Category: DAB Transcripts

2 Kings 22:3-23:30, Acts 21:37-22:16, Psalms 1:1-6, Proverbs 18:11-12

Today is the 3^rd day of July welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today as we greet a brand-new shiny sparkly week, the first full week in this brand-new shiny sparkly seventh month of the year. And what a joy to great this week together and take the next step forward on our journey through the Bible this year. And the seventh month of the year, July, August, that…that is the warm months actually the hot months here in the rolling hills of Tennessee. So, summer is upon us for those of us who live in the northern hemisphere. I guess for those of you down under it’s probably getting cold, which is so interesting to me, but so cool that no matter what is going on in the atmosphere around us we have a Global Campfire and campfires work really good in the winter for warmth and in the summer to gather community. So, I am thrilled we greet this new week together gathered around the Global Campfire. And add the next step forward for us leads us back to some territory that we been moving through, the book of second Kings. This week we will read from the Common English Bible and today we will read second Kings chapter 22 verse 3 through 23 verse 30.

Prayer:

Father, we thank you for your word and once again as we do every time we come to this point, we thank you for a brand-new week. We thank you for bringing us here into this seventh month of the year. And as we often do we reflect back on all that you brought us through even in the months that belong to this year. We are grateful for your compassion and your mercy upon us and we are so profoundly thankful that you are instructing us through the Scriptures and touching our hearts and leading us on the pathway to peace and leading us on the narrow path that leads to life. May we stay in lock step with you. May we stay vigilantly aware of what you are speaking and where you are leading. We ask this in the mighty name of Jesus. We ask this expectantly knowing that you will lead us into all truth. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Coming soon…

2 Kings 20:1-22:2, Acts 21:18-36, Psalm 150:1-6, Proverbs 18:9-10

Today is the second day of July, welcome to the Daily audio Bible. I am Brian, like every day and it’s great to be here with you today, like every day, around the Global Campfire, like every day, together, like every day. And I am thrilled that we can take the next step forward on our adventure through the Scriptures, day-by-day, step-by-step. Now we are moving into this seventh month of the year and continuing our journey through the book of second Kings. A pretty dramatic thing happened yesterday, the kingdom of Judah was spared from being conquered by the Assyrian Empire, who had already conquered the northern kingdom of Judah and exported, or exiled all of the people, but when they got to Jerusalem, Hezekiah the king of Israel, cried out to God and God delivered them. And we kinda left that story with Sennacherib having to go back to Assyria, to the city of Nineveh, where he ended up being assassinated by his own sons. And so, the next step forward, leads us back to second Kings chapter 20 verse 1 through 22 verse 2, today.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word, we thank You for bringing us into this brand-new month, we thank You for bringing us to the end of another week and we look forward to our first full week in this month, we thank You for your ever-present faithfulness to us. We want to be able to say the exact same thing, that we are ever-present and faithful to You, but we fall short, so many of the times and You are so kind and gracious that you restore us, and we thank You and we love You and we’re grateful. So, as this week comes to a close and we release it and it becomes part of our history, we look forward, with great anticipation, for all that You have to teach us through the Scriptures and for all that You are transforming within us, for the path ahead, the adventure of a lifetime with You, we love You and we worship You and we pray this, in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base and that is the home of the Global Campfire where you find out what’s going on around here. Couple things, the Daily audio Bible Long Walk is coming up Thursday, this coming Thursday the seventh day of July. And that is, as I’ve been saying here for the last week, our own annual Global Campfire holiday, a day that we can carve out of the year, one day out of the year, to go for a long walk, a long walk with God, to spend time saying everything that’s in our heart that we just never have time for, to create space for God to fill, be silent and listen to God’s responses to us, to allow the Holy Spirit to lead and direct us the way that we should go in the second half of our year. That’s the Long Walk. And yeah, it’s something you do by yourself, you and God, you go somewhere beautiful, near or far, just beautiful, somewhere where we can drink in what God is made in the beauty of the earth, and how that life is all around, to drink in. So, we do this alone, but we do this together. We do it by ourselves with God, but thousands of us are doing it all over the world. And we put up a Facebook post for the Long Walk on our Daily audio Bible Facebook page and invite you snap a picture the phone or whatever, take a little video, wherever it is that you go, whatever catches your eye and remind you of the day. Come share it. That open windows into each other’s lives, we get to see the beauty of the earth all on the same day and it’s a lot of fun. So, make plans for that. The seventh day of July.

The other thing that we’re talking about right now, is that we’re planning to go on pilgrimage, back to the land of the Bible, February 6 through the 19th 2023. Normally we, well, in the past we’ve, it’s been an annual pilgrimage to the land of the Bible and so, by the time that we get back from Israel, the next year is pretty close to full. We’re just kind of starting from ground zero here, just starting over, gonna go back one more time, after all this COVID stuff, we’re gonna go back and we’re gonna enjoy, we’re gonna reflect, we’re gonna discern and see if this is something that we do every year. But this is what we’re going to do in 2023. And you can check it all out by going to dailyaudiobible.com and in the initiatives section you will find Israel 2023. If you’re using the Daily audio Bible app, you just push the little drawer icon, in the upper left-hand corner and there’s the initiatives section inside the drawer, push that and you’ll find Israel 2023. Or you can go to dailyaudiobibleIsrael.com. So, check that out and we will look forward to seeing you on the Mediterranean coast in February.

If you want to partner with the Daily audio Bible, thank you, as we navigate through summertime, thank you, humbly and deeply for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you are using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996 Springhill, Tennessee 37174.

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

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

Prayer and Encouragements:

Hi, Daily Audio Bible, this is Joanna from the Pacific Northwest and it’s Wednesday, June 29th. Calling in because I wanted to give an update and also, just ask for prayer. I’ve called in about this before my husband and I, we’ve really wanted to have a baby for several years and it just hasn’t happened. And, we had someone, the Lord, prompted somebody to pay for IVF for us, which felt like a huge miracle, something we couldn’t afford on our own. So, we went through the whole hard process and it didn’t work for us. So, we’re just feeling pretty devastated and confused with what the Lord’s doing with us. And there’s a few other things, we’re, money has been really tight lately and trying not to be anxious about it but just ask the Lord for help and trust Him. And that’s hard. And been other health thing, my husband was recently diagnosed with sleep apnea which felt like a victory because we understand why he’s so tired all the time and why things are hard for him. Like getting up and doing regular stuff. But there’s a long wait to get the CPAP machine that will help him. So, things are just feeling hard right now, feeling pretty down. So, if you could pray for us, we would really appreciate that.

Okay family, so it’s Sparky. I got a wild God story. This morning, about 8 o’clock, I came out and I like to turn my DAB on and my dogs like to lay with me in the morning, we do our thing, I go through that, I get started. Well, I had applied for a job last week, where I was probably gonna take a pay cut. And I was okay with that but I had gotten an email that said, we have an interview. And I said, well okay. I get out of here, I’m pecking away at my phone, I can’t get the DAB app to work and I’m getting frustrated and so I reset my phone, thinking it’s my phone. And the reminder comes up, it wasn’t at 10 o’clock the interview, it was at 8:30. Well, it was 8 o’clock when this happened. So, I run in, panic, I’ve put my shirt on, a collared shirt, run back out, get on Microsoft Teams and the screen pops up and it is the Crime de la crime of the power company, that I have been contracting for. And they ask me, if I would be willing to take a top-level position. But I would have to go back to college and get another degree and they would pay for it. What!!!! God, but God. What!!! I had applied for that job like a year and a half ago. And I want to tell you, God moves, God speaks, our prayers matter. Good Lord, I love you guys. I just, it’s a God moment, be patient. Pray with Him.

Daily Audio Bible, it’s Quiet Confidence, can you please pray for me. Pray that God would take away all the fear, all the anxiety, and that He would heal my mental health, that I can help my family again. My husband is the only one that’s working right now. And it’s been a strain on our family. I just need my mind healed. I just ask that God would just restore to me, the joy of my salvation. I just don’t know how this happened. But I know that I need help. Pray for my husband’s health and he’s battling Greys Disease. That God would just restore everything, that the enemy has tried to steal. That He would restore my family and He would restore my marriage. That He would strengthen my walk with Him. The devil keeps telling me that I’ve back slide, that I’m going to hell. But I love Jesus, I confess Him as Lord and Savior and I just want God to just heal my mind. That He would just please heal my mind and restore my mind. Whatever it takes.

Hey, Daily Audio Bible, it’s Dr. John from Jordan, New York. Susan from Canada, God’s Yellow Flower, I heard you talk about going through the fire and having these difficulties and not minding because it encouraged other people, and I know exactly what you mean, because that’s what I went through last summer with my eyes and encouraging people with the…the blessings that I had from God. And so, yes, it is a blessing to go through trials when you can encourage each other and encourage one another. So, Heavenly Father, please continue to heal Susan and bring her through this trial. We thank You for her wonderful attitude, we thank You for her prayers. She is a blessing to us. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Daily Audio Bible, I have urgent prayers for my brother-in-law Carl. He just found out yesterday that his oldest son, John Carl, was found dead in and Airbnb, in Mexico. John has had problems with drug use in the past and it’s assuming that it’s an accidental overdose, but Carl has to go down to identify his son. He just lost his mother last month, my mother-in-law passed, that was a good death. She was able to be around family. It was her time. She was 87 years old and she passed peacefully with her loved ones around. This is not. Please pray for Carl and all of his family, that God will give him peace as he goes through these trials. Thank you, Dr. John, signing off.

Hello family, this is Paula, The Child Advocate from the LA area, calling with a message for Travis. Travis your prayer about becoming a pastor and you thought you were maybe too old or not smart enough, it really resonated with me, because when I was in my 40s, God was calling me to be a principal at a Catholic School. And I said, no Lord, it’s not me, too old, can’t do it, not smart enough. But God didn’t stop and at age 50, I finally answered the call, went back to school to get my Masters and became principal. And I look back now thinking, why didn’t answer that call when I was in my 40s. So, the message for you is, if God is calling you, don’t worry about it, just answer the call. He will provide what you need, you are smart enough and you are not too old by any means. So, my prayers are for you Travis. I know that you can do it. If it’s from the Lord, then you can do this. And family, I also have a quick prayer, I would like to ask of you, I put on the Prayer Wall, a young man named Angel, who went through a brain operation for a brain tumor. He was doing well. Came home for five days, fell, now they’ve discovered the tumor is back and it’s spread through his bones. His wife is due with their second child in a week and they desperately need a miracle. Please family, pray for Angel, he’ll be in the hospital for 30 days getting radiation. Thank you so much family. I know I can count on all of you. Take care.

2 Kings 18:13-19:37, Acts 21:1-17, Psalms 149:1-9, Proverbs 18:8

Today is the 1^st day of July welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. Welcome to a brand-new shiny sparkly month, the 7^th month of the year and the 182^nd day of the year. So, here we are launching into the 7^th month. We have crossed through essentially the halfway point in terms of months for sure. And, so, here we are. I guess we could consider this the back half, and there is a lot in front of us. And, so, let us dive in and take the next step forward. That next step leads us back into the book of second Kings. We kind of ended the month of June just imagining the fact that 10 of the tribes of Israel are gone. Like, the kingdom of Israel is…is gone. The people of been deported into exile, the 10 tribes of the north when the Assyrian Empire conquered them. So, let’s take the next step forward and see what happens next. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Second Kings chapter 18 verse 13 through 19 verse 37.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of second Kings we’ve continued this advance by the Assyrian Empire and King Sennacherib. They had conquered Israel, the northern kingdom, the 10 tribes in the north and were continuing their conquest southward through the land with the intention of also overcoming the kingdom of Judah and sending them into exile the same way. So, as the story goes, Sennacherib  captures the city of Lachish or La-chish and this…this was a walled fortified city. Like this was second only to Jerusalem and its defenses. And, so, the Assyrians captured the city and then send on an envoy to Jerusalem with essentially an intimidation tactic. And, so, they go outside the walls and some officials come to meet with them to get the message and they begin to speak with them and it is a message of intimidation, which essentially is, “what…what makes you think you can survive this? What…what are you relying on the makes you think you’re going to get away from us because you’re not? Who has ever withstood an attack from the Assyrian Empire? What place that we’ve ever gone did we not conquer and destroy? So, what would make you think that you’re gonna survive? Is it your God? Your God? Has any other God stood in the way of the king of Assyria?” You can just kind here the taunting and intimidation involved. And then the officials are like, speak to us in Aramaic, not in Hebrew so the people don’t understand. But that just makes the envoys from Sennacherib shout out to everybody in a language they can understand, in the Hebrew language to surrender so to like…to demoralize the people with inside the city. “Come out, surrender. You will live. You can stay here. You __. I’ll let you come back. And you’re gonna have to move but I’ll move you somewhere good, somewhere like this. You can keep your life you can keep your family. Surrender to me. Don’t be deceived by your king. Don’t be deceived by Hezekiah, thinking that the Lord is going to save you. No God has saved any country that we’ve invaded. Come out and surrender. Otherwise, you’re going to be trapped in there eating your own poop and drinking your own pee.” Totally demoralizing. If you are within the city walls trapped preparing for a siege surrounded outmanned outnumbered outgunned or out sordid and then this campaign of intimidation and taunting and arrogance comes. I mean sometimes that’s the thing that can take us out, the voice of intimidation, the accusation, the arrogance. And, so, king Hezekiah eventually gets the news, the word of all this and there’s sackcloth and ashes. And then there’s this beautiful scene of Hezekiah who was a good king, a good, good, reforming king in the land of Judah, the kingdom of Judah. He goes into the Lord’s temple with the letter, the second form of intimidation. He spreads this out before the Lord. Like right here on this page, that’s the taunting voice, that is the arrogance being spoken against you, Lord. It’s really actually a beautifully humble acknowledgment. I mean Hezekiah’s like the things that they’re saying our true as far as the destruction that has been left in their wake. Like they have destroyed everything they have attacked, and we truly are powerless to sustain or survive this without you, Lord. Sentiments inside of a prayer that we’ve probably prayed at one point or another. And then they send word to the prophet Isaiah asking for prayer. And Isaiah sends a message back from the Lord that relying on the Lord is actually a safe thing to do. The only safe thing to do at all in this scenario, and the Lord will not deny his people. And, so, Isaiah gives this message of confidence that there is a future for Judah, and that this isn’t going to happen. The Lord says, “this year you will you what grows on its own and in the second year what grows from that. But in the 3^rd sow and re-plant vineyards and eat their fruit. Like, there’s a future here. And then the Lord says the surviving remnant of the house of Judah will again take root downward and bear fruit upward. And that has been the word for our year, rooted. And, so, that jumped off the page to me. And I begin to think, even as I was reading. Take root downward and bear fruit upward, that’s it. We are always asking for the fruit of the Spirit to be present and plentiful in our lives but thinking back to the parable of the good soil that Jesus…or the different kinds of soil that Jesus talked about. To have fruit upward we need roots downward. If we’re not seeing that, then it’s beneath the surface that we need to be looking. It’s in the rootedness. If all we’re doing is looking for or looking at the fruit…I mean if we see someone bearing fruit for the kingdom of God and we must know that they are rooted. And if we want a bountiful harvest of the fruit of the spirit in our lives, then we must likewise be rooted. And this is what God is promising these people who are totally outnumbered and totally being intimidated. But as the story goes the Angel the Lord strikes down the Assyrian army, 185,000 people die and King’s Sennacherib has to go back to Assyria and in short order, he is assassinated by his own sons, and Judah is rescued under the leadership of King Hezekiah and the prophetic voice of Isaiah. And it will take a little bit of time and a totally different Empire to eventually carry Judah into exile. But we will follow that story and see how it all goes down in the days ahead.

And then there’s this really heartbreaking scene in the book of Acts today where the apostle Paul is on his way to Jerusalem and everywhere he stops people are warning them not to go up to Jerusalem. I mean, he’s a lightning rod at this point. Paul is a Pharisee who was educated in Jerusalem, who was zealous for the Mosaic law, who was absolutely against the name of Jesus, and he’s done an about-face and is moving in a completely just different direction. And, so, the Jewish people look at Paul as a heretic, as somebody who has actually left his faith, somebody who was saying that Gentiles can be involved in this story, like somebody who needs to die. And, so, as Paul is making his way back to Jerusalem he’s been warned, even prophetically warned that captivity and chains and suffering are in his future. And, so, everywhere he goes he’s like on his goodbye tour on his way back to Jerusalem. Very, very, very sad. And, so, people are pleading with him today and he’s saying like it’s breaking my heart to listen to you guys. You have to know that the Lord told me to go to Jerusalem and I know what’s coming and I’m ready. Like, I’m willing for captivity. But I’m willing to die for the name of Jesus if that’s what this takes. But I have to obey the Lord and it’s breaking my heart to see you so sad. And, so, we get a little bit of a personal glimpse into the apostle Paul. We’re still kinda getting to know him. We’re in the book of Acts, but after this we will begin Paul’s letters. And, so, we’ll be listening to Paul’s personality in his letters for quite a while. So, this glimpse of him just having a human moment here is really helpful because a lot of Paul’s writings are highly theological. And obviously we will be continuing the story in the book of Acts. Is he gonna get there to Jerusalem? Does he make it? What happens? We’ll find out in the days ahead.

And then lastly from the book of Proverbs, a theme that comes up often in the Bible. And that is what is coming out of our mouths. And, so, the book of Proverbs has a single sentence for us. A gossip’s words are like choice food that goes down to one’s innermost being. I cannot read that proverb without saying something about it, even if I’m just talking to myself. Gossip is such a destructive force. It destroys communities. It’s like a cancer in communities. When there’s this kind of back story that’s unspoken that’s fragmented that’s in pieces throughout a community, it's…it can be so divisive and devastating. And, so, what we’re told here is that gossip is tasty. And we know that. Like it’s tasty to have the inside scoop, to sort of get some information that’s not out there about somebody or even have a friendly Christian conversation about somebody else. Somebody else’s problems that we need to pray for. What do you think is going on? Well, I heard this. Really, well I heard this. And before you know it just fully creating a story without…about a person without the person there to say, no that’s not…that’s not how it went. I was there, it’s me. This is how it went. We need to know from the voice of wisdom is that these things end up in our innermost being. Like we can pick up somebody else’s offense through gossip. All kinds of things can happen through this. And, so, let’s at least just simply acknowledge once again the Bible has brought this up. The Bible brings this up a number of times in a number of ways. We’re not to be able to escape the fact that the power of life and death is in our tongue. So, in our mouths and what comes out of our mouths actually matters and sets things into motion. But what we receive from other people’s mouths into our ears when it’s gossip, it may be tasty, but it goes into the innermost being, which simply allows us to question whether or not we want that we want that, do we want that stuff, that kinda stuff, other people’s offenses, this kind of stuff, do we want that in our innermost being? Not like just something that we heard and went in one ear and out the other, but something that went into our ears and sank down into our innermost being. If we don’t then…well…then wisdom would tell us to avoid this kind of behavior.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for even the many different facets that we could look at ourselves through Your word in the stories that we read today, being surrounded and taunted by an enemy trying to intimidate us or Paul following what You would told him to do even though he knew what was going to happen was being warned, and what the Proverbs have told us about being careful what we participate in and listening to. We thank You that the Scriptures really do touch all of the different facets of our lives as we enter into a relationship with them. And we thank You that day by day step-by-step we are doing just that. And indeed, the Scriptures are touching our lives. And, so, plant these seeds in our lives. May our roots go down word that we might bear fruit upward. We ask this in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base and it’s where you find out what’s going on around here. And we’ve got several things going on around here. And by the way, if you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you can find out what’s going on around here as well by pushing the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner.

So, we have the Daily Audio Bible long walk coming up, which is less than a week now, a week from yesterday. The seventh day of July is the Daily Audio Bible holiday, our own little global campfire holiday. And I’ve been explaining it for…for a week or whatever. And it’s just a time to give ourselves permission to carve out a day and go for a long walk with God. Go out into nature, go intentionally with the idea that a long walk, a stroll through somewhere beautiful with the lover of our souls where we can say all that we need to say and hear all that we need to hear is a worthwhile endeavor to say the least. And, so, that’s what we do every seventh day of July. All over the world go out into beauty, spend the day with God saying we need to say and listening as we prepare to really set the course for the second half of the year. And, so, make plans for that. That’s coming up this coming Thursday, the 7^th of July. And obviously that’s a solitary endeavor. That’s a very, very personal journey with God but it’s something that we’re doing by the thousands together at the same time in different places in the world. And it’s very unlikely we’re gonna go anywhere without her phone these days and it’s important to remember these times, especially like a time that we spent with God. Maybe take some pictures. Take some pictures of the beauty that you see, a video of what you experienced and come and share your long walk story. We put a post on the Daily Audio Bible Facebook page. That’s facebook.com/dailyaudiobible. And you can post your pictures and your stories in there and then we can all enjoy them together looking through each other’s lenses basically, opening windows into each other’s lives. So, that’s coming up on the 7^th of July. Make plans for that. I am ready and looking forward to it.

And then the other thing that we’ve got going on right now is that we have announced the fact that we intend to go back to Israel on a pilgrimage, February 6^th through the 19^th 2023 and love to have you. And you can check out those details at dailyaudiobible.com in the Initiatives section or you can use the Daily Audio Bible app and open up the Drawer and find the Initiatives section and you’ll find Israel 2023 in  there or you can just go to dailyaudiobibleisrael.com and that will get you there as well. So, check it out and looking forward to that and in a few months.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if what w…if what we are as a campfire community around the Global Campfire taking the next step forward each and every day, if that is life-giving and encouraging then thank you for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage and at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner, or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, 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:

Coming soon…

2 Kings 17:1-18:12, Acts 20:1-38, Psalm 148:1-14, Proverbs 18:6-7

Today is the 30th day of June, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It’s wonderful to be here with you today, around the Global campfire for the next step forward. And wow, it’s the 30th of June, which means it is the final day of the sixth month of the year. I guess we are about as close to the halfway mark, in terms of months, that we can get. And so, let’s enjoy being here, kind of stretch our arms and it’s been a bit of a journey, all of the things that we’ve gone through in the last half of the year, not only in the Scriptures, but in our lives and in applying the Scriptures to our lives, so that we might continually be transformed. It’s been a journey. And so, here we are kinda stretching her legs and moving around a little bit and enjoy the fact that we made here, kinda at the halfway point now. So much as happened in the Scriptures, so much is out in front of us, what an exciting journey to be on together. My heart is just full of gratitude right now that we even get to do this together, day-by-day, step-by-step. But the only way this works, is if we take the next step and so, let’s do that and dive back in. In the Old Testament we are in the book of second Kings, kinda moving through different summaries of the kings and the different things that happened. Let’s find out what happens today, second Kings chapter 17 verse 1 through 18 verse 12.

Commentary:

Okay so, in the book of second Kings, again, so many times when really important things happen, it’s understated in the Bible like, when major prophets that we’re moving along with for a long time die, right, we’ve already seen as the Bible is…is like and then they died, for the most part. And so, it’s really interesting that something profound happened in today’s reading. We read it and we probably know, but it’s understated, again. The northern kingdom of Israel at this point, going forward now, after today’s reading, the northern kingdom of Israel, those 10 tribes, are gone, never to come back. Like, the 10 tribes were deported and carried into exile and were assimilated and never returned. They disappeared from history. Israel is over. All that’s left of the people that we’ve traveled for six months to get into the Promised Land, all that’s left is the kingdom of Judah, which indeed includes the city, the holy city, of Jerusalem and the Lord’s temple. But the northern kingdom and its capital, Samaria, was captured and the people sent away. And when people were sent away, other conquered peoples were brought into the land to live there, which was Empire building, at the time. Conquer a people, deport them from their homeland, make them settle in a land that has already been conquered, so, it’s a foreign land and here’s your stuff and make a life here. And they just kept switching people around, so that as the generations went by there is no connection to a homeland anymore. There is a connection to the entire Empire, in this case it’s the Assyrian Empire. So, that’s what happened. The Hebrew people were deported, people from all kinds of other places were brought in. It wasn’t going well, lions were attacking the people in they’re sending word to the authorities like, we need to know how to worship the God of this land because we don’t know about the God of this land, we only know about our own gods and we’re worshiping our own gods. But the God of this land seems to be upset. And so a priest is sent back to begin to instruct the people in the ways of the Lord. And as we read from the Bible, they did fear the Lord, but they also feared and worshiped their own gods, the gods of the lands that they had come from. So, over time things get fairly well discombobulated. The land of Israel had already been led away by Jeroboam, son of Nebat, right, the first king of Israel, after the kingdom divided into two kingdoms. They were led into idolatry. And so, their customs and forms of worshiping Yahweh were increasingly different than those in the kingdom of Judah. And now, we have all these people deported and new people brought into the land and a priest instructing them in the ways of the Lord. But there are all so intertwining all of that, with the customs from their own lands, and the worship of their own gods from their own lands. If you go in that direction and continue to move toward the New Testament, you find out that these people become known as Samaritans, after the capital city of Samaria. And so, when we read through the Gospels, we can see pretty clearly that Samaritans are not people who are to be trusted, they are frowned upon. They are considered other and, in some cases, they are the enemy. They are just, you are to hold them suspicious, they worship weird, it’s all messed up. They’re not true. And we see that, in the Gospels. And then, then we see Jesus making a Samaritan the hero of the story of the good Samaritan. Or we see Jesus talking to a Samaritan woman, telling her, her life story and Samaritans flocking to Jesus to believe. So, it’s interesting to look back and go, that’s how we got there. So, it went from this, to that and Israel is gone. Like, it’s hard to even imagine. At this point, as we’re reading this, in second Kings, there isn’t in Israel anymore. There is the kingdom of Judah. But the 10 tribes are gone forever. These people had been freed from slavery in Egypt and brought into the wilderness, where they were to learn utter dependence upon God. God had come through on his promises and given them the land that was promised to them and it just, it all fell apart. And there is so much for us to consider. But one of the things important for us to consider, is that walking this path of faith and trust in God, requires vigilance. It requires that we are actually paying attention and we all know this. If we stop paying attention, we drift and we start right away and start sliding, sliding, sliding, that’s how it goes. And so, vigilance is so important on the faith journey. What we see here with…with the removal of Israel, is that had broken down pretty much altogether. They began to vigilantly serve many god’s and this is where the road leads, this is where that goes. This is, this is God’s chosen people right, that He brought into this land. So, let’s not think that it doesn’t apply to us. These are God’s chosen people that have been removed and disappeared from history. And it wasn’t because God woke up on the wrong side of the bed. It was because he had chosen and they had rejected and that’s a big ouch. Because we do it too. So, that is something for us to sit with, specially here, while we’re kind of stretching our legs, at the halfway point of the year. There’s something for us to consider.

Prayer:

And so, Holy Spirit, we invite You into that. We do understand that we take our eyes off of You, we start moving in all, different directions, any number of different directions. And then, when we wake up and pay attention to where we are we realize, we’ve drifted far away and that can be just the nature of our lives, that can be the whole story, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. But what could our life look like, if we were aware and vigilant and walking with You wherever you are leading, every day for our whole lives. What could become of us, if we actually went all in and never wavered. We want to know the answer to that question. Come, Holy Spirit, and lead us into all truth. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base and that’s you find what’s going on around here and there are things going on around here. So, one week from today is the Daily Audio Bible Long Walk, our own little holiday, something that we do around the Global Campfire each year. If I have counted, well I can’t remember, it’s well over a decade, that we’ve been doing this, every seventh of July. And it is a day, that we just set aside on the calendar, recognizing we’re in the middle of the year, recognizing that it’s been pretty chaotic, recognizing that we could use a breather, recognizing that we could use a breather with God. Understanding that we can set the trajectory of the, of the rest of the year with God, knowing that He’s very, very interested and go for a long walk. Share everything that’s been going on and allow the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us, in the way that we should go. And that’s a very solitary, beautiful, devotional thing to do, spend the day with God and set up the second half of your year, that’s awesome, but it’s also really fun to be aware that no matter where we are, no matter how far out in the wilderness we think we are, enjoying beauty, our brothers and sisters all over the world are enjoying the beauty of God’s creation, at the same time. So, we put a post on the Facebook page at the…the Daily Audio Bible Facebook page, so that you can come back and share pictures, share stories, share videos from your journey. And that is, sort of like a double blessing. We go enjoy the day but then we can come back and look through all the different windows, into the different people’s lives that have participated and see the beauty of the earth, all on the same day, all over the world. So, make plans for that. That’s one week from today.

The other thing that’s going on right now, as we have announced, just a few days ago, our intention to return to the land of the Bible in 2023. So, we’ll be going back to Israel February 6 through the 19th of 2023. And going on another pilgrimage, through the land of the Bible, connecting the stories found in the Scriptures to the places that they happened and the profound change that comes from it. So, if that’s something that’s on your bucket list or something the you’ve been waiting for, now would be the time to check that out. You can check it out at dailyaudiobible.com, look for the initiatives section and you’ll find Israel, 2023 there. If you’re using the app, you can press the drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner and when the drawer opens up, you’ll find the initiatives section there, press that button and you’ll find Israel, 2023. Or you can go to dailyaudiobibleIsrael.com and that will get you there, as well. So, check that out. Very much anticipating and looking forward to seeing you. Well, the first time we’ll get to see each other would be on the Mediterranean Coast, right on the ocean, in the ancient Philistine city of Ashdod, as we prepare to begin our journey. So, we’ll look forward to seeing you there, you can check it out, well, you can check it out where I just said, so check it out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if what’s happening here brings life and good news and hope to you, then thank you for your partnership, as we move through summertime, thank you. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button, in the upper right-hand corner, or the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996 Springhill, Tennessee 37174.

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

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

Prayer and Encouragements:

Good day, Daily Audio Bible family. It’s been a very long time. This is Pamela, the pastor’s wife/teacher, from Huntington, New York. Thank God, I’m still listening. It’s been, oh my goodness, at least 13 to 14 years. I’ve been reading through the Bible. I thank God for Pastor Brian and his lovely wife Jill and all of you, my brothers and sisters in Christ. I was just listening and I heard Clarabell, calling from United Kingdom, I believe. And your story touched me. I can relate to your story. I was able to conceive children, but I wasn’t able to hold them. I had an incompetent cervix. So, I had to have a procedure done every time I got pregnant and I would have to stay in bed the entire pregnancy. So, I understand your feeling and what you’re going through. I lost two children, prior to receiving, there’s three, that the Lord has blessed me. So, just be encouraged. I want you to know I’m praying for you. And I want to leave you with Psalm 113:9 - He gives the childless woman a family, making her a happy mother. Praise the Lord. Be blessed.

Hi, this is Victorious Soldier. I wanted to just pray for some of the DABers. I wanted to pray for LauraBell who has been, she and her husband have been trying to have the baby and vasectomy work through. I’m with you LauraBell, I believe in miracles and I’m praying that God work a miracle, just like He did with me. God blessed us with a child and I was almost in my forties. And God can do anything but fail. Gracious Father, I just ask You to have Your way Lord, in LauraBell’s life and those who are trying to receive, to have a baby, Lord, we just ask You to open up the womb. We just ask You to bless, we just ask You to open up the doors and bless with this precious baby. You have a precious baby who You have a purpose and a plan for their life and they need a precious parent that’ll love them and that will be there for them. And we just ask You to have Your way. We just ask You to have Your way and continue to do what You do because You’re a God that never changes and nothing is too hard for You. And Lord, we will give You the glory and the honor and the praise. And we want to also, want to pray for, someone who has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s a brother who was diagnosed with Hopkins disease, we just ask You for a healing, Lord. We just ask You for Devine healing in his body, Lord, and we ask You to have Your way. In the name of Jesus. And the one who has Leukemia, we just ask You to heal. I know that nothing’s impossible for You. And we just ask You to have Your way. In Jesus name. Bless you DABers, bless China and bless Brian and all the people of God and bless our Long Walk Day, Lord. Bless it that it’ll be a blessing, that it be a day that we’ll remember for You and remember how You bless us on this 7th

Good morning, all, Daily Audio Bible friends and family. This is Theresa in Tampa, Florida. And I heard a prayer request today from Travis in Alberta, Canada, who is doing ministry. And Travis, you just touched my heart, today. I just want to give you words of encouragement. I really feel in my heart that God has great things for you. And just believe in yourself, know that God’s got you. God will make you do great things. Never doubt yourself, you are a true inspiration. You are doing the right thing. And you are going to achieve all of God’s goals for yourself. Have faith, never lose faith. Give it to God and you will do great things. God Bless you Travis.

Hi, DAB family, this is Jessica from California. Today, I’m calling in for Thomas. He called on the 28th podcast and I just know that he’s struggling with all these questions and all the different people telling him different things. And he’s afraid that if he gets off track that he’ll lose the job that God has for him. And that’s not true. That’s not true, Thomas. He who began a good work in you will continue it on until the day of Jesus Christ. And also, He wouldn’t have even begun the good work, if He didn’t call you to Him. And, yeah, maybe if you’re not ready, there could have been a potential work or a job that you could have done. But don’t think that God’s not working on you, every single day of your life. And he will find a new job for you, a more proper job or you know, you just gotta keep your eyes forward and keep looking to the future and trusting and believing God, that He has your best interest and He loves you with an everlasting love. I just wanted to encourage you, Thomas, to not be a doubting Thomas but be a believing, Thomas. And also, I love the name Thomas, that’s my father’s name and I just hope and pray and wish that you can find the joy of the Lord and you will continue on and get through this rough patch. And don’t be scared to love God, I mean, He’s the creator of the universe, He created you, He created everything. You should rest securely in His love and His all-powerful hands. In Jesus name. Talk to you later, Thomas. Have a good one. I believe in you. Take care.

Good morning, this is John Ransom from Budapest. And I wanted to respond to Thomas, Thomas who called in right after wonderful woman, wonderful sister in Christ, just gave him amazing, and all of us amazing advice and just wise counsel about running the race. Thomas, thanks for calling in. I wanted to share a poem that I wrote in a very difficult time, very similar to what you’re describing of uncertainty and just a lack of clarity, from 2003 and I hope it blesses you. It’s called victory.
This too is victory, muddled, fearful, tired, truthful, hoping,
Loving You, seeking You, unwilling to say no to the cross
Captured by such love, overwhelmed by such mercy
And understanding and compassion far greater than any hymns have yet revealed
Your loving eyes, see my heart, Your strong embrace breaks my fall
Your caress moves back my hair, as you say softly, shhhhhh
Rest in me. What counts is joy, my joy, is your strength
For you with your faith have overcome the world

2 Kings 15:1-16:20, Acts 19:13-41, Psalms 147:1-20, Proverbs 18:4-5

Today is the 29^th day of the month of June welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today, today and every day as we gather around the Global Campfire and take the next step forward together. And of course that next step leads us…well…to where our previous step ended and that is in the book of second Kings where we keep watching this kind of steady decline. There are generations of kings who do evil in the sight of the Lord and there’s a king that comes along and does what is right in the eyes of the Lord and then there’s another king that does evil in the eyes of the Lord for several generations. And it seems like there are more kings who led the people away into idolatry than those who restored people’s hearts to God. But let’s pick up the story. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Second Kings, chapters 15 and 16.

Commentary:

We had a pretty interesting story that we encountered in the book of Acts, and within that story is a profound lesson that we must all become aware of and that is basically this. Is their power in the name of Jesus? And probably the majority of us would say, of course, there’s power in the name of Jesus, but is there power in the name of Jesus without Jesus? Like is there power in the name itself without the person of Jesus? In other words, can the name of Jesus be used indiscriminately for anything by anyone to make commands and demands or to assume some sort of authority? So, basically what we saw today is that the name of Jesus in the mouths of people who knew Jesus had authority to get things done including casting out evil spirits. And, so, some Jewish people who were practiced in exorcisms known as the Sons of Siva decided to use the name of Jesus to cast away an evil spirit. And, so, they used the name of Jesus to cast away this evil spirit. Evil spirit be gone in the name of Jesus and the evil spirit didn’t go anywhere. Instead, it made a couple of declarations and then asked a question. The declarations were, Jesus I know, and I’ve heard of Paul but then the question was, but who are you? And then the spirit within this person leapt upon them and beat them up and then tore off their clothes. And they ran away naked. So, is there power in the name of Jesus without Jesus? It’s kind of a striking lesson because the name of Jesus gets used for all kinds of purposes, whether that be to curse something or to bless something. But it seems like just reciting the name as some sort of incantation doesn’t really work. Jesus needs to be there, and Jesus indwells His followers, but He does not seem to allow his name to be used as some sort of magic. So, those who offer themselves and surrender to Jesus and move about this world as a living sacrifice to move about this world in order to be available to Jim and His work in this world, Jesus is present. But for those who want to fake it, who want all of the benefits and authority that Jesus brings, but do not know Jesus simply want to use His name. And really, is there any other name to name drop, right? To act as if you are a certain way, that doesn’t work. There is power and authority in the name of Jesus nut not without Jesus. As the story goes in the book of Acts, after this happened and those seven sons of Siva Arana way bruised and broken and naked, reverence found all around the name of Jesus. Many people who were trying to find authority in other ways, and spirituality among other gods decided to turn to the power of Jesus within them and got rid of all of the things that they were doing and all of the materials that gave them instruction in how to do it and burned it all. There is power in the name of Jesus, you just don’t get to walk in that power without Jesus because it’s not our power to wield. We are simply the vessel for the power to flow through to go about doing what Jesus wants to do in this world. It’s not us that gets to walk around like some superhuman just making commands about things that will make our lives easier. We become a vessel for Jesus to do what he wants to do through us. It’s a big difference and something to ponder today.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit, we invite You into that. Is our relationship with You in name only? Ah…that’s a hard question. We want nothing like that to be true of us. We want to know You more and more and more each and every day as we draw near and walk with You in fellowship and companionship and in service. Holy Spirit come and Help us to become aware that we are a vessel for Your power to do Your work in this world. You haven’t given us power so that we can go around and do what we want. We are here is Your servants. Holy Spirit, come. Help us to ponder this today and help it to settle into our Spirits changing the way that we look at just about everything. We pray this in the precious name of Jesus our Savior. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com, that is home base. The other homebase is the Daily Audio Bible app which you can download from your app store, whatever app store is connected to your phone or tablet. And that’s where you find out what’s going on around here. And there are a couple of things going on that are sizable things.

First, being the 7^th of July which is a week from tomorrow and that is the Daily Audio Bible long walk, our own little Global Campfire holiday. A day that we set aside in the center of the year to do what it sounds like, go for a long walk. And we’re going for a long walk with God and we’re resetting for the second half of the year. And, so, we go somewhere beautiful, wherever that may be. Whether it’s down the street, or whether we get in the car and drive for hours somewhere meaningful, somewhere beautiful. We go and enjoy a day. No interruptions, no agenda other than to just be with God and pour out our hearts, say everything that we haven’t had time to say, everything that we need to say, catch up on everything that’s going on and allow for space, silence for God to respond into our hearts and give us the comfort that we so desperately need right now and bring us confidence to keep stepping forward, knowing that our steps are going somewhere and that somewhere is good. So, it’s a very solitary, very wonderful thing to experience, but it’s something that we’ll be doing all over the world all at the same time. And, so, we put a post on our Facebook page which…which is facebook.com/dailyaudiobible. We put a post there for the long walk. And wherever it is that you go, like I said, whether it’s down the street or across the field to a creek or whether you drive somewhere that you just love, you probably have your phone with you. The trick will be to stay off the phone during the day but you’ll probably want to commemorate your time, take some pictures of things that you saw that you’ll want to remember. And you can post a picture or a video in that post for the long walk. And all the sudden we have all kinds of windows all over the country all over the world enjoying the beauty of what the day looked like all over the world and getting that sense of connection of something that we’ve done together. And, so, make plans for that. That’s the long walk. The seventh day of July, one week from tomorrow.

The other thing that we’ve got going on is Israel 2023. Just a couple of days ago I spent some time telling the story of how we got to this point where it looks like it’s time to return to the land of the Bible and do another pilgrimage at least one more pilgrimage through the land of the Bible and root ourselves in the soil where the Bible happened. And it’s something that continues to grow inside of me in excitement about it. Looking forward to seeing some of these places again. Looking forward to seeing them with you and watching as…as we really make the connections between the text of the Scripture and the places where those things happened. It is a remarkable experience that changes us, really changes the way we look at the Bible and changes the way we should look at just about everything, giving us the opportunity to kinda reflect on the priorities of our lives. And, so, that’s coming up next year, February 6^th through the 19^th and you are invited. And you can check it out dailyaudiobible.com. When you get to the website, you’ll see a navigation at the top and look for Initiatives. If you click the Initiatives tab you’ll see Israel 2023 in there. If you are using the app, just push the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner and that’ll open up a drawer and you’ll find initiatives in there. And if you press the button you’ll find Israel 2023 in there or you just go to dailyaudiobibleisrael.com and that will get you there as well. So, check that out and we’ll look forward to that in the coming months.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible that can be done at dailyudiobible.com as well. There’s a link on the homepage. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner. And thank you. As we move through summertime thank you humbly for your partnership or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

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

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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hey good morning DAB family this is Joel out in Texas I’m a first-time caller but have been listening for a little while. Thank you so much Brian for this ministry and thank you brothers and sisters for your prayers and encouragement to me. On June 26^th I heard Travis call in from beautiful Alberta Canada asking for prayer as he was going back to school to be a pastor and really struggles with whether or not he has the mental bandwidth to do it and also the fact that he is older. Well Travis you spoke to me because I’m in that same boat. I am going back to school to pursue ministry, a different kind but something that I do not feel smart enough to do. I have a large family and I’m definitely a lot older and it’s a struggle. A matter of fact, in a couple days I have to take a test which I must pass, and I feel like I can’t. So, I’m gonna pray for you and our other brothers and sisters. Heavenly Father we just thank You God that You are in control and that You love us and that You have a plan for our lives and that You use us to accomplish Your mission. And Father as Travis has asked for prayer I pray that You would make him wise as we ask for wisdom, the same for myself in our age that You would give us strength, that we would run and not be weary in all our studies and trying to live life at the same time. And Father I just lift up all our brothers and sisters here on DAB who…some are seeking You for health, some are seeking You for finances, some are seeking You for their perspective on life because maybe they’re discouraged. And Father I pray that we would all hope and You that we would soar on wings like eagles, run and not grow weary. We love You in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hey DAB family this is Travis from Alberta Canada calling and I…I’d just been listening to today's…today’s podcast and it’s the 26^th and the past week I’ve just been hearing a lot of people just been dealing with…with mental health and, you know, I myself struggled with it for many years. My struggles with it started probably back when I was eight years old. Struggled with anxiety and depression and used to have five to six panic attacks a day. I’m really thankful that that’s not the case anymore. But I just…there’s this quote by Charles Spurgeon that I always love, and it always really helps me when I’m going through depression and it…it says this. Beloved, I find myself frequently depressed perhaps more so than any other person here and I find no better cure for that depression than to trust in the Lord with all my heart and seek to realize how fresh the power of the fresh speaking blood of Jesus in his infinite love and dying upon the cross to put a wall way all my transgressions. Beloved if there’s anyone out there today that are…is dealing with…with depression, with anxiety just know that you are loved and praying for you all. God bless you family.

Hey guys this is Jonathan from Denver. It is Sunday June 26^th and I just listened to today’s episode and heard a prayer from Travis from Canada. You’re training to be a pastor which is amazing. You’re feeling some worries about inadequacy about not being smart enough about having started too late and I just wanted to encourage you and say that all of the people that Christ chose to do his work were the most unlikely. They were not seasoned veterans of preaching or anything. They were fishermen, everyday working people and he chose the young and the old to do his work, people who had already had careers doing other things. Heck he even chose Paul who add a career actively opposing the one that he ended up following through on for Christ. So, just know that I’m praying that Christ will give you the power to study rigorously and study well and to learn. And I also am praying that He would multiply the work that you do and use it for the movement of the Holy Spirit in people around you. And just know that He’s taking care of you and He will do great things through you not by anything you do but your faith in Christ. Thank you. Praying for you.

Good evening DAB members. Today is June 26^th. Tis the last Sunday in the month of June and I look back to the beginning of this month and where we had no idea what was going to happen. Well, here we are spending the last Sunday of June by His grace and mercy. The Lord has been good. He has kept us all alive. Even though we’ve had difficulties along the way our God has not left any of us unattended too. He wakes us up every morning. He provides for us. He protects us. He’s constantly watching over us and making sure that we do not walk on troubled waters. He allows us to breath fresh good air. He continues to allow us to put food on the table. He covers us the precious blood of His only son Jesus Christ. And when we bring all of our needs before Him, our prayers, He looks at them and He gives us answers to them. All he wants us to do is to show gratitude for everything that He continues to do for us by waking us up every morning, allowing us to have a busy day, sometimes challenging days, but working through us He never leaves us or forsakes us. We have to thank Him again once more for the joy of the salvation that He’s given to us which we cannot buy with money. That’s salvation was paid for with the precious blood of Jesus. So, I thank Him on behalf of all my DAB brothers and sisters, all DAB families, all DAB marriages, all those who are going through difficult times. May His name be praised forever and ever. Amen.

Hey this is for Brian from Florida. This is Nate and North Carolina. Hey man I just wanted to lift you up and offer some encouragement. A couple years ago I was traveling full time for work. I was home rarely and when I was home it was after a long, long period of time without being home, without being near my kids and my wife and it was really, really hard. And it was hard on the family, and it just wasn’t good. The money was great. The experiences and the travel and seeing everything and building the team was great. I loved it and if I were at a single man, I would still be doing it. But I took a pay cut and am working locally doing similar work. It pays a lot less, has a lot less benefits. But it’s ultimately worth it because I’m spending time with my kids, spending time with my wife. I’m investing…investing in my house. And, you know, I don’t know. I’m not God but it was the right move for me, and it might be the right move for you. It can’t be a bad thing. I hope this helps you. Later.

2 Kings 13:1-14:29, Acts 18:23-19:12, Psalm 146:1-10, Proverbs 18:2-3

Today is the 28th day of June, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is awesome to be here with you today as we gather around the Global Campfire and let everything go, let it all go, for these few minutes. This is an oasis that we create together, each and every day. And so, when we come around the Global Campfire, we can let it all go and just let the Scriptures speak into our lives. And so, let’s do exactly that’s and pick up the story right where we left off. So that takes us back into the book of second Kings. We are certainly learning of Israel’s kings, which is the northern kingdom and Judah’s kings, which is the southern kingdom. So, today, second Kings chapters 13 and 14.

Commentary:

Okay, a couple of small things just pay attention to, as we continue our journey forward day-by-day, step-by-step. In the book of second Kings today, with very little fanfare, we said goodbye to the prophet Elisha, who had such a monumental prophetic voice in the land, as he had been mentored by Elijah, who also had a very prominent prophetic voice in the land. And so, it’s almost like, shouldn’t we see like more drama involved but when these people pass away, it’s just like, and they died. That’s what happened today, we bid farewell to Elisha. And as we move forward, he becomes part of history, as we continue with the journey.

In the book of Acts, we should just take note, Paul is still traveling around but he has now begun what is his third missionary journey. And, this, this missionary journey ends very counterintuitively and interestingly. As we will certainly see as the days go by. Paul is embarked on his third trip to share the Gospel and the different regions of the Roman Empire.

Now let’s talk about us, let’s talk about what the Proverbs had to say to us. Let’s think about it for second, are we opinionated or do we withhold our tongue and try to give our opinion when we feel like we actually have something to say? We can be both of those things, depending on what’s going on. But we probably know people, maybe we are that person, but we probably know people that seem to think that they were born to offer their opinion about everything. In fact, if we think this isn’t true just surf social media for two minutes and we can find that, everybody seems to think that they need to share their opinion about everything, as if the world is holding its breath for that post. Or we find ourselves in a group of friends, we have that friend that just has something to say about everything from politics to parenting, even though they may not have any children and have zero experience with public office. Or maybe it’s a member in our family. And so, every holiday when families gathering is like the eye roll, you have to sit through several hours of getting lectured from somebody who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Or like I said, maybe it’s us, maybe we’re that person. Proverbs has a sentence of advice in that regard. A fool does not delight in understanding, but only wants to show off his opinions. In other words, the person isn’t involved in the conversation to seek understanding or knowledge, the person is there to hear themselves talk. And that’s how they are. They live to hear themselves talk. Proverbs says that that person is a fool, a fool. Like, if that’s how we’re behaving then the Bible is telling us, that it’s foolish. Right, but it’s being more direct than that, it’s saying the person who only wants to show off their opinions and have no desire for understanding, is a fool. And let’s not shoot the messenger here. It’s not me that is calling anyone a fool. It’s the Bible. And it says so much in one little wisdom sentence. So, it’s like not so much to absorb that we can’t remember how it goes. It’s one sentence, a fool does not delight in understanding, but only wants to show off his opinions. That’s something that’s bite-size enough for us to remember. That’s something to carry around in our pocket as we’re dialoguing and maybe getting beyond dialoguing and getting into the zone, where we’re, we’re we’re, pretty much just running our mouth. We should remember this. It’s in the Scriptures, it’s in the book of wisdom, this is wisdom. And if there ever was a time for wisdom in the world, it would be now. And so, may we heed the voice of wisdom into our lives today and pay attention to what we’re saying.

Prayer:

And so, Father, we invite You into that. The truth is that, we can say tremendously comforting, uplifting and encouraging things, and we do, but we can also say things that destroy and tear down. And we can also just keep a running commentary going on everything, offering our opinion on everything, without in any way, desiring understanding, but rather just kind of hear ourselves talking. And we’ve all done these kinds of things. And so, we can’t just point to a people group who are just foolish. We have played the fool in all of this, as well. So, we need the guidance of Your Holy Spirit, as we begin to hear ourselves, pay attention to what we’re saying, hear ourselves saying what we do and watching how that lands on someone, rather than just simply letting them talk, so we can think of the next thing. Our speech is so powerful that it has the power of life and death. That’s something that we learn from the Scriptures, it’s words that ignite actions. So, we need to pay attention to this. It is Your opinion that we seek not our own. It is Your opinion, that is wise. It is Your opinion that matters and not our own. Come, Holy Spirit and help us in this area, we pray, in the mighty name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, that’s where you find out what’s going on around here and there are well, there are things going on around here right now. But before I get ahead of myself, the Daily Audio Bible app, can work like the website and show you what is going on around you. You just push the drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner and the Daily Audio Bible app can be downloaded from whatever app store is connected to your smart device, so check that out.

There are a few things going on. So, one week from this Thursday, which is the 30th day of this month, so the last day of this month is one week from our Daily Audio Bible holiday that we share every seventh of July. And that is the Daily Audio Bible Long Walk, a day that we set aside on our calendar, mark it on our calendar, clear our schedule on the calendar and go be with God. It’s like that simple. It might sound like, I don’t know but just try, go somewhere beautiful whether near or far. Go out into the beauty of God’s creation and realize how much He is loving us, everywhere we look His magnificence, hear the life that is happening all around you in the trees, with the birds and the squirrels and the rabbits and all of this stuff, that’s happening all around us. And go for a long walk. The kind walk where you don’t have interrupted time, like the kind walk where you can have a long talk and say all the things that are in your heart. This is the center of the year that we’re moving through here. So, this seventh day of July, that has been our own little Daily Audio Bible holiday for all of these years has been a reset. The opportunity to reflect on where we’ve come from in the previous part of this year and where we’re going in the second half of the year. And to reprioritize and just regroup, the kind of stuff that we do as we go into a new year. We’re halfway through. Let’s consider and invite God to show us what the second half of our year is supposed to look like and enjoy the time, the restorative nature of just unplugging and slowing things down and enjoying beauty and enjoying the presence of God for a day. It’s remarkable the dividends that get paid off spiritually in our lives. And so, that is coming up on the 7th of July, make plans for that. It is obviously something that we do by ourselves, we go out and spend the day with God. But it’s something that we do together, because we’re doing it at the same time all over the world. So, we will post a Daily Audio Bible Long Walk 2022 post on the Daily Audio Bible Facebook page. And you can send pictures or videos or whatever from your Long Walk and all of a sudden, all of us get to share. We get to open up these windows and take a little second Long Walk, a little virtual Long Walk as we look through the windows and see the beauty of the earth, all over the earth, all on the same day. I love it. Looking forward to it, so put that on your calendar. That’s the 7th of July.

The other thing that’s going on is what we talked about yesterday, and that is the intention to return to the land of the Bible for a Daily Audio Bible pilgrimage, through the land of the Bible in February of next year, February 6th through the 19th. And you can check out all of the details about that forthcoming trip. There are a couple ways to access the page, go to dailyaudiobible.com, look for initiatives and in the initiatives section, you’ll find Israel 2023. If you’re using the app, you can press the drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner and inside the drawer, you will see initiatives, press that button and you’ll find Israel 2023. Or you can go to dailyaudiobibleIsrael.com, which will get you there as well. And so, certainly check that out. We’re excited. I told the whole story yesterday; I just don’t want to re-tell the whole story again. But we’re excited, I’m excited to go back again. Excited to journey together on pilgrimage with a group of us who really want to connect the soil to the text and really begin to understand where the Bible happened. And so, if that’s something the pull that you, then you know where to check it out. We’ll look forward to being there together in February.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if what happens here around the Global Campfire every day is life-giving and meaningful to you, then thank you for your partnership, especially as we navigate through the summertime. Thank you, profoundly and deeply. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996 Springhill, Tennessee 37174.

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

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

Prayer and Encouragements:

Good morning Daily Audio Bible, this is One Penny Saved from Southwest Missouri. And I just listened to Brian’s podcast on freedom and deliverance and how we should not hide that. That we should share that and spread it out there for other people who need to hear our stories. And I’ve talked a tiny bit about it, but over the 15 years that I’ve listened to Daily Audio Bible, there was never a day I missed, even though, I probably looked like a hypocrite by judgers and there are plenty of those. I have been in and out of rehab, psych units. I was a binge drinker. I have been married more times and divorced then I would like to admit. I’ve had a DUI. I’ve traveled with a ministry for 15 years and I was living a lie. But I looked like I had it all together. And the only consistent in my life was God’s word. So, I encourage all of you who struggle with addictions and mental illness to hang in. And even when you don’t feel worthy, continue to listen to God’s word because there is nothing like it. It is the only thing that can take you and completely change you into something wonderful, beautiful, miraculous. And I will say that nothing is better than freedom and this community has been the greatest blessing of my life. I love you all.

Hey DAB fam, this is Halo from Colorado, Halo to Heal. First, I just wanted to pray for Skip Morgan and his wife because I heard that his wife is very ill and I’m sorry for that. So, Dear Jesus, thank You for this time and this day. Thank You for everything You’ve given us. I pray that You can just help Skip Morgan and his wife and I pray that You can just put Your hand, put Your hands on her. And I pray that Your guardian angels can guard them when they sleep and everything they do. I pray that they can follow everything You do and they stay in Your word. In Jesus name I pray, Amen. And finally, I just wanted to say that God can’t remove Your problems, He can only help You through them. And because He didn’t remove the Red Sea, He made a way through it. So, just remember that. This is Halo to Heal and I’m praying for Skip Morgan’s wife. Thank you DAB for having me.

Hey DAB family, this is Zack from Phoenix. I’m calling in today to ask you to pray me. I’m 38 years old and I’m single, never been married and I would like the opportunity to be married. God has provided for me the last two years to provide a lot of healing and restoration from past heartbreak and relationships and He showed me about the lies that I had been believing about myself. And so, I’m gracious, grateful and thankful for God for doing that. But I would ask you to pray that either God would make me content in my singleness and I would be okay for the rest of my life being single. Or that God would be gracious and merciful and introduce me to my wife. And I would hope that that would happen sooner rather than later. Help me, I just ask that you would pray that I be content in the waiting and the direction of His Spirit in my life. And that I would trust Him, wholly and completely in the process and in the journey. Thank you, guys.

Hello DABers, this is K from Ohio. To my brother who called in on June the 15th. Man, heavy and I felt your pain. But as I always say, most importantly, God heard your pain, He felt it and He caught every tear, every sigh that you gave. God was right there in the midst. I’m sorry that you’re where you are. Life is hard and if you choose to live for Christ, it gets harder because you said yes. And whatever the people are telling you, yes, you do want to finish strong, but it’s one of those things. It’s easier said than done. So, I pray Lord God, give him strength, renewed faith in You. Please, give him friends, people he doesn’t even know. Those angels out there that will be right there beside him to comfort him and to cover him. Give him a shoulder to cry on, to hold him tight. Stop talking and just hug him and love on him, genuine love. And when he needs to talk, he can call upon them. And as they gently deposit words of wisdom, words of courage, words of strength, words of peace and joy, that only come from You. Instead of just saying, finish strong, finish strong, finish strong. It ain’t working. So, brother, we got you. You called the right people today. The DABers will have your back and we will lift you up. Even though, we don’t know your name, we pray to know your name one day. So, keep calling in, let us know how you doing. Say, I need prayer again. I need prayer again. We got you, each and every time. We love you and God loves you most. Be blessed.

Hey everyone, I called on June 15th and left a message. I forgot to leave my name, Thomas. And, since then, a lot of people have called in, more than I expected. I’ve called in to offer encouragement for prayer to me. I just wanted to say thank you for that. On the whole, it’s been really helpful. I’ve, there have been a couple here and there, where people have kind of just told me, you know, well, carve out more time, spend more time, doing devotions. Spend more time studying the Bible. And I am doing that. So, maybe that is the right solution, here, I don’t know. I almost feel I’m being told by people in my life, everywhere that you know, God saved me but the work from here on out is my job. And if I mess it up, then, I guess I kind of loose the job, or something. And that makes it really hard to feel secure or even trust God. But I know there are people here, praying for me. So, I can, that’s something. So, thank you.

2 Kings 10:32-12:21, Acts 18:1-22, Psalms 145:1-21, Proverbs 18:1

Today is the 27^th day of June welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian and it is wonderful to be here with you today. And I want to invite everybody to kinda hang around until the end, all the way until the end today to have a little family gathering, little Global Campfire chat. I need to tell you a story and make an announcement and see if anybody is interested. And, so, how’s that for set up. But stick around until end. It is…It’s important. But that will be at the end because we’re at the beginning. There’s something even more important. And that is that we have gathered here for a purpose, to take the next step forward together in the Scriptures. And, so, let’s dive in. We left off yesterday in the book of second Kings. So, that’s where we will pick up the story. We are reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. And today second Kings chapter 10 verse 32 through 12 verse 21.

Commentary:

Alight. So, in the book of Acts we are traveling along with the apostle Paul. And he was in Corinth speaking in the synagogue. That was the custom. He would go to a new city, find out where the Hebrew people were, where the synagogue was, and that is where he would begin, with the Jews sharing the gospel. But invariably there would be all kinds of dispute and eventually the Gentiles would also hear the message which at times caused an uproar because the Jews would cause a riot against Paul. But in this case, Paul has shared the gospel with the Hebrew people. It has been rejected. And he finally has to like tell them that your blood is on your own heads. Like I have told you what I came to tell you, what God told me to tell you and you have not received it. So, I have given the message. I’m innocent of this. Your blood is on your own heads. I’m going to the Gentiles. And it’s such a fascinating story because going to the Gentiles wasn’t like to leave Corinth and go somewhere else and it wasn’t even to go to another part of town where the Gentiles were. It was to go next door to the synagogue to the home of the person named Titius Justus who was a Gentile who believed. And, so, Paul moves next door and continues to share the same message that he had been teaching. Again, we have another example of what it looked like at the time of the development of the church and the initial spread of the gospel throughout the Roman Empire. And again, I point out that we often have this rose-colored view of the book of Acts as the time that we need to get back to. And that is fine and good, but we often idealize the time. Once again, we are being shown that pretty much wherever Paul goes, it’s sort of the same thing. He’s being opposed, which means the gospel is being opposed and rejected even as it’s being accepted. And everywhere he goes, there is conflict that seems to arise around it. Sometimes he gets run out of town. Sometimes he gets beaten up. Sometimes he gets put in prison. Sometimes he gets away clean. Like, but it’s always a bit of an uproar everywhere that the gospel is going as things are developing. We can understand some of the things that people who were hearing the gospel would need to face and would need to wrestle with in their own faith to come to faith in Jesus, but we also need to understand that this is what it looks like when one kingdom pushes up against another kingdom. What we’re watching is a spiritual battle that ultimately manifests itself in people’s actions and decisions and choices. And, so, as we see the kingdom of God advancing in the book of Acts we also see that it is opposed in the book of Acts and throughout the rest of the New Testament which should give us at least a little bit of context and interpretation in our own lives. We’re a part of the same mission, like the exact same mission, to go into all the world and preach the good news to every creature, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Yes, it is the good news. It is the hope of humanity, but it is bringing light into the darkness and what is in the dark wants to remain hidden in the dark and not exposed to the light even though being exposed to the light is the pathway to freedom. Like there’s nothing left to hide, which is freedom. Let’s not forget this as we continue our journey through the book of Acts, but let’s not forget this as we live our lives when we find ourselves opposed, especially when it’s for the gospel. Like we’ve been told over and over and over that that’s generally what we should expect. Let’s not forget that as we continue to be a light in a very dark world.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit, we invite you into that. And certainly, we can boil this down to the fact that we need to share the gospel more, anything like that. But it’s more that we become aware and understand what is going on here and become more and more aware of how truly utterly dependent on you we are as we walk this journey of faith. We are lost without your leadership and guidance, and we are confused when we run into opposition. And, so, come Holy Spirit bringing comfort to us as we begin to open our eyes and see what’s really going on here. Help us to stay focused on that we pray. In the mighty name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

Okay. So, I was mentioning for everyone to kinda hang around here to the end for a story that leads to an important announcement. So, here’s the story. There was a year, it was a year called 2020. A year probably unlike any other year that any of us who are alive today ever saw before. There had been rumors of a virus going around. There were also rumors that it was starting to spread and was potentially dangerous. But other than it being just kind of it being in the news and an awareness of it the year began like any other year. We started a new journey across the year and through the Bible on the first day of January like we do every year. And for about the previous decade, the way that the year shaped up, we would be spending a couple of weeks in the land of the Bible, in the land of Israel and broadcasting from Israel and hosting all kinds of pictures from all the different places in Israel. And 2020 was no different. We got on the big plane that takes human beings across oceans and landed in Rome for a couple of days to do some filming there around the apostle Paul, and these rumors about this virus had a name, Corona, Corona virus, the thing we call Covid 19 now, like as…as a routine was called the coronavirus as I recall it. And there was…there was a bunch of buzz about this in Italy. Like…like the rumor was this virus has made it to Italy and is like taking over, just spreading really, really fast. And didn’t think much about it, just kind of went through the couple of days that we had there and then were able to board another big plane and fly from Rome to Tel Aviv in Israel and prepare for our pilgrimage, our annual journey through the land of the Bible. Within a couple of days of landing in Israel, Italy was on lock down. Like nobody in, nobody out kind of thing, which was sort of a first for me ever really seeing that before. But we were all thinking, wait a second, we were just there. Like we were just there. What are the implications here? What is…what is going on? What are we supposed to think? And at the time there wasn’t a whole lot to think. There wasn’t a whole lot to know. There wasn’t some kind of test. It was like the beginning of something that I think most of us didn’t think was gonna be that big of a deal. And, so, we went about our business, the journey of a pilgrimage through the land of the Bible and we began to travel through the land, even as news of this kind of coronavirus continued to…to build momentum. But we’re on this pilgrimage and we’re all over the land of Israel. So, it’s not like we’re constantly tethered to technology, where we’re constantly checking the news and hearing all the latest because everyone was immersing themselves in what we were doing, which was to immerse ourselves in the Scriptures where the Scriptures happened. So, we ended up successfully completing that journey. And obviously you got to go home. So, everybody got on big planes and went back to where they came from. We got on a big plane and ended up back in the rolling hills of Tennessee in Nashville where we live. And it’s typically at that point that the jet lag begins, it pounds you for a couple of days. You just don’t know where you are anymore and your whole-body clock is twisted off a little bit and…but this was still in the news. But within a couple of weeks, it was the news and the United States where I live was going on lock down. We were going to take a two-week break. We were all going to try to do the best we could to distance ourselves from each other and just kind of stay in our own family units. And it was for an introvert like me sort of exciting, sort of like, I don’t have to feel guilty about this, can just be here where I am and clear the calendar. And everybody has to do this. And, so, let’s do this. And it was like interesting. And you could go out, right, all over the world like for essential things. Like you could go out, but for some reason we couldn’t find…like there was nowhere to get any kind of paper products -  paper plates, paper towels, toilet paper - empty shelves across the country, probably across the world, but across the country. And it was just this weird thing where the general thought was this is a weird thing that’s gonna last a couple of weeks. We just need to let this kind of blow over. And as we now know it didn’t just blow over. And, so, we spent a good portion of 2020 isolated in some way or another, and the effects of what were going on were certainly changing the way people work, the way people interact. All kinds of things are being changed and I think we’re still kind of…kind of feeling some of those repercussions, but it…it changed things. And as 2020 got into its latter portion of the year, 2021 looked pretty uncertain, especially for something like a pilgrimage to the land of the Bible. And, so, for the first time we cancelled, we called it off, we had to postpone thinking that we would punt a year. And that year became two years and we decided not to continue in 2022. There were just all kinds of rules and regulations and like all over the world. Like everything was kinda discombobulated about how you could leave the country you were in and arrive in another country and how after you left that other country you would be able to arrive back in your…in your homeland. And these things were sort of shifting and changing quite a bit. It was kind of unstable. And within the Global Campfire community with the Daily Audio Bible here we’re all over the world, we’re all over the map. And, so, just trying to handle those kinds of logistics was overwhelming. It was just like, this isn’t wise. We should try to be wise and caring and loving and compassionate and wise. And that was going to continue, actually indefinitely. I was not going to go back in 2023 and I was starting to just settle into maybe…maybe that season…maybe we’ve done a decade of that season. It’s all lot, incredible amount of effort and energy. And it felt like just there’s still so much uncertainty about, if I go can I get back. And all these kind of moving things that we have no control over and it just felt like we’re not going to have the answers, they’re changing all the time. This is not…this is not the time. So, about a month ago I got an email from one of our travel partners who help coordinate the logistics of a pilgrimage like that and it was just a little. It was like everything’s confirmed, all the hotels, all the guides, like everybody that is the team, everybody is confirmed for 2023. And I looked at that email and I was like I don’t remember that we scheduled anything. And, so, my initial sort of reaction was just a quick email back going, I didn’t know we had scheduled anything, but we don’t have any plans, and so I’m not sure exactly what that’s all about. But I didn’t do that. I like to sometimes sleep on things. I can be slow in some of my decisions because I need to find a place of peace, like a place where I’ve seen all the angles that I can see and made the wisest choice that I can make. So, I just kinda sat with that for a week, started talking about it with my wife, Jill and just kind of considering, what do we want to do here? We can just keep kicking the can down the road and…and never return to the land of the Bible. We…we’ve been, we’ve seen, we know, we understand and it’s monumental in shifting how we understand the Bible, but we’ve been, and we’ve seen, and we can explain, and we can show pictures and we can show videos. And, so, maybe that season is over, but something started to ignite in our hearts, something sort of caught fire. And, so, I mean in a couple of years, when you have kind of a routine that you do, then there is some sort of underlying system in place, it keep things on track. And when you stop doing those things for a couple years than that sort of falls apart, but this was a situation where most…almost all of the logistics, like all of the things and all of the people and all of logistics are reasonably in place. And, so, some discussions happened and one of my concerns was the moving target of being able to go and being able to get home and what are the different requirements and how are we gonna be put in a position where we have to answer for a foreign government when we have literally no control whatsoever about who decides what for a nation. But as it turns out during the space of a couple of weeks of discernment and consideration the regulations changed to be essentially no regulations, like sort of full circle back to where we were before this ever happened. So, going to Israel doesn’t require testing, doesn’t require vaccinations, and getting back home even during last couple weeks that’s sort of shifted and it’s the same. No testing, no vaccinations, no nothing. No…no nothing. Its regular. You go, you come back home. And, so, that was like a bit of confirmation. Like, alright, we don’t have to answer for people who are making decisions that are above our pay grade that we have no influence over. And, so, that was good. But I don’t know if you’ve noticed through this whole time period like things have gotten really expensive, and costs of everything have risen, and supply chains up have been slowed down and all kinds of disruptions, little disruptions that add up to all kinds of changes. And with a nation like Israel, where tourism is a…a…a big deal, that whole industry had been decimated. So, it was like, what…what is this gonna look like?Aand it was then that I began to realize we did book this trip becuase we were trying to have a stable team in place which requires looking out several years to make sure that everybody that is the team, especially on the Israeli side is involved. And we had done that to keep a cohesive team together and Covid had canceled some of that reservation, but 2023 was the last year we had locked in. And what we had locked in was just the average normal pre-Covid increase in pricing that happens all over the world as things increase. And, so, that was…that was kind of it. Was like, we should. We may…like I have no idea how that industry, the tourism industry will change itself and how it has changed itself over the last couple of years, but we had already locked in hotels, we had already locked in all of the logistics all the stuff. And, so, long story short, it is our intention to take a Daily Audio Bible pilgrimage to the land of the Bible February 6^th through the 19^th of 2023. I do not know what lies beyond that. I do not know that there would be 2024, 2025, and so on and so forth. I’ve learned a lesson over the last couple years, disruptive things can happen that completely sideswipe your best laid plans. And when I first began going to Israel over a decade ago I would always hear people say, go well you can, you never know you just never know how things are going to be there or how things are to be in the world or whatever. And…and I always just kinda dismiss that. Like that’s just marketing. But I’ve seen it now. And, so, I don’t know. None of us know. What I do know is that we are intending to go back one more time. We may go back for 10 more straight years for 20 more straight years. I don’t know. I know that the only intention that we have at the moment is that we’re going to go and take advantage of what we had arranged for before we even knew the name Covid-19. And the truth is, I don’t know. We’re gonna kinda can step out in faith here. I don’t know if the Global Campfire…like I don’t know if anybody wants to have this experience. I don’t know if we will be having a small intimate trip or if we’ll fill up. The maximum we can do is to buses because of the kind of trip that we do. There’s all kinds of ways to experience Israel but we’re the Daily Audio Bible here around the Global Campfire. And, so, immersing ourselves in the places where the Bible happened and rooting ourselves in the soil while rooting ourselves in the Scriptures, that's…that’s what we do. That’s what the Daily Audio Bible is. And, so, that’s what we do when we tour the land of the Bible. And I’ve been there a bunch of times and seen a bunch of different ways that it can be done. And over the course of many years, we developed our own way of doing it. For example, there’s a generous generous portion…in fact I think it’s like 60% of the land is wilderness land, is desert land in Israel. And Israel, believe it or not, as small as it is is geographically diverse as a place like the United States, we’re you have deserts and canyons, but you also have fertile valleys. And like the Galilee is an oasis. But going to the wilderness takes some effort. But so much of the backdrop of the Bible and so much of the backdrop of our lives take place in the wilderness. How can you be there and not see that? And, so, I began to think, like how can we see north, south, east and west? How can…and central…and the lowlands…like, how can we see the different regions? All of this land is biblical. How can we see all of the different regions knowing like if this is the only chance, I ever get to be in this land I go home feeling like I understand, like I saw…I saw so much? There isn’t a typography that I don’t understand. Like I get what’s going on here when I read the Bible. Well there are some really really large ministries that will take like 12 buses full of people and just be this kind of massive, massive production, but that’s not really a pilgrimage and that’s not really my thing anyway. And I get my hands in the soil. Like I like to be together as a community experiencing this together. And, so, that…there’s only so much capacity for that to even be able happen. So, I don’t know if we’re gonna be just a couple of us or if we’re gonna have a couple buses but we’re gonna go. At least this one more time while we can. So, I am announcing that we will be going to the land of the Bible on a pilgrimage, February 6^th through the 19^th to the land of the Bible. And if you have had that desire or have even been waiting for an opportunity that made sense, maybe this is that opportunity. And you can find out all of the details, things that I probably can’t go through and take up another hour or whatever it is, just go through. We’ll talk about this over the next days and weeks. But if you want to check it out. Space will be limited. I mean, it has a cap. But if seeing this with your own eyes while you are in the land of the living and smelling what it smells and like being able to feel the soil crunch under your feet and realize I am where, what I have imagined my whole life, I am where that happened. If that tugs at you, if that awakens something in you then you can check it out.

Couple ways to check it out. You can go to dailyaudiobible.com and look for the Initiatives section of the website. And in the Initiatives, you will find Israel 2023. If you are using the Daily Audio Bible app you compress the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner and go to Initiatives look for Israel 2023 or you can go to dailyaudiobibleIsrael.com and you can find out what you are looking for there, which is what this with the tour looks like or how the pilgrimage is shaped - where you’ll go, what you’ll see, how…where you will stay, all the kinds of stuff that people want to know. And, so, there is the announcement. Registration for Israel 2023 is now officially open and I look forward. It’s funny. Like I…really when I first thought about 2023, when I first got that email my initial reaction was I don’t want to do it. It is so much work. I’m not sure we’re ready for all of that. But now, now as I’m like saying this out loud and telling everybody, yeah, we’re gonna do this, my heart just comes alive thinking about all of us jetlagged, weary from a lot of travel across the world, but showing up all in one place on our first evening, our welcome dinner together where we all get to see each other for the first time all together as a community in Ashdod, which is an ancient Philistine stronghold, but a city, a modern city of Israel now right on the Mediterranean coast. So, to be able to kinda land in Tel Aviv and then make our way to Ashdod and all finally be able to have our first meal together and get acquainted a little bit and be able to look across the street and go, that is the Mediterranean Sea and I am somewhere that’s different than where I normally am. I am now in the land of the Bible and to just kind of feel all that energy. I’m looking forward to it. So, if that tugs at you then you know where to check it out and I will look forward to seeing many of you on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in February. So, check it out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if what happens here every day, spoken word of God read fresh, offered freely to anyone, anywhere, anytime, if that is life-giving to you than thank you for your partnership as we move through the summertime. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

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

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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Coming soon…

2 Kings 9:14-10:31, Acts 17:1-34, Psalm 144:1-15, Proverbs 17:27-28

Today is the 26th day of June, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian, it’s great to be here with you, it’s always special as we greet a brand-new shiny sparkly week. And just realize that there is grace for this, it’s a brand-new start and there is so much for us to discover, so much life for us to live, as we walk in the presence of our Father, and he Father’s us through this life. And it’s great to be here with you, excited for this new week out in front of us. This week we will read from the Christian Standard Bible, and of course and pick up the story where we left off, which leads us back into the book of second Kings, today chapter 9 verse 14 through 10 verse 31.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word, it is the Scripture that draw us together in community and so we thank You, we wouldn’t be here without the Scriptures, they’re would be not point. So, we thank You for the Scriptures in our lives and what they mean to us. And we thank You for this brand-new week, that we get to live into the Scriptures, and we get to learn from and apply to our lives, what You are saying through the word of God. And so, we thank You for that that, we invite you into every aspect of this week. May we be awake and aware and walk with you in every respect as we tell the story of this week. Come Holy Spirit we pray, in the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

2 Kings 8:1-9:13, Acts 16:16-40, Psalms 143:1-12, Proverbs 17:26

Today is the 25^th day of June welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m it’s great to be here with you today as we bring another week to its conclusion and take the next step forward in the Scriptures. We have been working our way through the book of second Kings in the Old Testament. So, that is the next step forward because that’s where we left off. So, we’re reading from the New International Version this week. Second Kings chapter 8 verse 1 through 9, verse 13.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for another week in Your word. We thank You for bringing us through another week of life. And, so, now we are at this point where we look back. So often as we begin a week we look forward and see this week out in front of us that has yet to be written, a story has yet to be told. But here we are at the end of the week looking back at that very week that we looked at and now we can see. Did we walk with You? Did we cling to You? We can certainly see that You have brought us through. And, so, we are grateful, and we mark this moment. We are grateful that You have sustained us and that You will guide us by the power of Your Holy Spirit. So, as we release this week and prepare our hearts for the next one, we come with a grateful heart into Your presence thanking You for all of the days that have gone before that You have brought us through and all the days that are yet before us that You will bring us through. Lead us, teach us, guide us, correct us. Lead us into the truth we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com, that is home base, home of the Global Campfire and it’s where to find out what’s happening around here.

We’ve been talking about something that’s happening around here all week and that is something coming up on the seventh day of July. It’s our own little Daily Audio Bible holiday and it’s something that we call the Daily Audio Bible long walk. And I was talking several days ago. I think this is the 14^th year of doing the Daily Audio Bible long walk. So, we’ve been at this for a while. It’s super simple to participate in this little Global Campfire holiday. It’s a day that finds itself very near the center of the year. So, here we are moving through the center of the year, and this is a time to carve out a little bit of time. Some time for reflection, maybe some time for pre-flexion, time for us to look forward and look back and recognize the grace of God in our lives through all of it. It’s an opportunity to go out into nature, whether near or far. Maybe down the block from where you live is a park and that’s where you love to go. Great! Maybe you have a favorite spot, t’s a couple hours away and you carved out the day for this, a day to be with God and go for a long walk and be able to pour out everything that’s in your heart and have no hurry, no rush, not…no alarms going off, no deadlines going off. Time, space, to drink in the beauty and allow the beauty of creation to be restorative to us, to pour out our hearts and have space and time and silence to allow God to fill us again and speak back and aim us in the direction that we should go. It has…I mean I have done it all of these years and it has paid huge dividends in my life and resetting and not just barreling through like we are prone to do. But resetting. Resetting some priorities. Looking at what the second half of the year is supposed to look like. And that part that I said, emptying out our hearts, being able to just not be in a rush, to be able to say everything that comes to mind, everything that’s in our hearts and listen back. It’s beautiful. And, so, yeah, that’s the thing that we do by ourselves with God but it’s something that thousands of us are doing together on the same day all over the earth. And, so, it’s a community experience as well. We post a Daily Audio Bible long walk post on the Daily Audio Bible Facebook page and invite everybody, like wherever you go, whatever it looks like, whatever your day is like, take a picture, shoot a video and come back and share your day, your story and all the sudden we have this beautiful mosaic of our community, little windows that open up into the beauty of God’s creation all over the earth. And I love it. And I’m looking forward to it. That is coming up the seventh day of July, so put that on your calendars.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if you find being around the Global Campfire is life-giving to you then thank you for being life-giving. We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t in this together all of these years. And, so, thank you for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner, or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, of course, we are a community that loves on one another by praying for each other and if you are shouldering burdens that are crushing you, you don’t have to do that alone. You can reach out. 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:

Hi DAB family this is Larabell from the Arab United Emirates. I’m just praying over some prayers please. So, my husband did vasectomy many years ago many years ago before we met each other. Before we got married, we agreed that we wanted to have children of our own. So, he did a surgery to undo the vasectomy and then we’ve been trying for a child without success. Then when he went to…to…went for checkup he found out that the tubes had…they’re blocked, the tubes were blocked again, and we don’t know how and the surgery was a very painful process for him. I don’t want him to go through that again so we decided to go for IVF. We literally used our last savings to do the IVF and…and we had…I was pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl and we lost the babies. Their names are Destin and Destiny. We lost the pregnancy. Now my husband hasn’t worked for a long time since COVID, and we lost a lot of money that we invested in Ukraine because of the war. We literally used our last money for this, and we are in a long-distance relationship. He’ll be coming to visit again soon. We don’t have the money to do the IVF again. We don’t know when or how we will have it, but I believe in miracles. I just wish that by some miracle I could take in. I…I don’t know if it’s too much to ask but I just want…I just want our babies and I know God can do it for us. So, please pray for us. Would you pray for us please?

Hi this is Red. Hey I’m calling in reply to Brian from Florida who had a great job, has a great job and because of stress and not seeing his family he’s thinking about making a change. And a lot of his friends think he’s crazy because of the money he is making. Well, I’m gonna tell you from experience Brian I’ve been faced with that three times. First time I changed jobs I had to take a $25,000 pay cut and then I was a firefighter chief. I retired from that job and last 15,000 and then another time a company bought up a company I was with, and I had taken another 15,000. And all those times it was hard, and it was tight, but we prayed to make the right choice and God came through each time. So, when there was a firefighter I did that for 40 years and 18 is a Fire Chief in a small community, lots of calls. I don’t know how many birthdays, anniversaries, thanksgivings, Christmases I missed because I was out on the runs. And you can’t get that back. Family is important and money cannot buy any of that time back. I’m trying to make it up with the grand babies, but you just can’t get that back. So, let’s pray OK. Father give Brian the wisdom the knowledge and the discernment to make the right choice. Let him know that you’re always faithful. You’re amazing. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hey everybody this is Jonathan from Denver. I just wanted to call in and kind of follow up, give a little bit of an update and praise report. I think I last called in near the beginning of the month maybe end of May and I was really struggling feeling kind of left behind and like I had wandered off too far. And just this week I’m really experiencing a turning around and it feels like my heart is being softened. Feels like things are getting easier, feels like even when I run into day-to-day challenges, I am not forgetting that Christ is there for me. So, I just wanted to thank you all for your prayers know that I’m listening and I’m praying for you. I’m a few days left behind but I’m getting caught up and I love you all. Thank you so much.

Hi this is Pure Heart from Tennessee and I just wanted to call in to pray for Aaron in New York State that had just been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Aaron I just wanted to say that the Holy Spirit did something to me as you were telling your story and you said that you just want to walk the path, whatever path God had for you. Man, it’s like something just burned from the inside out. Not sure what it meant but I mean it hit me like a ton of bricks and I just want to pray for you right now. God, I just thank You that You are the great physician. I thank You that there’s nothing too hard for You. And Father God I thank You that when man say no You can still say yes, that You are the author and finisher of our faith. Lord You’re our creator and Your word Father God tells us that You know our beginning and our end. It’s not up to man. And Father I just pray right now Father that You would just heal Aaron, just confound the doctors in the name of Jesus. Lord, I ask You to touch whatever they thought they’d seen in Aaron and just make it disappear in Jesus’ name. Lord, I stand with my DAB family and asking in faith Father God that You would just work a miracle for Your glory Father God and for Aaron’s good. Lord, I pray over…

Katie calling from Boston this message is for you. This is Simone calling in from Houston and I want to encourage you. When I tell you baby girl that God is a mind stabilizer, He can do that. I am 46 years old, and I have fought depression for over 30 years. Less than ten years ago I attempted to take my life. It has been difficult; it has been hard. I was on five or six different medications for depression because they didn’t know what it was because it was so severe. And I challenged God. I went to Him, and I said, you know, this is Your word, this is…You said…You told me that there’s nothing wrong with me so I’m going to believe You and stand in Your word. I found an amazing therapist. I did talk therapy and I just learned how to hold steadfast to God’s word. And today, over 10 years later I have not taken a single medication for depression and my bouts are less and less and when they do happen it’s not as long, maybe a day. So, just trust and believe that God can heal you and deliver you from it. I am proof. I am praying for you. Please continue to stand on His word. Stand on His word, stand on His word. Keep coming back here for encouragement. Just immerse yourself in the word of God and just hold onto His word because, you know, He will provide everything that you need and He will deliver, and He will heal. And His word again will not come back to him void. So, I will definitely keep you in prayer because I understand your fight. And stay encouraged sweet girl. Praying for you.

2 Kings 6:1-7:20, Acts 15:36-16:15, Psalms 142:1-7, Proverbs 17:24-25

Today is the 24th day of June, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian, it’s great to be here with you guys today, around the Global Campfire as we gather and move forward together, which takes us back to the spot that we left off and that is second Kings, at this point. And we are kinda traveling alongside the prophet Elisha, getting to know him as well, as well as all of the kings that reigned during his time, his lifetime, his ministry and so, let’s pick up the story second Kings chapters 6 and 7 today.

Commentary:

Okay, let’s go in reverse order today and start with the book of Acts and work our way back to what we’re reading in second Kings. I just want to point out what the Bible tells us in the book of Acts, and that is that, Paul and Barnabas got into a pretty significant argument. A pretty significant disagreement, to the point that they needed to part company, after they had traveled all over the Roman Empire, preaching the good news, they needed to part company and continue that work in the name of Jesus separately. And the disagreement, is over a person Mark, John Mark. Though very, very likely the author of the Gospel of Mark, the very first gospel ever written. So, Mark was on that first missionary journey but in the city of Pamphylia he left them and returned to his home and that struck Paul, really wrong. As if he wasn’t fully and completely devoted and so he didn’t want Mark on this second missionary journey. And so, they had a disagreement and that disagreement left them still passionate for the Gospel and still called to speak the Gospel and in fact, to travel throughout the known world and speak the Gospel but not together. And so, we are embarking on Paul’s second missionary journey and it’s a whole new cast. Paul is the same person but he won’t be traveling with Barnabas this time or Mark, he’ll be traveling with Silas. And we will continue to follow along with that missionary journey, as we continue with the book of Acts.

But now, back in the book of second Kings. So much happens in our reading today an ax head floats back to the top of the water, miraculously. The Aramaeans, who are wanting to kind of ambush and fight against Israel, they can’t really make their plans, because Elisha hears from the Lord what the plans are and the Israelites are prepared. So, the Aramaeans find out where Elisha is, surround the city and when Elisha’s assistant wakes up and sees the Army, he freaks out and of course Elisha asks for his eyes to be open and then he can see that there are more with them, than any number of Army that is against them. They are struck with blindness. So, the key, like they can’t understand exactly what’s going on. And so, Elisha, the person that they’re trying to capture comes out and says this is the wrong place and they believe him and he’s like, I’ll show you the right place and they believe him and he marches them right into the capital of Israel, which is the city of Samaria, the northern kingdom. And some, this Army gets inside the city walls and then their eyes are opened, right, and this should be like a mighty victory, this Army could be destroyed, they have nowhere to go, but instead what Elisha instructs is that they should have food and water and be sent back to their master. That actually ends the ambushes and the fighting by the bands of Aramaeans who come to raid the land. So, in other words, God shows up and deals with the problem in a way that only God can. The Aramaeans are shown mercy, at the same time that they’re shown the very power of the God of Israel, the most high God. And so, respect for the most high God and respect for the mercy that was shown ends the conflict. And then, we have the story of the Aramaeans coming back at a later time to besiege and take the city, the capital city of Samaria. And so, they’ve surrounded and blockaded the city and people are beginning to starve, like all the resources that were inside the city are depleted and no one can leave and go get more and so whatever’s in the city is what’s in the city. That’s what they would do, starve them out, weaken them, demoralize them, wait until they were weak and until they could break in and put…put up little resistance. And so, that’s what’s going on here. The King of Israel becomes so demoralized and frustrated that he decides, he’s not waiting on the Lord anymore, because the Lord isn’t showing up and he’s going to behead Elisha, the prophet of God. Elisha has advanced warning about this and he tells the king about this time tomorrow, essentially, about this time tomorrow, the problem will be over. Of course, that’s hard to believe, but that’s what happens and it’s really interesting, the lesson for us to learn and how this happened. There are four lepers outside the city, they can come into the city, but if they come into the city, they’re going to die like everybody else in the city. They’re lepers and so they’re not being picked on so much outside the city walls and they can kind of scrounge around but they’re still going to die eventually. And so, they decide really, they have three options in they’re all bad options and there’s only one option that has even the remotest chance that they could live and that is to surrender to the enemy. If the Aramaeans kill them, they were going to die anyway but if they live, maybe they can find a morsel of food and live. And so, that’s what they do, they go to the Aramaean camp to surrender and seek mercy and nobody’s there. And that’s fascinating because the Lord had given the sound of a mighty army coming and so they fled. It’s like a ghost village out there, this blockade that has been starving the city to death and putting people through unbelievable atrocity. It’s like a ghost town out there, there’s nobody there. And so, these men, they go into camp or into a tent and they eat and they plunder. And they go into another one and they get some more stuff and they hide the stuff. And it’s like, they have everything they could ever need. And then they realize, people are still starving just like they were starving, back in the city of Samaria people are dying and they look at each other and say some really fascinating things. What we’re doing is not right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. The implications start to become apparent, because what’s going on here? These lepers have discovered that they have been rescued, that everybody can live. God has rescued them. And so, they’re enjoying the bounty, the benefit of being rescued and not having the fear that they had just moments before, but nobody else knows that. And they realize, it’s not right what we’re doing out here. This is a day of good news and we’re keeping it to ourselves. When we look at this through a spiritual lens, we have to realize that we were all surrounded and starving. And were going to be defeated and weakened and demoralized, our enemy was trying to stamp us out. And then we found out we were rescued and that the enemy has been banished and has no authority over us in any sort of way at all, anymore. We have been rescued forever and we can easily bask in that, when there are, there are people who are still starving and dying and are surrounded and don’t know that rescue is here. And so, we find ourselves, kind of with the same sentiment, what we’re doing isn’t right. This is a day of good news and we’re keeping it to ourselves. Something for us to think about, pretty strongly today. Maybe, even today, is the day to not keep it to ourselves.

Prayer:

And so, Holy Spirit, we invite You into that, we know that we have all been guilty of enjoying the blessing that You have poured down upon us, in the rescue of our very souls. And we can very, very easily, kinda think that we need to hoard that, that we have the out crowd and the in crowd, when what our role is, is to eliminate that, so that all can know, so that all might be rescued, so that we might be doing Your work in this world, telling the good news, that rescue is here and you don’t have to stay stranded behind these walls anymore. You can come out, freedom is here. Holy Spirit let this sink into us, so that we can understand that every thought, word and deed, everything about us is about You. Come, Jesus we pray, in your mighty name we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com, that’s home base and that’s where you can find out what’s going on around here. We’ve been talking about it. It’s coming up in less than two weeks now, two weeks from yesterday. The Daily Audio Bible Long Walk that occurs every seventh day of July, it’s our own little, private holiday. And it’s so simple. It’s a day that we carve out some time, set it aside, go out into the beauty of God’s creation, drink it in, and go for a long walk with God. Not only to awaken our senses to all the life that is happening around us and all that God has just showered us with that we mostly ignore, but also to regroup and reset, to actually have some time to speak out before the Lord everything that’s in our hearts, like the empty out everything that’s going on and have time to not leave anything back, like just to empty it out of us and to give space and time for God to respond and fill us again, anew, as we contemplate what the second half of the year is supposed to be aimed at. And it’s beautiful because we’re doing this for our own lives and our own relationship with God, but we’re not doing it alone, even though we’re doing it alone. We’re doing it alone with God but our brothers and sisters all over the world, around this Global Campfire are also enjoying the beauty of where they are, on this earth. And what makes it a community experience is that, we put a post on our Daily Audio Bible Facebook page, for the Long Walk and then invite everybody like, look while you’re out there, while you’re enjoying it, snap a picture, take a video, something to commemorate the day that you spent. And they’re so many of us who have pictures and videos like from…from years and years and years of doing this. Maybe this is your first year. This is where you start that collection of mementos, of remembrances, of the times that you set aside and go for a long walk with God and what that did to your life and to the rest of your year and we come back and share and post a picture, post a video, into that post and all of a sudden, we open windows into the world. Like beauty all over the earth, all over the earth, and then we get to share together, in each other’s stories. It’s a beautiful thing. I love it very much. It’s a treasure around here. And so, make plans for that on the seventh day of July, the Daily Audio Bible Long Walk. I’m looking forward to that.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible. If the mission that we share in common around the Global Campfire, to bring the spoken word of God, read fresh, every day and offered freely to whoever will listen, anywhere on this planet, any time of day or night and to recognize that that’s a rhythm, we show up every day and we begin to realize, this isn’t a solitary endeavor. We are in this together and it makes all the difference, to move through the Scriptures and through a year together in community. And if that has been the life-giving thing to you then thank you, humbly for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996 Springhill, Tennessee 37174.

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

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