Category: DAB Transcripts

Daniel 9:1-11:1, 1 John 2:18-3:6, Psalms 121:1-8, Proverbs 28:27-28

Today is the 2^nd day of December welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is a joy, it is really a joy to come around this Global Campfire together, warm ourselves, be together, feel like we’re not alone. I love that so much. I love that on days like today. Today would’ve been my father’s birthday. Today would’ve been his 79^th birthday. He passed away at 58 years old and I have missed him for a couple of decades now. And when his birthday comes up I…well…I think about him the time but his birthday comes and I think about him a lot and I think about all that’s happened in those years since he passed because I wasn't…I wasn’t in ministry…I mean, I’ve been around ministry my whole life. My dad was a pastor. I grew up in the church, but I was in the music industry. That was decades ago with no desire whatsoever and no plan whatsoever to end up in ministry. Was trying to kind of avoid that. And then there was the fateful day that I decided I should read the whole Bible and that decision led to me, thinking maybe I could say the whole Bible, maybe I could read it out loud. And that was 16 years ago around this time thinking. we’ll start at the first of the year, we could do this. Nobody will listen. Maybe a few people, but we could do this. And, so, I just did and haven’t missed a day, like haven’t stopped. And all of that was after my dad passed away and so I really…really would’ve loved…really, really would’ve loved for him to see that…that transformation in my own life. I am thankful that my mom, she was a part of the Daily Audio Bible community for a lot of years. She of course is…is going as well, but when their birthdays come up I feel a swell of gratitude because those are a couple of people that I love her very much and who I owe my very life to. So, I’m grateful today on this second day of December, and I’m really grateful to be around the Global Campfire together with you as we take the next step forward. And the next step will lead us…well…it will lead us to the very point that we left off yesterday, which will lead us back into the book of Daniel. Today chapter 9 verse 1 through 11 verse 1.

Commentary:

Alright. So, in our reading from first John today, in a nutshell we’re talking about the repercussions of unmet expectations. These early believers in Jesus had the apocalyptic worldview that everything is coming to an end and the arrival of Jesus is eminent. Those who believe will be the first in this new kingdom, this kingdom of God that would be established, and they would be the first in it and in so many ways, their fortunes will be reversed and no longer will they be trampled on and marginalized and pressed down, rather they will be members of the kingdom of God and Jesus will return and beat up the bad guys, basically. Those were the expectations. And what happens when you have an expectation that then goes unmet. We can say things like sadness or frustration or something like that. But in terms of our faith, if we’re believing God for something and it’s not happening then often we will endure and we will be patient but eventually we will begin to question and doubt and that is a really really pivotal moment in our faith journey because we start to doubt God as opposed to examining our expectations. And maybe rather than doubting God we should doubt the expectation. The early believers that John is writing to had expectations about the arrival of Jesus and that the whole…the whole script would get flipped, everything would change for them. What they got instead of that expectation was to be ridiculed and marginalized and persecuted. So, that’s not what they were expecting. They got what they were not expecting. And, so, John speaks to that. And I quote. “Dear children, the last hour is here. You have heard that the antichrist is coming, and already many such antichrists have appeared. From this we know that the last hour has come. These people left our churches, but they never really belonged with us otherwise they would’ve stayed with us. When they left it proved that they did not belong with us.” So, what would make them leave the fellowship and become anti-Christ? Unmet expectations. It is a little more even complex than that because when we read this letter, we’re reading it as part of the New Testament but as we’ve mentioned many times the people who read this letter in the first place weren’t reading it as the New Testament. They were reading a letter. There was no New Testament, although this letter was very important and passed around and preserved and captain studied and pondered upon it wasn’t really considered Scripture. That happened over time and was eventually canonized hundreds of years later. So, there were all kinds of things being said and taught about Jesus through people who believed just various beliefs, very diverse beliefs. And, so, there were plenty of alternatives, even if you wanted to remain Christian as it were. What we now consider orthodox Christianity, that was in formation. So, some of these people who are hearing what the apostles are saying and to endure and to embrace what’s going on and to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and then these unmet expectations happen because Jesus doesn’t come back when they thought he was going to come back, then they would either slink back into Judaism or…or move into another set of teachings. And we can see the apostle John’s frustration. They were never really part of us, or they wouldn’t have left and some of them wouldn’t have become anti-Christs, anti-Jesus, anti-God. And, so, into that swirl, into that unmet expectation and doubt and fading away and backsliding and returning and going away and going over here and learning this teaching, all of this stuff going on. John kind of cuts right through all of it very very simply and very precisely in a way that is still as precise now and can also serve us now. And, so, I quote, and we should hang onto this. “Anyone who denies the Father and the Son is an antichrist. Anyone who denies the Son doesn’t have the Father either.” And this is precisely what was going on as people debated and try to figure out the nature of Jesus and what he actually represented to the people of the earth. John simply responds. Anyone who denies the Father and the Son is an antichrist. So, look everybody experiences times where they’re not sure. We might call that doubt, but when we are not sure about what you think about something and that you need to maybe press into it deeper understand it better or move away from it because it’s taking you to bad places, but everybody, and it’s not only in spiritual terms, everybody doubts something sometime. If doubt leads us into a place where we deny the Father, and we deny Jesus, then we understand that that is anti-Christ. If that’s not happening but we are pressing into things that we do not understand then we are simply walking in faith. So, asking questions of our faith even when it unsettles us, this is how we grow. And John is basically saying, no matter where you go, and no matter what you think, and no matter what you explore what you’ve heard from the beginning hasn’t changed. The good news hasn’t changed. It’s still the same. If you want to go so far as to deny God and deny Jesus, then that is antichrist, but if in your exploration you understand that things haven’t changed, your changing, but the message the truth hasn’t changed it’s still the same then you always know where your anchor is and would always know that the spirit of truth is here to lead you. And I quote again from John. “I am writing these things to warn you about those who want to lead you astray, but you have received the Holy Spirit and He lives within you. So, you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true for the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know and what He teaches is true, it is not a lie. So, just as He taught you remain in fellowship with Christ. So, basically if we’re summing this up, unmet expectations can lead us into all kinds of trouble. It can eventually lead us to the point where we become antichrist if we want to follow down that path. But what we’ve been told about the good news hasn’t changed and that is home base. And no matter what we’re thinking and no matter what we’re hearing and no matter what people are saying we have that anchor. It hasn’t changed and we have the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit within us who will not lie to us, who will teach us the truth. And, so, we can be led into doubt by other people’s doubt. We can be led into doubt by all kinds of other people’s musings and assumptions but we can return to home base and understand that the Spirit of truth will guide us and we have to trust that even in the face of our unmet expectations.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit come into that. This is another really, really big deep thing. This is touching deep things within us and yet we thank You for simplicity, the simplicity of knowing if it denies You, then it is antichrist. If we deny You then that’s what we’re involving ourselves in. And yet the story hasn’t changed. We have a home base to return to. The good news of the gospel is the good news. It hasn’t changed. And, so, we can return to this place, knowing that the Spirit, Your spirit, the Holy Spirit of God will lead us into all truth. And, so, that is our prayer, and it feels like we’ve prayed it a 100 times this year. Holy Spirit come and lead us into all truth. That’s where we’re wanting to be. That’s what we’re wanting to live within, that You are within us and You are speaking truth to us and You will continue to do that if we will continue to pay attention to You and not get sidetracked by our unmet…unmet expectations and doubt and enter into this swirl that could eventually make us become antichrist. Holy Spirit come into all of this we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base and that is where you find out what’s going on around. If you’re using the appl you can find out as well. There’s a little Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner of the app screen and that opens up a Drawer. And, so, you can get to things like the Daily Audio Bible Shop from the web or from the app.

And in the Daily Audio Bible Shop is a Christmas category. And, so, the…the Daily Audio Bible family Christmas box for 2021 is in that category. And you can go there and see the contents. The God of Your Story is in there. The Daily Audio Bible Journal, 3.0 is in there. Your choice of Windfarm, coffee, fresh roasted and sent to you or our Windfarm boutique tea sourced and sent to you. The Daily Audio Bible Christmas ornament for 2021, which is only available in the box is in the box as well as a Global Campfire candle and it smells beautiful, like a…like a campfire. It brings the atmosphere, brings the aroma that we are connected around this Global Campfire each and every day. That’s in the box. A Global Campfire pop socket, a couple of Global Campfire stickers and a series of five Global Campfire postcards and a mystery item from the vault will be included in the Christmas box this year. So, you can see all that in the Shop at dailyaudiobible.com.

We have been talking about the new Christmas album, the new Christmas music release for this year that is released and fully available and rolling out, but you can for sure get it at the iTunes store or the Amazon music store. So, check that out. The entire album is now available.

And then there’s also Promised Land, photographs from the land of the Bible, which is a beautiful coffee table book, the kind of book that you would put on a coffee table or an end table and it’s beautiful in its craftsmanship. It looks beautiful on a coffee table, but it’s what’s inside - beautiful panoramas of the land of the Bible and where these story, some of these pivotal stories that we’ve read actually happened in all of the different regions of the land. It is a beautiful thing to immerse ourselves in the land of the Bible and realize this happened and it happened somewhere and here is the somewhere. This is what it looks like there. That story that I’ve known since Sunday school or that have imagined in my mind from going to the Scriptures, this is what it looks like and it kinda connects the dots in so many ways. So, check that out. It’s available as well for this holiday season - Promised Land, photographs from the land of the Bible. That can be found in the Daily Audio Bible Shop.

And then lastly, it is time to prepare for our Global Campfire Christmas party all around the world, our virtual Christmas party where we get to hear holiday wishes from all over the world, one of the most enriching things I look forward to all year long. And, so, if you want to participate, what we do…here…here’s how it works. We have a Hotline in the app that we talk about just about every day and we have phone numbers that we talk about that you can call in an encouragement or a prayer request and that’s what those lines are for. That’s all that, there for, except for one week out of the year we also open up and say you can call in your holiday wishes to the Daily Audio Bible community here, all of us who have been traveling through the year together. The only trick is that you don’t combine a prayer request and the holiday greeting in the same call. This is the one time of the year where it’s okay to hang up and call back and lets us keep things separate and put them where they need to go so that we can prepare. But we will be taking calls through next Wednesday. And, so, you can think, okay, yeah, I’m gonna think about that and procrastinate, but that happens every year. Don’t procrastinate. And I’m looking forward…I’m looking forward… every year I…we…when I hear the Christmas calls coming in it warms my heart so much. And, so, don’t leave your voice out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if what we do when we come around the Global Campfire every day, if that is life-giving to you than thank you humbly for being life-giving back. We wouldn’t be able to do this if we didn’t do this together. And, so, thank you for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com in the app or 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 or right now a holiday greeting 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 Daily Audio Bible this is Irene calling in. I wanted to say thank you to the lady who called in saying she was praying for me and gave me that Psalm. It just really encouraged me. And I am actively every day coming back to the Lord and trusting Him. So, thank you for praying for me. And for those who didn’t call in and are praying, thank you. Today I ask that you would continue to pray that I would not fear man, just that I wouldn’t fear what man can do to me. I think it’s easier said than done. But Lord…just help me…help me to trust the Lord. But I also have another prayer request. I have this friend her name is Sophia. She’s a very sweet person. She is someone who I feel like is very…I don’t feel like…I know…she’s very confused. You know, she has encouraged me to stay pure. You know, as a woman in high school she’s always told me, you know Irene you’re doing the right thing by not putting yourself with other guys, you’re doing the right thing by staying a virgin and I encourage you on that path. And this girl is not a Christian herself. She is not a virgin herself; however, you know, today I had a conversation with her, and I just realized that she was actively, you know, sleeping with different guys. She’s been making really poor decisions and she still encourages me not to do it. She says you’re right and she knows what the right path is, that she keeps choosing the wrong path. She seems open to the gospel. She has been open to wanting to come to youth groups but hasn’t come. So, I just ask that you pray for her that maybe this year I could open up Christ or her. She wants to go into the military and I just I really want to be a light to her in this short period of time. So, please pray for Sophia. Love you guys. Bye.

Hi DAB family this is your sister Ashley from California. I’m coming on here to ask for prayer for a friend of mine. It’s a very interesting stroke of providence. God has blessed me with an opportunity to speak life into a relationship I thought I didn’t have with this friend, someone I thought hated me years ago. But I’m coming on here to ask you all to join me in prayer. This friend doesn’t know Jesus and God is allowing me to plant seeds in our conversations. She’s allowing me into pray for her. My friend is sharing her hurts in her heart. She says she doesn’t feel God or that He isn’t listening, but I see her seeking, knocking, and crying out. I want to ask my DAB family to join me in prayer for my friend, that she would have eyes to see Him working, ears to hear Him speaking and a heart softened to receive the truth. Her name is Abby. Thank you DAB family. Love your sister Ashley from California.

Hi, my DAB family this is Tammy from the Adirondacks and I just…I call often asking for myself and I thank you all. I guess this community…I’m so grateful to my aunt for showing me this app and…and giving me this this entire community of brothers and sisters to carry me and my husband and be there for us and pray for us. And I just…I guess instead of asking for prayer I just wanted to tell you all that I love you and that I thank you and this is a new…his journey…I’ve been on this journey with the Lord for a year now I’ve been saved and I’m learning and I’m growing and it all takes time and I’m learning how to process, sometimes not a comfortable one, but it’s a process. But He’s healed me and He’s showed me so many miracles and so many blessings in so many ways and I just wanted to all to know that you and Brian and Jill and China and I’ve listened to Ezekiel one time, but the entire Hardin family you are such a blessing in my life and I thank you that every day because I question whether I read the word enough and but every day I…or every evening my husband and I listen to the word. We listen to Brian and we listen to Jill and I have it every day and I have you all and I pray for you all and I love you all and I hope God blesses each and every one of you. I love you.

Hi Daily Audio Bible this is Carla from east Texas and I thought I would call in to ask for prayer. I’m a single mom and loneliness makes my heart heavy often. Doing the best I can though. Take care of my daughter. Her dad is pretty…he's…he’s in our life. I’m just lonely and it hurts sometimes. So, yeah, if you could just lift me up in prayer. I don't…not…I’m not typically vulnerable about myself. I’ve taken in my great niece and she’s going back with her dad and I'm…I’m sad about that but their lives have been updated and changed. Things are looking good for them right now. So, prayers for Chloe. And my daughter’s doing great. I’m just having a hard time. Maybe it’s the season of holidays. But anyway, love you guys and thank you so much for the prayers. Thank you so much for this podcast. I love you all and God loves you more.

Hello, I am calling from Ohio and I have never called in to the Daily Audio Bible before. I’ve just recently become a listener and I am asking for prayer request for myself and my family. I have a very big decision that needs to be made by December 6^th and I really just don’t know what to do. I feel completely cornered and defeated I’m not sure where God is leading and what’s gonna happen next. I just need His guidance and His will to know what to do come Friday. Thank you so much for listening and for your prayers. They are very much needed. God bless everyone. Thank you. Bye.

Daniel 8:1-27, 1 John 2:1-17, Psalms 120:1-7, Proverbs 28:25-26

Today is the 1^st day of December, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is great to be here with you today as we reach…well…for this year anyway, the final threshold of a new month, this being the 12^th month of the year. And today is the 335^th day of the year. So, once we read today we will have completed 335 days consecutively in a row making our way here to this point. And it feels like the days are shorter because they are. It feels like it’s more busy because it is. We are all thinking about the Christmas holiday that it approaches here in just a couple of weeks. And we can see that there’s only a handful of weeks left in this year. And, so, it would be easy enough to go, well…we’re pretty close, what’s left. I get the…I get that point, I get the gist of the Bible, but there’s so much ground for us to cover yet, important ground as we make this push toward the end of the year. We have been reading from the New Living Translation this week and we will pick up where we left off in the book of Daniel. Today Daniel chapter 8.

Commentary:

Okay. So, when we read the book of James one of the themes that emerged from that letter is that talk is cheap. And then we read Peter’s letters, especially first Peter and we learned that talk is cheap. And now here we are in first John learning again talk is cheap. Anybody can say anything. If we have not learned that by now we have been probably under a rock somewhere. If social media doesn’t show us that anybody can say anything then I guess nothing…nothing really can. And in terms of faith talk can be cheap. If…if our lives are not in alignment with what we are saying then talk is cheap, we’re just talking. And John is essentially giving us a chance to examine ourselves, look at what our claims are and see if our actions actually match with our claims, if there’s harmony between what we say and what we do. and so quoting John. “If someone claims I know God but doesn’t obey God’s commandments that person is a liar and is not living in the truth, but those who obey God’s word truly show how they completely love Him. That is how we know we are living in Him. Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did.” So, if we have to boil this down, John is ready direct here. If you claim that you know God and you don’t obey God’s commandments then you’re a liar. Yikes. I mean, how much more direct did the Scriptures need to be for us to finally get this? Because it’s like we have been in this territory in these letters with James and Peter and John telling us you have to live out what you claim or it’s not real and you’re a liar. And if we just kind of zoom out and go, “well…what…what is…what is the primary goal of the reason that I believe?” Well, maybe it’s eternal life or just fellowship with God. But ultimately, as Christian people following Jesus Christ as disciples on this earth than one of the primary functions of our faith is that we become like Christ – Christlike, like Jesus. Not as a metaphor but as an actual goal that we actually live into. And this would be called sanctification, that we are being actually transformed into the likeness of Jesus, that our lives look like the life of Christ, which is not just something that can be said. Anyone on this journey of faith actually intentionally trying to live Christlike then you know that this isn’t just what you post, or this isn’t just what you say. It may be those things, but it is also everything about you. It’s the way you live. Let’s go back to John. Let me just quote John because it’s speaking as clear as day. John says, “if anyone claims I am living in the light but hates a fellow believer that person is still living in darkness. Anyone who loves a fellow believer is living in the light and does not cause others to stumble, but anyone who hates a fellow believer is still living and walking in darkness. Such a person does not know the way to go having been blinded by the darkness.” If we’re boiling that down to an essential core than he’s saying you can say you’re living in the light and still be in the darkness. Just because you say it doesn’t make it so. If you live it then you make it so. This is really a timely message being given to us on this first day of the last month of the year. We are definitely walking through the final weeks of our journey through the Bible this year. We are right at the front end of a very busy season that culminates with a lot of joy but also can provide an enormous amount of attention and interpersonal conflict with people that we actually love but we all get together and get forced into…into roles that we’ve played in our families are whole lives and the tensions arise and then we’re feeling like a kid again inside, and it’s easy for our actions and our words to not be in alignment with…with each other and neither one of them being in alignment with Jesus. And if we’re reading the Scriptures right today that is generally called darkness. We are moving through the season of Advent, a season of waiting for the arrival of the Savior, the light of the world. May our actions and our words demonstrate how profoundly we have been changed because God came to rescue us, may we perpetuate light and life and good news, and hope and joy in this season, rather than just fooling ourselves and living in the darkness.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit we invite You into that very direct message. Very, very clear, offering us much opportunity to examine and reflect on the ways in which our words and our lives are not in alignment with each other. And just recognizing some of those areas, that is the first step to repentance and change, going in a different direction. It’s just difficult in this world full of masks, not masks about viruses, but masks of pretense about who we really are because we live in comparison to one another and this brings up all kinds of stuff as we participate in the system of the world. When we have been freed from that and have been given permission to live true. Help us Holy Spirit to actually shine the light of truth and light and good news, the message of the gospel into this world into the lives of those that we love during this season we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base and it’s where we stay connected to what’s happening. And it’s Christmas time and that is certainly happening around here.

And it’s time to get ready for our annual Global Campfire Christmas party that we virtually have each year. And, so, it’s time to call in your holiday greetings to the community here that has been sharing this space and time with you as we have navigated the Scriptures all year long. And we do this each and every year, and it is one of the most moving things to me. It’s something that I look forward to all year, sitting back and listening to all the different calls from all the different people, brothers and sisters from all over the world sharing holiday greetings and seasons wishes to the community here. So, here’s how it works. We have a Hotline button in the app that I talk about most every day as well as 877-942-4253. That is the prayer line, prayer and encouragement line. And, so, once a year it also becomes the holiday greeting line. The trick is, don’t call in a prayer request and a holiday greeting in the same call. There’s no place to put that. So, if you have a prayer request go ahead and call that in as normal and then call in your holiday greeting if you want to. Or maybe you don’t have a prayer request right now, you just want to call in your holiday greeting. That’s fine. Just call that in. And we will be taking calls for the next week. So, a week from today we’ll close that down and get to the work of putting it all together so we can have our annual Christmas party.

Also, today is the release today of the brand-new Christmas album that we have for the community here. It’s called Christmas Time and it was arranged and produced by my son Maxwell and it is available in the iTunes store and is available in the Amazon music store and over the course of the next week, it should begin to roll out into all of the stores. But the fall album is available today and you get it at the iTunes store. So, check it out. We’re very proud of it, love it very very much. It sets an atmosphere, the exact atmosphere that we were trying to set, which is not the bombastic kind of really overjoyed Christmas music but the kind of music you want to listen to when you’re winding down, when the Christmas lights are on and you’re winding down after a long day. This is a beautiful album for that. So, check that out.

The Daily Bible Christmas box, our family Christmas 2021 is available, and you can see all the contents there in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. In the Daily Audio Bible Shop there’s a Christmas section, and if you click that category then you’ll find the Christmas box in there. So, check that out.

And then Promised Land, photographs from the land of the Bible our brand-new book chock-full of pictures from all the different regions of the land of the Bible in the places where the Bible happened. It is beautiful. It is beautiful in craftsmanship and should be a long-lasting heirloom where you can always refer back and go back and look at the different regions. See kind of what it looked like where the Bible happened. That can be found in Promised Land, photographs from the land of the Bible. And that is available in the Daily Audio Bible shop as well.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com also. There is a link on the homepage. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner of the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

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

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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello from beautiful Cincinnati OH this is Daniel Johnson Junior God bless you all. It’s been a little while since I’ve reached out and I wanted to say how awesome it is that we’ve come to the last month of this year. And it’s been an amazing journey so far. None of us knows what is going to exactly happen during this last month but one of the things that I realized for myself when I went through my DAB long walk back in July is that there’s no way I’m gonna be able to go through and be successful at this year unless I rely on the strength that God gives me because I don’t have it on my own. I literally do not have the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual energy to do what I need to do for God without relying on God completely. And, so, that’s my prayer request because I have felt exhausted, literally exhausted over the last several weeks and months. There’s a lot that is going on. And then now we just have the holiday season on top of it all. So, please pray for me and as I pray for you let’s finish this year strong because we can do it because He can do it. And with Him all things are possible. God bless you all from beautiful Cincinnati OH it’s Daniel Johnson junior.

Hey guys this is Tyler from Oregon. I have been recently struggling with, I would say, depression kind of masked a gigantic stronghold. And it’s almost as if I didn’t realize it was there and in a way it’s like claiming that I have light but how dark is that darkness. So, I guess that prayer would be for confronting the hurts to be able to move on a little more so that I can properly forgive and not have plastic forgiveness.

Good morning DAB family I’m calling in…I heard Diane Olive Braun. I heard your…your request this morning this is November 29^th, and my heart just broke for you as I listened to your heartbreak. And I just want you to know that I am praying for you. I don’t really know how things will work out. I know your heart is to go and see your aunt and to give her a hug and yet other family members are…are just not making…not making a way for you to do that. And I know that that hurts your heart. And…and I just want you to know that however this turns out that we are praying for you and that you will know that we are all reaching out to hug you and that God is hugging you too. And He sees your heart. He sees your desire and He will honor that. And no matter the distance God’s arms can reach you and can reach your…your aunt. And so we are praying for you today Diane that you will feel God’s comfort in God’s peace. And as you always say to each one of us at the end of your calls, Shalom Shalom. And we say that back to you this morning. Shalom Shalom Diane. God give you peace.

Hello DAB family this is Babba D in Tennessee. I wanted to pray for Crystal today. This is the 29^th of November. Heard the prayer request at the end of the program. Lord God we lift up Crystal to You Lord. We ask that You would bless her heart, her soul. Thank You Lord for her willingness to stick it out and put her life on the line for the sake of someone who betrayed her, her husband. She’s willing to wait and forgive. Father I ask that You would silence every voice of the demonic forces trying to influence her mind right now to believe that she is less of a person or she has failed. Lord we ask for Your spirit of restoration from Crystal, bless her Father, give her the desire to seek You, continue seeking You Lord in Jesus’ name. Lord I ask that You would her children the grace to go through this difficult time Lord. Pray for Your mercy on their hearts Lord, that they would not feel it’s their fault. We silence in Jesus’ name every thought every fiery dart of the enemy that’s trying to convince them otherwise and crystal. And in the Father’s name Jesus bless Crystal, the perseverance Crystal, bless her Father in every way possible through Your Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless…

Father God in heaven thank You for this time and I pray that Your words would be with my mouth as I…as I speak. Today is the 29^th of November. Thanksgiving has since passed and I’m just listening to the DAB today and I just wanted to talk about it. It was regarding the ending of second Peter. And what I got from it, what I took away from it was that all we have to do is live. The Bible doesn’t tell us to live to the extreme perfection of God nor does it tell us to live with any hopes desires or dreams to get better, but it tells us simply live well. Live a godly life. That maybe because you can’t reach your brother or sister through the word that your traits, God gave us a awesome gift as we are the gifted to share the gospel. Now whether you do that reading word for word or whether you do that by your actions, whether you do that in both, God I pray for our family, the church. Show us what we have right now. Let us know that we have been taught that we have been gifted and it is about our patients in your promise. God there’s no one like You here amongst the earth. Help us to show Your light. It’s in Jesus’ name I pray, and I ask. Amen.

Daniel 7:1-28, 1 John 1:1-10, Psalm 119:153-176, Proverbs 28:23-24

Today is the 30th day of November, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It’s great to be here with you and this is it, this is the last day of the 11th month of the year. So, when we conclude today’s reading, we will have concluded 11 consecutive months, every single day with only one month remaining. And what we’ll notice with the Bible, as with our lives in the final month of the year because such, so much changes in the last month of the year as we move toward the holiday season, we’ll also see that the Bible seems to be speeding up too because we will be encountering a number of smaller books. For example, in the Old Testament we’ll be moving through the minor prophets, and some of them we’ll read in one day. Many of them we’ll read in one day. And the letters in the New Testament we’ll run out of those and end up in the final book of the Bible, known as the Apocalypse of John or the book of Revelation and we will be reunited with that voice of John today in the New Testament. We concluded second Peter yesterday, which brings us to first John. And we’ll talk about that when we get there. But before we get there, we need to take the next step forward in the book of Daniel and today that step will be chapter 7.

Introduction to the Book of 1 John:

Okay, as we mentioned at the beginning, we’re moving into first John today and first John is the first of three letters: I John, II John and III John, that will bring us back together with the apostle John, a disciple of Jesus the beloved apostle. Interestingly, though, I John doesn’t mention who it’s from, doesn’t say who it was written to, so easy enough to go this is like Hebrews as well, like this is an anonymous letter we’re not exactly sure, for sure because there aren’t these identifying characteristics that we can kind of pinpoint down. One thing we can say is that the church fathers in the mid-second century, so, this is like, this is like 50 years-ish from when this particular letter was written. So, it obviously was passed around and existing 50 years later, and at this time it was thought, and attributed to John the evangelist. And John being the author of…of these letters weren’t disputed when the New Testament was being canonized. It’s, this is more recent where textual criticism and linguistic criticism were…were comparisons between writings purported to be from the same person are examined and the writing style and the use of specific words and the way things are communicated is different, so it’s thought that this is a different author. We’ve talked about that when we were talking about Peter though, could be a different secretary, could be at a different person who’s actually writing down what’s being dictated. These are just some of things biblical scholars and biblical historians’ study and examine and pour over in their study of the Scriptures. So, I said, there is no indication of who this letter was written by and there’s no indication of this letter was written to and so that presents a problem if you’re trying to figure out the origin and so that’s how different theories come forth, like maybe John was writing to people who already knew John, that he had written to many times, that he had visited many times, that were part of churches that were under his care. They already knew John; he didn’t need to say that this is from John or maybe it wasn’t addressed to a specific group of people because the people that were originally receiving this were in danger of persecution in some sort of way. So, anything that would identify them like to the church in Corinth or if that, if persecution is hard-core in Corinth and I’m just using that as an example, then maybe you don’t want to say to the people of Jesus in Corinth. We just don’t know for sure. I John was probably written from Ephesus, probably as the apostle John was late in his life. The letter is usually dated in the mid-90s, maybe the early 100s A.D. and from the contents of the letter we know that the primary purpose was to make a statement against a specific kind of false teaching and it’s here that we see some of the earliest forms of Gnosticism, which may or may not be a term that you’ve ever heard, but what we have to understand is that as we read these letters they are part of what we know as the New Testament, but when these letters were written they were not known as letters or books of the New Testament, there wasn’t a New Testament, there were these letters being circulated around and there were others as well being circulated around and there were other forms of conviction around what Jesus did and what he represented, going around. There wasn’t this definitive canon to sort of establish Christian doctrine. So, there were different ways of looking at what Jesus represented and what His mission to earth was and what ultimately, He represented and how it was that He was bringing salvation and light and good news into the world. Eventually, the particular persuasion that we adhere to today began to form. This was very necessary once the Roman Empire was essentially converting to Christianity. You have to have, you have to have some sort of clear standardized way of conducting things if you’re going to transform an empire to a specific religious persuasion, but before all that lots of people were saying lots of things and John, in this letter, is specifically speaking against what we, what we would now call Docetism, which was an early belief that Jesus wasn’t an actual human being, He was more like an apparition, like He appeared to be a human being, but he wasn’t a human being. He was divine, he was a God. There is also another view of Sorenthis, that taught that Jesus was a human being and He actually became divine like intertwined with God at his baptism, when the skies opened and the voice said this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, this is the moment when the human and the divine are intertwined in Jesus and then when Jesus is hanging on the cross and he cries out, why have you forsaken me, this is the moment that the divinity, the God, that was in Jesus left, departed and then Jesus body died. So, John writing these letters would have a unique perspective to speak on them because he was with Jesus. He had walked with Jesus. He was the beloved disciple of Jesus. He…he had seen Jesus from the beginning of his ministry, so he would be able to give an eyewitness account that could dispel some of these thoughts, which is what he does. So, with that we begin I John chapter 1.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word and we thank You for 11 months consecutively, day by day step-by-step in the Scriptures. We thank You for all that You have shown us, all that You have taught us, all that You have transformed within us, all that You continue to do by the council of the Scriptures and by the leading of Your Holy Spirit. And so, as we release this 11th month and prepare ourselves for the final month of the year, we do it with gratitude and thankfulness. We are grateful for Your kindness toward us, Your patience with us. We thank You for Fathering us and we ask Holy Spirit, that You continue to lead us into all truth as we continue this journey forward. We pray this in the name of the risen Savior Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base and that is of course the website, that’s where you find out what’s going on around here and it’s been Christmas time and it’s Christmas time around the whole world right now. So, it’s kind of Christmas time stuff that’s going on around here as well. We’ve been talking about the new Christmas album Christmas Time and this record will become fully available, it releases fully tomorrow. So, you can take advantage of pre-release pricing today and you can find it by going to the iTunes store or the Amazon music store. Just look for Maxwell Hardin or Christmas Time and can find it there and the album will show up tomorrow. Well, you’ll get three of the songs now and then the full album will show up tomorrow.

Also, the Daily Audio Bible Christmas box, family Christmas 2021 is underway. And included in the Christmas box this year is the God of Your Story the sort of a written version of the Daily Audio Bible if such a thing could be done and this was quite an adventure to accomplish but that will be in the Christmas box this year. Daily Audio Bible Journal 3.0 is in the Christmas box this year. Your choice of coffee or tea, whichever you prefer, is in the box. The Global Campfire candle which smells like a campfire is in the box this year. The Daily Audio Bible Christmas ornament for 2021, which is only available in the Christmas box, is in the Christmas box. A Global Campfire pop socket, two Global Campfire stickers and a series of five Global campfire postcards as well as a mystery item. And you can find that, look at all that in the Daily Audio Bible Shop in the Christmas category.

And then also, our brand-new book Promised Land, Photographs from the Land of the Bible. A beautiful coffee table addition, allowing us to kind of peer into the different regions of the land and be able to look at what it looks like where so many of the stories that we have encountered actually happened and that can be found in the Daily Audio Bible Shop as well. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if the mission here to bring spoken Scriptures read fresh every day and offered freely to anyone who will listen, anywhere on this planet, any time of day or night, and to build community around that rhythm so that we are in this together and no one is left alone, if that is life-giving and has mattered in your life then 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 P.O. Box 1996 Springhill, Tennessee 37174.

And of course, 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.

Prayer and Encouragements:

Family, it’s MaryBeth in New Brunswick and I’m calling to kind of practice some obedience. So, the Lord has been pressing on my heart to call in and speak what he wants me to believe. And I was kind of procrastinating as you guys know I like to do. And of course, my DAB app stopped, and I couldn’t get it started again so I said “okay, okay, I get it.” So, this is what I am to call in and say and believe me it’s hard. Father, I know Shelley is a seed of your righteous. I acknowledge that Heather is the seed of one of Your righteous. I acknowledge that April is the seed of one of your righteous. And as such I claim, along with their mothers’ prayers, that they will be delivered. In Jesus name, Amen. Now, if you guys could all, kind of pick-up there and believe with real faith and real belief, I would really appreciate it. The Lord is working on me, He’s getting me there. But I’m not there yet but I have noticed over the months that I’ve been with you guys that when He convicts me to do something, particularly to call in and pray for someone and I don’t, immediately I hear someone else pray exactly what He told me to pray. And He’s showing me that I am not going to stop His will but I am gonna stop my blessing. So, keep me up, keep me lifted up folks and get me through this cause this one’s rough, this one’s really rough. Thanks, remember it’s God’s love in us to the world. Because love truly does change everything. I believe it, I believe it, I believe it, I believe it, I believe it, I really believe it, I’m trying to believe it, I believe it.

This is Susan from Bryton in England. I recently attended the funeral of my father and at the end of the reception that we had for him, somebody approached me and said, “do you remember me” and I didn’t. And it turned out to be somebody I had known 40 years ago, a man called Johnny. And Johnny was a very troubled boy when I knew him as a teenager. He was always in trouble with the police and to be honest most people avoided him because he was just bad news. He did spend some time in a youth offenders’ institution as well. And then, later on he settled down a bit and seemed to be on the straight and narrow for a while but then tragically lost his partner very young, she died very suddenly. Anyway, he introduced himself, I didn’t recognize him at first. And then we sat down and had a chat during the reception of my father’s funeral. So, we had lots of interruptions and things, but he told me that he was still very lost and all over the place, that, those were his words not mine. And he told me he was developing an interest in Wicca, which I understand a form of witchcraft. Anyway, it was a marvelous opportunity to very quickly try and point the way to Jesus. And I did my best in the short time that I had to share my testimony and how my life had been changed by following Christ. I just wondered if the Daily Audio Bible community could stand with me and reach out to Johnny and see if we could bring him back from the brink. Thank you.

Hi everyone, it’s Lisa the Encourager, I hope you all are having a beautiful day. I’m calling today to pray for those that suffer from anxiety. And I’m just praying that God will help you through this season of the holidays. So, let’s all pray together for our friends that suffer from anxiety or depression. Dear God, I pray for these people, these loved ones of ours that are suffering Lord. I’m so sorry for their pain God, I’m so sorry for what they go through. I just pray God that you would help those, that You put people in their lives that can come alongside them and support them and love them and hug them and people that aren’t necessarily there to fix the issues or the anxiety but just someone that is there to support them and love them and give them the resources that you God, can help them with. Lord, and we just pray that You will just bless them during the holidays that we know that sometimes it can be very numbing or very difficult to want to get out of bed or difficult to want to get out of the house and see everyone else is happiness when their struggling deep inside, God. So, I just pray that You God will help them with those struggles that You God will help the people in our Daily Audio Bible community. And the ones that are around this campfire right now listening to me God, I pray that You will help them. That You will just be there for them and put people in their lives again Lord, that can support them and love them. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. I love you.

Hi DAB family this is Simple and Still and I’m calling in my November thanks. Thank you, Brian and Jill, for this ministry. Thank you for hearing and listening and obeying God’s voice in your life and following the leadings of the Holy Spirit. So many lives are touched daily, and I can say for my it’s been transformative in my faith. Listening daily and so thank you. And with that I want to ask for prayer for my ex-husband’s uncle passed away a couple weeks ago and so for his family, he has a wife and two children that are teenagers or young adults and so please pray for them as they mourn the loss of their husband, father, uncle, and we just got word two days ago on Thanksgiving that one of my boyfriend’s cousins had passed away in his sleep, a young man, only 18 turning 19 years old. So, there’s just a lot of grief and I pray that God comfort and that He work through these most sad scenarios and…and that family would be drawn close to God through these times, close to one another, but mostly close to Him and that our families would be saved. And so, I thank you for your prayers. I thank you for the word and the encouragement that is shared, and I praise God for each of you, those that call in, those that don’t. I just covet your prayers and I’m so grateful for you all. God Bless you.  

Good morning, this is Jeannie from Virginia. I’m calling with a story and a request. I’m a physical therapist, I’ve worked for 37 years now with older people that’s been the bulk of my career. I currently work for a program that we seek to help seniors age in place at home. They qualify for nursing home admission, but they and their families want to keep them at home. So, we provide support in the way of transportation, healthcare therapy, homecare support, etc. Yesterday, one of our patients, towards the end of the day, when it was time to get on the bus to start heading towards home began to cry out in pain, her knew hurt, her ankle hurt. I’m pretty sure I’ve broken it. I hope I don’t have to be in a wheelchair. And as I went over to her and started questioning her and assessing her, I helped her to her feet. We started walking together with me supporting her and I questioned her about the day before which was Thanksgiving Day. She shared that she had spent it alone, that she had made some deli turkey and opened a can of sweet potatoes to try to make a Thanksgiving meal. But as she continued to share her walking normalized. In other words, there was no visible pain. She was walking perfectly fine, but it was a physical manifestation of emotional pain. She also shared that a local church had told her they were gonna bring her Thanksgiving feast and they didn’t. So, my challenge and my request is, please reach out to the least of these that are in your community or in your circle of friends. Please reach out and be sure that they are having their needs met. Whether it’s conversation whether it’s food. And please, I beg you, if you’re part of a church that reaches out with programs like this, please don’t make a promise and then fail to keep that promise. Love your neighbor love the least of these. Thank you.

Daniel 6:1-28, 2 Peter 3:1-18, Psalm 119:129-152, Proverbs 28:21-22

Today is the 29th day of November, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is a joy to be here with you today as we spend together the last couple of days of this month. We started this month strong, day by day step-by-step, we’ll finish this month strong. And so, let’s dive in, we’re reading from the New Living Translation this week. Today, Daniel chapter 6.

Commentary:

Okay so, we just concluded second Peter in our New Testament reading today. And as the letter concludes we see pretty clearly the apocalyptic worldview of the first century, a general feeling that continues to exist until today and a problem that was introduced because of this worldview and how this, how this was addressed. So, a basic Christian apocalyptic worldview would be that the world is going somewhere and it’s going to get worse before it gets better, but it will get better, but it will get worse, way worse before that happens. A new era is coming, the world is changing, but in the end, there will be rescue and essentially a new heaven and a new earth. This idea, this sort of sense of the overarching themes here were involved in Jesus’ ministry. He spoke on these kinds of things as well, and He spoke of the immediacy of the kingdom of God like it's…it’s within you, it’s among you, it’s happening now. This was part of…of the attraction to the faith originally because it was taught that Jesus’ arrival, His return wasn’t going to be spaced out over thousands of years, it was imminent. He went away to prepare a place, He’s coming back. So, whatever you’re facing or whatever you are enduring right now is momentary, it will pass away. But the idea is it will pass away quickly, very, very soon eminently. And this was so much throughout the early churches that even in other letters we see people who are quitting their jobs to wait for Jesus’ arrival. They don’t need to work anymore and so they were told if you’re not gonna work then you’re not going to eat. So, and we’ve seen this stuff even until today. So, this apocalyptic worldview still exists with us today. This is underneath it all, how we feel, generally. This is going somewhere and it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better. So, this view arises in second Peter, it’s not the only place, but in second Peter in what we read today and presents a problem: people have believed and they have waited, and they are enduring and it is getting worse and Jesus isn’t coming, at least in the timeframe that they had assumed and so people were beginning to fade into the woodwork, to disappear, or to return back into regular Orthodox Judaism because what it was starting to feel like is it’s only getting worse but there is no rescue, He’s not showing up when He was supposed to, maybe we’re not believing the right thing. If we just think about what I just said, we realize that we end up at these crossroads ourselves maybe for different reasons. Maybe now 2000 years into the future, we understand that the arrival of Jesus will come when God wills it, but our assumptions about it aren’t going to change anything. But we do have expectations of God. We are believing for something or to be rescued from something and we’re waiting and we’re enduring and if He doesn’t show up when we expected him to than we are faced with the same kind of confusion that leads us to…to fade. The people that Peter’s writing to, they were not looking for a distant future arrival of Jesus. They were looking for an eminent arrival of Jesus. And that wasn’t happening. And so, Peter addresses this and so I quote “I want to remind you that in the last days scoffers will come mocking the truth and following their own desires, they will say what happened to the promise that Jesus is coming again. From before the times of our ancestors, everything has remained the same since the world was first created” and so that’s the setup of the problem and here’s how Peter responds to the problem “but you must not forget this one thing, dear friends, a day is like a thousand years to the Lord and a thousand years is like a day, the Lord isn’t really being slow about His promise, as some people think, no, He is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed but wants everyone to repent.” So essentially what Peter is saying to these people who are discouraged that what they thought was gonna happen has not yet happened and doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. Peter essentially says this isn’t about God’s tardiness. This is about God’s patience and then he explains a thousand years is like one day to the Lord. So, if we, in the modern era right now, take that metaphor then it’s only been a couple of days for the Lord, since this was said. So, Peter’s trying to say hey, you have to, you have to look with a God’s eye view here of time. That’s one thing that he’s saying but he’s also saying look, this isn’t really about you. You are redeemed, you are saved, what you are longing for is the reward of that. But what’s happening is you are being a witness and enduring what you are facing, which makes you a light, so that many more may also have an experience of the redemption that you are feeling and will be included in the end of all things, and rewarded with eternal life. So, you being patient is collaborating with God in his own patience with the people of the world. Certainly, God could come today, separate the sheep from the goats, destroy all of the evil and fix everything around us that could happen, but His patience is such that He loves the people who are destroying themselves and hopes, hopes for their redemption, their choice to turn and repent and follow Him and they won’t know how to even move in that direction if you don’t stay here as a city on a hill, as the salt of the earth, as the light in the darkness, if you don’t stay here as a testimony, if you don’t stay here and endure and rise above it and model that there is a better way to be a human being then they won’t know. So, your impatience is actually flying in the face of God’s patience. And so, he’s essentially inviting us to get on board with what’s really happening here. Our endurance is part of God’s work. It’s part of our collaboration in God’s work. Our endurance and our testimony are how these people that He loves will find a path to Him and that should change the dynamic of a lot of things that should, at bare minimum, force us to look at our discomforts and our impatience and our expectations and at least reframe them to the point that we begin to see that maybe we are actually collaborating with God. And maybe the word of our testimony and the light of our life, maybe it actually matters. Maybe it actually matters a lot. Maybe we should pay attention to our impatience. Maybe we should pay attention to the way that we behave toward one another because this is the word of our testimony, the weightiness of our lives, the way that we live. This is our testimony. Is it saying anything good about Jesus? Is it compelling in any way to somebody that’s within our sphere of influence that doesn’t know Jesus? But that Jesus loves deeply because we may be the one in proximity and it may not be the we have to go hand them a tract or walk them down the Romans Road, maybe we just have to live true, revealing that we have found a different way to be in this world, one that is permeated with love, one that is openhanded and patient. So, some things for us to think about as we approach the end of another month and as we certainly reached the conclusion of second Peter.

Prayer:

And so, Holy Spirit, we invite You into that, we think that if we keep our mouths shut, we’re not really saying anything which isn’t true, we’re still saying volumes with the way that we live out the convictions that we have. The way that we live into this faith and walk with You and there isn’t a day we couldn’t repent of something, we understand that we fail. The important thing is that You are patient and we know that You have been so patient with us, but we haven’t in turn been patient with the people of this earth that You love. We just want You to come and fix it and eradicate evil and get us out of here and make things right. And we do long for those things but help us to have a sense and an awareness that we are collaborating with You. We are the witness, we are the light, You are using us to tell the people of the earth that there is a better way and this is going somewhere and rescue is available before it’s too late. Come, Holy Spirit, and help us to realize the importance of our lives. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, that is the website, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here so check it out. It’s Christmas time in the city, so there’s plenty going on around here. First up, Christmas Time, a brand-new Global Campfire Christmas album and this brand-new resource was produced and arranged and performed by my son Maxwell, who has well, he’s been around his whole life, of course, he’s my son but he’s been around here since he was a little kid. He spent several years doing Daily Audio Bible kids and has pursued music as his passion for all of his childhood and into his young adulthood. And I’m very, very proud of this record, it’s one of my favorite contemplative Christmas records and I’m a bit of a Christmas music buff. I have an awful lot of Christmas records that I’ve collected since I was a child, something about certain records that you can put on, like there’s this, there’s the festive ones, certainly, for parties and for decorating, but there are also records that allow you to relax and unwind and just have the Christmas lights on, maybe a fire in the fireplace and just unwind and this is one of them. And so, Christmas Time, this new album is available for preorder right now, it will fully release on Wednesday, the 1st of December. But when you preorder, you get preorder pricing but also three of the 10 tracks immediately and it is available for preorder now in the iTunes store for Apple devices and in the Amazon music store for those devices. And then it will begin rolling out worldwide to all the digital outlets beginning on Wednesday, but take advantage of prerelease pricing. By the way, all the resources that we’ve talked about and that we ever will talk about, all of these resources have been created specifically for the community here as we move through the Scriptures together. And all the resources that are purchased, all of that, all of it goes to support everything that makes the Daily Audio Bible: server costs, bandwidth costs, development costs, all of the things that bring this here every day. So, hopefully you can check them out.

Number two, Daily Audio Bible Christmas box 2021 is available now and we’ve packed it full of resources like we do every year. The God of Your Story, a copy of The God of your Story is in the Christmas box this year. The Daily Audio Bible Journal 3.0 is in the box. The Global Campfire candle that smells like a campfire is in the box. The Daily Audio Bible 2021 Christmas ornaments with our word for the year mend is in the box. Then you’ll have your choice of either Daily Audio Bible blend coffee roasted in Colorado or our honey washing rooibos tea that we’ve sourced. So, either Windfarm tea or Windfarm coffee, you get to pick based on what you like to drink. A Global Campfire pop socket is in the box. Two Global Campfire stickers are in the box. Five frameable Global Campfire postcards are in the box. And we are also, while supplies last, including a mystery item from the vault. And you can see all of this at dailyaudiobible.com in the Shop in the Christmas section.

And then number three is our brand-new, long coming book, Promised Land, Photographs from the Land of the Bible. This marks book number five for me. Although this one is very, very different, it communicates very, very differently than just written page only. I mean if a picture tells a thousand words, then there’s a lot of words to be told as we gaze into the land and the terrain where the stories in the Bible happened and it’s beautiful. The craftsmanship is beautiful, but it also takes us into each of the different regions of the land of the Bible, so for example the wilderness, so much of the Bible happens in the wilderness. You can look at what that actual wilderness looks like. Or the Galilee, we know that that’s where Jesus did his ministry, but it’s a big region, it’s lush, fertile, beautiful region that is so drastically different than the wilderness of the desert that you would have a hard time believing there only couple hundred miles apart from each other. Or there’s the coastal region, Israel, modern Israel is, well, its western border is the Mediterranean Sea. Or the low lands, also known as the shuffula, where important stories in the Bible like David and Goliath happened. Or the central northern region where the ruins of ancient Shiloh exist. Shiloh, this is the place where the tabernacle rested permanently for nearly 4 centuries, it was the capital before Jerusalem, but then there’s also an entire section for Jerusalem because there’s probably not a biblical, a city with more biblical heritage in the world then Jerusalem. So, Promised Land, Photographs from the Land of the Bible is available now in the Daily Audio Bible Shop in the Christmas section.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, first of all, thank you humbly, thank you. If the mission here to continue to read the Bible, fresh every day and give it to whoever will listen to it and build community around that, what we call the Global Campfire, if that is meaningful and brings life and good news into your life, thank you. As we approach end of the year, thank you humbly for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage 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 or 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 community, this is Diane Olive Brown calling from and I’m from Newberg, Indiana but I’m at Beaver Island right now. And it’s the day before, it’s Thanksgiving Day but I’m listening to the reading from the day before Thanksgiving. Community, please pray for me. Because I had a dream where my uncle Don, he moved to heaven recently, he gave me a hug and he said “go to see your Aunt Denel and thank her for this hug. But my husband and my step-mom, my family don’t want me to go. I feel like God has called me to go and give her a hug from my uncle Don. There saying that you can do it on zoom. My sister is saying you can’t see my son Andrew who has, it hurts. I can’t do what I want to do. It’s been such a nice trip with mom but I shared things with her about my birth mom that I don’t think I ever shared. Family, please pray for me. Cause I want to be a light to the people here.

Hi Nita, I’m, this is Ashley from California. And I want to come on here and I just want to first and foremost say I am so sorry. If no one has told you but my heart broke for you and I want to let you know that first, I am praying for you. I am praying for strength; I am praying for wisdom and I am praying that our God who counts our tears comes and comforts you and blesses you. And, that is first and foremost what I’m praying for. But then I also want to respond to your request to pray for Robert. And I am praying for Robert that God would humble him. I ask that God would convict him and bring him to a place of confession and repentance that he would come to a place where he wants to be done with this addiction. And I am praying and I ask that, praying and asking God that he would reveal the lies and hurts that Robert has in his heart. And Nita, I want you know that there are people out there that are also going through this and they are, you’re not alone. And there is, there are ministries that can help you and that can walk with you through this season. So, I love you and I’m gonna be praying for you and praying for your husband and asking for God to just sweep through and that He would be glorified in what work is done in your house. And I just wanted you to know that and I’m grateful that you called in and I’m grateful that you called in on Thanksgiving, so I am praying for you Nita. Love, Ashley from California.

Happy Thanksgiving Family. This is Danny from Southern Oregon. Today I want to give thanks for all of the faithful husbands out there who wash their wives with the word of God. The husbands who pray with their wives, who lead their families according to Scripture, who teach their children about the love of God, who read Scripture with their wives. They just, they just take their wings, like God does with us and cover their wives and protect their wives and it’s so unusual for me to see anymore, and I can’t help but think that this world would be such a better place if more men stood up and surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ and led their families according to the way God’s set up the family. And anyway, so those of you wives who have husbands like this, O man, you have such a treasure. I hope that you honor and respect that husband of yours and just let him know how wonderful he is because he is submissive to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And so, anyway have a great Thanksgiving everybody. I love you, bye.

Hi, Daily Audio Bible family, this is Renzo in Florida. I just wanna ask for prayer today, just like, prayers for my family. My family is going through a lot of stuff right now. My mom has an ulcer that just, the doctor said that basically, it just needs to get better, hopefully. And it could turn into cancer so I just pray that it doesn’t. And if you guys could pray for that and if you could just pray for my dad as he’s just trying to find a job cause he was, he lost his job in early, in later October and he’s trying to find one right now and just let him be able to find one and if you could pray about that. If you could pray for my family there’s been a lot of struggles with our house and stuff breaking and stuff. So, if you guys could pray for that. And if you could pray for me as I’m growing my relationship with God. And I’ve been trying to find time to get caught back up on Daily Audio Bible cause I’m behind. I’ve been behind for a couple weeks now and it’s kind of getting me upset but I just have to realize that, you know, gotta keep going and gotta keep spending time with the Lord cause it’s very important. And if you guys could just pray about that. And just pray for me and my walk. And pray for my street of evangelism ministry. It’s starting up, I’ve been getting people together. If you guys could just pray that the harvest is plentiful. And thank you guys, bye. Have a blessed day, Jesus loves you, I love you too. Bye.

Hi guys, my name is Crystal and I’m calling and asking for prayer for prayer warriors out there. My heart is just breaking, my family is broken. My husband is living with another, I’m still standing for my marriage, my family, my kids, standing in the gap and loving them and doing my best. Thanksgiving was so hard, especially at night time when I hear my kids crying. I just ask for endurance and strength in Christ this Christmas season to make it through and to shine right, shine with God’s love to my kids. Just to teach them morals, integrity, faith in Christ and to persevere and to live a happy life regardless of my circumstances because God’s in control and God has this. I’m just asking for restoration: my husband’s soul, our marriage, and our family. If my prayer warriors out there can help me, I would greatly appreciate it. Again, my name is Crystal, my husband is Chris and we have our children. I thank you so much and enjoy this time with Brian in listening to everybody out there. I love it and I lift all ya’ll up in prayer. Thank you so much, bye bye.

Daniel 5:1-31, 2 Peter 2:1-22, Psalm 119:113-128, Proverbs 28:19-20

Today is the 28th day of November, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is truly a joy and a pleasure to be here with you at the threshold of a brand-new shiny, sparkly week, a week that will lead us into the 12th month of the year. So, by the time we’re done with this week we’ll be kind of on what is really shaping up to be the home stretch now. And so, as always, we stand here at this threshold, looking out over this new week. Knowing that nothing, nothing is ruined this week yet, nothing is ruined anything, we can we can march forward into this we can ruin everything if that’s really what we got our heart set on. I’m sure that none of us do. I’m sure we’re all here for the same thing, which is to walk with God and…and to do it with shalom, with peace and order and so yeah, unexpected things may come flying our way, we can just begin to choose now to be aware that this is likely to happen in some fashion and we don’t just have to react. We can choose in advance to take a deep breath, invite the Holy Spirit and then move forward. So, it’s great. I always love when we come to this fresh start of a new week. We will read from the New Living Translation this week. Continuing our journey in the book of Daniel, today, Daniel chapter 5.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for Your kindness and patience. Your long-suffering, Your endurance with us and even as we continue to be counseled about endurance in the Scriptures, help us to realize that we are simply mimicking You. You are long suffering, You are kind to us so we ask Holy Spirit that You come, plant the words of the Scriptures deep into the soil of our hearts. May these seeds be watered by the word, may we in collaboration with You groom until in care for and weed the soil of our lives that we might have a bountiful harvest for Your kingdom. We pray this in the name of Jesus our Savior. Amen.

Prayer and Encouragements:

Hi Jackie, this is Christie from Kentucky. I wanted to call because your phone call moved me, deeply, regarding your friend who has dementia and has that horrible paranoia about her husband cheating on her and specifically, and being mad at you. I have someone in my life that I so love that had dementia right before she went home. And she too, accused her husband of this and I watched how hard it was for him. And how hard it was for all of us. So, I want to thank you for calling in and for showing your love, your grace and your compassion towards your best friend and knowing that this is just part of her disease. And what a horrible way for her to live. What a horrible way for her husband to have to go day by day assuring her that that’s not true. So, I just wanted to thank you and let you know that I am praying for her, I am praying for her husband and I’m praying for you and so proud that you are my sister in Christ who understands, who prays and forgives. Alright, I love you girl, I pray that you’re having a most blessed and lovely day today.

Giving all praise and honor to my Lord and savior Jesus Christ who is the head of my life. This is Walking in the Wilderness in Georgia, Laura. And I’m praying for Nita who called in and left a prayer request and it aired on November the 25th which is Thanksgiving Day here. By the time this airs it will be passed, of course. But anyway, she was calling in asking prayer for her marriage of over 50 years. Her husband who has not treated her well has a sex addiction and she’s asking prayer for him. His name is Robert. Father God, I pray that you deliver whatever spirit that is over Robert that is causing him not to be the man of God that he should be for himself and towards his wife. And I pray for Nita, I pray Father God, that You strengthen her, that You comfort her, that You give her peace and that You continue to allow her to feel Your love and to know that she is not alone and that You hear her and that You can do the impossible, You make the impossible, possible. And let her know that she is heard. Nita, I continue to keep you lifted up darling and thank you for calling in. And thank you Brian, Jill, China, Ezekiel and all those who participate in keeping this wonderful ministry going. It has been a God-send for me for the last two years. And I am so blessed.

Good morning family and Happy Thanksgiving. This is Joyce from Virginia and I’m calling in with an encouragement to Mikayla from Gloster, UK, and to let her know that I’m praying. I have a friend Mikayla whose been struggling with sleep and so every time I pray for her, I’m praying for you. It was great to hear your voice, God bless you sister.

Hi this is Dee-ann from Washington and I just wanted to respond to Nita, praising God’s request that was about her husband Robert who is trapped in sexual addiction. Nita, I want you to know that this is not about you. This is obviously about your husband and his brokenness and I would like to pray for him. My heart goes out to you dear sister. So, Father we just lift up Robert Lord our heart breaks for him that he’s trapped in this scheme of Satan to get him into this sexual addiction pattern God. We just pray for the chains to fall off, the chains of addiction. Lord, we pray You’d rescue him from this strap. We pray that he would humble himself and realize that he needs You for his fulfillment, not other women and I just pray that he would run back to his faithful wife and I pray for reconciliation for their marriage. I pray that he would plant his feet on the solid ground of You and Your word. I pray that Nita would stand strong right now and look to You to be her, her Savior and her comfort and her best friend, her help in time of need. So, God we just commit this marriage to You, we commit Robert to You God and Lord, we just lift this up to You Father. Amen. So, Nita, just know that God will never leave you, nor forsake you, He’s right by your side and He will carry you through no matter what happens. But we do ask for help for Robert Father, in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Daniel 4:1-37, 2 Peter 1:1-21, Psalms 119:97-112, Proverbs 28:17-18

Today is the 27^th day of November welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is wonderful to be here with you today as we bring to a close another one of our weeks together. We, in the Old Testament are really still moving into the book of Daniel. And, so, we’ll continue our journey there. When we get to the New Testament we have some new territory, second Peter, the second letter of Peter. Aand we’ll talk about that when we get there. But first, we have been reading from the New English Translation this week, which is what we’ll do today. Daniel chapter 4. And we will begin with a declaration of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.

Introduction to second Peter.

Okay. So, as promised at the beginning, we have turned the page and now we are entering a letter known as second Peter. And it is thought that this is the final writing of St. Peter, although that has definitely been questioned. And whether…whether or not this is actually a letter from St. Peter has been questioned all the way back into antiquity. It was accepted as a letter from Peter over a period of time, and was included in the New Testament canon of Scripture by the fourth century, but the debate about who wrote this letter still…it’s still going on among biblical scholars. Part of this happens because the language between first Peter and second Peter are quite a bit different. So, it seems it was written by somebody else. A person that’s defending that Peter actually wrote this letter would say that he was probably illiterate. He probably dictated the letters that he wrote. It’s very very likely that whoever wrote down the dictation, they were…it was a different person between the two letters and so of course the language would be a little bit different. The truth is we don’t know. That’s the truth. The truth is there are compelling reasons to look at this like Hebrews. Many people have come up with many theories about who wrote Hebrews, but to this day we still consider it basically author unknown and that wouldn’t be an inappropriate way to look at second Peter. But there are compelling reasons that are equal to consider that the apostle Peter actually wrote this, and this is actually the…the last of the writings of his life. And for us we’ll just kind of go with that. It’s second Peter. It’s written in the voice of Peter. It is Peter who wrote this. It was probably written in the late 60s A.D. He didn’t live much longer. He was martyred. In our church tradition we…we believe he was executed upside down at his request, but was executed by crucifixion like Jesus only inverted upside down. So, that is a long-running church tradition. There is nothing in the Scriptures that say this is how Peter died but that is church tradition. And if we remember when we were at first Peter, Peter’s purpose was to instruct the believers and encourage them about endurance and enduring whatever came flying in their direction, all of the pressures that were being…that were mounting up against them and we talked about that quite a bit yesterday. Second Peter warns about false teachings and inappropriate behavior from within the church. And the thing that we need to remember is similar to what we read in second Timothy. I don’t want to get all convoluted here, but we remember reading second Timothy, which is thought to be Paul’s final writing of his life and what he chose to say Timothy as a kind of final testament. This is thought to be the final writing of Peter’s life. So, if he’s choosing to discuss false teaching and…and evil behavior, then we need to understand that it mattered a lot to him. He knew he was about to die. He says he knows he’s about to die. And it’s also important for us to remember this is St. Peter, right? This is one of the disciples of Jesus, actually saw the ministry of Jesus with his own eyes. This is a person that had private conversations with Jesus, things that are recorded for us in the New Testament. This…this is somebody that would’ve cooked meals and cried with Him and laugh with Jesus and lived with Jesus and ate the last supper with Jesus and watched Jesus die. But he also saw Jesus alive again. And this is a person that was in the upper room when the tongues of fire came. This isa a person that preached that first message after Pentecost and people came to believe by the thousands. And what we’re about to read may very well be the final living words recorded by the apostle Peter. And so, just as with second Timothy let’s pay attention. Let’s absorb this from that perspective, the perspective of a person who actually was a disciple of Jesus who is not going to live much longer, will be executed and knows it and this is what he has to say. And, so, we begin. Second Peter chapter 1.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word and we thank You for bringing us through the final full week in this month of November. We thank You that before we end next week, we will…we will have transitioned into the final month of the year. And, so, we’re very aware of where we are. We are very aware of how things go. We’ve lived through the holiday seasons before. And…and, so, once again we are inviting Your Holy Spirit to speak clearly to us. Help us to see where You are leading and obey where You are leading. And even as busy as we may get before Christmas comes, we don’t want to miss a beat. Want to stay in lockstep with what You are doing as we continue our journey to its conclusion. And, so, Holy Spirit come. Show us how to navigate we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

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

And it’s Christmas time around here, if you’re just waking up, like you’ve been sleeping all year and you’re just waking up. It’s Christmas time again around here. And, so, that’s what we’ve got going on around here, a number of resources for this season.

First up, Christmas Time, a brand-new Christmas album for those of us around the Global Campfire. This brand-new album was produced and arranged and recorded by my son, Maxwell Hardin. And Maxwell has been around the community here his whole life pretty much. He did Daily Audio Bible Kids for a long time and has, as he’s grown through his teen years and into his adulthood has been pursuing the music industry and has become an amazing musician. So, this brand-new album is available for preorder now. It will fully release on the 1^st of December but when you preorder you get preorder pricing as well as three of the 10 songs immediately. And as I have said over the last couple days, this is…this is the record you want on when you’re unwinding for the evening, or maybe even just kinda getting a slow start to the day. This is a contemplative atmospheric record that is just really beautiful treatments of the holiday carols that we know, but it is very cinematic in its approach. I love it. So, that is available now at the iTunes store for Apple devices or the Amazon music store for those associated devices. And then if you get it, on the 1^st of December a few days from now then all of the songs will just show up in your device like magic.

Also available is the Daily Audio Bible Christmas box for 2021. That can be loaded…located in the…at the Daily Audio Bible website in the shop. If you’re using the app you can get to the Shop from there by pushing the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner, but in the Shop you’ll find a category called Christmas and in the Christmas category you’ll find the Christmas box and you’ll be able to see it and see everything that’s in there, including the Daily Audio Bible ornament for 2021, which is only available in the Christmas box each year. So, check that out.

And then also new is Promised Land, photographs from the land of the Bible, a beautiful hardback edition. Sao, it’s 12 x 12. So, it’s like a foot square, perfect size for the coffee table, perfect size for viewing photography. It’s the…it’s a beautiful edition that allows you to peer into the land where are all of these stories that we are reading happened. And, so, that is available in the Daily Audio Bible shop as well in the Christmas category.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that dailyaudiobible.com and I thank you humbly. We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t in this together. And I’m grateful, humbly grateful that we are. So, there’s a link on the homepage. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner, or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Good morning Daily Audio Bible my name is Heather and I’m calling from Prescott Valley AZ. I’ve been a daily audio listener for this is my 10^th whole year going through Daily Audio Bible. Thank you, Brian and team. The reason why I’m calling in today is more of a thanks for Daily Audio Bible and the impact that it’s had on our family. This past year my son got married and he got married to a girl that was crying out to the Lord and had had just such heartache in her life, never has had a dad or stepdad. Her mom became an alcoholic later on and she was just crying out to the Lord and the Lord her to cry and brought her into our family and she has totally just groaned in the Lord. But this year she took up listening to Daily Audio Bible every day and the prayer requests. And Faith I hope you’re listening. This is your mother-in-law. And I’m just so encouraged by her encouraging me by what she hears from the Daily Audio Bible and how encouraged she is by the testimonies of the prayers, answered prayers, people calling in. And she told me yesterday that it gives her hope. So, I just want to…just say thank you to all those that are praying. Keep praying for those that are last, those loved ones. Faith has her sister and her mom and many family members that she wants to see come to the Lord. So, again just thank you. I’m glad I can call in every now and now then. Love you all and I pray with you, and I listen with you. God bless.

God our Father in the name of Jesus I wish to pray for Manny who has lost her husband who needs healing and comfort. I pray that You give her comfort, healing, that You give her and lead her, draw Lord near to You and lift her up in the name of Jesus and I pray that Your will be done in her life God. I pray that You bless her, comfort her, and continue to keep her near to You. I pray that You also bless Daily Audio Bible community and help us to continue to do Your will. Father I thank You for comforting Manny and helping her grieve over the loss of her husband in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Hey good morning Daily Audio Bible. After going through Brian’s reading today, I was just so so inspired. As a matter of fact, it…they say the word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword. I would say it actually cut me into pieces because I’ve always been that person who would always want to retaliate each time I’ve been pushed to the wall because I was bullied as a child, and I grew up without my parents. My dad died when I was eight and my dad mom died when I was nine. So, I grew up with a foster family. It was a family friend, and she has shown me the love that I couldn’t get from my parents but then I grew up with so much anger, so much regret. And sometimes I would always wish my dad or mom would be there to save me in my times of trouble when I’m in some sort of circumstance. I would always want them to hear me out. But then I grew up like that and today I’m 30 and sometimes when things don’t go my way I always want to retaliate. I always want to spit out words back at people but I’m sure today is a turnaround for me because I have to show love. And that took me to another dimension. So, I just want to share that with you. It’s touched me. And, yeah. Yeah. It’s really really touched me. Yeah. I will just silence the ignorance of people with love.

__  and Jake calling from Bouton city Philippines. We live in Minnesota and we’re here to get our two boys Griffin and Leon and we have two other boys Wesley and Lucas back in Minnesota. So, we just want to call in. We are a longtime listeners, but I’ve never called in. And pray for safe travels for us back to Minnesota. And we also want to pray that when our four boys come together permanently that there’d be a smooth transition and protection over our marriage. And we’re both currently unemployed. That happened right before we came. So, prayers for both of us to find a job and for it to be God’s will in Jesus’ name.

Daniel 2:24-3:30, 1 Peter 4:7-5:14, Psalms 119:81-96, Proverbs 28:15-16

Today is the 26^th day of November welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is great to be here with you today. Today is my daughter China’s birthday. Her very first birthday as a mom. And she is mommy to our beautiful granddaughter Reagan whom we are smitten with. So, happy birthday China on this lovely Friday. And typically, it’s this day, this day we call black Friday, this big shopping day. It’s sort of like the first day, although it’s not, right? I mean, it’s not but it’s just this is day I guess that you start really really focusing on and paying attention to the fact that Christmas is really just a…just a few weeks away, like less than a month away, right? This is the 26^th of November and Christmas is 25^th December. So, it is definitely gets more busy and everything but what a wonderful thing that we get to celebrate and enjoy this season together as we continue our journey. And our journey takes us back into the book of Daniel. And we began the book of Daniel yesterday and will continue for today reading from the New English Translation this week. Daniel chapter 2 verse 24 through 3 verse 30.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we just concluded first Peter. So, this…this letter, not a superlong letter. Obviously, we read it in a couple of days. We’ve reached the conclusion and it should have been observable that this idea of long-suffering or endurance is practically on every page. It’s a theme that keeps coming up and will continue all the way until the very very end of the Scriptures, where endurance really is one of the central points of the final book of the Bible. And we’ve mentioned, we’ve said this endurance is an irreplaceable piece of our faith journey and that the Scriptures in the New Testament are going to kind of reiterate that over and over and over. But what were they and enduring? We know that they were enduring…enduring marginalization and persecution would break out here and there but why is practically every letter that we are encountering instructing or encouraging the receiver of the letter to endure? Basically, we’re in the Roman Empire. These letters are being written from within the Roman Empire and let’s remember that it was the Roman empire that executed Jesus. We know that the Jewish people were complicit. Like, we have the story in the gospels, but it was Rome that executed Jesus in order to stave off any possibility of any type of uprising. And at this point, it wasn’t illegal to be a Christian in the Roman Empire. The society of the Roman Empire was polytheistic, which essentially means the worship of many gods or the understanding that there are many gods. So, worshiping Jesus as a deity, that’s not…not a problem. You can worship whatever God you want because the gods were…were involved in all different aspects of life. And, so, maybe there’s this God that you need to do this thing and this Goddess that you need to do that thing. And, so, it’s not unusual. It wasn't…it wouldn’t have been unusual for people to be worshiping Jesus, although He would have been a God that wasn’t like an ancient God of theirs. Where it gets sticky is that you can worship whatever God you want in the Roman Empire, but the gods of the Empire, the ones that made the Empire great, everybody in the Empire had to worship those gods because those were the gods providing the stability of the Roman Empire. And, so, obviously Christians wouldn’t do that, and that made them stand out because this is part of public life. So, in this case, the Christians looked more like the Hebrews, the Jewish people because Jews also wouldn’t worship the gods of the Empire. But the Jewish people, they had a bit of covering. They sort of had an exemption. They were a people who were practicing of an ancient religion, Judaism. They had always been worshiping this way. They had always been separate. There never had been mixture. They were known for worshiping their God, the God of Israel. So, they were marginalized and didn’t have all of the rights of a citizen but they were allowed to…to just worship their god and not have to intermingle into Roman culture, basically, as long as they kept their act together, which is why we see like the Sanhedrin working together with the Romans to get Jesus killed. It made them look like they were turning over a terrorist to be executed who was going to cause an uprising because they thought He was a king. So, it would look good. It would keep Rome off their backs. We remember reading the story of Jesus trial and the high priest saying, “it’s better for one man to die than for all of us to get wiped out.” And, so, we can see how this all worked. For a while, Christians were mostly Jews. Infact for a while Christians who were not called Christians, they were either called followers of the way or Nazarenes, were only Jews. And, so, Christian’s kind of had the same past that the Jews had, because it does seem like they were part of the same thing. Once the Jews fully rejected Jesus and rejected His followers. Now you have this kind of newly evolving religion as it looks emerging in the Empire. And, so, everyone’s like, “that’s cool but you have to worship the gods of the Empire”, because as time went on more and more Gentiles, more and more Romans were coming into the faith, and they were not gonna be allowed to stop worshiping the gods of the Empire that they had always worshiped. And, so, therefore the tension and the need to endure. Not just endorse some kind of physical suffering, but to ensure the whole process as this is all getting worked out. And, so, this is why we see this theme of endurance happen so often as we move through the letters that are found in the New Testament. And this is why we can see instructions about it, instead of, “just hang in there”, you know, “have a stiff upper lip. Just don't…just ignore people who are saying bad things about you.” Instead, they were instructed, you are partaking in the suffering of Jesus. This is a posture. This is a lifestyle. This is a way to be in the world, understanding that you have the name of Jesus. You are saved forever no matter what bigotry you face no matter what slander comes your way no matter what physical oppression comes your way, endure because you are a witness for the truth of Jesus, and you are secure. No one can take your soul from you. And, so, we see why they would be saying this, and we can see how they would be stereotyped, and we can see why they are encouraged to fly above the stereotype because you’re not gonna just be able to beat a stereotype with words. You’re gonna actually have to show a life that people can look at a go, “ahhh…I know them, they aren’t that. What…what’s being said, that’s not true, that’s not how they are.” To actually be different instead of just talking different. And if you’re curious about like what…what does that marginalization actually look like? We’ve talked about it so many times. But what were people actually saying that would stereotype believers in Jesus. There’s actually a description that has been preserved, written by a man named minutia’s Felix. I think if I remember right, sometime in the late second century. So, like maybe in like the 180s. So, just imagine you’re a believer, and hopefully you don’t have to imagine that. Just pay attention to the fact that you are a believer, you are in some kind of congregation with other believers, you have a certain way of conducting worship, certain things that you do like maybe taking communion or singing hymns. The kinds of things that we recognize even in churches today. We…we understand the rituals of our faith. And not listen to this description of Christians by a Roman observing Christians and buying into the stereotypes. So, Felix says, “they know one another by secret marks and insignia and they love one another, almost before they know one another.” Now, we could stop there and go, “I’m not so sure about the secret marks but the love part, that’s what we’re going for. But let me continue. “Everywhere also, there is mingled among them a certain religion of lust and they call one another promiscuously brothers and sisters that even a not unusual debauchery may by the intervention of that sacred name become incestuous”, right? Super old language, but the idea of calling each other brother and sister and feeling like you’re a part of the family of God, that was viewed as secret meetings, secret hand signals, secret insignia, lust, incestuous lust through this Savior because now their loving their brother and sister. So, you see that…the things that even today that we take for granted in our faith, how easily they can be misinterpreted. Let me continue on. “I hear that they adore the head of an ass, that basest of creatures consecrated by I know not what silly persuasion, a worthy and appropriate religion for such matters. Some say that they worship the virilia of their pontiff and priest.” Virilia is not a word we use now, but we’re talking about…well you can guess what we’re talking about. They’re being accused of worshiping the genitals of their priest. “And they adore the nature, as it were, of their common parent.” Because they would say, maybe “father” to their priest. Now we have father, brothers, and sisters. This is an entirely incestuous religion. That’s where the stereotype is going. But wait there’s more. If that…if that weren’t a horrible enough stereotype. It continues. “Suspicion is applicable to secret and nocturnal rights and he who explains their ceremonies by reference to a man punished by extreme suffering for His wickedness and to the deadly wood of the cross appropriates fitting altars for reprobate and wicked men that they may worship what they deserve.” These are the kinds of things that were being said about our brothers and sisters, right? Alright, I just said our brothers and sisters and we all know we’re talking about. We see how the stereotypes went. You start thinking those kinds of things about people, you start thinking, “yeah, they worship their pastors’ genitalia, they have secret insignia there are other descriptions of Christians actually eating human flesh and maybe killing and eating. The way stereotypes spread around. This is how the stereotype went around communion. This is the kind of stuff that we’re talking about when we’re talking about stereotyping and what the early believers are instructed to endure and…and rise above that. If somebody thinks you’re eating human flesh in some kind of ritual and your worshiping the genitals of your priest and you have all of the stuff going on, it’s pretty hard to combat that unless you’re just not that, and it can be seen that you’re just not that. And this is why they are told to endure and why it’s an important lesson for us today. We don’t have quite the same type of marginalization for most of us, although there are things going on the world today that…oh…are really really difficult to see. And, so, much of that is carried out through stereotyping. And they were told to endure. And we are being told to rise above it and fly higher than it and just not be what the stereotype is. That is so important right now for the body of Christ because so often we’re playing into the stereotypes by just being at war with ourselves. But let’s just make it is simple as possible. If these letters had not sufficiently encouraged our brothers and sisters, our spiritual ancestors in the first century, had they not endured we wouldn’t be here talking. We may very well be worshiping the gods of some empire somewhere. And it’s easy for us to say, “well this is the last generation, these are the end times, it’s all going down because every generation says that.” But our endurance is actually what keeps the story going forward. And should there be another say five centuries out in front of us or fifty centuries out in front of us, how will this story continue if we do not endure now, if we do not stay true now? And, so, let's…let’s carry that with us as we continue our journey through the rest of the Bible. But let’s carry that with us as we move through the holiday season and let’s carry it with us every day of our lives, that our actions, that what we do actually does matter, that we are a living testimony and we overcome a stereotype by not being it. We overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony.

Prayer:

Father, we invite You into that. We have confessed many times as we have come before You that endurance is one of the…one of the things that are not on our short list of things we love to do. And we fail at it all the time because we forget that there’s a reason for it. Help us to remember that there’s a reason for it. It builds strength within us. But it is also us standing in the face of whatever may be flying in our direction and holding true to the gospel. Holy Spirit come into this we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

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

It’s Black Friday. So, there’s all of that going on around here. And we have been talking about some of the brand-new resources that are available.

For example, our brand-new Christmas album that releases on the 1^st of December but is available for preorder now. And when you preorder the album you get the first three tracks with the other seven just showing up like magic on your device on the first of December. This new Christmas recording is produced and arranged and performed by my son Maxwell of Daily Audio Bible kids fame. He did Daily Audio Bible kids for many years after China moved forward toward Chronological and some of the other things that she’s done over the years. Max seems to be our child that is walking in his father’s footsteps toward a vocation in the music industry. And he has been working so hard on that his entire childhood. He blows me away to be honest. He has far outpaced me as a pianist. He is a fantastic player and arranger. And, so, he’s well on his way. And it’s so thrilling to be able to offer this and remember talking to him about it back in the springtime and to create an atmosphere, to create the kind of album that you want to listen to while your unwinding, while kind of the day is unwinding at Christmas time. Maybe the way I always picture it because the way I always do this kind of thing is to shut the lights off in the house and just leave the Christmas lights on on the tree and we have a little village and that kind of stuff and just…just let that set the atmosphere. This record really fits the bill as a soundtrack for that time. So, the album is called Christmas Time. It’s by Maxwell Hardin. You can find it available for preorder on the iTunes store for Apple devices and the Amazon music store for those associated devices. So, I hope you can check it out and I hope it can bring an atmosphere of calm and contemplation and thoughtfulness and reflection in this holiday season.

Also, it's…it’s Black Friday so the Daily Audio Bible Christmas box for 2021 is now available. This year we are including a copy of the God of Your Story, which is a written companion, the perfect written companion to the Daily Audio Bible. We’re also including our Daily Audio Bible Journal 3.0, the Global Campfire candle that indeed smells like a campfire, fills the room with that sort of aroma. And that can be used all year long to just remind us, we’re not alone. We’re sitting around the Global Campfire together. We’re all over the world. Maybe we won’t see each other, but that does not mean we’re not connected in spirit because we are, and we’ve been traveling throughout this year with tens of thousands of our brothers and sisters around the Global Campfire. And, so, the Global Campfire candle brings the aroma into the room. We also have our Daily Audio Bible Christmas Ornament for 2021. So, it says Daily Audio Bible 2021 on it and the word for the year which has been “Mend”. That ornament is available only in the Daily Audio Bible Christmas box each year. Then you also will have your choice of fresh roasted DAB blend coffee from our Windfarm brand that we roast at altitude in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and then ship fresh to you. If you are a tea drinker, you can choose our…this year we’re…we’re offering our honey Bush and rooibos tea, which is one of our most popular. So, you can choose either Windfarm coffee or Windfarm tea for the box. Also included is a Global Campfire pop socket, 2 Global Campfire stickers, five…a series of five Global Campfire postcards. Of course, they can be used as postcards and sent anywhere. But they’re a series of five. They’re beautiful. They can be set around in places to remind us to pray for one another and be together in community as we’re taking the journey. And then a mystery item from the vault will also be included in every box while supplies last.

And then the other resource that makes a very very wonderful Christmas present would be Promised Land, photographs from the land of the Bible, which is a beautiful coffee table book that has photographs from the land of the Bible curated from nine different seasons in the land and then printed to exacting specifications. It is a beautiful book. And when we were just putting it all together I just decided if we’re going to do this I want this to be excellent, truly a beautiful thing. And it is a beautiful thing printed on beautiful matt art paper. It's…it’s lovely.

So, you can find at Christmas Time, the new album in the iTunes Store or the Amazon music store. You can find the Daily Audio Bible Christmas box in the Daily Audio Bible Shop in the Christmas category. And you can find Promised Land, photographs from the land of the Bible in that same section, the Christmas section in the Daily Audio Bible Shop and I hope you get a chance to check it out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, thank you. If this mission to continue to read the Bible, the scriptures fresh every day and offer it to anyone in the world any time of day or night freely and to build community around that rhythm so that we know we are not alone in this endeavor. We’re doing this as brothers and sisters all over the world. If that has been meaningful and life-giving to you then thank you for your partnership as we approach the end of the year. Thank you so much. We wouldn’t be here if we were not in this together. And, so, 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 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 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.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello friends this is Alisa from Colorado. I called in a couple months ago asking for prayer for my taste and smell to get better and I just want to thank you so much for those of you who prayed for me because it is slowly improving. So, praise God for that. Today I just wanted to ask for prayer because since I called, I found out that I have stage four kidney disease and my kidneys are quickly failing and the doctors don’t know why. And I actually need a transplant as soon as possible. S0, I’m only 30 years old. I have a 3-year-old daughter. And, so, as you might imagine this time’s pretty scary for me and my family. So, I just need prayer that we find the perfect donor match for my body and that the Lord has His way. I do trust Him, and I do know that He’s going to get a glory through this but it’s just a scary time. I did want to say to Blind Angel that I do relate with you. So, I to pray for you, And I’m also blind. So, we’re in this together sister. And I just want you to know I love you and I pray for you. Thank you so much for all of your prayers in advance. God bless you all and I hope you have a very happy Thanksgiving.

Good morning my DAB family this is Judy from Georgia. Today I want to thank Brian Hardin for that beautiful book, that Promised Land. I was looking at all the pictures and imagining that I was there, or I could see when the apostles were traveling through spots and just awestruck by how far they walked and how much they went through. It’s just beautiful. And then today, Tuesday November 23^rd you mentioned about Maxwell having an album. So, I went I listened to some of the tunes that were available to listen to and preordered it and then I got the three songs right away and it is beautiful. So, thank you Brian and Maxwell for brightening my day and my Christmas season. I love you all. Thank you for this platform. I am very grateful. God bless you. Goodbye.

Good morning, DABbers Marjorie from New Mexico. I’m calling in prayer request. I have a younger sister she just turned 47. She married her husband when she was 15 because she became pregnant. And I don’t know how to put this but he…he was the devil in disguise. Well anyway, long story short he had an extramarital affair, and he got the woman pregnant, and this was in 2014. Well, my sister divorced him. He…he had been abusive throughout their marriage. Anyway, they still live together in the same house. She says they’re sleeping in separate beds, but he’s controlled her her whole life. He’s kept her from my mother and I. And now we’re back in contact but we have to hide to talk because if he finds the messages, he will go off. But my sister denies that he’s in control of he. But then the next breath she’ll say that…that…that she is afraid, that she doesn’t want him to find out. And I said OK but why would…why would it matter? Anyway, just pray for her to…to come to Jesus and to know Jesus and to allow her to leave that…that abusive relationship. I know their divorced. She says that they’re separate but she tells me lies because __ she’ll contradict what she just said. So, I just ask for prayer for her. Her name is Crystal. Thank you, DABbers…

Hello. Good morning family this is Hope in Nebraska. It is November 23^rd. I would just like to share with you the mighty works of God in my life. When I was two years old my older sister was taken away, adopted by another family member. And…and let’s fast forward 41 years that God has brought her back into our life and my heart just rejoices…it rejoices. Yes. And I would like to say that God is doing a mighty work in your life and that he loves you So much. I pray for the renewal of your spirit, that as it says in Numbers chapter 6 verse 24 through 26 that the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you, the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace. And I say this in the name of your son Jesus Christ. Amen.

Hey there Daily Audio Bible family this it’s John calling from Bethlehem PA I hope you’re doing well. Today is the 23^rd of November and I just got through listening to the prayer requests or the program from today and listening to their requests for today’s program and then transcribing the prayer requests and I wanted to thank Work in Progress in California for being just an awesome example of light and life and hope in the world for your friend Marlene that you’ve come to know over the course of time from frequent visits to the…the grocery outlet there in your neighborhood. And I wanted you to know work in progress that I am praying for Marlene, thanking God for how He’s treated her and His hand His healing hand in her life with regard to the cancer that she’s overcome through Him, I’m certain. And of course, so sorry to hear about the loss of her husband tragically in the motorcycle accident. So, yeah brother, I’m here with you lifting her up as well and will be…will be keeping her in mind. And then I also wanted to just thank His Girl Warrior from Alabama for calling in. And I’m praying for the salvation of your family your parents and your brothers. And, so, I’m lifting Shane and Joshua and Benjamin and Normie…and Norman and Becky along with Madis, Manesis, Brianna and Riley up and thank you sister for again for being a shining example of Jesus light and life in the world. Keep on doing your thing. They’ll see you and you’re a testimony to God’s greatness. I love the family. Take care. Bye-bye.

Daniel 1:1-2:23, 1 Peter 3:8-4:6, Psalm 119:65-80, Proverbs 28:14

Today is the 25th day of November, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian, it is wonderful to be here with you today in our neck of the woods or our part of the world here in the rolling hills of Tennessee and for that matter from coast-to-coast in the United States, this is Thanksgiving Day, so happy Thanksgiving. May your heart be full of gratitude today.

Introduction to the Book of Daniel:

And so now that we have observed that let’s observe the fact that we are moving into some new territory in the Scriptures. I thought we were gonna be finishing the book of Ezekiel today, but we actually concluded the book of Ezekiel yesterday. Which brings us to the book of Daniel and Daniel is indeed an intriguing book. We’ll enjoy the historical account in narrative form of the story and we’ll encounter really famous portions of the Scripture that we’ve probably known since Sunday school, like Daniel in the lion’s den, this is the Daniel that we’re talking about. Or Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego in the fiery furnace, we’ll be encountering those stories, but that’s not all that Daniel is, Daniel has visions and he writes these visions down and they have been consulted for thousands of years in terms of what they represent and what their timeline is. So, they are studied in eschatological studies all the time, eschatological studies or eschatology, being the study of the end of all things, the end time, so Daniel was contemporary with Ezekiel and we read, we’ve been camping out in the book of Ezekiel, but we concluded the book of Ezekiel yesterday. Daniel was one who was taken into exile when Jerusalem fell to Babylon, which is a topic that we have been on for a while in the Old Testament. We know that when the exiles went into exile it wasn’t a good time, it was a sad, depressing time when all seemed lost and so Daniel certainly had to experience this disruption in fear of the unknown. But through it all, Daniel was favored by God, and he was gifted and so it was recognized and he rose to become an advisor and then an influential advisor and an authority in the kingdom of Babylon. So, Daniel was exiled so he’s in exile, an exiled Hebrew so, he’s a Hebrew. He was also a prophet; it’s just a little different because he wasn’t assigned to be a prophet for Israel. His prophecies aren’t for or against Israel, and the visions that Daniel sees and writes down in this book there not, there not particularly Jewish. So, Daniel has a unique voice in the Bible and this book of Daniel is going to carry us, it’s gonna carry us into the final month of the year. We still have a lot of ground to cover, but Daniel is going to carry us over into the month of December. And so, let’s dive in, we’re reading from the New English Translation this week, Daniel chapter 1 verse 1 through 2 verse 23.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word, we thank You for this day. It’s a good day to be thankful. This is a celebration day in this country but it’s a good day to be thankful no matter where we are on this earth. So we do focus our attention toward gratitude. We are grateful, we are thankful that You have given us the gift of life and are allowing us to share with one another as we continue our journey through the Scriptures. We are also grateful for this new territory as we move into the book of Daniel and we invite Your Holy Spirit to lead us, to quicken us, to awaken us to the things that that we need to grasp, the things that we need to hold onto in our own lives as we continue this journey forward. Come, Holy Spirit, lead us into all truth, lead us deeper in our relationship with Jesus, light our way, guide us, we pray in the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it is the website, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here and there are plenty of things going on around here. It’s Thanksgiving, we’re being grateful today and I know that doesn’t affect everybody in the whole world, but it affects those of us who live in the United States.

For the last couple of days, I’ve been talking about our new Christmas album that is available: a beautiful contemplative modern composers production from my son Maxwell, a beautiful treatment. Very thoughtful treatment of the Christmas carols that we know and love. Very, very much appropriate for the time of day when you kind of winding down, everything is decorated, you’re getting ready for the season. It’s been a busy time and you just kind of shut the lights off and just leave the tree on right, or just like the Christmas lights on and just kind of wind down for the night. This is the album for that time of day, and it’s available for preorder right now, it will become the full thing will become available on the 1st of December. But when you preorder the album, you immediately get three of the tracks, and this is available for preorder on the iTunes store, somewhat like apple music, the iTunes store. So, I guess if you just go to Apple music and just look for Maxwell Hardin and Christmas time, you’ll find it. It’s also available for preorder in the Amazon store. So, I’m a proud papa but I mean music was my life and my vocation and record production is what I did before this fairly radical transformation into ministry that I find myself doing now. So, I’m pretty picky about that kind of stuff. But I love, I love what he’s done and I hope that you get the chance to love it too. And you can get it now at the iTunes store or the Amazon music store.

We’ve also announced the release of the Daily Audio Bible Christmas box for 2021 and I won’t go into all that today. You can check that out in the Daily Audio Bible Shop in the Christmas section.

And then the other item that we have been talking about is Promised Land, Photographs from the Land of the Bible. Another project that was long in the waiting, long in the making, but worth it. It is a beautiful coffee table or end table book that will stand up and will hold up to be passed down but allows us to kinda drop into the different regions of the land of the Bible and get a little glimpse of what it is we’re talking about when we read these stories so you can check that out in the Daily Audio Bible Shop as well.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if what we’ve been doing around this Global Campfire this year has been life-giving than thank you for being life-giving. We wouldn’t be able to be involved in any of this if we weren’t in this together as a community and so thank you profoundly for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage of 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 of course, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app which is the little red button up at the top or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that’s it for today, Happy Thanksgiving everybody, I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Ezekiel 47:1-48:35, 1 Peter 2:11-3:7, Psalm 119:49-64, Proverbs 28:12-13

Today is the 24th day of November; welcome to the Daily Audio Bible, I’m Brian it is wonderful to be here with you today. It is a joy for us to take the next step forward together. That next step lands us in the Old Testament in the book of Ezekiel, we will conclude the book of Ezekiel tomorrow which will be Thanksgiving Day here in the United States and maybe…maybe even more importantly to me personally, will be my daughter, China’s birthday. So, this year we’ve had two birthdays in our family on national holidays because Jill’s birthday is always the 4th July which is a national holiday in United States, Independence Day and then now China on Thanksgiving Day. But I digress. We have come around the Global Campfire to take the next step forward in the Scriptures, so let’s do that, we’re reading from the new English Translation this week, Ezekiel chapters 47 and 48.

Commentary:

Okay, so the apostle Peter in his first letter, at least the letter known as first Peter in the New Testament and he is giving us wisdom and guidance for life. Yes, indeed for the holiday season where it is upon us, but for life and I swear it couldn’t be more poignant because if…if we can be self-reflective, as Christian people as the body of Christ, we would have to know that we are arguing with each other constantly and that is spilled into social media to the point that it’s really, really disheartening and sad the way that we need to be right all the time against each other and what is that look like if you are on the outside of this, knowing that something inside of you is tugging you toward spirituality. But you look at this and say, but that, that who wants to be involved in that, some of that would be deserved. We brought it upon ourselves. Some of it would be a stereotype, it’s not fair, it doesn’t represent all but once you become a part of the stereotype then it’s very, very easy to dismiss the stereotype because it’s not actual people anymore. It’s a set of behaviors and characteristics that are brought together in some kind of melting pot and an isolated in some sort of way, dismissed in some sort of way. That has been the story of the Christian faith through different parts of our church history. It has also been certain that we have been on the other side of that, marginalizing others and stereotyping others in the same way, which is what’s really easy to find going on. If we leave here the 21st-century and go back to the first century, go back to when this letter was written, we’ve talked plenty through our year about the back story, about the culture that Jesus came into about the culture of the early church and what they were facing when they were being marginalized and stereotyped by Jew and Gentile alike, where they were being kind of shot at from every direction and persecution had begun because marginalization had begun because stereotyping that happened. And now, these aren’t people anymore right, this is a group of people with a select group of behaviors that are weird, and so all kinds of assumptions were being said about these early believers. So now, with the freedoms of the internet and the freedoms of speech and the freedoms that we take for granted often, if somebody maligned us we feel slighted in some way or stereotyped in some way, usually we’ll just go right back, right eye for eye, tooth for tooth, whatever we gotta knock out, whatever we feel likes been brought against us we’re gonna come back that much stronger and dominate and be right. The people that Peter is writing to, these Jewish people who are being dominated by the Roman Empire, who really don’t have a spiritual home anymore because they’re also being dominated and pushed around and stereotyped by their fellow Hebrew people, they don’t really have the opportunity to rise up and do that. But even if they had the opportunity to rise up and do that that’s not the council that the apostle Peter them with. And honestly, if we have to sum up what Peter is saying it’s: hey guys, you’re better than this, don’t you know that you’re better than this. Let me just quote Peter and it’s really simple, it’s is the 15th verse of the second chapter of first Peter “God wants you to silence the ignorance of foolish people.” I mean just stop there because we could be like; well, that is what I’m doing if we’re the one that is constantly doing this. Let me read the whole thing, God wants you to silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good, live as free people, not using your freedom as a pretext for evil but as God’s slaves, honor all people, love the family of Christ, fear God, honor the king. I guess there’s plenty to say, doesn’t it, doesn’t just say it for itself, like if that’s not how we’re conducting ourselves, then there is at bare minimum, a disconnect from what Peter is suggesting what we live into as the body of Christ. Like, it’s not, the things aren’t being said or marginalization or stereotyping isn’t happening. It’s the response. Do you, do you fight back with the same tactics or do you say no, that’s not, that’s not who I am and just move on and rise above it all and be better than that because eventually your true character has to shine through. And isn’t that what makes us human, isn’t that what humanizes us away from a stereotype and makes us a person like everybody else doing their very best to try to live true. This advice will change our lives. It’s as simple as that. If we change our speech, we change our lives and this could change our lives and maybe we only have control over that. We can’t change the world we can just change our lives. But if God’s people would see things like this directly and clearly from the Scriptures and obey it, instead of all of the different nuances that we fight over we would change the world by rising above it all and revealing a better way to be a human being, but may we at least personalize it. May we at least take ownership of ourselves and determine for ourselves that we are going to rise above it all. We will be a witness to the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ not by the next clever meme, but by the weightiness of our very lives.

Prayer:

So, Holy Spirit, come into that, O we need You, more than ever we need You. We are all over the map, all of the time. And so, on some days we are actually doing well and on other days we’ve lost ground. We need You because we need to consistently live into the principles that you have taught us and this one specifically in first Peter today, understand our posture of heart and how it is that we should be in this world and how that will change things. Come Holy Spirit into this, we will not be successful without Your leadership and we humble ourselves to Your leadership and pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com that is home base and that’s where you find out what’s going on around here and there’s a lot of stuff going on around here right now as we move into the holiday season. So, yesterday we announced our brand-new Christmas album that releases one week from today on December 1st and is available for preorder right now and you instantly get 1/3 of the album, three songs, well, it’s a 10 song album. This is a contemplative kind of atmospheric treatment of the classic Christmas carols that we know and love and it was produced and arranged and performed by my son Maxwell. So, during this preorder week, it is available in the iTunes store for the Apple devices and it’s also available in the Amazon store for download. So, that is available now, I’m excited for you to hear it. I’ve been listening to it for over, well, about a week. It’s beautiful. It’s right down my alley and enjoyed since I was a kid, shutting all the lights off in the house and just leaving the Christmas lights on and just kinda, just being quiet, just enjoy, just having Christmas music in the background to set the tone and just appreciating the season and this record is made for that so just search for Maxwell Hardin Christmas Time and you’ll find it. I hope you can pick up a copy when we have preorder pricing.

The other thing is that tomorrow is going to be Thanksgiving here in the United States and then the day after that is a Friday and it’s Black Friday all over the world. I think big, big shopping day and so our email inboxes are about to get jammed with every conceivable Black Friday configuration known to man, so just letting you know a little bit, a couple of days ahead of the game here. The Daily Audio Bible Christmas box that we’ve done annually for a long time, we didn’t do it last year due to COVID, but we are doing it this year and it becomes available, now today. So, if you go to the Daily Audio Bible Shop using a web browser or using the Daily Audio Bible app you will see in the Shop a new category, it’s called Christmas and the Christmas category you will find Family Christmas 2021. And this year in the box we have a copy of the God of Your story, a written resource that is, I mean the Daily Audio Bible is what the Daily Audio Bible is and this is happening in real time, we’re doing this together every day but if there were a written version of the things that we talk about as were navigating and moving through the Bible in the fashion that we do it would be the God of Your Story. It’s a 365 day dated devotional, that’s not my favorite word because it just plugs right into the Daily Audio Bible here but if you’re ever without Internet access, or you’re kinda of taking break from the Internet and you continue the rhythm in the Scriptures, than the God of Your Story is a perfect companion to the Daily Audio Bible. This is a beautiful hardback edition. It’s a lovely piece that I thought would be fairly simple to write but it took two years to really dive in and write this and so I’m glad that it is available and it will be in the Christmas box this year. We also will be including the Daily Audio Bible writing notebook, the Daily Audio Bible journal 3.0 and yeah, we’ve just been over time kind of trying to create a journal that you can carry with you, that you can have with you that is fun, uses good quality paper and is good to write and I personally use black wing pencils that we sell in the shop as well and the journal is perfect for writing in a pencil. But I’ve also written plenty of notes in pen. But if you’re planning to take the journey through the Bible next year and if you feel like God speaks to you through His word, then it’s good to have something to take notes with. If the Lord is speaking it’s good to take notes and so a Daily Audio Bible journal will be included in the Christmas box this year. We are also including the Global Campfire candle which is well, it’s a Global Campfire candle. It’s got the Global Campfire logo on it. It’s a beautiful tin candle and we worked with the perfumer to create an aroma that smells like a campfire. And I’m not talking about a smoldering campfire that just had water poured all of it and just smells like soot and smoke. It’s a lovely aroma that evokes a campfire and evokes the community that we are around the Global Campfire. Also, included your choice of either the DAB blend of fresh roasted coffee or if you are a tea drinker, we are including as the tea selection, our honey bush and rebus herbal tea, which is one of our more sought-after teas, so it’s your pick either coffee or tea. Also included will be our 2021 Christmas ornament. So, it’s got Daily Audio Bible 2021 on it and the word for the year which has been “mend” and I love these. I’ve got them since we started doing them. I think 10, 11, 12 years ago, I don’t know, a long time ago. I got one for each year, goes on the tree and it just reminds me of the journey through the Bible in a year in community. There’s no possible way I could have everybody over for hot cocoa and cookies at our house and that would be impossible, but it’s one of the ways, one of the things that I have in our Christmas tradition that brings the community home and close in nearby. So, that ornament is available in the Christmas box for this year. In fact, that’s the only place you can get it, is in the Christmas box. We are also including a Global Campfire pop socket. So, pop socket is that little handhold device he can come to stick to your tablet or your phone and then you have a little grip. We’ve made one with the Global Campfire logo on it. Also, two Global Campfire stickers and a pack of five Global Campfire frame-able postcards, it’s a series of Global Campfire postcards. It can be used as postcards to write, put a stamp on, send away or to kind of hang onto and put in different places to remind you of the community that we are as we moved to the Scriptures together. And then lastly, we will be including a mystery item from the vault, while supplies last. So, you can check out the Christmas box. The family Christmas box for 2021 in the Daily Audio Bible Shop which you can access at dailyaudiobible.com or using the Daily Audio Bible by pressing the drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner and in the Shop you will find Christmas category now that it’s Christmas time and you’ll find the Daily Audio Bible Christmas box for 2021 there in the Christmas section. Another new resource that we’ve been talking about for about a week is the Promised Land, Photographs from the Land of the Bible which is beautiful coffee table book full of photographs from the land of the Bible that have been curated from nine different seasons in the land of the Bible that can also be found in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. In fact, we even put it in the Christmas section to make it easy to find. You can find it in a couple of other sections but if you just go to the Shop, click Christmas, then you’ll find Christmas box as well, as well as the Promised Land book, so check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, here as we begin to approach the end of the year, I thank you humbly, humbly, deeply with a deep gratitude. We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t in this together. And so, 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 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.

Ezekiel 45:13-46:24, 1 Peter 1:13-2:10, Psalms 119:33-48, Proverbs 28:11

Today is the 23^rd day of November welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it’s awesome to be here with you today as we continue our journey through this week and continuing our journey through the book of Ezekiel. We have been moving through Ezekiel for a while now. Couple more days in Ezekiel and then we will…we will conclude that book. We began the first letter of Peter yesterday in the New Testament and so we will continue that journey today to let us dive in. We’re reading from the New English Translation this week. Ezekiel chapter 45 verse 13 through 46 verse 24.

Commentary:

Okay. So, today is the 23^rd day of November and the day after tomorrow in the United States is Thanksgiving Day, which is a national holiday for us here in the United States, but typically the day after that which is Friday is known as Black Friday and that’s definitely true in the United States that…that's…that’s true around the world as well. It's…well…I guess it's…it’s not really a holiday. It’s just something that retailers definitely dive into. People are going to be out shopping for Christmas. So, all of these big sales begin and that kinda kicks off what we know as the holiday season or the Christmas season and it will only amp up all the way through the rest of the year pretty much. And, so, that’s where we’re sitting. We’re right on the cusp of things becoming busy, the busiest time of the year. And it’s in the busiest time of the year that we may be going too fast, and we find ourselves back in old ruts where we’re just reacting to things because we feel like we don’t really have the time to process everything that’s coming our way. Ironically, we see words that give counsel for this kind of attitude or this kind of behavior in first Peter today. Now, there…there was no Black Friday. Peter isn’t commenting on the holidays that exist in our day and time and in our parts of the world, but it is the holiday season that makes us feel full of joy but also feel very busy usually. And, so, it’s so easy because maybe we’re tired, we’re not getting enough rest, we’re running too fast, we’re trying to figure out how to pay for it all, all of the stresses that come put us in a position where one wrong word, right, can send us into a tornado of awfulness. And if we paid attention to James, we know that a lot of that awfulness comes from our mouths. That’s really where it lives. The awfulness might separate us bodily from one another, but it originated with words and behaviors that we had grown accustomed to and fall back into because we’re not paying attention. Listen to what Peter says. “Like obedient children, do not comply with the evil urges you used to follow in your ignorance, but like the holy one who called you become holy yourselves in all of your conduct. For it is written, you shall be holy because I am holy.” So, Peter’s obviously not talking about the Christmas season. He’s talking about every day, like this is what normal is supposed to look like. But the holidays can certainly give us a gut check and first Peter can certainly give us a reminder of where were supposed to be walking instead of in this old rut that we have fallen back into being reactionary and spewing things out of our mouths that should not be said. So, Peter gives us something that we can kinda just let sit there in our back pocket and we can kinda carry around with us. And if we can stay observant enough to know like, “okay it’s startin’ to heat up inside of me. I’m gonna boil over and when I do things are gonna come out of my mouth”, that’s how it’s gonna boil over. If we can catch ourselves there and simply say, “you must be holy because I am holy.” Let’s take that into the rest of this week because before this week is out many, many, many of us will be kind of in…in situations that we’re not normally in. We’ll be around family members that maybe we’d only see once a year or a couple times a year. We will be all pulled together and then all of a sudden, boom, it will be the holiday season. If we could hold on to this, “you must be holy because I am holy”, that could save us from all kinds of awfulness, which means its at least worth meditation, right? It’s at least worth thinking about.

Prayer:

Father we invite you into that. And we are inviting you into all kinds of things about us but if we had to break it right down we’re asking your Holy Spirit to help us keep guard over our tongues, because James is right, we can burn our whole life down with our tongue, and we’ve set fires with our tongues and we’re moving into a time that is the most joyful, but is also a volatile time for many. So come Holy Spirit, may we be aware of your presence and walk with you in all of our interactions. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base. That’s the website, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here. And always something going on around here. But now we’re at the end of the year plenty is going on around here. So, something brand-new today. And I guess with every resource that becomes available around here there’s a story and I love to tell the stories and this story is about my son Max, Maxwell.

Manny years ago, when Maxwell was just a little fella, he’s a little bit younger than his bigger sister China. Well, China when she was a little girl had vision for Daily Audio Bible Kids and we launched Daily Audio Bible Kids when she was 10 I think…9 or 10…I can’t remember…I’d have to count the years. And once in a while Max would make a cameo appearance and then we started having the Maxwell minute., where he’d just come share some of his thoughts and he had the best thoughts. I’ve had so many great conversations with him throughout his life. But when he was a little kid just the way his mind would work I remember him talking to me about Adam and Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the serpent. And he was like, “so the snake did he say like “sssssss” to them and they just understood what he meant? Stuff like that would be in the Maxwell minute. And then Max grew up a little bit more and learned how to read and then he began to do Daily Audio Bible Kids carrying that tradition forward that Ezekiel now has. And as Max got older and older, he got a little bit less interested in the day-to-day daily recording. And, so, big commitment for a kid, largely because he got bit by the music bug, and I began to teach Maxwell how to play piano about that same time and he really really took to it and he became really amazing at it. And then he got really really good at engineering, audio engineering and production kind of following in the pathway of his father because that was…that was my vocation before there was a Daily Audio Bible. Well…he’s not a little kid anymore. He’s a grown young man now, but through all the ups and downs of growing up and being a teen and moving through all of those uncomfortable years and all of those uncomfortable distinctions and all that stuff that goes with becoming a grown up. I would say music has been his anchor. It’s something that he has pursued throughout his life. And if I’m being honest, he has far surpassed me as a musician. And, so, earlier this year I asked him if he would begin to create a Christmas album for us around the Global Campfire. And he has been working on that throughout the course of the months of this year. And I love Christmas music. I don’t know, there’s some kind of connection point to my childhood through Christmas music because I’ve just loved it my whole life. I’ve been an avid collector of it. I have more Christmas music than anybody I know. So, I’m a little bit of a connoisseur of Christmas music when it comes Christmas time. And I love this record. It’s cool, it’s modern but it’s contemplative and thought-provoking. And this will be the second Christmas album that we’ve released over the years here around the Global Campfire. The first one was a few years ago called Family Christmas. That was a production that I was able to do. But I love Max’s production just the modern feel, just the way kid of modern composition…composing is going right now is…it’s to really pack life, to not sterilize the tracks, to actually have atmosphere and noises from recording and try all kind of unique instruments in different configurations. And I just love the treatments to these classic Christmas carols. I’ve had the advantage of listening to it all week. So, this brand-new Daily Audio Bible Christmas album is called Christmas Time. And like our other Christmas record it is the kind…it…it’s not the kind of music that’s gonna get you up and dancing and having a party. It’s the kind of music that…that you…that you listen to when you’re having a cup of coffee or cocoa or whatever and, you know, you turn the lights off in your house and just have the Christmas lights on and it’s peaceful and serene and different and very calming, that’s how this album Christmas Time feels. And it’s coming just in time for the holiday season. So, this brand-new recording will release on December 1^st. So, a week from now, but it is available for preorder on…well…at the iTunes store for Apple devices and at the Amazon store. In about a week it’ll begin to move out into all the digital platforms worldwide, but Apple and Amazon allow us to do a pre-release with prerelease pricing. And when you get this new album Christmas Time, you’ll get three of the songs instantly and then the other ones will show up in your music collection on the first. So, if you like Christmas music as I do, if you like Christmas music that…that sets an atmosphere of reflection and contemplation then this will be a great addition to the collection. So, you can go to the iTunes store…and you’ll have to go to the iTunes store and not Apple music and search for Maxwell Hardin or Christmas Time. And I’m so excited for you to hear. This is the first thing he’s allowing to go out into the wild for a while now and I’m proud of it and I’m proud of him and I’m hoping you can pick up a copy for your holiday season. And, so, that’s brand-new today and moving us into the holiday season.

We also have the brand-new Promised Land, photographs from the land of the Bible. and I have loved the feedback that I’ve been able to hear so far. I love the pictures on social media when they arrive. I love that. And, so, that resource is available at the Daily Audio Bible Shop. Just go into the Books and Audiobooks section or go into the Lifestyle section and you’ll find it there while supplies last. We have some more on the way, but I think it’s starting to get doubtful that they are going to arrive before Christmas. There’s just this massive supply chain issue in the world right now. But Promised Land, photographs from the land of the Bible is available in the Daily Audio Bible Shop at dailyaudiobible.com.

Maxwell Hardin and the Christmas Time record are available in the iTunes store or the Amazon store. So, check those out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if the mission here to bring the spoken word of God read fresh every day and offered freely to anyone who would listen to it anywhere on this planet any time of day or night, and build community around that rhythm, also known as the Global Campfire, if that has been life-giving to you than thank you for your partnership as we begin to move toward the end of the year. 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, the little red button at the top or you can dial 877-942-4253.

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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi, my DAB family this is Work in Progress here in California. Just got a prayer request for a woman named Marlene. Marlene works at a Grocery Outlet kind of in our neighborhood here. And…and, you know, a while ago I could tell, you know, I’ve kind of gotten to know her a little bit, and…and a while back I could, you know, saying hi I could tell something was kind of on her mind and kind of talked to her and she said that, you know, her cancer had come back. And, so, she allowed me to pray with her. And anyway, long story short with that, her cancer, she went in for surgery and everything was good…good with that. But today I saw her again and it was that same kind of thing where I could tell something was wrong and…and…and she told me that her…a week ago her husband was killed in a motorcycle accident and she was right there and, you know, saw…didn’t see it happen but, you know, she…she…she…it was a bad accident let's…let’s put it that way. And, so, she again…I hugged her and she just burst into tears and I told her that I’d be praying for her and I know you guys will be too. Her name is Marlene. Really really sweet gal. So, if you could just lift her up in prayer for healing and that she draws near to the Lord that would be great. Thanks DABbers have a great day.

Hello everyone, my name is Christina and I’m from Indiana. My family and I have posted multiple things on the Prayer Wall and have had plenty of responses and prayers and people keeping us in your thoughts and we want to reach out and say thank you for everything that you have done. Even the simple kindness of praying for someone that we’re not used to. We’re used to doing everything on our own and not having people here and I’m thankful that we do. I’m thankful to God that he showed this app to my husband, and he has shared it with me, and I’ve shared it with countless others. And that God is continuously helping us through the struggles that is life and the problems that we are having continuously. But I really want to say, please pray with me for my family for all of my family. Dear God I want to thank You for everything that You’ve given me, all the blessings of both of my kids, my two five year old’s that don’t understand what’s going on but still push through every single day like nothing’s happened. I want to say thank You for the life that You have given me and my husband and continually to push us and carry us through our struggles. Thank You for everything and that…

Hi family, it’s Machala from Gloucester. It is Saturday the 20^th of November, and it is half one in the morning. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers over this past year. I have been struggling but things are getting back on track now. I’m moving in the right direction, and I can only thank God for that. I don’t know where I’d be without Him. I’d appreciate your prayers for sleep. Sleep is happening but not as much as I would like or as much as there should be and I can’t or I'm…I’m struggling to get my brain to switch off. Yeah. Father God thank You so much for this day You have given us. Thank You for all that has happened. Thank You for the opportunities and the things that have been achieved. Sorry if there’s opportunities that I’ve missed and those things that could have gone better. I give them all to You and submit them to Your care. Lord You know those thoughts that a whirling round, those things that are stopping us from sleep and we do commit them to You. I pray Lord that You would help us to rest, that You would help us to relax, that we would find peace so that we may be restored through sleep.

Hey friends this is Planted by the River in California, and I was just overtaken by the prayer request from…I am sorry I missed your name…but the woman whose has a husband who has had multiple strokes and they’re now calling in Hospice. And I was just emotionally overcome by your message about tears and pain and also laughter and joy. And all I could think of was the joy…the joy of the Lord is your strength, and you radiate it my friend. I’m just praying that the God will…that God will cradle your heart and protect you from the pain of the loss of your husband as…as he goes through his end of life and God…and God will be there with you. And I just want to say your husband is blessed to be having a woman beside him like you to take care of him through this…these multiple strokes and this process. And I just picture you and he and God together passing through this challenging time in life. And sister I just pour out God’s blessings on you and His favor and His peace. I love you friend. And just know that we’re all here with you going through it together and God is with you and we love you. Praise God. Take care.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family this is His Girl Warrior from Alabama it is Saturday November the 20^th and my grateful for today is my parents…are my…bla…are my parents haha - Norman and Becky. I’m grateful for them being alive and still being a part of my life and that they are generally healthy. I’m thankful for their kindness and support in this last year of my life which has been kind of a Cray Cray one. Please pray for their salvation. My parents are not believers, and neither are my brothers. So, please pray for my brothers Shane, Joshua and Benjamin and please pray for my nephew Madison and Manesis, Brianna, and Riley. They need Jesus and I…they listen to me but they…just pray that God would move on their heart and the Holy Spirit would take the scales off their eyes and that the hard life stuff that they’ve experienced won’t keep them from the love of Jesus. Anyway…so it is a beautiful day here in Alabama. I’m about to head out and go hiking. Alright I love you guys. Thank you that I can know that a worldwide army of prayer warriors is going to be praying for the salvation of my family. Alright. See you guys later. Bye.