Category: DAB Transcripts

1 Kings 18:1-46, Acts 11:1-30, Psalms 135:1-21, Proverbs 17:12-13

Today is the 17^th day of June welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you, hump day, as we move through the center of the week, a week that’s also at the center of the month. It is a joy to take the next step forward together with you as we continue our journey. So, we’ve been working through the book of first Kings and what we’ve been working through are the difference reigns of two different kingdoms that used to be one kingdom, right? So, we know that the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah are how things are organized now. And they have two different kings and those kings live a…well…they overlap each other in their reigns. And yesterday we saw the northern kingdom relocate their capital city building a city that would be their capital city known as Samaria. And Samaria is basically the equivalent of Jerusalem in the south in the kingdom of Judah, they’re capital cities. Right now that's…that’s all that’s happened. This capital city is being built or has been built. It’s known as Samaria. But later on, that…that will actually matter. Later on by the time we get to the time of Jesus life and ministry these people, while they’re not the people that they are now, they will be in this area, this region, and they’ll be known as Samaritan’s because of their capital city Samaria. And we’ll talk about that later as we get deeper into the story but there’s a king now in Samaria named Ahab. And there is a prophet in the region named Elijah. And Elijah has prophesied that the rains are gonna stop and they have, which obviously creates a problem for the people. So, we pick up our story today while in the drought. First Kings chapter 18.

Commentary:

Alright. So, in the book of first Kings we spent our time today in the northern kingdom of Israel. The 10 tribes that had defected and rebelled against Rehoboam, the son of Solomon of the house of David, right? They’ve rejected the house of David and they’ve gone through a series of Kings and there isn’t like one the house because people keep assassinating and wiping the houses out. So, it’s a pretty tribal time, pretty dangerous to be the king I suppose. But Ahab is the king and his wife’s name is Jezebel and she is obviously famous. Although just famous because she was a devout worshiper of Baal and sought to wipe out the prophets of the Lord, wipe out name of the Lord’s. So, certainly evil, but she’s a sero-Phoenician princess who was raised this way. And, so, she is not gonna be happy when she finds out what happened on Mount caramel. The showdown that we read today brought the end of the…the prophets of Baal, the priests of Baal in the land. Of course, what this ends up doing is showing the power of the Lord and the Lord shows His power with fire from heaven and the people see it and their hearts return to the Lord and the Lord is going to lose the skies so that rain can happen on land. But Jezebel is not going to be happy about all this and we’ll continue that story tomorrow.

In the book of Acts, we continue this story that we began with Peter having this vision of essentially unclean meat. And he’s told that what God has made clean is clean and that he should and can in must eat this meat in this vision. Meanwhile Cornelius the centurion has sent for Peter and Peter goes and ministers to the Gentile household who receive the Holy Spirit. And then we saw Peter go back to Jerusalem to report this and there were people that were standing against this, right? They were ridiculing. They were standing against this because Hebrews and Gentiles are not supposed to intermingle, you’re not supposed to go into each other’s houses, your separate, you’re a separate people. But the Holy Spirit comes upon these Gentiles and that’s pretty tough to argue with. Like, they could’ve continued to argue against Peter’s vision, they could’ve continued to argue against intermingling with Gentiles but pretty hard to argue with the fact that the Holy Spirit has made the decision, right? You just showed up in obedience and the Holy Spirit’s made the decision to come upon the Gentiles. They couldn’t argue with that. And the book of Acts tells us that even as persecution, especially instigated by Saul who has come to know Jesus now but even as persecution swirls around Jerusalem and people flee the persecution they are going into other territories where they are interacting with Gentile people who are hearing the message of Jesus and the Holy Spirit is coming upon them too. This is really creating a set up because religious Jewish people who had been adhering…like, not the nominal Hebrew people who were just living culturally, but devout people who’ve been living the Hebrew lifestyle according to the Mosaic law, but who have also come to believe that Jesus was a prophet, was the Messiah, was everything He claimed to be and had put their faith in Him. It was never conceived that their religion, Judaism, was to be dismantled. Like, they never ever thought they were converting to anything else by following Jesus. Jesus was a Jew. He was a Jewish rabbi. He ministered in a Hebrew context. They didn’t conceive that they were leaving anything in favor of something else. And if a person who wasn’t Jewish wanted to convert, then there’s a process. And, so, it was thought then among the Hebrew believers that if the Holy Spirit is gonna let Jewish…or Hebrew…Gentile people be in…be allowed in then they would need to become Jewish, they would need to convert to Judaism not to something called Christianity, which hadn’t even been coined yet. We saw today in our reading the it was the people who had believed in Jesus in Antioch, Gentile people, where this first phrase, this first word Christian was not…so this is a Gentile word, a Gentile description of a follower of Christ. I point this out just so that as we move through the letters and everything, as we move through the…the time period of the early church that we…we understand what’s going on, we understand that they had some things to figure out, big…really, really big things to figure out, some of which we seem to still be struggling with, some that we still seem to be trying to figure out. What we see in the book of Acts is the people are deferring to the Holy Spirit, right? So, they have a way of thinking about things. They have a worldview and they have a culture and customs that they have been raised up in. So, they see things a certain way and the way that they see things is going to be similar to those that are around them. They’re…they’re in the same culture and that is an exclusive culture and there’s not intermingling with Gentiles. So, when the Holy Spirit comes upon Gentiles, they don’t have to work out the dissidence because all of the sudden their understanding of God has expanded. They didn’t make the decision. The Holy Spirit came upon these people. God made the decision. So, in the face of that they have to expand their view of God as opposed to cementing further their sense of tradition. That is very, very much a part of the story of the early church. It has always been very, very much a part of the story of the gospel of Jesus Christ and yet so often we find ourselves fighting the same battles, trying to be the one to decide who gets to be in and who has to be out. And, so, that’s where we are. That’s where we are on a journey through the Scriptures and these stories, both of them, old and new Testament will continue to expand and bloom before us giving us incredible lessons but also an incredible mirror into our own souls.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for that. We thank You for bringing us here. We are grateful. We are humbled that You would even care for us, that You would lead us into all truth, that You would have concern for us that we would know and that we would thrive and that Your Holy Spirit would lead us in the same way that You led in the days of old. We are grateful and we ask that You do exactly that, lead us deeper into Jesus today, deeper into our relationship and our intimacy, deeper into the truth, further on the narrow path that leads to life. Come Holy Spirit into all of this we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home, home base for…for a virtual community like ours where we are geographically, literally all over the map, but we do have a place and the Global Campfire lives there and that’s at dailyaudiobible.com.

So, connect in the Community section, pray for each other at the Prayer Wall.

Check out the resources in the Shop like…like our coffee, like our tea, like our journals, like everything that’s been created over the years, specifically for the journey that we’re on. So, check that out in the Shop.

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

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

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

1 Kings 15:25-17:24, Acts 10:24-48, Psalms 134:1-3, Proverbs 17:9-11

Today is the 16^th day of June welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today and every day. It is always a joy to stand here and turn the mic on and…yeah…just visualize all of us around the Global Campfire and know that we are continuing our journey forward for another day. So, we’re reading from the New Living Translation this week and we’re working our way through the book of First Kings. So, the kings of Israel and Judah are what we’re reading about and we kind of…we talked about that yesterday just to keep ourselves oriented because we’re learning of two different nations now. These people had been one people, the Hebrew people but they’ve decided to split into two nations - the nation of Israel in the North and the kingdom of Judah in the South. So, two different rulers, two different kings and they overlap in time and we’re just reading about their stories. And, so, we continue that journey. First Kings chapter 15 verse 25 through 17 verse 24 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, the things that happen in the book of Acts today are profoundly monumental even to this very day. What we read over the last couple of days is a shift in awareness, a complete rethinking, a reframe of what they understood. And when I say they, I’m talking about Peter in particular. But what Peter is learning…well he is going to take it back and share it with the others and their going to have to wrestle pretty hard and that wrestling will last a very long time. The fundamental issue here is who gets to be in. Who gets to be a disciple of Jesus? Who is welcomed into the community of faith of those who are disciples of Jesus Christ? Up into this point it was just assumed this was Hebrew, exclusive. Jesus was a Hebrew. His context was completely Hebrew. His message was in that Hebrew context, even though it expanded, even though it was well beyond that, this was the context from which He was operating. The things that got Jesus in trouble weren’t ultimately His actions against the Roman empire. Rather, He was judged according to the interpretation that the high Council had about the Mosaic law, essentially labeling Jesus a blasphemer. Of course, they went to the Romans and said He’s claiming to be the king of the Jews. And, so, you know, this is how they kind of loosely pulled things together, that Jesus is setting Himself up as a king within the Roman Empire, like a crime against the Empire. But ultimately, all of the things that came against Jesus that would lead Him to His death were hatched in a Hebrew context for Hebrew reasons. So, it would stand to reason then that those who were following Jesus were Hebrew people, and that Jesus was the Hebrew Messiah, and that the Hebrewness of the whole thing was going to remain intact because these are the chosen people until we got to this portion of the book of Acts and met this person named Cornelius who is a Gentile, who is a Roman, and who was a member of the Roman military who is living in Caesarea, which is about the most Roman city in the land. He’s obviously not raging against the Jewish people. He is integrating and being around and fearing God and is a good person, but he’s a Gentile. And he has this visitation and is told to send for Peter, who is a Hebrew and Peter’s having this vision, where he…where he has to rethink what is unclean and he has to understand that he’s been being given a new…given a new revelation, that what was unclean isn’t unclean anymore, that things have shifted. And this is huge. And, so, Peter goes, and he ministers to the house of Cornelius and the Holy Spirit comes upon them. So, now, you know, Peter…Peter could have been going through these motions, as it were, he could be doing these actions, sharing the gospel, seeing the visions. He could be doing this all and obedience not knowing what’s up, but when he witnesses the fact that the Holy Spirit has come upon Gentiles it’s hard then to rationalize, it’s hard then to figure out what’s going on, other than to say, “God did this. God sent his Holy Spirit upon these people. Who are we to comment on what God is doing even though it breaks long-running tradition, even though it seems to be a contradiction.” I don’t think we’re adequately able to understand how big of a deal this is. We will watch that it causes all kinds of problems. It would still cause these kinds of problems. I mean, you’ve gotta think about it. You have believed in a certain direction for a while, right, maybe all your life, maybe for last few years, maybe the last few months, whatever. You have been persuaded spiritually as we move through the Scriptures to believe in a certain direction about certain things. It’s your worldview, it’s your understanding of the nature of how things are. If all of the sudden you have an understanding somehow that things are shifting and that some of the things that you’re holding onto really, really tightly have…that they’ve been fulfilled, that they’re no longer necessary and you’re to move and shift in a different…different direction. Like, changing the way we believe is really difficult because it brings up all kinds of fear of what might happen if we get deceived and end up somewhere…who knows…somewhere way off in Lala land. And yet this is precisely what’s happening to Peter, the apostle Peter, the disciple of Jesus, the one who denied Him, right, the one who walked with Him. This is what’s happening to him. He’s seeing that God is doing a new thing in the world although he does not fully understand the magnitude of it. He sees that God is on the move at least with this Gentile, which opens up a whole new can of worms. We can read through this and just go, “yeah. This is the story. This is how it happened. This is how we got here.” But we don’t always kind of go into the story and kinda realize, “man, this is upending life as you know it.” Like this is tipping things upside down in their faith journey. And if we were faced with the same things, we would find ourselves tipped upside down as well. And, so, this always brings us to this question. “Like, who does get to be in? And does God get to do a new thing if God wants to do anything in this world, even if even if it’s confusing to us, even if it messes with our theological understandings, even if it robs our well seeded doctrines? And as we watch this story continue to unfold…well…hopefully it will challenge us. But hopefully we can enter the story instead of reading this…reading it as this very smooth, very beautiful onslaught of the goodness of God that established His church in the world. May we understand it happened a little different than that. And if we can enter into that story we can enter into our own story and see what God brings up in us.

Prayer:

Father, we invite You into just that, that we would open ourselves to You, trusting You completely and that You would send Your Holy Spirit upon us to lead us into all truth. This is our desire. It has been our desire and we can see that there are times that we fight, even against that. And, so, as we continue to watch the formation, these…these early weeks and months and years after Your ascension, may we understand what our brothers and sisters were wrestling with then, that we might better interpret and understand what we wrestle with now. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

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

The Initiatives section shows some of the things that are going on around here.

The Community section will get you connected. And the Prayer Wall, of course, is in the Community section.

And check out the Daily Audio Bible Shop. There are resources there for the journey that we’re on. So, check that out. And thank you.

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…yeah…humble gratitude for…for your partnership. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

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

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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello this is Jane from Australia I just love the way that Stanley from Maryland played piano behind the lady who prayed for Terry in Australia. Wow, that was an incredible gift Stanley. That was just beautiful. What a…what a family…what a family of love. What a circle of love. Thank you, Daily Audio Bible.

This is Alta Lee Maxwell calling from Colorado Springs. It is the 9^th day of June. This is prayers from the power the praying nation. Lord as the body of Christ we are weary of watching the enemy whom You defeated on the cross run roughshod over people and destroy their lives. We are disgusted by our own compromised prayers. We confess that we have been willing to lay down enough of our lives to see them break through the darkness with power. Renew us and revive us Lord. Fill us afresh with Your Holy Spirit. Break down the strongholds in our lives that stand in opposition to You and Your ways. Help us to be doers of the word and not just hearers only. Work a profound spiritual awakening in Your people all over this land. Lord You have said that You are able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that is in us. We know that means You can do more than we ever dreamed. We invite You to do that in us in Your people and in our country. Ignite a fire in our hearts that illuminates to us the possibilities of what can happen when we pray. Move the hearts in this nation into alignment with Your will. We ask for Your grace be poured out upon our nation. Only You can bring good out of the evil and destruction that has been manifested here. Show us how we can be of service to You in that regard. Help us not to shrink back when You call us into the storm. Shine Your light into our darkness and evaporate it. Help those of us who believe to extend Your life to others. Thank You that You have put gladness in our hearts once again and are even now making all things work together for good in our nation. In Jesus’ name.

Hey, DABbers this is Katie in Kentucky and once again I’m out running and something just made me like almost trip and stumble because we know that God knows our needs before we even say them. But sometimes God like, bam, I know your needs. His little Cherry, it is June 9^th and you just called to pray for those who have trouble sleeping. In about two hours I’m taking my four-year-old for a sleep study. He has had major issues. He just like…he won’t fall asleep he won’t stay asleep. I am exhausted. It’s put a strain on all the relationships in my household. My most common prayer is just laying next to him saying go to sleep, got to sleep, go to sleep. So…wow! You just really…you are speaking God to me right now as I know that God is taking care of us and that he is with this whole sleep situation. So, thank you for your prayers. If you could pray for Caius Daniel. He is my little four-year-old who needs to get some good rest. Thank you, guys. I love you all and I love hearing from you.

Hi this is Victoria Soldier just calling to pray for some of the DABbers. I’m just listening __ Trusting in Him and the challenges he is going through with his marriage. And I just want to encourage you Trusting in Him __ seconds or not, God is in it and God is going to keep this marriage together __ continue to pray and seek Him because it’s seems that God is tugging at your wife’s heart and showing her what she has in you and what you have in her. Continue to be encouraged my brother and I know…and know that I’m praying with you and your wife and your family. I also want to pray for Veronica and her husband and her children. And I also want pray for…for Jesse in the…in the challenges that he’s going through and just encourage him and know that God is…God says…God says I’m a God that can do anything more that He’s says that’s why I’m God. And I just want to encourage you in that. Also, continue to pray for our black community and our…our human community with…with the wicked things that happened to that poor 80…to our senior citizen…that they’re beating up senior citizen. It’s nothing but the enemy that is trying to keep us separated as a nation, but we have to remember that righteousness exalts a nation. No matter whatever else they tell us, righteousness exalts a nation no matter what happens. And pray for the peace of God which passes all understanding. Gracious Father I just ask You to touch those marriages of these beautiful people, to touch the Young woman that also God seeing her husband is trying to have a baby. Lord I pray that You bless them to have a beautiful baby…

Hi, my name is Rebecca from Pal alto California and I’m calling in for prayer right now. I don’t know who to really reach out to besides the Lord. I’m not super connected with my Christian family as I’d like to be. And I love them dearly and I’m grateful. I’m calling because I may have crossed boundary lines and done something that was not of God’s will and not of His way in trying to force my will on others. And I feel that I’m in trial and my intention is always to do God’s will and I love God and…and I’m just praying for help for His mercy and compassion and…and for Him to have mercy and know that I love Him more than anything and to show me what I did wrong so I can fix it and change forever. Please help me family. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hello Daily Audio Bible audience, Brian. My name is Ron I’m calling from New Caney Texas just outside of Houston. My wife Terri is in her last stages of brain cancer glioblastoma, horrible disease that leaves most dead within 12 months. And she’s lived 32 months. So, we thank God for time that she’s had to enjoy holidays, enjoy us, and to see a third grandchild born during that time. And, so, we’re very thankful for that. Also, thankful that Terry had lived a fantastic life, a fantastic life of blessings. She’s been a blessing to so many people. She’s…she’s the poster child for faithfulness not only to me her husband of 44 years, but to her grandkids and her children. So, just pray for the family to…to be able to enjoy if that…if that’s possible. And so far, it has been the last few days that we have with her and we are just looking forward to seeing a saint of God ushered into His presence. Anyway, we appreciate the prayers, appreciate the work that you do Brian and we listen every day. And we just…we just want to say thank you. Bye-bye.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family this is Patricia from New Orleans Louisiana. I’m calling to thank you all for praying for me for remembering me and praying for me. I pray for each and every one your prayer requests being made. I listen every day daily. I’ve not been calling in, but I am praying with you all listening every day. Family, please continue to pray for me. Please, my pains are increasing __. They are getting worse. So, I’m calling in remembering to thank God and to ask for a prayer request for your prayers, please for my pain. I’m trusting God, that God will eventually take my pain away. My pain is crippling. It’s to the point where I can barely __ something to eat. So, please pray with me, pray for me that God takes the pain away. Thank you, family and God bless us all. I love you all. Thank you, Jill. Thank you, Brian…the whole Brian family. Thank you.

1 Kings 15:25-17:24, Acts 10:24-48, Psalms 134:1-3, Proverbs 17:9-11

Today is the 16^th day of June welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today and every day. It is always a joy to stand here and turn the mic on and…yeah…just visualize all of us around the Global Campfire and know that we are continuing our journey forward for another day. So, we’re reading from the New Living Translation this week and we’re working our way through the book of First Kings. So, the kings of Israel and Judah are what we’re reading about and we kind of…we talked about that yesterday just to keep ourselves oriented because we’re learning of two different nations now. These people had been one people, the Hebrew people but they’ve decided to split into two nations - the nation of Israel in the North and the kingdom of Judah in the South. So, two different rulers, two different kings and they overlap in time and we’re just reading about their stories. And, so, we continue that journey. First Kings chapter 15 verse 25 through 17 verse 24 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, the things that happen in the book of Acts today are profoundly monumental even to this very day. What we read over the last couple of days is a shift in awareness, a complete rethinking, a reframe of what they understood. And when I say they, I’m talking about Peter in particular. But what Peter is learning…well he is going to take it back and share it with the others and their going to have to wrestle pretty hard and that wrestling will last a very long time. The fundamental issue here is who gets to be in. Who gets to be a disciple of Jesus? Who is welcomed into the community of faith of those who are disciples of Jesus Christ? Up into this point it was just assumed this was Hebrew, exclusive. Jesus was a Hebrew. His context was completely Hebrew. His message was in that Hebrew context, even though it expanded, even though it was well beyond that, this was the context from which He was operating. The things that got Jesus in trouble weren’t ultimately His actions against the Roman empire. Rather, He was judged according to the interpretation that the high Council had about the Mosaic law, essentially labeling Jesus a blasphemer. Of course, they went to the Romans and said He’s claiming to be the king of the Jews. And, so, you know, this is how they kind of loosely pulled things together, that Jesus is setting Himself up as a king within the Roman Empire, like a crime against the Empire. But ultimately, all of the things that came against Jesus that would lead Him to His death were hatched in a Hebrew context for Hebrew reasons. So, it would stand to reason then that those who were following Jesus were Hebrew people, and that Jesus was the Hebrew Messiah, and that the Hebrewness of the whole thing was going to remain intact because these are the chosen people until we got to this portion of the book of Acts and met this person named Cornelius who is a Gentile, who is a Roman, and who was a member of the Roman military who is living in Caesarea, which is about the most Roman city in the land. He’s obviously not raging against the Jewish people. He is integrating and being around and fearing God and is a good person, but he’s a Gentile. And he has this visitation and is told to send for Peter, who is a Hebrew and Peter’s having this vision, where he…where he has to rethink what is unclean and he has to understand that he’s been being given a new…given a new revelation, that what was unclean isn’t unclean anymore, that things have shifted. And this is huge. And, so, Peter goes, and he ministers to the house of Cornelius and the Holy Spirit comes upon them. So, now, you know, Peter…Peter could have been going through these motions, as it were, he could be doing these actions, sharing the gospel, seeing the visions. He could be doing this all and obedience not knowing what’s up, but when he witnesses the fact that the Holy Spirit has come upon Gentiles it’s hard then to rationalize, it’s hard then to figure out what’s going on, other than to say, “God did this. God sent his Holy Spirit upon these people. Who are we to comment on what God is doing even though it breaks long-running tradition, even though it seems to be a contradiction.” I don’t think we’re adequately able to understand how big of a deal this is. We will watch that it causes all kinds of problems. It would still cause these kinds of problems. I mean, you’ve gotta think about it. You have believed in a certain direction for a while, right, maybe all your life, maybe for last few years, maybe the last few months, whatever. You have been persuaded spiritually as we move through the Scriptures to believe in a certain direction about certain things. It’s your worldview, it’s your understanding of the nature of how things are. If all of the sudden you have an understanding somehow that things are shifting and that some of the things that you’re holding onto really, really tightly have…that they’ve been fulfilled, that they’re no longer necessary and you’re to move and shift in a different…different direction. Like, changing the way we believe is really difficult because it brings up all kinds of fear of what might happen if we get deceived and end up somewhere…who knows…somewhere way off in Lala land. And yet this is precisely what’s happening to Peter, the apostle Peter, the disciple of Jesus, the one who denied Him, right, the one who walked with Him. This is what’s happening to him. He’s seeing that God is doing a new thing in the world although he does not fully understand the magnitude of it. He sees that God is on the move at least with this Gentile, which opens up a whole new can of worms. We can read through this and just go, “yeah. This is the story. This is how it happened. This is how we got here.” But we don’t always kind of go into the story and kinda realize, “man, this is upending life as you know it.” Like this is tipping things upside down in their faith journey. And if we were faced with the same things, we would find ourselves tipped upside down as well. And, so, this always brings us to this question. “Like, who does get to be in? And does God get to do a new thing if God wants to do anything in this world, even if even if it’s confusing to us, even if it messes with our theological understandings, even if it robs our well seeded doctrines? And as we watch this story continue to unfold…well…hopefully it will challenge us. But hopefully we can enter the story instead of reading this…reading it as this very smooth, very beautiful onslaught of the goodness of God that established His church in the world. May we understand it happened a little different than that. And if we can enter into that story we can enter into our own story and see what God brings up in us.

Prayer:

Father, we invite You into just that, that we would open ourselves to You, trusting You completely and that You would send Your Holy Spirit upon us to lead us into all truth. This is our desire. It has been our desire and we can see that there are times that we fight, even against that. And, so, as we continue to watch the formation, these…these early weeks and months and years after Your ascension, may we understand what our brothers and sisters were wrestling with then, that we might better interpret and understand what we wrestle with now. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

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

The Initiatives section shows some of the things that are going on around here.

The Community section will get you connected. And the Prayer Wall, of course, is in the Community section.

And check out the Daily Audio Bible Shop. There are resources there for the journey that we’re on. So, check that out. And thank you.

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…yeah…humble gratitude for…for your partnership. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

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

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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello this is Jane from Australia I just love the way that Stanley from Maryland played piano behind the lady who prayed for Terry in Australia. Wow, that was an incredible gift Stanley. That was just beautiful. What a…what a family…what a family of love. What a circle of love. Thank you, Daily Audio Bible.

This is Alta Lee Maxwell calling from Colorado Springs. It is the 9^th day of June. This is prayers from the power the praying nation. Lord as the body of Christ we are weary of watching the enemy whom You defeated on the cross run roughshod over people and destroy their lives. We are disgusted by our own compromised prayers. We confess that we have been willing to lay down enough of our lives to see them break through the darkness with power. Renew us and revive us Lord. Fill us afresh with Your Holy Spirit. Break down the strongholds in our lives that stand in opposition to You and Your ways. Help us to be doers of the word and not just hearers only. Work a profound spiritual awakening in Your people all over this land. Lord You have said that You are able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that is in us. We know that means You can do more than we ever dreamed. We invite You to do that in us in Your people and in our country. Ignite a fire in our hearts that illuminates to us the possibilities of what can happen when we pray. Move the hearts in this nation into alignment with Your will. We ask for Your grace be poured out upon our nation. Only You can bring good out of the evil and destruction that has been manifested here. Show us how we can be of service to You in that regard. Help us not to shrink back when You call us into the storm. Shine Your light into our darkness and evaporate it. Help those of us who believe to extend Your life to others. Thank You that You have put gladness in our hearts once again and are even now making all things work together for good in our nation. In Jesus’ name.

Hey, DABbers this is Katie in Kentucky and once again I’m out running and something just made me like almost trip and stumble because we know that God knows our needs before we even say them. But sometimes God like, bam, I know your needs. His little Cherry, it is June 9^th and you just called to pray for those who have trouble sleeping. In about two hours I’m taking my four-year-old for a sleep study. He has had major issues. He just like…he won’t fall asleep he won’t stay asleep. I am exhausted. It’s put a strain on all the relationships in my household. My most common prayer is just laying next to him saying go to sleep, got to sleep, go to sleep. So…wow! You just really…you are speaking God to me right now as I know that God is taking care of us and that he is with this whole sleep situation. So, thank you for your prayers. If you could pray for Caius Daniel. He is my little four-year-old who needs to get some good rest. Thank you, guys. I love you all and I love hearing from you.

Hi this is Victoria Soldier just calling to pray for some of the DABbers. I’m just listening __ Trusting in Him and the challenges he is going through with his marriage. And I just want to encourage you Trusting in Him __ seconds or not, God is in it and God is going to keep this marriage together __ continue to pray and seek Him because it’s seems that God is tugging at your wife’s heart and showing her what she has in you and what you have in her. Continue to be encouraged my brother and I know…and know that I’m praying with you and your wife and your family. I also want to pray for Veronica and her husband and her children. And I also want pray for…for Jesse in the…in the challenges that he’s going through and just encourage him and know that God is…God says…God says I’m a God that can do anything more that He’s says that’s why I’m God. And I just want to encourage you in that. Also, continue to pray for our black community and our…our human community with…with the wicked things that happened to that poor 80…to our senior citizen…that they’re beating up senior citizen. It’s nothing but the enemy that is trying to keep us separated as a nation, but we have to remember that righteousness exalts a nation. No matter whatever else they tell us, righteousness exalts a nation no matter what happens. And pray for the peace of God which passes all understanding. Gracious Father I just ask You to touch those marriages of these beautiful people, to touch the Young woman that also God seeing her husband is trying to have a baby. Lord I pray that You bless them to have a beautiful baby…

Hi, my name is Rebecca from Pal alto California and I’m calling in for prayer right now. I don’t know who to really reach out to besides the Lord. I’m not super connected with my Christian family as I’d like to be. And I love them dearly and I’m grateful. I’m calling because I may have crossed boundary lines and done something that was not of God’s will and not of His way in trying to force my will on others. And I feel that I’m in trial and my intention is always to do God’s will and I love God and…and I’m just praying for help for His mercy and compassion and…and for Him to have mercy and know that I love Him more than anything and to show me what I did wrong so I can fix it and change forever. Please help me family. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hello Daily Audio Bible audience, Brian. My name is Ron I’m calling from New Caney Texas just outside of Houston. My wife Terri is in her last stages of brain cancer glioblastoma, horrible disease that leaves most dead within 12 months. And she’s lived 32 months. So, we thank God for time that she’s had to enjoy holidays, enjoy us, and to see a third grandchild born during that time. And, so, we’re very thankful for that. Also, thankful that Terry had lived a fantastic life, a fantastic life of blessings. She’s been a blessing to so many people. She’s…she’s the poster child for faithfulness not only to me her husband of 44 years, but to her grandkids and her children. So, just pray for the family to…to be able to enjoy if that…if that’s possible. And so far, it has been the last few days that we have with her and we are just looking forward to seeing a saint of God ushered into His presence. Anyway, we appreciate the prayers, appreciate the work that you do Brian and we listen every day. And we just…we just want to say thank you. Bye-bye.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family this is Patricia from New Orleans Louisiana. I’m calling to thank you all for praying for me for remembering me and praying for me. I pray for each and every one your prayer requests being made. I listen every day daily. I’ve not been calling in, but I am praying with you all listening every day. Family, please continue to pray for me. Please, my pains are increasing __. They are getting worse. So, I’m calling in remembering to thank God and to ask for a prayer request for your prayers, please for my pain. I’m trusting God, that God will eventually take my pain away. My pain is crippling. It’s to the point where I can barely __ something to eat. So, please pray with me, pray for me that God takes the pain away. Thank you, family and God bless us all. I love you all. Thank you, Jill. Thank you, Brian…the whole Brian family. Thank you.

1 Kings 14:1-15:24, Acts 10:1-23, Psalms 133:1-3, Proverbs 17:7-8

Today is the 15^th day of June welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you as we move into our week, continue our journey through this month of June, and continue our journey through the Bible. So, we’re in the book of first Kings in the Old Testament and things have kinda fallen apart. So, Solomon had his reign, brought Israel to its apex. His son Rehoboam succeeded him as king but 10 of the tribes defected or rebelled or abandoned Rehoboam’s rule and…and abandoned the house of David, for that matter and have appointed their own king’s name is Jeroboam. He’s the King of Israel while Rehoboam, Solomon’s son is king of Judah. Rehoboam is…it would be good…Jeroboam and Rehoboam sound very similar. So, it’s easy for us to get kind of mixed up. It would be good for us to just know who we’re talking about here. Jeroboam the King of Israel, the 10 tribes of the north has lead Israel into idolatry by setting up golden calves in Dan in the north and Bethel in the South. Those are the borders of his kingdom. And now a nation that was once one chosen people has been divided into two different nations who have animosity for each other. So, we pick up that story. We’ reading from the New Living Translation this week. First Kings 14:1 through 15:24.  

Commentary:

Alright. So, in the Old Testament today in the book of first Kings, now is the time that we’ve gottta…we’ve gotta pay attention to the fact that these 12 tribes that we watched form…I mean we watched the 12 sons who whose offspring became the 12 tribes of Israel, we watched them be born and we watched them in slavery, we watched all of the things that they did, including the wandering in the wilderness but they unified as a people, as a family. And this family was united under King Saul. But then…well…we know the story that happened there. And, so, the house of David rose up and the tribes had all ratified this. This king who was from Judah was going to be king of Israel. They all had to get behind this. And, so, they got behind David. And remember the story of David. We see why they got behind David, because everybody knew he was running from Saul and everybody knew he was a great leader in Israel. So, when David died Solomon ascended to the throne, although there was…there was some drama, some significant drama involved in that, but Solomon ascended the throne and brought this unified Israel, this unified monarchy to its apex. And then Solomon drifted away from God. And it…you know…it was a brief description of what happened. The wives and concubines that he had, he started trying to pacify them and let them worship their own gods and he was seduced away. We’ll…we’ll hear more about these things as we continue through the Bible, especially when we do the book of Ecclesiastes. But after Solomon’s reign things fell apart. So, Solomon’s son, David’s grandson, Rehoboam became king of Israel and everybody came together to ratify that he would be the king over all the tribes of Israel, but he was arrogant and he told the people, especially of the northern tribes that he was going to make life even more difficult for them than his father had made. And, so, they rebelled and made Jeroboam their king. And now there are 10 tribes in the north, the nation of Israel and two tribes in the south, the nation of Judah. I say all that by way of review because we are in the books of the Kings, the books of the kings of Judah and Israel. And they…they weren’t born and they didn’t die on the same day. So, there’s gonna be plenty of overlap. Like even in today’s reading, Jeroboam the King of Israel in the North has been prophetically rejected by God, but his reign went on for a couple of decades. In the meantime, Rehoboam lived and reigned and his son succeeded him, and his grandson succeeded him, and we see…we should note that the kings of Israel and Judah, after Solomon’s reign, they were not loyal to their covenant with God until king Asa of Judah, which we briefly read about today, began to turn things back around, began to serve God as his ancestor King David had done. So, in so many ways it is like we’re repeating the book of Judges only in a very organized political military. Again, in the book of Judges everybody’s doing what’s right in their own eyes and now everybody can’t do what’s right in their own eyes. The king can. But this thing that they thought was gonna unite them and make everything better was just a brief temporary fix. The thing that will hold them together is their covenant with God but seems to be the thing that’s disposable. And we will continue this journey as we move through many, many generations and centuries of Kings who ruled in Israel and who ruled in Judah.

In the New Testament some pretty significant developments are happening in the book of Acts, things that have implications that are far, far, far reaching and actually craft the story of the early church. So Cornelius, Roman centurion, is a God-fearing man. And this is what the Hebrew people called a Gentile person who wasn’t converting to Judaism but was attempting to live among the Hebrew people and worship among the people and honor the God of the Hebrew people. They were God-fearing and respected, and this was a respected man who had a vision telling them to send for Peter. Like just send some people south out of Joppa and get Peter and bring him back because he had some things to say. So, he does obey that. Meanwhile, Peter’s on the roof of a house in Joppa having a vision of his own – a sheet coming down full of animals that are, under the Mosaic law, unclean. And Peter is being told to eat those animals, like…like to disobey the law. Like something new is afoot and Peter is confused. He’s like, “I’ve never…like I can’t. I’ve never done anything like that…like this. I’ve never let anything unclean touch my lips to eat them.” And then in the vision he’s told what God has made clean is clean. Like, so something new is happening. And then these people arrive to…to pick up Peter and Peter’s told to go with them. We have to remember that Cornelius is not a Hebrew, he’s a Gentile. And the things that Peter’s seen in this sheet; those are the kinds of things that Gentiles eat. They’re unclean. And we are beginning to practically see that this new thing that God is doing in the world through Jesus, this thing that’s forming in the world called the church that is evolving right after Jesus ministry may in fact be a little different than anybody was thinking because up until this point, Jesus was considered by some to be the Hebrew Messiah, pretty much rejected by most. That could be true. But everything Jesus had done was in a Hebrew context, and His ministry was in a Hebrew context to mostly Hebrew people and His message was very, very much in the Hebrew context. He was a rabbi who commented on all on the customs and on the Hebrew people. So, what’s going on here with an angel telling a Gentile to go get Peter? And what’s going on here with Peter seeing unclean things that are now permitted? A vast shift with far, far reaching implications is afoot in the early church in the book of Acts. And we will watch that come to fruition in the days ahead.

Prayer:

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your faithfulness to us in our lives. And father as we come to the Scriptures each day, we ask that you would lead us into all truth. This is a promise one that we hold onto. And, so, we continue our journey forward believing that you will continue to lead and guide our steps through the Scriptures, through our understanding of them, and through the way that we live our lives because of them. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it is the home of the Global Campfire, its where you find out what’s going on around here. So, stay tuned, stay connected.

Check out the Initiatives section. See what’s going on.

Check out the Community section. Get connected. The Prayer Wall lives there. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Or maybe it’s you. Maybe you’ve been carrying something on your back up a mountain with other things chained to your ankles and your slogging along and maybe you don’t have to do it alone. Maybe it makes a difference if a brother or sister…if you just know they’re there, calling out your name just thinking about you. It’s just amazing. It’s amazing. It’s amazing how the body of Christ works and it’s amazing to…to see it in action here in our community. So, yeah, reach out. Check out the Prayer Wall. Reach out, reach back.

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. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the hotline button in the app, little red button at the top. And just…yeah…I love that thing. It’s like, if you’ve got the Daily Audio Bible app you…you got a hotline and a hotline to people who are gonna pray. And, so, I love that. So, hit the hotline button in the app or you can dial 877-942-4253.

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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello DAB this is David the beloved child of God in Northern California it’s been well over a year since I’ve called in. I’m still involved with young life doing ministry to adolescents and you could be praying for that community all over the world. It’s been especially hard in the COVID-19 pandemic. And young life camps are closed throughout America this summer. So, pray for creativity for young life leaders. Also, I just want to say, Jesse from Washington. I don’t know what it is about you brother but every time you call in I just…you’re on my heart. You’ve been on my prayer list for many, many months and I’m praying for you. Just know that. I’m not very good about praying a lot of the phone here but for some reason you’re the one guy that I just continually…every time I hear you call and it just piques my ears and I pay attention. Praying for faithfulness. Praying for you specifically to stay faithful to your wife. Stay strong stay encouraged. And then finally family, I would ask that you would pray for my neighbors Randall and Debra. Randall has stage IV cancer. Doctors aren’t given him much prognosis for a healthy lifestyle going forward and maybe two years to live at the most. First off and more than anything I ask that you would be praying for a miracle. My wife and I are praying for him and his wife is really losing hope. So, pray for Deborah that she would have hope. Pray for a miracle for Randall who is also having trouble sleeping. Jesse also just want to let you know I’m praying against all the attack of gossip that your wife is experiencing. Stay strong family. Love you. Bye-bye. This is David the Beloved from Northern California.

Good morning DABbers this is in response to Abby who called in and to the mothers who are weary of being afraid of what might happen to their children of…and for the families who have lost members to violence. I don’t have my own wisdom other than to say I long Lord to be a part of the solution and not the problem. So, I want to pray for Micah 6:8. What does the Lord require of you? To do justice. To love kindness. To walk humbly with your God. So, Lord I pray that You would work justice in my heart, in my thoughts, in my words to others, and my actions. Open my eyes to see injustice around me and give me the courage to speak and act against it. Lord, let me show kindness to all I encounter, to remember that they are made in Your image and so treat others as Kin. And Lord let me walk humbly with You, banish pride, and to love in Your name. I pray wisdom and humility in our leaders. Oh Lord, help our country Holy Spirit in Jesus’ name. Amen.

I am a longtime listener and a first-time caller and I’m just going to call myself Virginia from Dallas because that’s who I am. My name is Virginia and I’m living in Dallas Texas. And at the beginning of the year, Daniel the Kingdom Seeker sung a song and…and he released a word and it said “rest, trust and worship.” And I realized how much we were going to need that as we began our journey through 2020 - the rest, the trust in our God, and the worship that will get us through. And, so, daily when I…when I start my work day of course it’s at home now and part of the prayer that I pray it says rest trust and worship and O Lord even in this day’s most stressful moments may I rest in you. Increase my love for Your word and Your people and let passion rise within me. Let the fire of the Holy Spirit rise inside of me in the mighty name of our Lord Jesus, in the matchless name of our Savior. And I just wanted to say to my brother how much I appreciate that word and how it has carried me through the tribulations of 2020. I love you DABbers. I listen and I pray along with you. I remember you. I love you. And I thank God for community that understands the power of love and prayer. Brian…

I would just like to ask for prayer request. I’m in a marriage. I accepted Christ about six years ago and my husband has not, and this causes me to struggle with my faith. So, right now I’m just struggling really hard trying to believe God’s word and deal with my husband at the same time. It just keeps putting doubts in my head. So, I’m just…just requesting prayer for me for like God to strengthen my faith and pray for my husband that isn’t saved. Thank you so much. I just joined this about a week ago and I’m loving it and I wish that I joined it so I could have been a part of this from the beginning of the year, but I’m thankful that it is now part of my life and I’m getting in the word more. So, I’m thankful for that and if you could just please lift me and my husband up in prayer and most importantly pray for my strength in…in God and these doubts from the enemy just stop because I feel like I’m being attacked right now. Thank you and have a great day.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family this Taria calling from Chicago. I’ve called in a couple of times before with prayer requests for my family and to offer encouragement to others but today I’m calling because I just learned that a gentleman that’s done some work with me around my house for the better part of 10 years now just shared with me that his son and his wife have recently passed away. He lost his son earlier this year and lost his wife just not even a month ago. He and his wife came to America over 40 years ago to build a better life for them and their small family. He is now here separated from the majority of his family from his home country and his support system and it just breaks my heart that such a wonderful hard-working loving person is just dealing with so much on top of everything else that’s going on in 2020. So, I’m just asking for the Daily Audio Bible family to pray for Mr. Batista, that he can get through this extremely difficult time and just be surrounded by all the love and faith and endurance that it’s gonna require of him to…to stay strong. Thank you very much.

Good morning prodigal I’m glad to hear your story. You know what? Israel fell to pieces because they didn’t know who they are. America falls to pieces because she’s been torn apart by her internal strife. My family was torn apart because we didn’t know who we were and that’s how it’s been. But I know I’ve got a Father who cares about justice. I’ve got a God of hope as it says in Romans. It fills me with all joy and peace as I serve Him. And I know that He cares to put good food on my plate, He cares about who I am because my Father is the prize…kind of person I want to be. My Father walked here on earth in the person of Jesus Christ. He showed exactly what sort of family I’m a part of. And prodigal I’m proud to be in your family. I’m proud to call you my brother and I’m also proud that we have a Father that cares to do justice in the courts of heaven. And that’s exactly where we belong. Even on this moment on our knees while were waiting for revival to break out in America where there’s fighting and violence on the spirit of consternation and if frustration and of anger has its way, I know that the Holy Spirit is on the wave behind that. I know that my God is great and just, greatly to be praised. His Angels are mighty and waiting for us to pray the word and to release them into the atmosphere around these cities. He’s waiting for us to be strong in Him not in who we are here in flesh but in Spirit. And I praise the Lord for watching over …

Convicted Beyond Measure what a glorious and beautiful name. I heard your prayer, your plea this morning and was overwhelmed with the heart of the Lord for you. A sweet and soft kind love, the embrace of a loving parent who weeps over their child in sadness and in joy. And what a wonderful name Convicted Beyond Measure, for conviction in Christ is the realization of how much we are loved. Lord I ask for my sibling that you give them peace, peace not in their emotions but peace in their soul knowing that You are in control. Lord, open their eyes to Your work that they might not be distracted by their own faults and flaws or distracted by the works of the enemy but see Your hand in all things and hold fast to that so that they may follow You and bring healing and love and joy and peace and kindness and gentleness wherever they go just as their Father and their brother Lord Jesus Christ did before them. Amen.

1 Kings 14:1-15:24, Acts 10:1-23, Psalms 133:1-3, Proverbs 17:7-8

Today is the 15^th day of June welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you as we move into our week, continue our journey through this month of June, and continue our journey through the Bible. So, we’re in the book of first Kings in the Old Testament and things have kinda fallen apart. So, Solomon had his reign, brought Israel to its apex. His son Rehoboam succeeded him as king but 10 of the tribes defected or rebelled or abandoned Rehoboam’s rule and…and abandoned the house of David, for that matter and have appointed their own king’s name is Jeroboam. He’s the King of Israel while Rehoboam, Solomon’s son is king of Judah. Rehoboam is…it would be good…Jeroboam and Rehoboam sound very similar. So, it’s easy for us to get kind of mixed up. It would be good for us to just know who we’re talking about here. Jeroboam the King of Israel, the 10 tribes of the north has lead Israel into idolatry by setting up golden calves in Dan in the north and Bethel in the South. Those are the borders of his kingdom. And now a nation that was once one chosen people has been divided into two different nations who have animosity for each other. So, we pick up that story. We’ reading from the New Living Translation this week. First Kings 14:1 through 15:24.  

Commentary:

Alright. So, in the Old Testament today in the book of first Kings, now is the time that we’ve gottta…we’ve gotta pay attention to the fact that these 12 tribes that we watched form…I mean we watched the 12 sons who whose offspring became the 12 tribes of Israel, we watched them be born and we watched them in slavery, we watched all of the things that they did, including the wandering in the wilderness but they unified as a people, as a family. And this family was united under King Saul. But then…well…we know the story that happened there. And, so, the house of David rose up and the tribes had all ratified this. This king who was from Judah was going to be king of Israel. They all had to get behind this. And, so, they got behind David. And remember the story of David. We see why they got behind David, because everybody knew he was running from Saul and everybody knew he was a great leader in Israel. So, when David died Solomon ascended to the throne, although there was…there was some drama, some significant drama involved in that, but Solomon ascended the throne and brought this unified Israel, this unified monarchy to its apex. And then Solomon drifted away from God. And it…you know…it was a brief description of what happened. The wives and concubines that he had, he started trying to pacify them and let them worship their own gods and he was seduced away. We’ll…we’ll hear more about these things as we continue through the Bible, especially when we do the book of Ecclesiastes. But after Solomon’s reign things fell apart. So, Solomon’s son, David’s grandson, Rehoboam became king of Israel and everybody came together to ratify that he would be the king over all the tribes of Israel, but he was arrogant and he told the people, especially of the northern tribes that he was going to make life even more difficult for them than his father had made. And, so, they rebelled and made Jeroboam their king. And now there are 10 tribes in the north, the nation of Israel and two tribes in the south, the nation of Judah. I say all that by way of review because we are in the books of the Kings, the books of the kings of Judah and Israel. And they…they weren’t born and they didn’t die on the same day. So, there’s gonna be plenty of overlap. Like even in today’s reading, Jeroboam the King of Israel in the North has been prophetically rejected by God, but his reign went on for a couple of decades. In the meantime, Rehoboam lived and reigned and his son succeeded him, and his grandson succeeded him, and we see…we should note that the kings of Israel and Judah, after Solomon’s reign, they were not loyal to their covenant with God until king Asa of Judah, which we briefly read about today, began to turn things back around, began to serve God as his ancestor King David had done. So, in so many ways it is like we’re repeating the book of Judges only in a very organized political military. Again, in the book of Judges everybody’s doing what’s right in their own eyes and now everybody can’t do what’s right in their own eyes. The king can. But this thing that they thought was gonna unite them and make everything better was just a brief temporary fix. The thing that will hold them together is their covenant with God but seems to be the thing that’s disposable. And we will continue this journey as we move through many, many generations and centuries of Kings who ruled in Israel and who ruled in Judah.

In the New Testament some pretty significant developments are happening in the book of Acts, things that have implications that are far, far, far reaching and actually craft the story of the early church. So Cornelius, Roman centurion, is a God-fearing man. And this is what the Hebrew people called a Gentile person who wasn’t converting to Judaism but was attempting to live among the Hebrew people and worship among the people and honor the God of the Hebrew people. They were God-fearing and respected, and this was a respected man who had a vision telling them to send for Peter. Like just send some people south out of Joppa and get Peter and bring him back because he had some things to say. So, he does obey that. Meanwhile, Peter’s on the roof of a house in Joppa having a vision of his own – a sheet coming down full of animals that are, under the Mosaic law, unclean. And Peter is being told to eat those animals, like…like to disobey the law. Like something new is afoot and Peter is confused. He’s like, “I’ve never…like I can’t. I’ve never done anything like that…like this. I’ve never let anything unclean touch my lips to eat them.” And then in the vision he’s told what God has made clean is clean. Like, so something new is happening. And then these people arrive to…to pick up Peter and Peter’s told to go with them. We have to remember that Cornelius is not a Hebrew, he’s a Gentile. And the things that Peter’s seen in this sheet; those are the kinds of things that Gentiles eat. They’re unclean. And we are beginning to practically see that this new thing that God is doing in the world through Jesus, this thing that’s forming in the world called the church that is evolving right after Jesus ministry may in fact be a little different than anybody was thinking because up until this point, Jesus was considered by some to be the Hebrew Messiah, pretty much rejected by most. That could be true. But everything Jesus had done was in a Hebrew context, and His ministry was in a Hebrew context to mostly Hebrew people and His message was very, very much in the Hebrew context. He was a rabbi who commented on all on the customs and on the Hebrew people. So, what’s going on here with an angel telling a Gentile to go get Peter? And what’s going on here with Peter seeing unclean things that are now permitted? A vast shift with far, far reaching implications is afoot in the early church in the book of Acts. And we will watch that come to fruition in the days ahead.

Prayer:

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your faithfulness to us in our lives. And father as we come to the Scriptures each day, we ask that you would lead us into all truth. This is a promise one that we hold onto. And, so, we continue our journey forward believing that you will continue to lead and guide our steps through the Scriptures, through our understanding of them, and through the way that we live our lives because of them. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it is the home of the Global Campfire, its where you find out what’s going on around here. So, stay tuned, stay connected.

Check out the Initiatives section. See what’s going on.

Check out the Community section. Get connected. The Prayer Wall lives there. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Or maybe it’s you. Maybe you’ve been carrying something on your back up a mountain with other things chained to your ankles and your slogging along and maybe you don’t have to do it alone. Maybe it makes a difference if a brother or sister…if you just know they’re there, calling out your name just thinking about you. It’s just amazing. It’s amazing. It’s amazing how the body of Christ works and it’s amazing to…to see it in action here in our community. So, yeah, reach out. Check out the Prayer Wall. Reach out, reach back.

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. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the hotline button in the app, little red button at the top. And just…yeah…I love that thing. It’s like, if you’ve got the Daily Audio Bible app you…you got a hotline and a hotline to people who are gonna pray. And, so, I love that. So, hit the hotline button in the app or you can dial 877-942-4253.

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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello DAB this is David the beloved child of God in Northern California it’s been well over a year since I’ve called in. I’m still involved with young life doing ministry to adolescents and you could be praying for that community all over the world. It’s been especially hard in the COVID-19 pandemic. And young life camps are closed throughout America this summer. So, pray for creativity for young life leaders. Also, I just want to say, Jesse from Washington. I don’t know what it is about you brother but every time you call in I just…you’re on my heart. You’ve been on my prayer list for many, many months and I’m praying for you. Just know that. I’m not very good about praying a lot of the phone here but for some reason you’re the one guy that I just continually…every time I hear you call and it just piques my ears and I pay attention. Praying for faithfulness. Praying for you specifically to stay faithful to your wife. Stay strong stay encouraged. And then finally family, I would ask that you would pray for my neighbors Randall and Debra. Randall has stage IV cancer. Doctors aren’t given him much prognosis for a healthy lifestyle going forward and maybe two years to live at the most. First off and more than anything I ask that you would be praying for a miracle. My wife and I are praying for him and his wife is really losing hope. So, pray for Deborah that she would have hope. Pray for a miracle for Randall who is also having trouble sleeping. Jesse also just want to let you know I’m praying against all the attack of gossip that your wife is experiencing. Stay strong family. Love you. Bye-bye. This is David the Beloved from Northern California.

Good morning DABbers this is in response to Abby who called in and to the mothers who are weary of being afraid of what might happen to their children of…and for the families who have lost members to violence. I don’t have my own wisdom other than to say I long Lord to be a part of the solution and not the problem. So, I want to pray for Micah 6:8. What does the Lord require of you? To do justice. To love kindness. To walk humbly with your God. So, Lord I pray that You would work justice in my heart, in my thoughts, in my words to others, and my actions. Open my eyes to see injustice around me and give me the courage to speak and act against it. Lord, let me show kindness to all I encounter, to remember that they are made in Your image and so treat others as Kin. And Lord let me walk humbly with You, banish pride, and to love in Your name. I pray wisdom and humility in our leaders. Oh Lord, help our country Holy Spirit in Jesus’ name. Amen.

I am a longtime listener and a first-time caller and I’m just going to call myself Virginia from Dallas because that’s who I am. My name is Virginia and I’m living in Dallas Texas. And at the beginning of the year, Daniel the Kingdom Seeker sung a song and…and he released a word and it said “rest, trust and worship.” And I realized how much we were going to need that as we began our journey through 2020 - the rest, the trust in our God, and the worship that will get us through. And, so, daily when I…when I start my work day of course it’s at home now and part of the prayer that I pray it says rest trust and worship and O Lord even in this day’s most stressful moments may I rest in you. Increase my love for Your word and Your people and let passion rise within me. Let the fire of the Holy Spirit rise inside of me in the mighty name of our Lord Jesus, in the matchless name of our Savior. And I just wanted to say to my brother how much I appreciate that word and how it has carried me through the tribulations of 2020. I love you DABbers. I listen and I pray along with you. I remember you. I love you. And I thank God for community that understands the power of love and prayer. Brian…

I would just like to ask for prayer request. I’m in a marriage. I accepted Christ about six years ago and my husband has not, and this causes me to struggle with my faith. So, right now I’m just struggling really hard trying to believe God’s word and deal with my husband at the same time. It just keeps putting doubts in my head. So, I’m just…just requesting prayer for me for like God to strengthen my faith and pray for my husband that isn’t saved. Thank you so much. I just joined this about a week ago and I’m loving it and I wish that I joined it so I could have been a part of this from the beginning of the year, but I’m thankful that it is now part of my life and I’m getting in the word more. So, I’m thankful for that and if you could just please lift me and my husband up in prayer and most importantly pray for my strength in…in God and these doubts from the enemy just stop because I feel like I’m being attacked right now. Thank you and have a great day.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family this Taria calling from Chicago. I’ve called in a couple of times before with prayer requests for my family and to offer encouragement to others but today I’m calling because I just learned that a gentleman that’s done some work with me around my house for the better part of 10 years now just shared with me that his son and his wife have recently passed away. He lost his son earlier this year and lost his wife just not even a month ago. He and his wife came to America over 40 years ago to build a better life for them and their small family. He is now here separated from the majority of his family from his home country and his support system and it just breaks my heart that such a wonderful hard-working loving person is just dealing with so much on top of everything else that’s going on in 2020. So, I’m just asking for the Daily Audio Bible family to pray for Mr. Batista, that he can get through this extremely difficult time and just be surrounded by all the love and faith and endurance that it’s gonna require of him to…to stay strong. Thank you very much.

Good morning prodigal I’m glad to hear your story. You know what? Israel fell to pieces because they didn’t know who they are. America falls to pieces because she’s been torn apart by her internal strife. My family was torn apart because we didn’t know who we were and that’s how it’s been. But I know I’ve got a Father who cares about justice. I’ve got a God of hope as it says in Romans. It fills me with all joy and peace as I serve Him. And I know that He cares to put good food on my plate, He cares about who I am because my Father is the prize…kind of person I want to be. My Father walked here on earth in the person of Jesus Christ. He showed exactly what sort of family I’m a part of. And prodigal I’m proud to be in your family. I’m proud to call you my brother and I’m also proud that we have a Father that cares to do justice in the courts of heaven. And that’s exactly where we belong. Even on this moment on our knees while were waiting for revival to break out in America where there’s fighting and violence on the spirit of consternation and if frustration and of anger has its way, I know that the Holy Spirit is on the wave behind that. I know that my God is great and just, greatly to be praised. His Angels are mighty and waiting for us to pray the word and to release them into the atmosphere around these cities. He’s waiting for us to be strong in Him not in who we are here in flesh but in Spirit. And I praise the Lord for watching over …

Convicted Beyond Measure what a glorious and beautiful name. I heard your prayer, your plea this morning and was overwhelmed with the heart of the Lord for you. A sweet and soft kind love, the embrace of a loving parent who weeps over their child in sadness and in joy. And what a wonderful name Convicted Beyond Measure, for conviction in Christ is the realization of how much we are loved. Lord I ask for my sibling that you give them peace, peace not in their emotions but peace in their soul knowing that You are in control. Lord, open their eyes to Your work that they might not be distracted by their own faults and flaws or distracted by the works of the enemy but see Your hand in all things and hold fast to that so that they may follow You and bring healing and love and joy and peace and kindness and gentleness wherever they go just as their Father and their brother Lord Jesus Christ did before them. Amen.

1 Kings 12:20-13:34, Acts 9:26-43, Psalms 132:1-18, Proverbs 17:6

Today is the 14^th day of June welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is awesome to be here with you around the Global Campfire as we twist the knob and step into a new week together just being aware that it’s out in front of us. And here we are in the middle of a month and what a joy, what a gift it is to be here. I mean, we may have all kinds of things going on in our lives, some of them good, some of them challenging, but…and even if everything is challenging, what gift to be…like when we step back from the circumstance and we step back from the swirl of it all the that kinda wants to suck us into the vortex and right down the tube. When we step back away from all that all…all of that and realize, I’m here, this is a gift, these breathes that I’m taking, these are the breath of life. I’m here because God created and allowed me to be here. What a joy it is to begin this new week with you and work through it together. So, yesterday we started the slide downward in the Old Testament. King Solomon, the wise one, passed away, died after having his heart seduced away from the one true God, and to many of the gods of this wives. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines. That’s a lot of ladies with a lot of voices from a lot of places and ultimately, Solomon was seduced. He died. His son Rehoboam became king in his place at his coronation where all the tribes are coming together to ratify his kingship. Things don’t go well. 10 of the tribes have decided they will no longer have an allegiance to the house of David, which means that…I mean things are looking like this United people, the Hebrew people have decided they don’t want to be united anymore. So, we’re in a brand-new week. We’ll read from the New Living Translation this week. First Kings chapter 12 verse 20 through 13 verse 34.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word and we thank You for bringing us into this brand-new, shiny, sparkly week. And we mark this time, we honor it. It’s a bit of our custom when we come to the beginning of a new week to just observe the fact that it's…it’s out in front of us. We’re here. You have brought us to this point. All of our history has brought us to this point, but the rest of this week is out in front of us. It has yet to be written. The story has yet to be told. It will be told by the choices that we make and we invite Your Holy Spirit to lead us and direct us in the days ahead, and to inform us by Your word, as we engage, as we come around the Global Campfire every day this week and take the next step forward. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, it’s always been, always will be…I guess…I don’t know. Who knows where the future leads and where technology leads, but it’s been home base for a long time. It’s the one place that we all can get to because we’re all over the world. And, so it’s a place to find out what’s going on, it’s a place to find resources for the journey that we are on in the Shop. It’s a place to get connected in the Community section. It’s a place to pray for each other. So, stay tuned. Stay connected in any way that you can.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link on the homepage, and I thank you for your partnership beyond words. That’s true, beyond words. I’ve used all the words that I know in my vocabulary of gratitude that we are…that we even are here able to take the journey together. It’s awe-inspiring. So, thank you for your partnership. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement 877-942-4253 is the number to dial or you can just hit the Hotline button, 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.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hey __ in South Carolina this your brother Ben in Columbus Ohio. I heard your testimony today and I just wanted to thank you so much for calling in today, for calling in and leaving your testimony. I haven’t personally lost children but just the message that you shared, that you heard from God, the fact that you’ve heard from God and that was so clearly from God. I needed to hear that today. And there’s just something…something about your voice. I don’t know what it was __ but I just feel connected to you. I feel like you are my sister and…and you also feel so different. I’m a 42-year-old man in Ohio, right? But there’s just something where I feel…I feel my forever family connection with you. And so thankful…so thankful you called in. I’m so thankful I got to hear your voice. God bless you.

That the Lord is faithful He will strengthen and guard you from the evil one. Heavenly Father I pray for brother Ruben in Burma. I pray that You will strengthen him and his family and the workers who are spreading the good news in Burma by the power of Your might oh God. Clothe them in Your armor so that they can stand firm against the schemes of the devil. We know that their struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Father, I pray that she would shelter the Burmese Christians in the shadow of Your wing. When life is hard help them remember that You are with them and that they are never alone. Thank You that You are the good Shepherd. Lead each of these dear ones beside still waters. Restore their souls. Thank You, Lord that You remain faithful. And for the dear lady in Spain who is struggling. Oh Lord, I felt her desperation. She is trembling, she is feeling weak. Yet You remain faithful for You are a good Father. She is in a difficult situation Lord and I sense that her faith is wearing thin. We reach out to You Father and ask You to meet every need. Give her the courage to cast every care on You. Your word promises that You will supply all our needs according to Your riches in glory. So, we stand together in this community and ask You to intervene. Thank You that You are a God that hears the cries of Your children and thank You that the answer is on its way. We leave these dear ones in Your hands. To You be all the praise and honor and glory. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Melody Faith from Canada. Love you family.

Good morning DAB family this is the other Melanie. It’s June 9^th and I am calling in with a prayer request. I don’t know why I find it so hard to do this, to ask for prayer for myself, but I am going to add myself to the list of all the people who have called in asking for help with weight loss. And I agree, it does seem insignificant or certainly much smaller than a lot of the other things that people need prayer for. But for me, after having had two breast cancer diagnoses in the last three years, this is…it’s critical that I lose weight. And I had been doing really well __. And I’m a stress eater and it just made everything worse and I really have not coped very well. And added to that is shame because I feel like I should have done better, I should’ve leaned on the Lord and…and prayed and done all the things that I know to do as a Christian. And I know that all these thoughts of shame do not come from God. But it’s a battle, it is such a battle, and this is such a stronghold for me. So, family I just pray that you would lift me up in your prayers for strength. If anybody else out there wants to join with me, please email me my address is theothermelanie@gmail.com. I would be so happy to walk this road with someone else who’s feeling the same struggle. I love you guys and thank you so much.

Hey this is Melody from Canada. I was just listening to the June 9^th podcast and a couple things. Cherry thank you so much for your prayer about sleep. I really need it. My whole family needs it. Our toddler daughter is waking up a few times in the night and…yeah…I really receive that prayer in faith for…for her to sleep well and us…for my husband and I to sleep well. It’s hard doing a dayshift and a night shift. So, yeah, we’re really trying to problem solve and trust God with that. So, thank you for the prayer. Also, Vincent from Connecticut who was calling to ask for prayer about loneliness. That is…that is so significant. I’m…I’m so grateful for my husband and daughter because I don’t do very well alone. And I just pray God’s blessing on you and that you would…yeah…that you would receive the gift of relationship in God’s timing and God’s way. I was just thinking about what Brian was saying about Psalm 127. And I pray that God will build the home and family that he has for you and that he would be your strength in this time. And for all people who are alone right now, especially during COVID. And it’s hard to socially distance. It’s super hard. Yeah, just extra grace for those who are living on their own. Love you. Bye.

Marla Forgiven by the Savior this is Adrian from Maryland. I am praying for you. I have seen your request on Facebook, I have heard your request on…on Brian’s podcast. I’ve heard your request on China’s podcast. I know you’re suffering now, and I am praying for you, I’m praying for you, I am praying for you. Lord, please take care of Marla. Get her the medication she needs and help her survive this terrible, horrible disease of bipolar disorder. My…I…I know someone who suffers from mental illness and it is a horrible, horrible thing. Please, please just hang in there. The shipment of medication will come. God will take care of you. Please hang in there for…for…just hang on. We all love you and we are praying for you. Many people who are not going to call in, they are also praying for you. Please hang on. We love you.

Hi DAB family this is Marla forgiven by the Savior from Albuquerque and I’m listening to the June 10^th podcast and I just heard my prayer request and I’m happy to report that my doctor called me on Monday to let me know the samples had come in. And this was right after I posted on DAB Friends with the same prayer request because I figured it would get you guys faster. And right after I posted it and everyone started praying for me, that’s when I got the phone call. So, I wanted to let you know that…yeah…I have the pills now. And it takes a while for them to kick in, but I am very much looking forward to the day when I wake up feeling like my normal self. If you could pray for me that…excuse me…that my bipolar depression does get lifted sooner rather than later, I would really appreciate it. And hopefully I will call in with a praise report very soon. I love you all more than you know, and God bless.

Hey DAB family, Alicia here from Pennsylvania. I’ve been listening and thinking and praying for a couple of people. Some man who called in about being diagnosed I think with pancreatic cancer last week. I just want to lift him up Lord and a few others. Lord You know their names and You know their…their prayers Lord. DAB family, I don’t usually ask for prayer for myself, but I do feel called to ask for some prayer. I am trying to move out of my comfort zone in a few different ways. One of them in trying to speak to friends of friends who make racist jokes that make me really uncomfortable. Lord, I just pray that You give me the words to say. And we know that if anybody can help them or change their minds that it’s You Lord and You alone. So, please if You want to use me as a vessel as a…as a facilitator for change Lord I am open and receptive to whatever You have to put in front of me Lord. I thank You for all the support that You’ve given me in these endeavors and I just thank You for that. Lord, I want to pray about my relationships in general. And please just help me to be able to find myself in a way that I can be complete with only You Lord and not rely on the people for energy. Lord, You know my issues and You know my prayers, You know my heart. Please just be with me, help me to accept You as Lord, as Him. Please if there’s any DAB…

1 Kings 11:1-12:19, Acts 9:1-25, Psalms 131:1-3, Proverbs 17:4-5

Today is the 13^th day of June welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you at the end of another of our weeks together. I am so grateful…I’m so grateful for each day adding up to each week adding up to each month together and adding up into a year of life that we share together as we move through the Scriptures. So, let’s dive in. We’ve been reading from the Good News Translation this week and we have moved through this time this week in Solomon’s reign in the Old Testament where we’ve experienced peace and prosperity on every side and development all over the land of Israel. We have been brought to the apex of ancient Israel’s civilization. And I mentioned that we should enjoy that as were passing through because it is so…because we spent so much time to get here, but it lasts so briefly. And today we’ll begin moving down the other side as King Solomon begins to turn away from God. First Kings chapter 11 verse 1 through 12 verse 19 today.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for bringing us through another week, bringing us into the middle of another month. We thank You for Your faithfulness to us. It is astounding. Your kindness, Your mercy. And, so, here we are, and we see that in the Old Testament we end this week by kind of crossing through…through the pinnacle. And Solomon the king begins to fall away. His wives, the women in his life seduce him away. We see his death, the wisest man to ever live, and his son Rehoboam become king and we see the disintegration now. It appears as if 10 of the 12 tribes will rebel against the dynasty of David and appoint themselves a new King while David’s son Rehoboam will reign in Jerusalem over the tribes of Judah. But even as we see that disintegration, we see something in the New Testament happening. The same person who held the coats of the men who murdered, who executed, who martyred Stephen has now met You on a…in a blinding light on the road to Damascus, Saul. So, we see things turning very troubling in the Old Testament and we see things turning toward hope in the New. And we look forward to all that You will speak to us as these stories continue in the coming week. Come Holy Spirit we pray. We love You; we worship You, we adore You, we surrender to You and we give our lives to You and we ask that You lead us in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, it’s always home base, it’s always we’re you can go and reach out and get connected. So, stay tuned. Stay connected as we move closer and closer toward the…well…the direct middle of the year. Oh…what a voyage that we’ve been on this year. So, stay connected in any way that you can.

Check out the Community section of the website. That’s…that’s where to go and find different links on social media, etc. etc.

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. I thank you with all of my heart for your partnership as we move deeper towards the warmer summer months. Thank you profoundly and humbly. So, 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, 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 at the hotline button in the app, which is the little red button at the top, or you can dial 877-942-4253.

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

1 Kings 9:1-10:29, Acts 8:14-40, Psalms 130:1-8, Proverbs 17:2-3

Today is the 12^th day of June welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great, it is a joy, it is an honor to be here with you today around the Global Campfire as we move ourselves into the end of the week and man…moving ourselves toward the middle of another month. What is going on with the time friends? It just keeps moving. I mean, if you want to put it in perspective, we’ve gone through a lot this year but we’re like two weeks away from the middle of 2020, which will…which will put us halfway through the Bible. So, think about that. But anyway, that’s not we’re we are, that’s a couple weeks in front of us. We are here. And, so, we inhale a deep breath and we exhale it, kind of  center ourselves where we are right now around the Global Campfire, ready for the next step forward, ready for the Bible to lead us further into the stories that we’re in. So, we’re reading from the Good News Translation this week. And today let’s enjoy this pinnacle moment in ancient Israel’s history under King Solomon’s rule. First Kings, chapters 9 and 10.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of first Kings today we reached this point. I’ve been kind of mentioning that we’re reaching the culmination point in ancient Israel where…where we started with Abraham and then we saw the son of promise, Isaac, and then all of the generations that came to make the patriarchs and then the story of Joseph and slavery in Egypt and the story of Moses and the plagues and the deliverance and bringing them to the Jordan River and wandering for 40 years. And then the story of Joshua crossing the Jordan River and settling in the Promise Land and then the time of the judges and just the back-and-forth and craziness of everybody doing what’s right in their own eyes and then the entrance of Kings into the story and Saul’s story and how we learned so much about ourselves by looking at Saul. And then David’s story0and how we learned about ourselves by looking into David’s story. And, so, here we are now with David’s son Solomon bringing this whole long story that’s taken us half a year to get to this point. We reach this point. We’re finding…because…it’s been an uphill battle the whole way, right? We’ve been going uphill the whole way. Now we are at the top. Things are well. Things are prosperous there is capital city. It is magnificent. The king of Israel, Solomon is famous throughout the earth for his wisdom. People are coming to Jerusalem, right? Like people…this is a destination point now. From all the nations people are coming here to bear witness to see this, to see what they’re hearing about. And we’ve learned of just Solomon’s wealth. Like the…the fleet of ships down at Eziongeber which is by Eliot. Eliot is a city today. And, so, sailing out and coming back years later with all these exotic things and just how there’s peace and prosperity on the borders. This is the moment. The thing is this is the moment. I mean, like right now we are sitting at the top because when we come back tomorrow and we take the next step forward tomorrow…ahh…we’re gonna begin the slide downward off this peak that we’ve been working toward for so long. So, let’s enjoy this moment here.

In the New Testament in the book of Acts we’re obviously learning about the church, the beginning of the church era, the early church and yesterday we experienced the first martyrdom for the cause of Christ, and we saw that people began to be persecuted at that point, in part at the instigation of this Pharisee named Saul that we’re gonna get to know better later. But people began to flee. They…they began to move away from the persecution to get to somewhere that they could live peaceably and practice their faith and that spread the gospel everywhere. So, you know, like we…we think with rose…rose-colored glasses a lot about the early church if we could just go back to the early church, but  the thing is the early church spread because of pressure, because persecution, because of resistance. The early believers had to learn how to endure things that most of us don’t even think about and the further we get into the New Testament the more this idea of needing to endure will become apparent to the point that we can’t escape it. So, just knowing that that was a theme in the early church, and it permeates the New Testament helps us know that, yeah that’s something we gotta learn too. Because we can look, and we can see these people all in unity. The Holy Spirit has come, people are coming to Christ, they’re sharing the good news. They’re doing everything right. They’re in the right mind, they’re doing what they’re supposed to be, so they should be prosperous, right? But instead they faced obstacles and pressure and persecution and resistance, which spread the gospel throughout the earth. And, so, we have Philip today being told to follow a road from Jerusalem to Gaza. And he does and this is a counterintuitive thing. And this is where the eunuch, right, that Ethiopian official is reading Isaiah. Philip shares the gospel. The official understands it, receives the message. And for that matter, finds some water and is baptized. Philip then goes north from there the Ethiopian eunuch goes south from there and carries the good news back to Africa. So, we can see that sort of the soil of the early church is in counterintuitive ways of following the Holy Spirit and learning to buckle up under oppression and marginalization. I’m pretty sure we still need the same ingredients. And we would do well to watch closely what we’re reading as we continue our journey through the New Testament because resources for the journey are in the Scriptures and we’re going to need to know these things and discern these things.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit come. We read of Your work today in the Scriptures in leading Philip to the Ethiopian who then took the gospel back to his homeland. We need Your guidance in our lives. We need that kind of companionship in our lives too and You are not withholding it from us. We often are ignoring it or we’re seeking it when everything else has blown up in our lives and the chaos won’t let us slow down and get beyond ourselves to find a place where there is calm and where You are leading. And, so, we repent of that. We acknowledge it. We acknowledge that’s what we do when You are offering intimacy on a daily basis, on a moment by moment basis. We are never alone. You are always available to us. You are always with us and we’re sorry that we abandon and ignore You as often as we do. Come Holy Spirit, we pray. May we pay close attention today to where You are leading us. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is…is the website, its home base, its where you find out what is afoot, what’s happening around here.

Check out the Initiatives section of the website to see…to see what’s going on around here.

Check out the Community section of the website to get connected. The Prayer Wall is there. Check…check out the Daily Audio Bible shop. It is full of resources for the journey that we find ourselves…well…I mean it’s not going to be long before halfway through. So, check…check those resources out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, thank you, humbly, honestly. Thank you for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. 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 is it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

1 Kings 8:1-66, Acts 7:51-8:13, Psalms 129:1-8, Proverbs 17:1

Today is the 11^th day of June welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is wonderful to be here with you today. It is a joy to be here with you today around the Global Campfire as we take our journey another step forward. So, let’s dive in. We are in the book of first Kings. We are watching Israel reach the culmination of everything that had been worked for over centuries and centuries since the beginning of our journey. And this happens under King Solomon’s rule. This week we’ve been reading from the Good News Translation. Today, first Kings chapter 8.

Commentary:

Okay. So, as we passed through today’s reading, we passed through two pretty monumental moments in the Bible. And that’s…actually that’s kind of an understatement. These are…these are actually huge and very, very pivotal moments. So, in the Old Testament in the book of first Kings we see the dedication of the temple. Like, we’ve been moving toward this place, toward a land that was promised, toward a people that were chosen, toward their own rule and governance, toward them coming under God and being aligned together in the worship of the Lord and established firmly. That’s like what we’re watching here. Solomon, as I’ve said over the last couple of days, brings ancient Israel to the culmination of all her struggles, like from the time that God called Abraham and set him apart and told him to go to a land that he didn’t know. And by the way, Abraham’s obeying a God that he didn’t know, like when this happens. And, so, obviously they get to know one another, they enter into a covenant together and that covenant keeps getting renewed and renewed and renewed over time. These are the same people. And, so, they’re reaching their shining our on the journey that has taken centuries to get to. And, so, yeah, we’ll watch this today and kind of coast through tomorrow, we’ll begin to understand the peak of Solomon’s reign, and we really should enjoy, really enjoy this moment that we pass through because it…it…it’s so brief in the context of things. It’s like they got to the place that they were going, and they had it so briefly, because…well…well…we’ll see why, and we’ll see that it’s the same story we live.

Then when we turn to the book of Acts…and for the last couple of days we’ve been listening to a man who was appointed to be a helper or a deacon or like a proto-deacon in distribution, in caring for God’s people around the church in Jerusalem. So, he had been appointed, but he had also been arrested and he was brought before the council in Jerusalem, where he then had to sort of prove his Hebrew credentials. And, so, he testified, and he told the Hebrew story, which for us, allows us kind of a fast motion review of the different stories that…that we’ve been encountering. We reached the end of that today. We began to reach the end of yesterday where he gets to the point where Jesus intersects with the story and he reveals to these people what they did in…in killing Jesus and they freak out on him. They’re yelling out, they’re covering their ears, they’re screeching at him. Like a mob mentality ensues. And this is the Jewish high council, by the way, but it’s not like we haven’t seen weird things happen in political arenas before on television or whatever. So, anyway their freaking out and they…they rush Stephen, they…they escort him outside the gates of the city and then they stone him to death. This is the first recorded martyrdom. This is the first recorded instance of anyone dying for their faith in Jesus. And we met someone at that execution or at the murder as the Bible calls it, a Pharisee. He held the cloaks of the people, really kind thing to do, to hold their coats because they’re working up a sweat while they’re killing Stephen by throwing rocks at him until he collapses broken. So, Saul, the Pharisee holds onto their cloaks, and watches them do their business and approves of what they’ve done and then he in turn begins to try to root out by capturing and persecuting other Christians in the church at Jerusalem. Saul, you gotta remember that guy. He hates Jesus. He wants to destroy this message and then he goes on to write two thirds of the New Testament. And that story is out in front of us.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for bringing us this far We thank You for all that we have learned and all that we are learning. We thank You for all the shifts that are subtly, slowly, methodically, steadily taking place in our hearts and we see that as those shifts happen our lives fall into different rhythms and alignments. We ask that You continue this work of transformation. And we don’t want to make that a big religious word. You are making us new again. You are changing us from what was old into something new. You are changing us from what we were into what we are becoming. May we not fight You on this. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, like I say every day. It’s always home base. It’s where the Global Campfire is.

It’s where we come together to pray for each other. The Prayer Wall is there in the Community section. The different places to gather on the social media, all those links are there in the Community section. Check out that link to the women’s group. If you are a lady and not part of the Daily Audio Bible women’s group…oh man…there is a beautiful sisterhood there for you. So, check that out.

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

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

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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Good morning Daily Audio Family this is Denise and I am on a walk right now and I just wanted to give praise for Mitch who called in who is a newer Christian and was just praising the Daily Audio Bible family. And Mitch, welcome. Just welcome. Welcome to the family. Welcome to Christ’s family. Just so happy to hear the joy in your voice. There’s…sometimes the world can feel real heavy for those of us who go to battle in prayer over lots of deep things and when a young Christian, however mature you are in your earthly years, when a young Christian comes it just gives me hope and fills my heart, so thank you Mitch. And gracious heavenly Father I just pray over Mitch. I pray over Mitch’s walk. I pray he comes to us every day to listen to Brian’s voice. I pray for his journey. I pray for his learning. I pray that the fire that I heard his voice is never doused in your Son’s mighty, mighty name. Amen.

[Singing starts] We are one in the spirit we are one in the Lord. We are one in the spirit we are one in the Lord. And we pray that our unity will one day be restored. And they’ll know we are Christians by our love by our love. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love. We will work with each other we will work side-by-side. We will work with each other we will work side-by-side and we’ll guard each man’s dignity and save each man’s pride. And they’ll know we are Christians by our love by our love. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love. We will walk with each other we will walk hand in hand. We will walk with each other we will walk hand in hand. And together we’ll spread the news that God is in our land and they’ll know we are Christians by our love by our love. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love [singing stops]. Oh Lord, let us be unified in the body, let us be…let us be unified in heart to heart. Let us be unified in prayer. Let us be unified in your son Jesus Christ and it’s in His name we pray and we love you Lord in Jesus’ name. Treasured Possession.

A family how you doing? This is prodigal. Hey, I have a few things to say. First off thanks Pelham for praying for me. I appreciate that brother. I mean, we’re soulmates, been listening to you before…I think before Molly actually but for a long time. So, as we…as we watch our country…the United States descend into chaos and tribalism and hatred it’s time for the Lord more than ever. And His voice is being drowned out so it’s up to us. So, we all make choices every day as we’re on lockdown. I’ve been on lockdown for over three years with no money, wife leaving, company failing, bankruptcy, IRS…doesn’t matter. Long story…doesn’t make a damn. The point is, I’m still here. Fortunately, the…had to sell all my guns. So, that’s one option that’s off the table finally. So, that’s a good thing I suppose. But I’m really here to tell you that the…the biggest weapon we have is prayer. And yes, those cops did something bad. Okay, got it. And that unravels our entire society? They killed Jesus. Did that unravel their entire society? Ultimately, yeah probably, but it’s gotta be for the greater good. So, not sure where this message is going. Just having a really bad day in a string of really bad days but I love my family. Just hear Walta the Burning Bush, Victoria Soldier, Tony. All you guys are rock stars brothers. So, God bless you all. And make whatever you want out of this. Let’s make it a great day. God bless.

Hi family this is Viola from Maryland I hope you’re all doing well. Brian and Jill God bless you and your family and God bless this wonderful ministry that God has used you to create. You know family when we call in and we say “family”, we’re not just referring to a particular group of people, we’re referring to us children of God have been bought and blood washed by Jesus Christ - white, brown, black - whatever color you decide to call yourself. You know, when God created us in the book of Genesis it said, “let us make man in our own image, in our likeness.” And the Bible said, “male and female He created them.” And afterwards our God of color, our beautiful God, made us all with different colors, bold, beautiful unique. You know, it is man’s sin that has caused us to move around and disunite and just have hatred and injustice in our hearts and…and towards our fellow man. And I pray that God will heal our land and that God will heal every land globally and that justice will prevail, there’ll be no more injustices in the name of Jesus. You know, the Bible says that when we come to Jesus Christ and when we receive Him we have become a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people that we may proclaim the praises of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. Family, I want to pray for the families of all those who have lost loved ones. More recently, George Floyd, Brenda Taylor, Michael Brown, Edward Gana, Fred Ugray and many many others, those killed by the police and those killed by private citizens. You know, families __ so on. I want to pray that God will touch their hearts and comfort them and that there will indeed be justice in our land. You know family, I’ve been the subject of racism before when in 2005 my children and I were on the bus and a white man looked at us with hatred in his eyes and said, “get to the back of the bus.” And before I could get up and give him a good tongue lashing that he deserved people like Abby - God bless you, Abby - got up and fought for us and that man was chased off the bus. God bless you family.

Hi this is Emily I’m…I’m a new listener…new listener to this…to the Bible…to the audio Bible. So…and I…and I really like it and am really loving it. And I think that…and I don’t like what’s going on in the world today but I think that people should be following what Peter said. In 1 Peter chapter 3 to verse 5…chapter 5 verses 3 to 5 “don’t be rulers over the people entrusted to you but be examples for the flock to follow. Then when the chief sheppard appears you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away. Young people, in a similar way, place yourselves under the authority of spiritual leaders. Furthermore all of you must serve each other with humility because God opposes the arrogant but favors the humble.” I think that’s a really a good verse for today. Okay. This is Emily calling from Humbalita California. Bye.

I turn my life back over to Jesus. I am convicted beyond measure. My marriage is a mess. I’m still having problems quitting smoking. Please pray for Satan to be banished out of my home and out of my life in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hi family this is Erin from Michigan and I’ve been noticing a lot of people calling in and talking about the racial temperature of America and how we as Christians and the body of Christ can, you know, lift each other up and can advocate for those whose voices are not as prominent in our society. And I just want you to remember that Jesus is close to the brokenhearted and He is the one that will lift us up. As far as it goes for what our place is as Christians to speak out against this, racism is America’s original sin. And there’s a great awakening happening and right now we have a chance to stand up and be counted among those who say we are all God’s children. And anyone who would like to put anybody…part of the body of Christ down needs to be reminded that there’s a consequence. There’s a consequence for pretending that God doesn’t care about social justice, there’s a consequence for believing that God will not set right what we as humans have messed up. So, I lift up America to you Lord God, I lift up our leaders. I lift of the people in position to make laws Lord God and just touch their hearts. Help them to realize that Your love is perfect, Your love is all-consuming and there is no one that is left out of Your love and there’s no one that should be left out of our love as Christians and we should fight, we should stand together in the name of Christ under His blood and…and stand up and say no more. Say that we are one body, one church and we will not be separated by the things that the world would like to separate us for. Thank you, family. I love you. This is Erin from Michigan. Have a great, great day. Peace.

1 Kings 7:1-51, Acts 7:30-50, Psalms 128:1-6, Proverbs 16:31-33

Today is the 10^th day of June, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today. I guess it’s the 10^th day of June, and there’s 30 days in this month so we are one third of the way into the month of June already and there’s no place that I would rather be right now than right here around the Global Campfire together as we move further on our journey through the Scriptures this year. So, we’re learning of King Solomon. Yesterday we learned of the building, the construction of the temple of God, the first Temple in Jerusalem and today we’ll learn a little bit more about Solomon’s development of the nation that he is king over, Israel. So today, we’re reading from the Good News Translation. First Kings chapter 7.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in first Kings…we…yeah…we’re watching exactly what we talked about at the beginning, Solomon and his development. So, he builds this magnificent palace today. And, so, we got a temple in Jerusalem, we got a magnificent palace. We have an identity. We have a capital city. We have people now moving in the same direction under Solomon’s rule.

And then we move into the book of Acts, and we are continuing to hear the testimony of Stephen and that’s leading somewhere, but as we are listening to the testimony of Stephen it gives us just…amazing…like…what a gift because we’re just so briefly touching all of these major points that we…that we lived through as we began our journey and worked our way through the books of the Bible. But now Stephen is testifying before the Hebrew Council and he’s telling the Hebrew story showing that he knows the Hebrew story because he is a Hebrew. And, so, we are listening to his testimony but we are being given the opportunity to review the territory that we’ve encountered in the Bible.

Okay. Let’s jump to the Proverbs today that we read. “It is better to be patient than powerful. It is better to win control over yourself than over whole cities.” That…that right there is sort of the magic of the Proverbs. That’s two sentences that…that say an awful lot about our lives and the way that we live our lives and then unflinchingly it just simply says, “here’s the better way.” It’s better to cultivate patience than power. It’s better to have self-control than even defeat cities. So, may we consider that today as we go through the day.

And then flipping backward to the Psalms. Remember when…when we encountered the benediction, “May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He make His face to shine upon you,” and we kind of talked about how words of blessing spoken over us can really, really change our day, like can really change the atmosphere. And then…then when we in turn speak words of blessing over others, like you can’t speak words of blessing and words of cursing simultaneously. If your blessing your blessing. And there are many words of benediction in the Bible. Many words of blessing and we have that today. And, so just allow these words wash over you and then you in turn go out and bless the world today.

Happy are those who obeying in the Lord who live by his commands. Your work will provide for your needs. You will be happy and prosperous. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine in your home and your children will be like young olive trees around your table. A man who obeys the Lord will surely be blessed like this. May the Lord bless you from Zion. May you see Jerusalem prosper all the days of your life. May you live to see your grandchildren. Peace be with Israel.

Prayer:

Father, we receive those words of blessing. May we obey Your commands today. May we walk with You today. May we remember that it is better to be patient than powerful. It is better to win control over ourselves than to win control over whole cities. Come Holy Spirit into this, may we walk in this. May we remember this, may we live in this in Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

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

Stay connected in the Community section. There…there’s plenty of places to reach out on social media. The Prayer Wall lives there. We are a community that prays for each other. It…it binds us together doesn’t it, that we pray for each other, that we care enough to take time to go into the presence of God on behalf of one another. What a privilege, what an honor to be able to do that and we do that well. So, stay connected there.

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

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

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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Daily Audio Bible this Alfio calling from Delaware. It is a great month. June is already here, and God has seen us through half of this year. I just want to call to say glory to God for my brother Pelham, Pelham from the Arab Alabama. My brother, the kind of journey that you have is a true testimony to a lot of us who have shared all of your struggles and your triumphs through this journey. So, congratulations for being able to finish this program and congratulations for making it through, hanging in there with our Lord Jesus Christ. I pray for the restoration of your family but more so, I pray for the pure guidance of our Lord Jesus Christ to guide you through the next steps in life. I wanted to pray also for Blind Tony, that God may continue to bless you for your eyes to see and for your ministry to continue growing. Slave of Jesus, God continue blessing you. We are in tough times and we cannot be ignorant of the fact that we live in times that are perilous at this point in a day that so much that is going on. The society is burning, and the society is also crushing but we are also strong together. May God give us the strength to stay together as brothers and sisters and may God give us the energy, the wisdom, the diligence, to know that He called us as one people. This is Alfio calling from Delaware. May God bless you and make it a great day.

Hi DAB family this is Marla Forgiven by the Savior from Albuquerque and I’m calling in with an urgent prayer request. I think I’ve mentioned that I am bipolar and I’m prone to bipolar depression, which is absolutely debilitating for me. My doctor put me on Latuda, which is strictly for bipolar depression. Unfortunately, with Medicare my co-pay is over $500 which I can’t afford. So, my doctor gives me samples. They ran out of samples. And, so, I’m waiting for the shipment to come in so I can get it. but I don’t even…I couldn’t even tell you how long I’ve been without it and this bipolar depression is really hitting me hard right now. I couldn’t even tell you when the last time I took a shower was, when I…the last time I did my dishes, when I cleaned my house, did laundry, nothing. I basically sit around and do absolutely nothing. I get up, I stay awake for a few hours and then I go back to bed. So, if you could pray that the shipment comes in soon so that I can get my medication and also pray that this bipolar depression will alleviate a little bit, will lift, so that I’m not sleeping all the time or just sitting around doing nothing but that I’m actually able to get things done in my apartment and just all-around feel better. I love you all very much and God bless.

Hello, Daily Audio this is Alina from Delray Beach. Jesus worshiper. So, I just heard Galina on the Dail;y Audio Bible. So, I wanted to welcome her. I haven’t heard her before. And she had an accent just like me. So, I just wanted to say maybe she’s from Ukraine or Russia or somewhere from Soviet Union countries. I wanted to welcome her here and to say that I’m praying for her. And I also wanted to ask for the prayer for myself. It’s really hard for me today. And I’m in a stage of getting divorced with my husband and it sometimes it’s really hard on me. And God is with me all the time, you know, but also I have a lot of, you know, there’s a lot of feelings, there’s a lot of emotions and just want to do…I just want to make sure that I do the right thing but this is just not that easy. And God is talking to me and I think that I’m doing what I’m supposed to, but it’s just doesn’t…I don’t know…still like the emotion don’t…it’s really not easy. And, you know, my friend is also…Laura Lee’s birthday tomorrow and I wanted to wish her happy birthday and I wanted to say to her that I really love her, and I wish her all the best. I wish her to stay with the Lord for the rest of her days. This is the best wish. I love everybody. I love you guys a lot. Thank you.

Good morning DAB this is Lydia from Maryland. I recently heard a lady on here and she was getting…she was debating whether or not she would want to tell you what was on her mind. She said she’d probably wind up being embarrassed later on because she had told you about it and asked for prayer. Well, I…I want to let you know that, please don’t be embarrassed. I felt at one time exactly what you’re going through. I don’t know why either of us feel that way. Sometimes it’s…it’s almost physically impossible, even though I can walk and get around, to not do housework, don’t care or not if I get a shower, but I never share it with anyone because it doesn’t happen too often. But it can be very embarrassing and a bit depressing. Please, know that I’m praying for you. I love you. God loves you. He’s the one person who can give either of us what we need when we have those times, to pull through it and remember how important we are to Him. God bless you sweetheart and don’t be embarrassed. I’m here for you. Lydia from Maryland. Take care darling.

Good morning DAB family this is Blessed by Jesus in Kansas City and it’s a beautiful Sunday morning June the 7^th and I just have like three things to say. First of all, to Prairie Sky I have been praying for you since your prayer request this past week and I just want to possibly give you hope. When I was a young adult, I got very frustrated by the choices that my father made and I just wanted to write him off, have nothing else to do with him for the rest of my life. And when you’re 19 years old that’s a long, long time to be without your father. And God convicted me that I needed to restore that relationship as much as it was possible to me and I’m so pleased to say that I had 31 years left with my father and we had a wonderful relationship. So, I’m praying that God will restore the relationship between you and your children. Also, to God’s little Cherry, thank you so very, very much for the prayer that you mentioned me specifically in, praying for our grandchildren and their education issues. I’m so pleased to say God has changed that around too. For Brian, thank you for your response that you gave this past week about how to respond to the chaos and the hurt in the United States. I’m a 62-year-old white woman who has never really understood racial problems until I saw why I get angry. It’s frightful, disrespected, not listened to. Now I think I get it. So, I’m praying for fresh eyes and fresh ears to be able to be part of the solution. Thank you.

I just listened to the June 2^nd podcast and I cannot tell you what a blessing it was to me. For some time, I have watched the rising division and chaos in our country. Quite frankly I have despaired that we cannot even continue as a nation. In this podcast Brian compared our times to the first century Israel. He reminded us that Jesus came into that situation 2000 years ago and brought hope. He reminded us that we can ask Jesus into the division and chaos of today. That my friends is very good news.

Hi there, all my brothers and sisters in the Lord I’m Allie from England and I have found the blessing of this community being spiritually fed by God’s word especially during this uncertain time across all the world. Turning our eyes upon Jesus and all the problems in this world grow dim in the light of His glory and His grace. I pray God’s blessing and protection over us all from Psalms 81. He that dwells in the shelter of the most high will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. We will not fear the terror of the pestilence that strikes in the darkness nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand may fall at your side, 10,000 at your right hand but it will not come near to you. If you make the most high your dwelling even the Lord who is our refuge then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near you for He will command His angels concerning you to guide you in all your ways then will lift you up in His hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. Because He loves me says the Lord, I will rescue him, I will protect him for the…for he acknowledges my name. Keep safe everybody and may God richly bless you all in Jesus’ name. Amen.