Genesis 26:17-27:46 ~ Matthew 9:1-17 ~ Psalm 10:16-18 ~ Proverbs 3:9-10
Today is the 12th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It is awesome to be here with you today. We’re starting to turn a corner toward the end of the second week and the rhythm is established. We’ve covered so much ground already and so much richness to go as we continue our way through this year. Let’s get to it. We’re picking up in Genesis where we left off yesterday and getting to know this son of promise who is named Isaac. From the Common English Bible, Genesis chapter 26, verse 17 through 27, verse 46.
Commentary
The book of Proverbs gives us, of course, wisdom and today it is giving us wisdom specific to the word we’re exploring this year – margin.
Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your crops, then your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will burst with wine.
Ironically, it doesn’t say first build yourself a nice portfolio and then guard that selfishly as long as you can so that it can grow and you can have plenty. It says honor the Lord. Honor the Lord with all that you are. Yes, that includes your financial resources, but that includes everything. Give the first, the best of what you are to God.
What I’m not saying is make sure that you give a bunch of money to whatever charity or church or cause that is important to you. That is not what the proverb is saying here. It is saying give the first and best of what you have and what you are to God, which means you need to go to God to find out what that looks like.
Just think of this relationally. Is the first and best of who you are offered to God in relationship? He is certainly offering his first and best to us. He has withheld nothing from us and is life-giving. We begin to see not only in the words of Jesus, but in the words of the Proverbs and all throughout the Old Testament that God’s ways are counterintuitive to our own ways. Does that mean we are completely separated and we can’t see it God’s way? Not at all. We were made to be intertwined with God. So what we see when we see these contrasts in our own lives is the ancient and ongoing effects of the fall of mankind. We were made to be quite a bit different than how we normally live our lives. The proverb is simply telling us how things are supposed to be and that we understand our source of life and everything that fills life and we are to honor that and steward that and protect that above all by offering the best of what we have and what we are to God. Then we’ll have everything that we need. Plenty.
Prayer
Father, we invite your Holy Spirit into that because we so often move toward money. There have been so many generations of dictating how that is supposed to look. Some of it is completely and totally righteous, but it has also been mixed in with all kinds of other motivations to persuade and motivate us. So we’re coming to you. What does it look like for us to give the best of who we are and what we have to you? You have placed individually on this planet each of us with our own experiences and stories, so it looks and feels different for each of us. It is shaped like our lives are, so we invite you into this. What are the areas inside of us that we’re completely unwilling to give our best to you? Or like Jesus was saying, what are the areas that we’re pouring new wine into old wineskins? That will not work. We invite your Holy Spirit to begin the work within us, the ongoing work of sanctification, the day by day, step by step process of being reformed and renewed. What are the things that you are after right now that we are withholding from you and by withholding them from you, effectively saying that we don’t believe this is true, we don’t believe you’ll come through, which is essentially saying you won’t do what we want you to do? It shows us, as the whole thing comes unraveled, that we’re trying to really control you and not submitting ourselves to your will and your ways in our lives, which unravels further, all the way down to the core that we don’t trust. We don’t trust you. What are the ways that we’re doing this? Begin that work in us and continue that work through this year so that when we get to the end of this year we have grown comfortable and that it is normal for us for us to fully embrace and trust you for our very next breath. Come Holy Spirit, we ask. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Announcements
Www.DailyAudioBible.com is the website and that is home base. That is where you find out what is going on around here. Prayers are happening there and resources are available there. Check it out.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible in this rhythm of the spoken Word of God every single day of the year, then thank you for your partnership. There is a link on the home page. If you use the app, you can push the More button in the lower right-hand corner. Or the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996, Spring Hill, TN 37174.
And, of course, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, (877) 942-4253 is the number to dial.
And that’s it for today. I’m Brian. I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports
Hey DAB brothers and sisters. This is Byron out in Florida. I was listening to Saturday’s podcast where Brian was talking about The Lord’s Prayer and all that and my heart was just overcome with all kinds of things that was just on it that I wanted to share with you guys. I’m just going to mirror it out of the __________, but before I got to that, I wanted to call out to Yvonne in California. Yvonne, I heard your call on how you struggle with drinking and how you want to get past that this year and I want to encourage you in that. You very much can succeed in that and you very much can turn that around, but in light of what Brian was talking about today, in everything else we go through, it is a process. It’s a process. The things that we want desperately in our lives to just change overnight, they don’t in most cases. But that doesn’t mean that God isn’t working on them. It’s a process. And I want to talk more about how God has shown that in my life, but if I had to pick a word as a __________ for this year it’s process. It is God working bit by bit every day over time. So Yvonne, take it one day at a time. Take it to the Lord. On that same podcast another lady called and talked about how she got freed from drinking, so I managed to listen to that again and take that to heart, what she said there because it was very powerful. But I just want you to know that I’m praying for you and you can do it and this can turn around but it will be a process. Love you guys. I’ll talk to you all later. Bye.
Hi Daily Audio Bible. My name is Kelly M. I’m a 32-year-old from Cincinnati, OH. I’ve been listening to Brian’s podcast for the last year and it has been such a blessing to me. This is my first time calling. I call to ask for your prayers for myself and my family. Four years ago my parents both were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer two days apart from each other. My father died on January 19, 2013. My mother passed away on my 30th birthday on May 9, 2014. We didn’t think that was coincidence at the time. Well, recently, we were just kind of out from our city due to an investigative report by Fox 19 that showed mold, asbestos and a whole bunch of toxins that were in the building. Over 25 officers have been diagnosed with cancer throughout the last 50 years and we think that is not a coincidence that our loved ones are getting sick. I call to ask for prayer for my family because we are all angry and we’re bewildered and the city is trying to hide evidence of what they did and won’t take responsibility. I just heard the podcast about forgiveness which I know wasn’t a coincidence, but how do you work through this process? Thank you all. I love you all. It has been such a hard world for us all. We feel like we’re starting the grieving process over again and it is frustrating. Thank you Brian for all that you do and your wife Jill. I’m praying for you all. God bless you all.
Hi Daily Audio Bible. This is Thankful from Australia. I’m just ringing. I’ve become aware of an issue in my life that I feel God is showing me that some of my loving is so that other people will love me. It has been revealed and I’m just reaching out and asking that God would help me to love with his love, without any expectation of needing other people to love me, that I would somehow find my value and __________ in God. I haven’t been able to change this on my own. I’m just reaching out and ask that God would help me and also bring the right resources or help across my path. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate and value the Daily Audio Bible and the wisdom that comes through that. Thank you.
Hello everybody. Hey, this is Annette A. I have to give my speech today, okay? I’m having a little bit of a hard day. But anyway, I’ve been contemplating forgiveness here in the last few days. Wow. You know, you think you’ve got it all figured out, you’ve put before the Lord the things that you’re forgiving him, whether that is actually forgiving people, forgiving circumstances, or turning things over to the Lord to let him deal with on your behalf. That is what for-giving is. You’re giving it to somebody else to fix. But anyways, I know there are a lot of people dealing with a lot of hurts out there and bad situations and I know children… It’s tough. I know it’s hard. I want to let you know that God cares and that he sees and that he knows and he understands. Sometimes when we’ve come to the end of the things that we can fix, we have to for-give it to God and it not only takes the burden out of our hands that we don’t have to worry about it so much anymore, that we have to fix it, but we’re going to trust that our Father has our best interests at heart with things that he knows the bigger picture. Sometimes things don’t look like the way we want to see it and circumstances happen, but he knows the biggest picture. Sometimes things don’t make sense to us, but they sure do to him. Consider that today. I want you all to know that I love you very, very much.
Hey family. Jordan from Michigan. I wanted to call with day 26 of my 30-day challenge which is a great praise report. Today I am grateful that Yeshuah has granted me a new job. So I’ll be working at the Dearborn Academy as co-teacher and a reading specialist. So I just want to give thanks to everybody who has been praying for me. It really made a difference. Look at what happened. A miracle happened. Seemingly out of nowhere they called me and gave me this job. I just feel so blessed, so blessed to have this wonderful new opportunity in a school where my friend worked and he told me that it is a very nurturing, warm, caring atmosphere for new teachers. So it is the ideal place for me to grow so that I can go back to the Detroit schools that I aspire to teach at and be much more effective someday. So Heavenly Father, I just want to thank you for everyone who prayed for me. I want to thank you for this opportunity. I want to thank you for my Daily Audio Bible family. I just want to thank you for all their prayers. I pray that you bless them and show them that no matter what they’re going through in their lives, there is always a possibility of something better around the corner. Heavenly Father, you know that I sinned. You know that I doubted. You know that I went through so many trials, it’s innumerable, but you pulled me through because…
Good morning Daily Audio Bible. I wrote a prayer request on December 23rd and it read “Hi Daily Audio Bible. This is Autumn. I’m 11 years old. I’m a first-time caller. I am letting everyone know that I am praying for them and I need you to pray for my paternal grandma. She is getting discharged today. I ask that she is healed completely and that she returns for home safely. I also ask that you pray for my parents, my brothers and me, that everything will work out for God’s glory. Also, I am Inez from Arizona’s granddaughter. My family and I had moved to Oklahoma in September but things didn’t quite work out, so my mom, brothers, and I came back to Arizona. My hope is that we get to go back to Oklahoma, my dad, and that no harm or no evil penetrates our family. Thank you. Bye.” Well today I am calling to tell you that my grandma Gloria passed away on December 27th. We are all heartbroken and sad but I also know life has to go on. My prayer for being together as a family has been answered. We are going back to Tulsa with my dad. Please pray for us. By the way, I really love the way Victorious Soldier prays for everyone and the way she says ‘the name of Jesus’ really makes her prayers powerful. I love it. Okay, I’m going to go now. I will call back when time allows. Bye now.