be here. Whatever I do for You is insignificant and not enough and it’s just…it’s just my duty.” That posture is the posture of a servant, it is the posture of the Savior. And when God then pours out blessings in spite of us, beyond us, that He cares for us regardless, the dynamic is completely changed to one of utter gratitude as opposed to the one that we normally carry around in ourselves, that we’re trying to earn something and if we could just be…finally level up and get good enough before God then we can get the next level of blessing. We’re not on a treadmill here. We’re just so often living backward. We aren’t in a world of lack. Our father is the Creator of all. Not only this world but everything known and unknown. It’s all His, it’s all our Fathers. There is no lack. He will take care us. He has always taken care of us. Where we get sideways is where we try to define what that care must look like and then we do not have the attitude of the servant who’s like, “I’m lucky to be here. I’m just doing my duty.

Prayer:

Jesus, we acknowledge there’s a lot here for us to contemplate, matters of faith, matters of temptation, the fact that we must pay attention to ourselves and not just everybody else and that we must walk in forgiveness with open hands and the fact that we are equipped with what we need and the fact that we are so fortunate to even be here as a servant and that as we go through this day may our posture not be one that we are just trying to level up with you somehow, somehow get your attention so you pay attention to us, but rather that this is our duty because we love you and we are your disciple and we want to be your hands and feet in this world. We invite your Holy Spirit to well up within us, that we might take these postures to heart, that this might rearrange things in us. And rather than cultivating an attitude of entitlement toward you, that utter gratitude descends upon us. Come Holy Spirit into this we ask in Jesus’ name Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home, its home base, its where the Global Campfire’s burning, its where you find out what’s going on around here. So, be sure to stay tuned and connected.

The Community section of the website or the app for that matter leads you into all the different places to connect including the Prayer Wall. So, yeah. Stay connected through these weird times that we’re in.

Also, I mentioned just prior to, you know, kind of Good Friday and Holy Saturday and Easter and…and all that about this latest release of the Daily Audio Bible app. And I want to say a couple things about that today and then tomorrow after our reading. And when get to this time I’m gonna share some kind of basic, here’s how you use the Daily Audio Bible app instructions tomorrow. So, have your app ready…like if you’re kind of new to it, if you’re just kinda coming in, I’ll…I’ll try to do a little…little bit of an overview because it’s pretty simple. But today here’s what I want to tell you. There have been a couple of different Daily Audio Bible apps over the years and we’ve had some different technology partners over the years and for the last year and a half…yeah…and a half there’s been two different Daily Audio Bible apps, one that we’ve been developing and launching that is completely our own from the ground up, infrastructure from the ground up, all the way to app from the ground up. And we’re still continuing to develop that. But we knew, you know, as you put something new out there, it’s really interesting. You can test and test and test and test and test until you have everything perfect but once things go out into the wild you find all kinds of different ways things can be used and you learn. And, so, we’ve been doing that over the last year and it’s really educated us in some very hard ways, “like this is what we’re building here. This is what we have to build in order to do…achieve the dreams that we have.” And, so, we’ve been working diligently on that. In fact, working super diligently on it even though we’re all kind of having to be quarantined and separated. Like we’ve been continuing to press forward and forward and forward. So, all that to say there are no longer two different Daily Audio Bible apps in any of the app stores. There’s only one. Like the previous one that had gone through us for…I don’t know…probably eight years, that has reached its end of life, that is no longer in the stores. There’s one Daily Audio Bible app. So, if you go to your app store and search for Daily Audio Bible, you’re finding…if you find the Daily Audio Bible mobile app, that’s the one we’re talking about. So, make sure you have downloaded the most current app and have updated to the most current version because this is where…this is the Global Campfire, this is where we’re headed. And, so, the newest version of the app, as I mentioned just before Good Friday because Good Friday was like a milestone moment in our journey through the Bible. It was the day that we finished the Torah or the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. And what makes that significant in the app is that if you’ve been checking off the days that you’ve listened to, like if you’re logged in and been checking off the days that you listen to, then you will have received the Pentateuch badge. We imported all this infrastructure now to give us, at a glance, our progress through the Scriptures as we move through them and those are called achievements, and that can all be found in the app now by pushing the little drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner. You see achievements. So, if you’ve been checking off those days then you’ll see your progress. And it helps us to see that sense of progress, that sense of accomplishment, that sense of moving forward. Believe it or not, that right there, just that ability, that is a five-year-old dream. Like it is a dream that made us examine the technology we were using back then and exploring how to do just that, just like achievements. Like just show us the progress. The interesting thing is it’s easy to show the progress of the Daily Audio Bible. It’s different. It’s more…it’s much more difficult to show tens and tens of thousands of people their own personal progress. And, so, yeah, we had to examine what we were doing and realize we cannot get there from here. And then we had to start laying a foundation and building something from the ground up for a long time in a straight line to…to get to this point where this is possible now. And it opens up the doors to so many other possibilities. So, pretty excited about that. Yeah, and if you need to catch up on your checkboxes or whatever than you’ll see your progress in the achievements section through each different section of the Bible and you’ll see where you are personally as we make this journey. So, however it is that you’re listening to the Daily Audio Bible, the best way, the most communal way, the way that we’re heading into as we continue to build community in new and interesting ways the app is the way to go, or the web player that you would you get to from…well…from any device that can get to a website and you can just go to dailyaudiobible.com and click listen now and then you’ll have those choices, web player or app. They work identically. It does not matter how many devices or whatever you have, they’re all synced together so you can pick up one place…start one place and pick up on another device or whatever. It all works in a seamless kind of little ecosystem I guess that we’ve been working on for years. So, this latest push, this newest version of the app has been six straight solid hard every day months of development to bring us to this place. And it finally…it's…it’s finally reached a place now that it’s solidly doing what it’s supposed to be doing. So, make sure you update or maybe even for the first time get the Daily Audio Bible app and have that experience. Like I said, tomorrow I’ll spend a little bit of time doing like an app overview. If you have the app with you I’ll just talk you through some of the major points of it. So, look out for that tomorrow.

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. And we are in this together. It is only ever been this way, it’s the only way the Global Campfire burns. And, so, thank you for your partnership. 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, 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 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.

04/13/2020 DAB Transcript

Joshua 7:16-9:2, Luke 16:1-18, Psalms 82:1-8, Proverbs 13:2-3

Today is the 13th day of April, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it’s great to be here with you kind of in this post Easter glow. Sure, we can just treat it as another workday, we can just move back into the isolation that we’ve been feeling for the last month, but we’re not supposed to. Easter changed everything and let’s not let that fade so quickly back into the cares of this life. Let’s take the gratitude that we feel when Easter time comes. Let’s carry that forward into this week and allow that gratitude to shape the rest of this week. And let’s take the next step forward in the Scriptures and allow the word of God to wash into our lives and inform us for the days ahead. So, we’re reading the…from the English Standard version this week. And in the book of Joshua, we’ve seen the first battle, the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down and then we saw the second battle in which a smaller amount of Israelite…Israelite fighting men went up to…to pursue this city Ai, and they turned and ran. And God informed Joshua that it was because envy and greed had entered the picture, and somebody had taken things from Jericho and hid them, and this was forbidden by the Lord. So, we’ll try to get that all sorted out. And that’s where we pick up the story. Joshua chapter 7 verse 16 through 9 verse 2 today.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. And we thank You for bringing us into this new week. And we think back over the last several days moving through the Easter holiday and we don’t want to just move past it. We don’t want to just get things back to how they were as quickly as we can. We’ve been learning to observe disruptions or changes in our lives and look for You and Your kingdom in them. And, so, once again we take the time to be grateful, we take the time to be overwhelmed by Your love for us because when we do take this time and we do become fully aware, everything else in our lives begins to have context. And the things that pull us apart in a million different directions, we realize those entanglements aren’t necessarily necessary. And, so, we invite Your Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead to well up within us because this is what the Scriptures tell us has happened because of the resurrection. And what we need is eyes to see and ears to hear, to become aware of this. And that changes how we might live today and tomorrow and every other day for the rest of our lives for all of eternity. And, so, we stay with this and we linger in it and we ask that the season that we’ve just come through, that would be transformative, that it wasn’t just another Easter holiday, as interesting and different as it was, that we become aware that everything has changed and the more that we become aware of the shift the more that we can walk straight into all that You have for us in this life and all of the collaboration that we get to do as Your body on this earth as brothers and sisters throughout the world. Come Holy Spirit we pray into all of this. This is our prayer and we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, and its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here. It’s how you stay connected.

Visit the Community section at the website for all the different things to different social media channels and stuff to stay connected on as well as the Prayer Wall that lives there in the Community section. You can get to all this in the Daily Audio Bible app as well. So, stay connected. We…we need to be connected. We need to remind each other on a continual basis of what God has done for us and this is one…one good place to do that. So, check it out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that dailyaudiobible.com as well. There’s a link on the homepage. I thank you with all my heart for your partnership. 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, it’s the little red button up at the top or you can dial a number of numbers depending on where you are in the world. In the Americas that would be 877-942-4253. If you are in the UK or are in Europe 44-20-3608-8078. And if you are in Australia or that part of the world 61-3-8820-5459 is the number to dial.

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:

[singing starts] Oh tell me who can stand before me when I call on His great name? Jesus, Jesus precious Jesus we have the victory [sing stops]. Good morning DABBers this is Victorious Vanessa from Maryland and I just wanted to encourage you this morning, today is the 7th of April and as I sit in my car and put on my mask and get ready to put my gloves on to go in and help some people, I’m a respiratory therapist and them also 65 years old coming out of retirement. I just want to encourage you that God is faithful, He is not a man that He should lie. He says that no weapon formed against us will prosper and that we obey the instructions that are being given to us we don’t have any problems. So, look to God, look to the heels from which comith your help and your help comith from the Lord. He has not given us a Spirit of fear but with a sound mind He gives us the victory. I love you guys. Be careful, be safe because we win. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hi Daily Audio Bible my name is Emily and today is April 7th. I just finished listening to today’s podcast and wanted to call in and pray for someone who I heard in the prayer request today. I did not hear a name, but they said that they were feeling very disappointed in themselves, overtaken by evil thoughts and I just wanted to call in and say that those evil thoughts are not from the Lord. I have been in such a time as that and in those times I had to cling second Timothy 1:7 which I encourage you to do and it says, “for God has given not given us a Spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” I encourage you to just repeat this to yourself every day. I encourage you to search God’s word every day because God’s word is truth. Your feelings are not truth, God’s word is. And the devil can fill us with so many lies and tell us that we can’t be in God’s presence and that God is angry with us, but they are just lies, and I want you to know that God is with you, God is watching over you, and God loves you and he will get you through this. And I pray in the name of Jesus Lord that You will give this person peace and joy amidst this desperate time Father that You will help them to grow in faith in this and they will seek You each day and know that they are loved by You. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Hey Daily Audio Bible family this is John calling from Bethlehem Pennsylvania it’s 6th April just about 9 o’clock or so p.m. here in the evening after another day sheltering in place we’re being, you know, maybe physically distant from one another but not socially distant because we’ve got this amazing virtual community where we can come together. My call today is for three people, Brave from New Jersey who called in on the 2nd, for Adrian from Maryland who called on the 2nd, and for Carmen from Germany who also called in on the 2nd. So, first of all, Brave, I want you to know that in God, in Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit that you have everything. In Him you’re totally complete and your capacity to experience him increases through the removal of all the debris and clutter from your heart. You’re going through a lot right now. You’ve been through an abusive emotional relationship and I’m praying for you sister. I love you and I know that God has a special plan for you. Remember, you’re gonna go through this wilderness season, and Lord knows it sounds like you have for a long time, and out of it is going to come something just absolutely unimaginably beautiful. So, just hang in there, sister. I’m thinking of you. And then Adrian from Maryland, gosh, here’s what I have for you sister. God meets you in the stillness of your soul. It’s right there that He seeks to communion with you. In your message you said that you commune together with God. Oh my gosh, Adrian. That’s exactly…that’s exactly where the presence of God is, it’s your relationship with Him it’s not in your words. And it was beautiful. And lastly Carmen, thanks for the shout out. I love you sister. Family, I am praying for you, I love you, I appreciate you. Brian thank you and God bless you.

Hi Daily Audio Bible it’s Rebecca from Michigan and it’s April 7th. I wanted to thank Brian for reading Sneezing Jesus. I was reading along with you in my hard copy because I’ve got a book here and I sat down to read and while I’m not a big reader, but it made me want to read other books after this. But I like…I was…the thing that Maudie Thursday and I realized that was the time that Jesus was washing the feet of the disciples and I remember you talking about that in the book and how their feet was dirty and come from all grimy sections and how Peter didn’t want his feet washed and how Jesus said “you’ll want this”, basically. So, yeah, it’s like…I’m thinking our feet must be where…well nowadays we wear shoes and socks so they’re cleaner than they used to be. But I know they used to wear sandals and sometimes went barefooted, so your feet could’ve been all over. You could have been stepping in feces and all kinds of stuff and…but it’s like how God took the time to wash our feet and He took the time…He went to the cross because He knew that He was going there and…thank you Jesus for dying for us. Yeah. Thank you for reading that book. I really appreciate it a lot. It was really a blessing to me. It helped me see the Bible a little bit better and Jesus’ life. Bye.

This is Vicky from Des Moines I’m a first-time caller today is April 7th. I’m calling in response to a prayer request from an individual who didn’t leave a name, but the message can be heard at the 39 minute 42 second mark in the podcast. I just want that person to know that feeling disappointed in oneself and feeling as if God in angry at you are tricks the devil plays to keep you separated from God. You did the right thing by calling in for prayer. The Bible says where two or three are gathered in his name God is there. You have a whole Global Campfire family praying for you. Be encouraged because God isn’t angry with you. He loves you unconditionally. There’s nothing that can separate you from the love of God. He knows your heart and hears your prayers and blesses your obedience. When you feel weak, He is strong. He can soften your heart. He is your avenger and your defender. Darkness won’t win. Continue to pray and draw near to God and we pray for you as well.

Well good morning Daily Audio Bible community this is Diane Olive Brown saying shalom, shalom and putting my log on the fire and joining with all of you. And I just had to come again. I hope this will be allowed with my second time in the same day. It’s 2:23 AM, Tuesday…Wednesday, April the 8th, 2020. And I just heard a lady that was struggling with abuse from satanic rituals. Oh…my heart went out to you because, you know, I had abuse. I never was in satanic rituals, but my father was a…my first father, my birth father was very abusive and almost killed my mother twice. And, so, I just know…I know you can go down into a dark, dark, dark hole. And I want you to know that God hears you. When you can’t feel Him or see Him or have any confidence and you’re in this dark, dark, dark place He’s right there with you. He’s right there with you. When you can’t see His hand, trust His heart. On this Easter week I’m praying for you my friend. I understand some of your pain, maybe not all of it, but shalom shalom. Shalom shalom.

Hi DAB family this is Liza calling from the East Coast. Today is Wednesday, April 8th and I wanted to pray for the woman who called in at the very end of the prayer requests who mentioned that she is just really struggling with the pain of the abuse and wondering if God is there with her in all of this. And I just wanted to let you know I’ll be praying for you. God is absolutely there with you and he loves you. He is there with you every step of the way. And I know that the pain is…is really hard but…but there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and this will end. It will be better. On my end, I…I just want to pray for everyone who is cooped up at home and maybe not a very safe home environment. I know for me, when I was going through abuse when I was a kid, this would’ve been my worst nightmare, just being trapped at home. I felt like my only safe place was really going to school. And, so I’m just praying for all those, anyone whether you’re a child or an adult and you’re trapped in an unsafe environment at home. I just want to let you know I’m lifting you up in prayers, that God protect you, that God keeps you safe, both mentally and physically. And I just want to let you know that I will be praying extra for you because I can’t even imagine how hard it is for you right now. On my end I just also ask for some prayers about just staying sane in all of this and living alone. And, so, I just realized I’m probably not gonna get any kind of hug or any physical contact for a few more months. And, so, I’m just trying to find some positives in all of this. I pray for all of you. Thank you all so much for sending in your prayer requests and sharing your encouragement. Hope everyone has a great rest of your day.