Category: DAB Transcripts

Nehemiah 8:1-9:21, 1 Corinthians 9:1-18, Psalms 33:12-22, Proverbs 21:11-12

Today is the 14^th day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you today as we approach the landing on another week and…and move forward…move forward into the weekend and will start another spark…sparkly shiny new week and we’ll just keep going with this rhythm day after day, step-by-step around the Global Campfire. And, so, the next step leads us back into this book that we have been reading all week, Nehemiah. We’re reading from the English Standard Version this week and we’ll read Nehemiah 8 verse 1 through 9 verse 21 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in our reading in first Corinthians today we can see that Paul is being questioned about money basically. We can deduce this because of his response. He’s responding to some things that have been said to him, and he’s exasperated by like saying, “why…why…why shouldn’t I earn my living from the gospel? This is my job. Like this is what I do. This is with the other apostles do. This is what is even provided for in the Mosaic law. Like, I’m…as basically I’m a member of the clergy. This is like a full-time gig. I’m traveling all over the place. I’m running for my life half the time. I should at least maybe be able to eat food”, right? Like, so he’s kind of coming back at what they’re saying and there’s probably an undercurrent here because in a number of Paul’s letters we will see him talk about a collection, a collection for the poor Jerusalem church. And in some cases, he’ll even be like, “when I get there make sure you have the money ready.” So, there’s probably an undercurrent going on that connects itself to the Jerusalem Council itself. And we read about the Jerusalem Council in the book of Acts. And at that counsel that’s where a very, very pivotal decision was to be made and the essential question at that counsel was “who gets to be in? Who gets to be in the church? Who gets to be a believer in Jesus?” Because as we’ve already talked about a number of times and we will talk more as…as we continue our journey through the Bible, the Hebrew believers felt that Jesus was a Hebrew rabbi and that His message was a Hebrew message in a Hebrew context and so if you wanted to follow Him you needed to essentially become Hebrew, convert to Judaism and then follow Jesus. But the Gentiles, on the other hand, were still receiving the Holy Spirit. And, so, it was as if God has made this decision, which is what they looked at and what they understood and what they decided – “God is the one giving out his Holy Spirit and we can’t argue with what God is doing. And, so, we have to…even though it bends our minds…we’re gonna have to get on board with what God is doing.” But not everybody could do that. And it seems that the Bible goes to great lengths to tell us that the mother church, the Jerusalem church was a poor church of poor people. And, so, it seems maybe that because Paul didn’t frequent Jerusalem that often, because there wasn’t kind of constant dialogue going on, that Paul had at least alluded to the fact that as he continued to share the gospel among the Gentiles and plant the churches among the Gentiles, that he would not forget the Jerusalem church, that he would not forget that this is kind of the “where it started”, and that these people needed help to be strong. He explicitly says this in some of his letters. So, we can get into conjecture here and go like, “okay. The church at Corinth, maybe there on board with this collection, but also like paying Paul and there’s all this money being asked for and this is a new church and these are…this is a cosmopolitan urban area with educated people and who are gonna ask questions.” And, so, we see some of the different entanglements, like just some of the stuff going on in the early church. And it’s so fascinating. It’s so fascinating because, I kinda grew up thinking that everything was…Jesus ascended back to the Father and those early days of the church, they were just magnificent. And yes, they were magnificent but they are full of the same kinds of struggles that we can continue to struggle with today, in one form or another and that's…in one way that’s encouraging. In another way it’s like, shouldn’t we be doing better? Like, shouldn’t we…we’ve had 2000 years of practice, why do we keep following the same circle? Like, why do we keep doing the same things over and over? They keep yielding the same results. Why don’t we fully live into what is described in the New Testament as our identity as children of the most-high God? And it shows us that, yeah, they had work to do then and we have work to do now. But we’re not alone. This has been an ongoing struggle.

Prayer:

Father we invite You to that. The thing is, what we’re asking for is that we could overcome some of these things, that they wouldn’t only ever be struggles, that we would actually overcome some of these things in our lives as we become completely and fully aware of who we are in You. We know who we are without You and we are a colossal mess. We can fool ourselves into the thinking we’re the greatest thing that that was ever born. But the truth is when we have to look in the mirror for real and examine our lives, we are a colossal mess. The only thing that ties it together is You because we were created this way. We will only ever be a mess when we try to navigate anything without You, and we’re ashamed to confess that we try to navigate a lot of things without You. And it’s helpful to know like we’re not the only ones, that this has been going on a long time, but we would like to step forward. And…and it seems as if You would like that too, very, very much. That You have been so patient, that You have been so kind, that You have been so loving, that You have Fathered us. But maybe it’s now time to grow up a little. And, so, come Holy Spirit into these long struggles of our lives and show us how to live into a new way, a way that puts some of this stuff behind us. We pray this in the precious name of Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Announcements:

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If you want to  partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link on the homepage. And I say it all the time, like pretty much every day, thank you, humbly and gratefully because that is a daily…that…that is a daily sensation of awe that this is happening, that we live in a time where there’s technology like this where we can be in community no matter where we are and be the body of Christ, no matter where we are and feel connected to that global body, which we call the Global Campfire and we can feel connected and not alone. If that is important, if that is life-giving to you then thank you for your partnership. That is how the fire keeps burning. So, thank you. So, there’s a link on the homepage. There is a Give button in the upper right-hand corner of the app or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Well hello DABbers I was just listening to the prayer requests today and I heard from Louise from the states and she was asking for prayer for her son Peter who she said his birthday was August 10^th and he’s 24 and he’s away from the Lord. I could hear the pain in your voice Louise. It’s a special day for me because it’s my birthday, August 10^th is my birthday and definitely not 24 but I just wanted to say a quick prayer for Peter. Father, I just pray right now wherever Peter is in this world that You would send Your Spirit Father in a unique way through Your body Father, someone that he knows, someone that he doesn’t know Lord just I pray that You would get a hold of this Young man and that You would change his heart, draw him to You. And I just pray for protection on him Father that You would speak life to him. I pray against any death, any demonic forces, any drugs, anything like that Father. I just pray that he would…that it would just fall to the wayside and that Your Spirit would be very clear and that You would draw him back to You and to his family and that it would be a redemptive story in Jesus’ name. Amen. Today my theme is these are a few of my favorite things and I am thankful for the daily by the on my 55^th birthday. Thank You Lord for life. Thank You for Your word thank You for Your joy and thank You for this family.

Greetings everyone this is Olivia Zara from London England today is the 10^th of August. This is not my first time calling in, but I would definitely say that I’m quite new when it comes to the Daily Audio Bible app. I just joined this year but enjoying participating and sending in prayers when can. What rang new to me today I would say is listening to Ms. Louise from the states concerning her son Peter who is turning 24. Happy birthday Peter! Never know, you can be listening to the Daily Audio Bible app as well, but I was tremendously moved, I don’t know why, I’m not a mother myself yet but I guess because me, I’m 26 and I know what it’s like to witness running away from the Lord as well as myself at times running away from the purpose that God has given my life. And please join me in prayer. So, Lord I place Your beloved son Peter into Your precious and merciful loving hands. Lord You know him by name and by nature of whatever reason he’s running away from Your glorious Spirit I ask in Jesus’ name that he takes heart to find rest and lay down his burden on to You completely. Lord I thank You for his loving mother. Reward her trust in You and guide her son into Your eternal kingdom. May Your supernatural power bring a new testimony into her life over Your faithfulness in Jesus’ name. Amen. God bless you everyone. By.

Hey family it’s Jesse from Washington I need some prayers for one of my employees. Last night…I mean…today when she came in and she looked pretty upset and I didn’t want to ask her in front of everybody but when we were alone she told me that right outside her kids window last night her three-year-old’s window there was a young African American…African American kid was stabbed to death like literally like 10 feet outside their window and he and his wife have four kids. And, so, just prayer for my employee, his name is Yami and it’s her and her husband and her three-year-old and they couldn’t sleep at all last night. I…I can’t believe she even came in to work. She’s just been such a blessing to our family and to our business. But just prayers that Yami and her family can get some sleep, prayers…I don’t know how your mind would be set at ease after something like that but just prayers that they don’t stress out too much or worry too much about the situation. Only God can do that, obviously. And then prayers for that young family, for those kids, and for the mother, all their family. I can’t even imagine what they’re going through. So, just cover them with your prayer’s family. And, yeah, thanks family. Bye.

Hey Daily Audio Bible family this is Dan in Arizona. I have not called in for some time now. I just wanted to pray for our world and just the many things that are going on, the many things at play in the world. And we know that these things are supposed to happen. We know that the enemy is at work behind the scenes here, but He that is in us is greater than He that is in the world. And I am so thankful and grateful to have Jesus in my heart and know that Jesus is in control no matter what is going on in this world. And I’m praying for peace for myself. I’ve had some battles with anxiety lately and I’m just starting to really come out of it and realizing that it’s because I’ve been trying to hold onto those things and do everything on my own and world put the…literally put the world’s problems on my shoulders. And I’m praying for those of you who share that battle of just putting your world or bills and payments and…and other responsibilities plus the news that is going on constantly 24/7. And, you know what? Jesus says hey take my burden it’s light. And I’m praying for you out there specifically who are going through this battle, I’m praying that you would take on the burden of Jesus because it is light, and His yoke is easy and His burden is light. I love you all family. Be blessed.

Good morning DABbers this is Running Desperately to Jesus. I come to you all with a heavy heart. I’m still struggling with my fornication, I would just be transparent, fornication. I don’t know why that is. This is so hard for me. God has given me many ways out and yet I seem to still keep going back. I don’t know what’s going on with that. It’s…it’s…it’s a battle, I feel it’s a battle within me, my spirit and my flesh are warring so hard. The other thing is is I just want to let everyone know that prayed me during the time I had my grandson, I’m gonna take full responsibility and am sure that I sabotaged this through my stress, through my desire to be in the home by myself, my desire to not have to go through parenting again. Some things were done by another relative where he has been not returned and I feel relief in a sense. I’m not stressed about it but I feel I am at odds with two things that have had such a major impact on my life and that was my grandson coming to live with me, that relationship God knows my desire to have a relationship with him, but in the capacity of grandmother and then this man that I have been physically with and having a hard time with me just walking away. Those are two things that seem to have just turned my world upside down since this COVID thing has caused me to be at home just go to work and come home and nothing in between. So, I’m asking for prayer again. This is Running Desperately to Jesus.

Dear Esther from Flushing Queens now in Orlando Florida I just…I heard you say that you don’t think you have a deep faith and yet you said that you have faith but you just don’t want to be shaken to the core. And sister, I don’t know but I think that faith that knows all the facts, that looks at the reality, that feels all the feelings and yet says, “Lord let it be done unto me, yet though he slay me I will trust in Him”, that’s faith. Faith, I don’t believe is ever going to be a situation where everything’s going great. In fact, that’s when faith seems to wander off, is when everything’s going great. So, it sounds to me like you’re rockin’ it in the faith. And I love your prayers. I want you I I’m gonna pray for you. Father God I thank you for my sister Esther. I think you father God for the beautiful name that you gave her. She’s one of my favorite characters in the Bible in fact she’s a queen. And I thank you Lord that you are fulfilling your purpose for her in her life right now and you’re bringing her through the valley and your setting tables before her in the presence of our enemies. And father God you are going to look for comp overflow and goodness and mercy follow her wherever she goes because she has a heart that trusts in you and follows up to you. Bless her Lord God. Let’s perceive the truth about herself as you see her Lord. She is your treasured possession and I thank you father God for all the blessings of all my dear sisters and brothers in Christ on the DAB. In Jesus name. Treasured possession.

Nehemiah 5:14-7:73, 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, Psalms 33:1-11, Proverbs 21:8-10

Today is the 13^th day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is…it’s great to come around the Global Campfire together and, I don’t know, grab a seat, step away from it all for a minute in this little oasis that we have created for ourselves, a peaceful place in the midst of chaos at times, a place of serenity, a place that we can allow God’s word to speak into our hearts and minds and…and lives. So, it’s great to be here with you right now, today, as we take the next step forward and that will lead us back into the book of Nehemiah. We’re reading from the English Standard Version this week. Nehemiah chapter 5 verse 14 through 7 verse 73.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we’ve been watching the story of Nehemiah as we read through it and what we’re gleaning from it is just a very, very…like a front row seat to the way that he was leading things, how he got a vision for this wall to be rebuilt in Jerusalem while he was cupbearer to the king of Persia, how he interceded, how he planned before he ever told the king, how it was that he invited the king into the story, and how the king got on board and sent him, how he was provided for, how he showed up and was just kind of incognito, didn’t show up announcing himself and his authority to do what he was going to do, how he just kind counted the cost, looked the whole situation over, and then how he cast vision and people got on board and how that only…that…that’s when the problems began. They started rebuilding the wall and then the voices of intimidation come against them. The voices of ridicule and discouragement come against them. The threats of attack comes against them, and they just…they keep going. I mean, they make the adjustments necessary and even though that slows things down they keep going. And we should see that as they get closer and closer the completion of the goal of the dream of the wall then the…the problems, the challenges that they face escalate. And in some ways, we should just…we should feel a sense of encouragement. Like this is how it goes. Like when we face these things, we’re not the only one. But what is it that puts the wind in Nehemiah’s sails? Like, what is it that keeps him going? That’s kind of what we get to in today’s reading. We’re able to observe Nehemiah’s heart, like his motives and that’s ultimately…when we’re trying to accomplish something, and it becomes hard and it always does, it’s our hearts motive that will dictate whether we will persevere or whether we will surrender and give up. And, so, we see Nehemiah’s motives is in the way that he deals with everybody else. He’s not lording it over them because of his appointed position. And, in fact, he’s not even taking what he deserves according to his position because of the burden that would place on the other people around him. And there’s nothing wrong with him earning what he’d earned. That…that was his job and that was his compensation, but he saw that the people he’s working on this wall, the people that he’s on this mission with are the people that would have to provide that and they’re already working their hearts out. And, so, instead of like trying to add to that load so that he can benefit personally or for that matter just not have to pay out of his own pocket, he…he chooses…he chooses not to put the burden on them and that had to speak volumes toward his character and his leadership to the people that he was leading. He’s providing out of his own pocket for his own job. So, we could safely say like, “this is a job that Nehemiah wanted so bad, he was so passionate to accomplish this he would have done it for free” because he was. And that shows his motives and it shows that he is resolute in his purpose. He is there for a specific thing, to get this wall built in. And this wall needs to be built, not for some kind of ground-floor opportunity to rebuild Jerusalem to become rich. This wall needs to be built because God’s temple is inside those walls and God’s temple must be protected. And I mean if you think about it. So, there is this city named Jerusalem and it’s an ancient city and its very, very famous for lots and lots of reasons, over lots and lots of generations even at this time and it has been destroyed and it’s being rebuilt and now there is a temple and there are walls. So, you would think like, the real estate inside those walls is now very, very valuable and this is an opportunity to use position to get rich, to build wealth, to build…to own property. It’s just that Nehemiah, like he didn’t do any of that stuff. He was there for a reason and nothing was gonna distract him from that reason. That…the wall was his mission from God, and he was in that mission with a single purpose with the whole heart, which would…which would help the people…the people who were following Nehemiah to be on board, like to get his heart about the whole thing as well. And then the politics got into the situation. So, these ringleaders of the opposition, Sanballat and Tobiah. I mean they tried to discourage. They tried to ridicule or make fun. They tried to threaten and intimidate, and those things were not successful. And, so, they start sending him letters, “hey, we need to get on the same page. Come talk to us. Let’s…let’s meet about this.” And, so, they send him four letters of the same…same thing and Nehemiah basically responds the same way, “I am on this wall. I am not coming down from this wall. Why should I come down from this wall to listen to you when all you’ve done is discourage and intimidate us and try to stop us? Like, why should I come down and talk to you?” And, so, then they send the open letter like, “well, you should come talk to us because the king is going to find out what you’re really trying to do.” And they had cooked up this thing that the real reason Nehemiah was there working so hard was for his own benefit, like they’re gonna get the wall done and he’s gonna declare himself king, and that the prophets are gonna prophesy about him and he’s gonna try to take over, which was a complete fabrication, but if it took hold it with be the end of Nehemiah, like he would be executed for this. And this is what Nehemiah says, “they all wanted to frighten us, thinking their hands will drop from the work and it will not be done, but now O God strengthen my hands.” And they just worked harder. Like, basically Nehemiah was like, “okay. If I’m going to have to defend myself, if this is gonna like pull me away because of the politics of the situation we better finish what we started and they worked harder. So, the politics didn’t work. And, so, the enemies then try to bring religion into the mix and the payoff a prophet to try to coerce Nehemiah into the temple where it looks like he’s blockading himself where it’s like he’s done something wrong and he’s hiding out in God’s temple and this would discredit him. And Nehemiah is…because he’s got a single purpose and because he’s been true and because he’s walking in wisdom, he can see what they’re trying to do and he even realizes, “wow! Wow! It’s like my…some people that I even know and who know the story here, they had a price. They’re speaking for God and they had a price. This is…this isn’t what God’s saying,” And Nehemiah’s like, “I am not…I am not gonna do this stuff. I am not going to play these games.” And, so, we see that through it all, the mission, the dream, the thing, the calling, the purpose, that never got unclear. It never got cloudy. Nehemiah was there for something specific, and so all of his efforts, no matter what came his way and he had significant obstacles that we’ve seen so far, he did not stop. He was there to finish what he started.

Prayer:

Father, again as we have said in days past, thank You. Thank You that this story has been written down for us to look into and examine and interpret and bring on board into our own hearts as it…it works in conjunction with some of our own stories and some of our own dreams and some of our own goals and some of our own callings. And, so, we invite Your Holy Spirit again to continue to lead us into all truth but give us wisdom from the story of Nehemiah. Give us wisdom and insight into our own stories because we can see resolute and single-purpose to person here achieving a goal, but…but we can also see the voices of discouragement and threats and politics and religion and all of the things that are brought to bear against this story and how he is able to look through it all and stay clear on what the mission was. Help us to see that too. We ask this in the precious name of Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base for a virtual community like ours. This is where the global campfire is. So, yeah, be familiar. If you haven’t already be familiar.

Check out the Community section. That’s where the Prayer Wall is and that is a place to reach out anytime, to reach out asking for prayer, but to also reach out in prayer and encourage your brothers and sisters who are asking. It’s a place that we can always go and turn outward. We spend a lot of our time turned inward because we’re…we’re all going through something…we’re all going through something and it…it…it can become an obsession. We’re…we’re looking inward…we’re working on the things that we’re trying to move out of the way. Sometimes it can lead us into this vortex that just goes down into the darkness when what we need to do is reach outward, look outward, reach toward one another, shoulder one another’s burdens. So, the Prayer Wall is a wonderful place to do that. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com which is the website, which is where you can find out what’s going on around here. You can partner with the Daily Audio Bible there. There’s a link on the homepage. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app there’s a give button in the upper right-hand corner and you can press the Give button, 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 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 Duncan the piano man from Fredericksburg Texas. Almighty God please take care of Emily the urgent prayer going out for her there in ICU there in Wyoming or wherever it was. And Father just we hold her to in the…before Your throne Lord. Please hold her in the palm of Your hand and heal her out right. Touch the ouches touch the hurting places. Take care of Jordan here in Texas Father and as he is Papa to this newborn for the second time around. Father be especially with him and his wife and their two children, their two boys. Father, it’s not easy not even for…for a parent of a newborn even if they had maybe two or three. We had we had one. So, Father You know. Just give them grace, both of them grace Jordan and his wife and the kids too. Restore calm and gentleness and patience and humor and…and just…and the joys of parenting because it’s tough even with the challenges of it all. Father, this is the week of my wedding anniversary and I look forward very much to…to Friday but my dear wife has been dead…has been with you now over eight months, I’d say 10 months now, almost a year. And father thank you for giving me the joy this past weekend with visits from friends and going places. And I prepare now for worship. Thank you, Jesus for hearing on prayer. Amen.

Hello, my wonderful DAB family this is Rosie in Oklahoma and today is Sunday, August 9^th. I’m calling in right now to ask you to pray for my granddaughter Anisa and her husband Isaiah. They’ve been married a little over year and a half, and he told her two days after she had their son that he didn’t have any feelings for her anymore. And we have talked to him and let him know that love is not a feeling it’s an action and we don’t always go by our feelings. But I think he has his eyes on other people and he’s not listening to anybody. And right now my granddaughter and my great-grandson are staying with me and it just breaks my heart because she’s trying so hard to restore her marriage and she’s been praying a lot and she reads the Bible and she even reads the Bible to the baby. And that you would pray for him as well his name, his name is Demaree. And I just want to ask you guys to please pray for them. I love you DAB family. I appreciate you more than you…than you’ll ever know. God bless you. Bye.

My name is Julie I’m calling from Petula Montana I’ve never called __ for introducing me to DAB. Today is August 9^th. I’m listening to August 2 and I just want to say prayers for all the COVID people all this nation. I want to ask for prayers for strength for me. I have been with a cancer patient for 22 years chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Also has had __. He has been my whole life. I met him when I was 34. I am now 58 and I feel that the end is coming and we had a horrible two nights of throwing up and nerve pain. I’ve been through seven chemo’s with him, numerous tumor removals. He has been…he is the love of my life and it’s been the best and the worst and he is Jewish, and I want him to see Jesus and I want to strengthen my relationship with Christ. And please forgive me, I’m just am lacking sleep and I just….it’s like, bargaining with God to please at this point just take him or care for him as if…as if that can…

Hi family this is Biola from Maryland I hope you’re all doing well. Brian and Jill God bless you God bless your ministry. Well I’m still behind, I’m on July 27^th and I’m going to mix the old with the new. I want to say a big shout out to those who transcribe Daily Audio Bible transcripts. God bless you for your labor of love. Mike from Reading I heard your prayer request for your daughter Annie, and I am joining…joining you in prayer for her. Father Lord you said Lord Jesus when you were here on earth that you have come to set the captives free. And, so, Lord of heaven in agreement with my brother and thousands of others who are praying oh God for Annie I break the hold of addiction upon Annie’s life, the hold of this heroin O God Lord, I break it upon her life. Lord Jesus set her free. You have come to…You came specifically for Annie, set her free in the name of Jesus and every work of darkness in her life we command you to cease and desist in Jesus’ name. Lord bring the prodigal daughter back home in the name of Jesus. Carmen how can I advise you in less than 30 seconds? I’ve been where you are Carmen. What I would just say my sister is that you should give yourself time to grieve. Do not rush into any relationship. Just process what is going on and give yourself time to grieve. And what is very important is that you forgive your husband or your ex-husband now that you will forgive him, you know. And I pray that God will comfort your heart and God will touch you in the name of Jesus. And then I want to pray for Gigi’s sister. Gigi, I heard your prayer request. I read it rather because I’ve not listened because I read it on Tumblr and I’m praying for your sister, that she will find a job, a good job and God will comfort her even over the passing of your dad, that God will comfort you all in the name of Jesus. Anonymous, I am praying that the truth will be found out in your situation, that God will step in and help you and the truth will be found out in the name of Jesus.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family this is BW in NC I hope everyone’s doing well. I’m calling in today for Megan who called in about seeking counseling and living with her boyfriend before marriage. Megan, God is telling you what to do here and I think you know, and God is your ultimate provider. He is not gonna leave you stranded if you follow Him. Also, it sounds like you may be getting ready to become unequally…unequally yoked, which God also commands against as well. I would say to you as a male that, if your boyfriend will not respect your wishes to honor God then you should probably not worry about losing him but you should run from him. And as always seems to be the case, if you’ll honor God you will be provided for in abundant ways, in ways that are…ways that you would never be able to imagine or understand, but you will never go wrong by honoring what you know God is telling you to do. I’ll be praying for you and I know you’ll be okay so long as you honor your God.

Good morning DAB family this is Jonathan from North Carolina and I’m calling to pray for Mike and his daughter Annie in the situation with a heroin addiction and the baby on the way and recovering. Dear Jesus, I just want a lift before You as Mike has done many times his daughter Annie. And this whole situation Lord, I thank You that she came to the point of coming to him and wanting to get help and yet God it seems that she has left the recovery program again and God I have no idea how hard it is for her to go into recovery or what that’s like but I just pray that You will strengthen her, that You will change Your heart, that You will help her to know that…that You can strengthen her to tear away from this addiction Lord that’s been a part of her life for only You know how long. And God I’m just sitting around my porch looking at a rainbow, a sign of Your promise, and I just thank You for Your promises and I thank You for Mike and I thank You for Annie and I just pray that You would bring his daughter Annie home. He talked about her and it’s almost like she’s…she’s gone and it’s just a ghost that’s left and God I just pray by the power of Your Spirit that You would deliver Annie, that You would comfort Mike in this time. I can’t even imagine the pain and I pray that he will sense Your presence in this time and Annie as well Lord, that she will just know beyond the shadow of a doubt that You’re there to deliver her in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Nehemiah 3:15-5:13, 1 Corinthians 7:25-40, Psalms 32:1-11, Proverbs 21:5-7

Today is the 12^th day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you today as we move our way through the center of the week get ready for the back half. And we are continuing our journey through the book of Nehemiah that we have found ourselves in. And there’s much for us to learn from that book as well as the letter to the Corinthians, first Corinthians that we’re reading. So, let’s dive in and take the next step forward, which is Nehemiah chapter 3 verse 15 through 5 verse 13 today.

Commentary:

Okay. I want to spend some time talking about what we read in Nehemiah today because Nehemiah is just so helpful for us as we discern a calling and a direction and counting the cost and just trying to follow the will of the Lord as we understand where we’re to go and what we’re to do. And, so, I don’t want to miss that. But I want to second to just kind of catch us up in first Corinthians. We kind of passed this section today about, you know, whether you should get married or whether you should not get married or how you should stay how you are however that is and it causes this confusion where people, “like should I be pursuing a spouse? Should I…should my passions all be put into…into the things of the Lord? What should I do?” Because here it is in first Corinthians. And this brings up like a contextualization thing that we find in these letters. And it gets a little prickly, right? Because this is the word of God. And, so, we read this, and we go like, “this is the word of God for all time. And, so, it’s got have some sort of meaning now that it had then.” And, so, if you start discussing, “what…what…what…what might that be?” Well that’s when you get into this territory where…where you get people kind of making accusations like, “you’re just trying to make the Bible say whatever you want the Bible to say and you’re just trying to water down the word of God and…and…and my experience among scholarship, that’s really not the case at all. People are looking for the essence of what was trying to be communicated in context. And, so, when Paul says today like now, concerning the betrothed, so those engaged to be married. I don’t have a command from the Lord but I’m telling you what I think. I think that in view of the present distress, which is what they were going through at that time in the world, specifically in the region of the city of Corinth, where this church and these people were although all of these letters were passed around other churches. So, we can we say at this time, this present distress that he’s talking about. It’s good for person to remain as he is. So, if you’re married don’t try to not be married in. And if you’re free then don’t try to get married. But if you do it’s not a sin. It’s just that it’s gonna introduce all kinds of worldly problems that you have to deal with in your marriage instead of being able to focus wholeheartedly on God or just to quote Paul, “I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about the worldly things, how to please his wife.” And then he goes on to say the reverse that the woman is in the same boat, basically. And, you know, I read is, and I’ve read this, you know…I don’t know… most my life, “the unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord and how to please the Lord.” I used to read and think, that’s not what. I’m anxious about the opposite sex. That’s what I’m anxious about. Because the natural order of things id for us to come together, reproduce and create the next coming generation. Like this is biological, this is spiritual, and this is reality. So, how is it that Paul is saying, “just however you are right now, just stay that way.” It’s because Paul’s conviction, and it’s not just Paul’s conviction, like it's…it’s a large part of the conviction in the letters in the New Testament. The conviction is that the world is passing away. In fact, let me just quote Paul. He says, “this is what I mean brothers. The appointed time has grown very short. From now on let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn, as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.” That last sentence is the key one, “for the present form of this world is passing away.” And we could say, even though we are a couple of thousand years in the future from this letter, we still believe that trajectory. “The present form of this world is passing away.” That is our eschatological view, like that this is all going somewhere and what we now know is passing away, but something new will be reborn, right? And, so, it’s like, that’s why we watch the signs of the times. And that’s why we, every generation from that generation to this generation thinks this is the last one. The signs are all lining up. This is the end of it all. This is the big one. Paul thought that but not in the distant future, like imminently. This is one of the things that drove the church forward in its early inception, the imminent arrival of the return of Jesus Christ and the establishment of the kingdom of God. And like I said, like generation after generation forward all the way until today continues to have that thread of urgency because it’s all throughout the New Testament since they believed this was in imminent thing. Then when we read it we are also in the same place. This is an imminent thing which leads us to live our lives accordingly which is appropriate, like with an urgency that there is something going on that we are a part of, and we are carrying that story forward and we may be in this transitional moment. Like, we should live accordingly. That’s living awake and aware. But I don’t think it’s like in any way sacrilegious or anything disrespectful at all to say what Paul thought about this imminent transition and what the earlier…early church writers, early things that we read in the New Testament, what they thought was imminent wasn’t. I mean we’re 2000 years from there. They have all passed on. They are all restored ad whole in God, but this story has continued forward. So, when we read some of these ethical things and this advice that Paul is giving along the way, not just right here, this isn’t just the only instance, it’s all throughout the letters. So, when we come across these things where we’re like, “how would that work? Like how…how…how do I live into that? How do I do that?” Let’s first understand they were trying to figure that out too. They were trying to figure it out against a backdrop in which this transition, this return, this reemergence of Jesus was going to happen any second. And, so, Paul gives advice accordingly. This is what he thinks. And, so, yeah, if that’s the case, if the return of Jesus is imminent, like any day…and I know this gets a little sideways because…because we read the New Testament and then we enter into that same story – any day, maybe today, hopefully today. And I feel that…like hopefully today. But we have 2000 years of history to say, “okay. It wasn’t like in the next month. It wasn’t even in like the next year. And what they…they thought they thought. And it’s not disrespectful to say that what they thought wasn’t exactly accurately right. We’re still here and it’s 2000 years later. So, that’s a fact that’s not, like just disrespectful. And, so, having context for what they were thinking and what they were trying to press into helps us define that place in our own lives to press into. But like suggesting that you shouldn’t be married you should stay how you are, like you shouldn't…you should pretend like nothing’s going on, like you’re not mourning if you are, you’re not sad if you are, you’re not rejoicing…if you’re rejoicing…like you’re just trying to focus here on the immediate task at hand then reading it 2000 years later can be confusing because it’s like, “okay I don’t know exactly what…how I’m supposed to be aimed. And, so, I’m pulled in all kinds of different directions because I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.” So, what I’ve learned and what I’ll point out as we continue through our year and as long as I am able to continue to do this however many more years into the future, but what I have learned as a student of the Bible as a student of our faith is that context actually matters a lot trying to peel back the layers over thousands of years of time. And, so, my motives for saying what I’m saying today have nothing to do with like trying to make a theological statement or create some sort of theological position. I’m like completely devoid of that at this point. I’m trying to say context matters when we try to do that work. And as we pass this specific section of first Corinthians where Paul’s saying, “like the whole thing is coming down. Like the whole thing is about to blow up, the end is upon us.” Well then, his advice is strong, true, and absolutely good but like just from a logical perspective, we would have to say if people stopped getting married, for the most part, in order to live and what Paul is saying, then by now 2000 years in the future the faith would not have flourished around the world, it would have died out because people stopped having kids because they stopped coming together in union and the union of marriage. So, you see, context matters. And that was an awful lot of words to say context matters but context matters. And that’s why we look at the context of things as we navigate.

And, so…and, so, now to Nehemiah. So, Nehemiah just helps us understand that there is a process when there is a calling and there are steps that need to be taken as…as we continue to try to live into what we feel like God is leading us to do. And when we watch Nehemiah we see a person acting in collaboration with wisdom really, So, Nehemiah has gotten to Jerusalem, he has cast the vision, the people have caught the vision, they have gotten on board, they are building this wall, which was the dream. This was the thing that Nehemiah wanted to come from Persia all the way back to Jerusalem to do, to protect God’s temple with a wall. And the building of this wall is happening faster than anybody would have suspected. It's…it’s actually happening. And, so, when we have prayed and planned and sought God and launched that’s what we would hope for is that things go faster than we even planned. But it…it’s like the idea that everything’s gonna downhill and we’re just going to be coasting into this new destiny that God’s dropped into our lap is unrealistic. Nehemiah faced all kinds of opposition in our reading today alone. So first was the…the…the outside voices of ridicule. Like, I’m quoting this out of Nehemiah. “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish and burned ones at that? Even if fox goes upon it it’ll break down their stone wall”, right? The voice of discouraging ridicule. So, like, when we’ve launched into something and our heart is in it, like we are working tirelessly and all of the risk that’s involved, our heart is invested, and then those of voices of ridicule, like “you think you can actually do something that’s gonna matter.” When those things come against us that can be the end of the dream. And if we think about it, we can probably confine places in our lives where it has been, like that it was just debilitating and we just couldn’t, we lost heart and we couldn’t find it. What Nehemiah does in the face of this ridicule is to cry out to God, to cry out to God, to name it, to say, “look at what they’re doing” and then to keep going, to keep moving forward. That’s what he did, and the wall was soon half of its height. Like it was all the way around and half of its height. Once that happened, then these voices of ridicule got more serious and threatening. And, so, yeah the psychology of it just kind of gets in your head. Like an army is going to swoop down and destroy us at any moment. All of these threats are coming against them. This wall that was easy to ridicule when it was just a pile of burnt up rocks is now actually becoming a wall and people are starting to see that this is going to happen and so they’re trying to intimidate the people to get them to stop building this wall, to come down off that wall and leave it behind. And in our own lives, like man, we reach a point where the dream was awesome but the blood and sweat of trying to make it happen is difficult. And, so, all of these threats that seem to come against us in all kinds of ways can get us off course or to give us…get us to give up completely. What Nehemiah did when he believed that the threats, like he was taking the threats seriously. They weren’t just words of discouragement. This was an actual, intimidating threat. What he did was prepare. Pre…like if you’re gonna attack us, it’s not…you’re not attacking an unprepared person or people. We’ll be ready for you. So, if that’s what you’re gonna do you’re not going to just take us out. We’re gonna stand here and oppose you. And, so, he armed everybody along the wall, even cut the workforce in half so that half the people could be on guard and ready while the other half of the people worked kind of one-handed while they had weapons ready as well. And as fast as the first half of the wall went up and things have ground to a slow process now, because everybody can’t work without fear and wholehearted…like everybody…everybody’s got to be on guard now that can be very discouraging when things begin to slow down. But let’s notice that even though things slowed down significantly…significantly in the book of Nehemiah they still moved forward. Like every stone that got laid was one more stone toward completion. Every brick that was put in the wall was one more brick forward. Like even though things have slowed down they were still going forward. And then problems begin to erupt from within the camp. Like this is the next thing that Nehemiah faces today. These people are building the wall, but they have other obligations and taxes to pay and land to maintain and it’s becoming very, very difficult. And, so, some of the more wealthy people are praying upon the more unfortunate people, even to the point of selling their fellow Hebrew brothers and sisters into slavery, a horrible thing. And Nehemiah finds out about this and he doesn’t just try to work the back channel of politics so that, you know…so that the behavior can continue but at a…in a different way or at a different rate of what…like he calls the whole thing out into the light. Like he drags this issue into the light and names it and confronts the people doing it. And they are ashamed because they have no defense against it. It is what they’re doing. And so often when we are on some sort of mission, man, its when things go sideways within…within the team, right, that…that there are problems in all these kind of back channels and this is where gossip festers. Nehemiah just drug it into the light right away and named it. And, so, in our reading it’s like ridicule, intimidation, threats, trouble from within the camp. These are all obstacles that Nehemiah faced while trying to achieve the dream, the dream that there would be a wall around the city of God, where the temple of God dwelled. And, so, we should, on the one hand, take heart. We’re not the only ones that go through this kind of stuff. This is how it works. But too, we see that however Nehemiah responds, however it is that he…he’s doing everything with wisdom, he’s doing everything ethically but whatever he does, he’s doing it in such a way that forward progress can still happen. Even if it slows to a crawl the thing doesn’t stop. It continues forward however it’s got to be situated so that it can.

Prayer:

Father, there’s a lot to here, there’s a lot here and we invite Your Holy Spirit, as we do every day because it’s You who will lead us into all truth. It’s You who will guide our steps. It’s You that we are depending. In fact You help us to realize how utterly dependent we are upon You when we see the context of the stories in the Bible, when we understand that these are examples and these people all had to wrestle with the same things that we wrestle with as well, that like we’re not just reading the superhero version of the faith where all of these people were just so powerful that they didn’t face any kind of challenges. They’re not exceptions, they’re examples, examples for us in our own lives. And, so, come Holy Spirit we become aware of You. And as we think about these things today, tomorrow, whenever it is You bring them to mind, however it is, that we are listening and that we are seeing where You are leading. We do need You now more than ever and You are not distant, and You are not unavailable. We are just largely unaware. So, give us eyes to see and ears to hear we pray in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base it is the website, it’s how you find out what’s going on around here So, check it out. Everything that’s in the website you can pretty much check out in the Daily Audio Bible apps as well by pushing the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner. So, yeah, get connected, stay connected as we continue our daily adventure, our daily journey through the Scriptures.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that dailyaudiobible.com and I…I…I thank you, can’t thank you enough. The…the reality of a community like ours is it’s here because we’re in it together. And, so, thank you for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner. If you prefer the mail, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

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

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

Nehemiah 1:1-3:14, 1 Corinthians 7:1-24, Psalms 31:19-24, Proverbs 21:4

Today is the 11^th day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is a joy it is a pleasure it is an honor and a marvel…a marvel that we live in a time where there’s technology like this, that we can be together right now and spend some time in God’s word together. So, it is a joy to be here with you today. And as we get into our days reading, we find that we concluded the book of Ezra yesterday, short book, which leads us to another book and this one is called Nehemiah.

Introduction to the Book of Nehemiah:

And we’re kinda dealing with the same time period and this is another of the books of history in the Scriptures and we’re actually not too far from completing the books of history in the Scriptures. We’ve got a little ways to go but we’ll get there. Anyway, Nehemiah picks up pretty much where Ezra left off. It’s…in Christian tradition, Ezra is at least one of the authors of Nehemiah because Ezra and Nehemiah were a single manuscript at one point, they were separate documents as they are broken up now. But Nehemiah was one of the Jewish exiles who had been carried off to Babylon and then Babylon changed hands. The Persians overcame them and he had followed the story of what God was doing and giving favor to the Jewish people among the Persians and then being allowed, the first people, being allowed to go back home to their homeland and begin to rebuild God’s temple and have cover and protection and provision to do that. So, he’s watching this story, and Nehemiah was able to kind of watch the story pretty close because he was a direct servant to the Persian king. And Nehemiah’s heart was drawn to this story, this story of return from exile, this story of the rebuilding of the temple and it pulled him into months of interceding and his intercession was wrapped around one kind of image in his heart that was kind of breaking his heart, it was the image of God’s temple in Jerusalem, which is the very symbol of the Jewish people, the place where God would meet with human beings, the place where God put His name. He sees it sitting there in his mind’s eye completely undefended and that begins to build in him a passion to see the walls of Jerusalem rebuilt so that they could protect the temple of the Lord. And that just percolated, it just wouldn’t leave him, and he kept praying over it until finally he needed to approach the king with his desire. And we’ll see that he does get favor and he is able to go but it’s just like the rest of the stories in the Bible, it didn’t all go well. Like, there was all kinds of opposition that he had to endure, all kinds of stuff that he had to persevere through, but he didn't…he didn’t deviate. Like his purpose didn’t change. He didn’t lose sight of what he felt called to do any didn’t lose sight that in order to accomplish something like that he would have to utterly depend upon the Lord. And the thing is, of so many of the books of the Bible and so many of the stories of the Bible this one, the story of Nehemiah has a lot for us in our own lives about persevering, about enduring, about not losing focus, about how leadership can be done. And we’ll see that the wall does get rebuilt and it’s rebuilt faster than anybody thought. And Nehemiah goes back to Persia to tell the king and to begin serving the King again and then later he gets to go back to Jerusalem and then what he finds is like heartbreaking again. They have a strong wall and the people are so weak. They are so rebellious. They are so walking away from their covenantal relationship with God. And, so Nehemiah is able to step into that and…and restore Israel to the Lord and cause repentance and revival move throughout the land. So, yeah, like I was saying this is one of the books of history but it’s like a living metaphor for how to live into a passion and a calling. And, so, with that we begin. We’re reading from the English Standard Version this week. Nehemiah chapter 1 verse one through 3 verse 14.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we…we’ve already spent some time talking about this new book that we are in and it’s not a long book. We will complete it within a week, the book of Nehemiah. But we were saying this is really…watching Nehemiah navigate is really, really helpful to observe as we navigate, especially…like under the circumstances. This is Nehemiah with a passionate desire, even a calling to do something. And, so, just in today’s reading alone, we saw Nehemiah in Persia. We saw him hearing about what’s going on in Jerusalem. We see this thing get birthed in his horror and how he stays…like he keeps it to himself and he begins interceding before the Lord about this. And we saw him become passionate about this. And we can only deduce that he began to plan, like in hopes of this, knowing that one day he…he’s the cupbearer of the King. He’s gonna have to be go before the king who could be frustrated with a request like this and just be done with him, right? Like his life could be over and yet his got this passion. And, so, he’s methodically praying into it, getting direction from God about it, making plans and holding it in his heart and so that when he does go before the king, he is given favor and he’s got a plan. And, so, he makes a long journey to Jerusalem and he’s got letters, like he’s got authority, he’s got resources, like he’s got the command of the King behind him, but he…like he doesn’t ride into town with a banner, right, and climb down off of his horse and pull up his britches and act all proud and arrogant. He is completely quiet about the plans. Like, he hasn’t shared what he’s going to do with anybody. And he does this for three days. Like, he does these reconnaissance missions on the walls of Jerusalem and nobody knows what he’s doing. Like, he’s getting everything in order before there are a bunch of voices in the mix. And he’s counting the cost to see what this is going to take so that when he presents the vision he is…he’s prepared, like he knows what it’s gonna take and he’s able to spur people into action and so they dive in. And we’ve got a lot more to go, but just that right there is so helpful. There is just so much to learn right there. And we’ll see how this story continues as we continue forward in the coming days.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You. We thank You for Your word. We thank You for this and every book or letter in the Scriptures. We thank You for what You have given us in all the different genres of literature that we get to experience in a year as we go through the Scriptures and we thank You for this book of Nehemiah. And as we watch this story, we invite Your Holy Spirit to help us to overlay our own stories and find guidance and clarity that we’ve been seeking and we invite Your Holy Spirit to speak that clarity into our stories. And we ask expectantly in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it is indeed the website, it is indeed where you find out what’s going around here. So, check it out. There are number of sections there.

The Community section, that’s where the Prayer Wall is, that’s where all the different links to get connected are. The Shop has resources for the journey, fun stuff, but deep stuff, things to be companion…to be a companion on the journey, things to write in, things to write with, all intended to support the journey of a lifetime through the Bible in a year. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well and I can’t thank you enough, especially as we move through the summer. Thank you profoundly for your partnership. So, there’s a link on the homepage. If you’re using the app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if you prefer, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the little red button at the top and share from there or there are a number of numbers you can call. In the Americas 877-942-4253. If you are in the UK or Europe 44-20-3608-8078. And if you are in Australia or that part of the world 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:

Good afternoon DAB family God bless you all I love you all so much. A woman from Tennessee His Life called for her sister Jeannie. I am so sorry that, you know, she is suffering the effects of having multiple car accidents. I am praying in the name of Jesus for her body to heal in the name of Jesus. Pelham, Pelham, Pelham, from Alabama, you know, yes you are addicted to Christ, I am believing that in the name of Jesus. It doesn’t matter that you’re alone and that you’re afraid and that you feel beaten up and lost but I am believing in God’s will for you. I am believing in the name of Jesus that He is going to just help you feel everything you need to feel. Mother, her son 22 years old, left home. I am believing in the name of Jesus that he will be returned and that your relationship with him will be restored in the name of Jesus. Michael from Texas. You know, quad driver, yay! I love it. So, I am believing in the name of Jesus for your mom, you know, and for there to be peace. I’m sorry that she’s in hospice and I’m believing for comfort for your sister and the rest of your family. June from Maryland home due to COVID, sweetheart, sister thank you first of all for being that nurse and being with us in the name of Jesus. I am believing in the name of Jesus for your totally healing. Brent, well… Jesus Freak, I pray to God that were all Jesus freak. You know, you lost your job, 59 years old. I am so sorry that you are going through this. I too am 59 and I am not employed but I am believing in the name of Jesus that the Lord is gonna open doors. God bless you all. Love you. Esther from Orlando Florida.

Hi this is Radiant Rachel let’s pray. Dear Lord, we lift up all those who have loved ones or who themselves are suffering from the COVID-19 virus. I pray that You will surround them with healing and comfort Lord. I pray that their symptoms will be lessened and manageable and that they will come through this, that You will provide full healing complete healing. I pray that You will give them peace and their families peace as well. And I pray for anyone who is struggling with the virus and expecting. I pray for the little children who are, You know, still with their mommies and I just lift them up to You Lord and we know that You will protect them. I also want to pray for the people who come in contact with COVID-19 positive people. Lord I just thank You for keeping them safe and I thank You for minimizing this virus and keeping it from spreading any further. I thank You that there is light at the end Lord and I just pray that You will be with us as we go through this. In Your name I pray. Amen.

Good morning this is Miriam it’s August 8^th and I am calling in response to Megan Kimman. I just heard your message and the strangest thing is I was just sitting here right before I heard your message on Daily Audio Bible I was thinking about the days when I was a young lady and was living in a similar situation to you and feeling the same feelings that you expressed about not wanting to live in sin with my boyfriend and feeling trapped. And sis, I just want to tell you I really feel for you and empathize with you. The timing of this just makes me think that God is telling me to reach out to you and let you know that you’re not alone and that you have a huge family here at Daily Audio Bible. And also, it sounds like your boyfriend might be manipulative…well…you said he manipulates you. It sounds like he’s possibly a narcissist and has possibly cut you off from your friends and family and church otherwise you would have a…a support system to fall back on in this situation. So, I encourage you to reach out to your own family, reach out to old friends, reach out to your church. And if you would like to reach out to me you can reach me at my email. It’s mimiquag@yahoo.com. I encourage you to not give up, not buckle and be strong. Trust in God. He will honor your attempts to follow Him and do what’s right and He will take care of you. God is your safety net. God is your husband.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible family this is Terry from farm country in New York calling for Megan. I heard her on August 8^th she was the first one of the prayer line and she’s asking for prayer for decisions that she needs to make regarding the relationship she’s in. She said she’s living in sin and she’s very worried about, I’m sure the relationship, as well as not having a car, not being able to get to her job and just various other things that would come from separating for a little while and getting counseling. I am praying for you and your, I believe, fiancé or who you are living with, that you make this correction now and it will benefit you later. I know a teacher that I listen to and respect highly spoke of making these course corrections, listening to the Holy Spirit, and equated it to corrections made in an airplane or driving an automobile. You make those little corrections constantly in order to stay on the right path and you’re being prompted by the Holy Spirit and you need to follow through on it. I’m just praying for that because you will benefit later by following God’s leading even if it’s short-term pain. And I’m reminded of Matthew 6 where Jesus is speaking about not worrying for the things of this world and what you wear, and…and what you eat and other things. He says, “seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you” and I truly believe that. I’ve seen it in my own life, I’ve seen it in the lives of friends and others that I know and just praying that you will just have peace in making this decision and God will bless you for it. Love you sister.

Hey Daily Audio Bible family it’s Rebecca Joy from Illinois and what I’m about to say, may God speak through me because I don’t want my own voice to be heard through this, but yeah, I’m just praying that it’ll be purely Him that’s talking through me rather than myself. I’m calling for two people today, Sierra and Pelham over the topic of addiction. I first off wanted to say thank you to Sierra for just being honest. I have also struggled with sexual addiction in my past and present still…it’s still following me. It was here when I was a teen and in my early 20s right now and its still kind of bothering me. And for Pelham, man I feel…I feel for you. I appreciate so much that your nickname is Addicted to Christ because that’s just speaking truth over yourself and I encourage you to keep on doing that. But I wanted to pray for both of you guys because I know…I know what it feels like to be addicted to something and it’s not fun, it’s just…it’s…it’s your addicted to a feeling because it’s some kind of escapism that you’re trying…you’re trying to feel better about something or you’re trying to forget something and you’re trying to find peace and comfort through whatever’s distracting you and whatever your mind is hooked on and I know this is not healthy but I understand and so many other people do. And anyone who is struggling with addiction there is a place where you can be with God where you can escape from those feelings, maybe not feeling them, but you can escape from the tie that they have on you. It’s possible, I know it is because I’ve seen it in my own life. And I hope that everyone knows that and you don’t give up. I don’t have all the answers, but I just wanted to say keep trying. It’s possible. Thanks.

This is Grandpa Bob from Michigan and I’m crying out and reaching out to Sierra from Arizona. Honey I…I heard your cry and I will be praying for you. And know that these kinds of addictions are often rooted into that earlier abuse that you’ve experienced. I am so sorry that you had to experience that but it does lead to addictions like you’re experiencing. And honey, you cannot beat this on your own strength. You have to ask the Lord to help you get through this. I believe in kill and fill. Every day I pray, “Lord kill the sinful desires of my flesh and fill me with your Holy Spirit.” So, kill the flesh and fill with the Spirit. Only the Lord can give you the strength to overcome all these temptations. And I’m also a biblical counselor and believe it or not maybe one step you might consider is to ask the Lord for the strength to forgive your abusers. It doesn’t mean the you have to go to them and seek their…talk with them. I mean, just in your heart forgive them for the abuse and that might be the first step toward your healing. But honey, you cannot do this on your own. But you’re a beautiful child of God. The Lord is obviously knocking on your door and prompting you with the Holy Spirit that you ask for prayer and that took courage. So, proud of you. I will continue to pray. Love you child. You can do this. In God we pray. Amen.

Ezra 10:1-44, 1 Corinthians 6:1-20, Psalms 31:9-18, Proverbs 21:3

Today is the 10th day of August, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian and it’s a joy to be here with you today as we get into this week, continue our journey together, and just…just come around the Global Campfire and let it go and just take a break, take a break from all the chaos that can be all around us and just let God’s word speak into it. And, so let’s dive in. We’re reading this week from the English Standard Version. Ezra chapter 10.

Commentary:

Okay. So in the…in the book, the letter known as first Corinthians, Paul is continuing to speak…speak to the people of the church in Corinth to the issues that they have brought to his attention, the questions, the kinds of things that they’re asking. And he’s being very direct in his responses and it’s really easy to go, “wow man, this guy’s really going for it, heaping the condemnation on in a big way.” But that’s really not what he’s trying to do. What he’s trying to do is say, “lift your eyes, raise the bar, you’re better, you’re bigger, there is a bigger thing going on, you’re a part of something way larger, you need to look way above it all. And, so, he’s like…like taking people to court. In this time in Corinth you had a problem, well, you went before a judge to get the matter sorted out. Sounds pretty much like today. Paul’s trying to say like, “look a little bit higher. Look at who you are and who you are becoming. You are becoming a judge of the world. You will judge angels. Like where this is all going is a lot bigger than a little disagreement that you got to run off to Small Claims Court about in front of unbelievers and you too are brothers or you are brother and sister or you are sisters, like whatever. You can sort this out, can’t you? Isn’t there some way you can sort this out so you can remain being examples of the light instead of children of the light fighting over each other bringing the darkness?” He has a whole bunch of different behaviors that they’re…that they’re apparently asking about. And, so, he’s like condemning certain things and saying, “look higher, bigger, this is a bigger story. Yes, Jesus has made you completely free. You are free. Do you want to use that freedom to engage in bondage? Like do you want to use that freedom to shackle yourself in bondage.” Like one of the questions that we are asking is like, “well…since we’re free, can we…like how do we handle sexual ethics? Can we sleep with anybody that we want to, whoever we want to, however, we want to because were free? We’re free and we’re to be looking higher, we’re to…we’re to be looking at the world from a spiritual perspective. And, so, why…why can’t we just have sex with whoever we want to because what does it matter? Like it’s just our bodies?” And Paul’s basically going like, “yeah, the thing is, sex isn’t like having an ice cream cone together. It’s not just like, your body having some kind of transaction with somebody else’s body. Like there’s a spiritual exchange involved here. Look bigger, look higher.” And you can see some of the exasperation from Paul coming through in the tone of voice that he’s using. And he sums this up really succinctly in a way that we can carry around in our pockets and purses and remember. He says, “all things are lawful for me”, right? So, in other words, “I am totally free, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything.” And then he talks about food, which is another one of things they’re talking about or asking about. Like, he’s saying like, “all the bodily things that you’re trying to get away with, like you’re trying to say we’re spiritual beings who are completely free and so it doesn’t really matter what we do to or with our bodies anymore. That’s not true. Your body is the temple of the Spirit of God with you. It all matters. And the reason it matters is because you died. You are not who you were. You were bought with a price. You were brought back to life. So, glorify God in your body.”

Prayer:

Jesus, we look at this and it’s a constant, it’s been a constant wrestling match about how to live spiritually while engaged in a…a fleshly body in a culture where there’s all kinds of things going on. It’s not always clear. And, so, we wrestle with our freedoms and we wrestle with…we wrestle with the things that would be bondage to us and we are constantly almost on a wheel where it just spins around and around and around but what we’re being told here in the letter to the Corinthians today is that it’s a bigger story than this. We can lose the plot of the story and it gets really confusing very fast because it’s not clear what’s happening anymore. But when we are clear, when our eyes are open, when we can see then we do become aware of Your presence in every decision, but we also become more and more aware that You aren't…You aren’t the magic super sauce for our lives. Like we don’t just apply You to our lives and then things get easier and smoother. What we are actually doing here is surrendering to You leaving behind who we were, which means we’re leaving behind the patterns and the choices that we used to make because we are aware that that persons gone and this person, this new creation doesn’t have to live that way and we don’t need to use our freedom to get ourselves into bondage even though we can, even though You permit it. We were bought with a great price. And, so, may we glorify You may You come and show us what that looks like for each of us today. We ask this in Your precious name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base and that’s the website, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here. So, check it out.

Check out the resources that are in the Shop. As I’ve said many times, they…they are in the Shop, there is a Shop, it exists because these are resources that have been created over the years for this journey and to take this journey deeper and just to stay connected in any way that we can in this virtual world that we live in. And, so, check those out.

Check out the Community section, that’s where the Prayer Wall is. Certainly, be familiar with that. Pray for your brothers and sisters and always know you have a place to reach out. 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. Thank you, humbly, profoundly. Thank you. If you’re using the app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if that’s your preference, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, well, there are a number of numbers that you can dial. If you are in the Americas 877-942-4253. If you are in the UK or Europe 44-20-3608-8078. If you are in Australia 61-3-8820-5459 or no the matter where you are you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the little red button at the top and begin to share from there.

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

Ezra 8:21-9:15, 1 Corinthians 5:1-13, Psalms 31:1-8, Proverbs 21:1-2

Today is the 9^th day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you as we collectively reach out and twist the knob and throw open the door and step into this new week together, shiny and sparkly, all new out in front of us just waiting for us to write the story of our lives upon as we go through this week. And, so, it’s great to be here with you at this threshold as we step into the new week and as we invite God’s word to speak into this week and tell us what we need to know as we continue to navigate forward. So, brand-new week, which means we’ll read from a different translation. This week we’ll read from the English Standard Version and we will pick up where we left off yesterday. Ezra chapter 8 verse 21 through 9 verse 15.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for bringing us across this threshold into a brand-new, shiny, sparkly week and we refer to it that way because it’s a new beginning, and we just…we have these markers along the way that make up the story of a year and the beginning of each week is one of those markers and we have 52 of those markers and we know this, we gauge our lives kind of around the rhythm of the year and we thank You that we have that and we thank You that we have Your word involved every single day. And, so, as we cross…cross every threshold we are reminded all things have been made new. Every threshold is a new start and here we are at one of them. And, so, we become aware of Your presence, we become aware of Your Holy Spirit’s guidance in our lives and we seek to follow Your direction and Your counsel every moment of this brand-new shiny sparkly new week. We need You. We’re not going to navigate this successfully without You. We can’t navigate the next five minutes successfully without You. And, so, come Holy Spirit, we become aware of You and we invite You to lead us in every way possible as we move into this new week. Come Jesus we pray. In Your precious name, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base and it’s the website – say that every day - and that might get like old…it might get old, but there are new…there are new friends, there are new brothers and sisters every day. And, so, if this is your first day, welcome! Welcome to the adventure of a lifetime. And one of the places to find out what’s going on around here and what this all is is dailyaudiobible.com. So, check that out.

Check out the Community section, that’s where to get plugged in. Check out he resources that are available in the Shop. They are there for this journey.

And, if you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, thank you. Our mission collectively, the thing that we call the Global Campfire is to bring God’s spoken word to anybody who will listen to it any time of day or night anywhere on this planet and to make a rhythm, a rhythm of our lives, something that speaks into our lives every day and to build community around that so that it’s not like some kind of solitary adventure that we can barely call an adventure because we don’t really know what’s going on. We know we’re not in this alone. We are in this together. And if that is a life-giving thing than thank you for your partnership. So, there’s a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com or you can press the Give button in the app, which is 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 when you 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:

DAB family this is Jordan in Texas just wanted to say to Standing Firm in South Carolina your…your kind of confession that when you make calls you in one way or another kind of make it about yourself, you know, recognition or wanting to look important. And I just want to thank you for saying that. It took courage and boldness and you saying that to all those others who may feel that way you’re not alone. And, so, that’s me because I was actually thinking about doing the same thing, saying something. And, so, I do say that now, just confessing that…that like the three or four times I’ve called in to pray for others kind of having that feeling of, “I hope I hear” you know “I hope I hear a little bit of accolades about how cool my prayer was.” And it’s ridiculous and embarrassing and I just want to bring that before you guys and the Lord. And anyways, I…I also want to just by way of you guys getting to know me because I love getting to know you, ask for prayer for my marriage. My wife just had our second son, he’s 16 days old and, you know, just the emotions and hormones kind of can swing one way or another and I lose patience with her and get short with her and even knowing that…that her hormones are kind of up and down and whatever it just…there’s…it’s hard for me to give her grace. And I know that comes from wounding in my life. And anyways if you’d pray for that. And also please my older son he’s 2 ½ and he’s so sweet and so gentle with baby brother Benjamin and…but Caleb is just having a hard time adjusting…

Hello this is All the Treasures from Wyoming and I have an urgent prayer request please for anybody who hears this message. There’s a young lady here who is in our ICU hospital her name is Emily and she developed blood clots and those blood clots broke loose and went into her heart and she almost died. They had to do emergency surgery and she almost bled out and she’s in really bad shape. And anybody who hears this message, if you could please pray for her. I don’t know if she knows the Lord, but I’ve been praying that He would meet her right where she’s at and that she would live to tell about it and have a wonderful testimony of His goodness. Please join me in praying for her. Again, her name is Emily…

Hello everybody this is Tony the Narrator. Michael and Elijah, please let us know how you guys are getting on now. You know, this…we…we your’re…you’re still in many of our prayers, probably the majority of us pray for you. We love you we miss you. Please let us know what’s going on. And a big shout out to everybody else, you all know who you are. Thank you so much for the prayers for my brole life and I promised you my testimony. So, with a minute and 23 seconds here we go. So, on November the 24^th, 2009 I was doing 65 miles an hour in a 70 mile or road on my motorbike going for a job interview with an electricity company where I was going to be going door to door going, “do you want to change your electric company?” All right by then…which I was actually really looking forward to. But anyway, so this guy in a van pulled out in front of me and my groin hit the fuel tank at 65 miles an hour, I broke my pelvis in four places, my spine, I broke my wrist in four places, my thumb was hanging backwards, I broke both my hands - various different breaks. I did…I bruised my lungs, I bruise my ribs, I did soft tissue damage in various different places and also brain damage. I should be dead. I was bleeding out and laying there, I ended up having to have four pints of blood that day. I shouldn’t be here and my dad got on the phone and he said, “son, if you don’t become a Christian you’re gonna die!” Just like God’s Smile he’s from Lancaster too. And, so, I became a Christian that day. Praise the Lord. I love you guys, God bless…

Heavenly Father I pray that You would set all those free who are struggling with anxiety, depression, and mental illness. You have the power to set us free, so I ask that of You right now. I also pray You would give direction to those who don’t yet know You and what their calling is in life. I also pray for all those who don’t know You yet and have hardened hearts toward You. I pray that You would soften their hearts and bring people into their lives to speak truth. Allow them to be open to the gospel to hear Your good news and Your powerful news. In Your powerful name.

Hi, so I’ve never done this before, but I thought it was a good opportunity to try it out. So, my parents moved recently and because of that they both had to quit their jobs. And luckily my mom was able to find something again, but my dad has really been struggling. It’s really taken a toll on him. He is a man who needs to feel like he’s doing something, like he’s contributing, like…like he has a purpose. And, so, it’s been really hard for him and for us seeing him like this. And I would just ask that whoever hears this will stand in agreement with me, will pray with me, not just that my dad would get work but that he would get something that he is passionate about, something that is worthwhile and that he would just keep good spirits and keep on praying and keep talking to the Lord about it and that he won’t just isolate himself and, you know, give into that feeling of uselessness. Thank you very much.

Hi this is Teresa from Indiana God bless you all. I just want to mention a couple people. I feel like I’m just growing so close to everybody. I’ve never met one of you but we’re all so connected. Mike…Mike I’m just proclaiming every day. I’m praying for you and am proclaiming that Annie is delivered from drugs. She is whole and that baby is healthy. In the name of Jesus, I’m…I’m…I’m proclaiming it every day. The Bible says to call those things that aren’t as though they were. So, I am doing that, and she is delivered from drugs in the name of Jesus. She’s whole, she’s healthy, she saved, she’s delivered, and you have peace in the name of Jesus. Daniel from Singapore, O, God bless you sweetheart. That’s so precious, so precious. I’ve just listened to that song and your prayer every single day. This is August the 6^th. So, it’s been like four days later and I’m still listening to it. I’m going back to it. It’s…it’s so precious. Remember all the things that David the great man of the Bible went through, David and Paul. The Psalms, how many times there was an attempt on David’s life. My husband preached last night so many times someone was trying to kill him he was crying out to God. So many things that Paul went through, you know, being stoned and shipwrecked and all the things that he went through being in prison for so long for nothing just for loving Jesus and proclaiming his good news. And, you know, we have to go through these things I guess because we wouldn’t be who we are without…without the fires and the trials in our life. It makes us closer to God. It brings…we pray more it…it just…it just…it just molds us into who we are. We need that. I love you guys. God bless you.

Ezra 7:1-8:20, 1 Corinthians 4:1-21, Psalms 30:1-12, Proverbs 20:28-30

Today is the 8^th day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you and welcome to the end of the week. Another one of our weeks is quickly becoming a part of our history as…as is prone to happen when you’re day by day, step-by-step moving forward on the journey that we’re on. So, today’s the last day of the week. We’ve been reading from the Christian Standard Bible all this week, which is what we’ll do today. And we’ll continue our journey in these new books that…a book and letter that we’ve gotten ourselves involved in with this week, the book of Ezra and the letter to the Corinthians, known as first Corinthians. So, Ezra chapter 7 verse 1 through 8:20

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word, we thank You for another week together in Your word. And often we reach this point where we’ve concluded another week and we just release it week, we release the week to You. It’s a part of our past. It’s a part of our history. And yet what we carry forward is Your guidance and leadership and direction that comes from Your word. We carry those things forward cumulatively, week after week after week after week. We carry these things forward and they go deep inside of us and they…they plant a crop. And we ask Holy Spirit that You come and yield the fruit of the spirit in our lives because of this. And every week we recognize that an ending is a new beginning and that You are there present with us in it all. And, so, we release this week to You and we invite Your Holy Spirit to lead us forward in the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

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

Check out the Prayer Wall. This is in the community section of the website. You can get to all of this in the Daily Audio Bible app as well, but the Prayer Wall is a place to go. I mean, if you’re just worn out and full of anxiety and anxious and…and you need to turn your focus outward, but you don’t know exactly how to do that, the Prayer Wall, go there and pray for people. Let them know you’re praying for them. It’s a game changer. It’s a game changer in our own hearts and it’s a game changer in people’s lives to let them know that they are being prayed for or maybe you’re just carrying a burden that you just need to reach out. And you can always reach out at the Prayer Wall. And, so, that’s in the Community section. Check it out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, obviously, thank you. We wouldn’t be here at all if we weren’t doing this together, if we hadn’t been doing this together. And, so, this is definitely a community effort. There’s like no big anything behind all this, there’s just us…us around the Global Campfire. And, so, thank you, thank you for your partnership as we continue to move through these…these warmer summer months. Thank you very much. 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, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the red Hotline button at the top in the app screen, can’t miss it, 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:

Hey Daily Audio Bible community this is Meagan ___. Currently I am engaged to a man that I love with all my heart but I know that I am in sin and I know that living with him outside of marriage is sin and I don’t want to do that anymore and I want to have the courage and the strength that it takes to tell him that I need space and we need to get counseling first before we get married. And the quarantine is a perfect time for us to postpone because everybody else is expecting it. But I don’t have the guts on my own or the strength of my own ability to just be honest with him and not crumble when he manipulates my words and says, “why do we need counseling, what’s it gonna do?” I need help and I can’t do it alone and no matter how hard I try I constantly feel like I am swimming in the deepest waters by myself. And I don’t know what to do because if I do this then I have no home, no car, and a job that’s miles away from my original home and I don’t want to be stranded just because I want to follow God. So, please Daily Audio Bible can you pray for me? Thanks. I hope you all are blessed by God. Love you. Bye.

Good morning family it is 3 o’clock in the morning on August 5^th this is Brave from New Jersey I’m calling you because I’m…I’m tried and been calling on the Lord from Psalm 35 all night long asking Him to show up and to defend me against numerous attacks from the enemy. My children cannot be grateful for anything that I’ve done for them. They have no respect for me, and they are following the wrong leadership from their father, persecuting me for no reason. And I pray that the Lord will come through for me according to Psalm 35 and defend me as He as promised. I am only looking up to Him because I don’t know what peace will look like. I don’t know what respect. But only the deliverance of the Lord. So please family pray for me. In Jesus…

Hi DAB family this is Gigi from Gainesville I called in yesterday asking for prayer regarding my health seizures and having to sleep all day because of them…headaches. Praise God! I woke up at 5 AM this morning and I just felt led to worship Him and one hour later I’m outside running 2 miles. All pain is gone, all headache, fatigue. In the name of Jesus, I’ve been set free. By his blood by his power I’ve overcome. Thank you for your prayers. I am rejoicing. God’s promises are true and faithful, and we can trust in Him. I have a prayer request for my sister. She’s dealing with acute loneliness because our father was her biggest friend and he died just a month ago and she wasn’t repaired at all for his death. She’s been very much in denial and she doesn’t make friends easily. Also, her job is incredibly intense right now. They have her floating to different floors. And, so, she…she’s dealing with a lot of overwhelming sadness and great pain. So, if you guys could be praying for her and my other sister who’s turning to her first job as a teacher. She’s got her bachelor’s in early childhood education and I’m so proud of her, but she really needs to get a job. It’s getting close, so. Thank you, guys so much. Power and prayer is amazing God hears us.

Hi everyone, I’ve had these thoughts for a while, and I’ve been thinking about this time that we’ve been in and I feel like it’s the wilderness. A lot of us have been launched into wilderness in this strange limbo time applying to jobs or losing jobs or not knowing what’s gonna happen. And I think this is a great opportunity to see, “what are we doing right now?” Are we praising God or are we grumbling and complaining and crying where our food is gonna come from? And if we are getting food, are we crying about what kind of food we are getting? Now is a really good opportunity if you are in the wilderness to see if I am doing what the Israelites did or, am I just trusting in the Lord? And I know it’s hard. I mean, I kinda was in the situation where my master’s was ending, and I was looking for a job and searching for a job during a pandemic is definitely a scary thing. But you know what? I had faith in God and that if He could split oceans, He could send me multiple job options during a pandemic and that’s what He did. He did that for me, and it took…was months of insecurity before that happened. But I just want you to think about what you are doing now and remember to stay in faith and your promised land is not that far away. That’s all. Bye.

Hi DAB family this is Sierra from Arizona. I’m calling for couple different reasons. I wanted to pray for the woman who called in, she said that her daughter was molested by a couple family members. I want to pray for her. I know what that’s like because I’ve been there, and I just want to say that she probably needs you and she’ll be needing you for a long time. So, I wanted to pray for you and just…I hope that everything works out. The other reason I’m calling is because I need prayer. I am in a fight against addiction. I’m still a teenager and I know this is sort of normal because a teenage girl but I’m in addiction to all sexual things. So, I in the past have had problems, major problems, with that and I’ve done things and have had things done to me that have helped in my addiction and I’ve been in this fight for a very, very long time. I’ve never entirely been away from it and I’m doing my best not to give in but it’s really, really hard. I’ve failed in the past and I’m really afraid that I’ll fail again and I hate it and I hate that I love it and I need your prayers because I don’t ever want to travel that road again because that road hurt and it’s not bad…it’s not good. And anyway, I just need your prayer …

This is Angie from Virginia this…I just wanted to say to Addicted to Christ, you have been on my heart and my prayers. I heard your message and it just broke my heart. Just know that God’s got this, and He is gonna hold you through this and just cradle you and protect you. So, just hang in there. He created you with purpose and He will reveal that to you. Just stay strong in His word and He will take over and just work miracles in your life. And also, I am asking for prayer from my Daily Audio Bible family. I am a registered nurse and I’ve been on the front lines fighting COVID and let me tell you this has been such a terrifying journey and I could have never have made it without God helping me through this. But I’m just asking guys to pray for me that God will put His protection on me and just cover me and keep me safe during this pandemic and also that He would keep my family safe. Thank you so much and you guys have a blessed day.

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

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

Commentary:

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

Prayer:

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

Announcements:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Commentary:

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

Prayer:

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

Announcements:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Introduction to the book of Ezra:

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

Commentary:

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

Prayer:

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

Announcements:

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

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

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

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

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