Genesis 46:1-47:31, Matthew 15:1-28, Psalms 19:1-14, Proverbs 4:14-19
Today is the 23rd day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It is wonderful to have this time together to just kind of let everything else that is going on fade away and just center ourselves in the rhythm of the Scripture in our lives. And as we do every day, we’ll pick up where we left off. And Joseph has revealed himself to his brothers, who are absolutely struck speechless, can’t believe what is happening. And they’ve been sent back to tell their father, Jacob, that Joseph, his son that he thought was dead, is actually alive and in command of Egypt. So, he, Jacob is obviously struck speechless as well, can’t believe this. And now they’re going head back to Egypt to see Joseph. Genesis chapter 46 and 47. We’re reading from the Common English Bible this week.
Commentary:
Okay. Let’s pay attention to the stark voice of wisdom, the simple, stark, voice of wisdom found in the Proverbs today, where we’re just told directly, ‘don’t go on the way of the wicked, don’t walk on the path of evil people. Avoid it. Don’t turn onto it. Stay off of it and keep going.’ And we could say, well, that’s kind of dah, that’s kind of, like, obvious. And if it is that stark and that clear and sort of obvious, then why don’t we do it? And we can say, well, it’s kind of complicated, life kind of flies at us with 100 decisions a minute, and we don’t always know whether we’re making the right decision. And, so, sometimes we end up in a place that we didn’t expect. Yeah, but we know right from wrong. We can’t be walking with God and we have no sense that we’re walking into gray. And if we’re walking into gray, out of the light, into the gray, then we are certainly walking toward the darkness. So, if we’re walking into the gray and we keep walking, we will end up in the darkness. And things don’t go well in the darkness as we probably all can testify to. On the other hand, the Proverb tells us that the way of the righteous is like morning light. It keeps getting brighter and brighter till it’s full day. Right? So, if we’re walking into a gray area and we realize that it’s getting darker and we turn around, we’d be walking back into the light and it will get more and more light instead of more and more dark. This is a very, very simple truth, a very simple juxtaposition between darkness and light. It’s something that we can all understand. And yet, its implications are profound. This little proverb here between darkness and light and where were going to walk, if we obeyed just this it would have a profound effect on our lives and the outcome and impact of our lives. Life may be flying at us at a 100 decisions a minute, but that doesn’t mean we have to be swept away. It means we have to stay rooted and centered in Christ and invite the Holy Spirit to navigate these decisions, because He has the capacity to handle 100 decisions a minute flying at you. He has the capacity to navigate in life with you, in collaboration. He can tell you, this doesn’t need to be decided right now, you need to sleep on this. On this one, this is the way to go. On this one, do not even make that decision, don’t even go there. And we can say, man, life is just too busy for that. Like, there’s no way to slow down and listen like that. Like, who has that kind of time? If we don’t have time to walk with God then we have lost the plot of our story and we will never be able to walk out of the darkness into the full glory of the light.
Prayer:
Father, we invite You into that - the busyness the chaos, just the way that the world works. Through Jesus, You are showing us in the Gospels that we don’t have to live in the chaos of all that. We have to re-center ourselves. That’s not going to take the chaos away. That’s not going to take everything that’s going on away. It will center us and root us in You and then we will not be navigating the chaos alone. We will be collaborating in a life that is meaningful. And, so, Father we pray along with King David in the Psalms. Clear us of any unknown sin. Save us from the sins that we’ve committed willfully. Don’t let them rule us. Then we’ll be blameless. Then we’ll be innocent before You. Father, let the words of our months, and let the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You, because You are our rock and our Redeemer. You are our only hope. And, so, we center ourselves in You. We find our place in You. We reconnect with You. And we watch all the chaos that’s swirling around us be put into its perspective. There is nothing more important than that we walk with You today. Come, Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.
Announcements:
Okay. I want to talk to you a little bit about the new Daily Audio Bible app. For some of you it’s working perfect and for others of you it’s not working very great. So, I want to talk to you about a couple of the pain points, because it’s not like we’re sitting back here oblivious. Like, we’re studying everything, figuring out everything. We did a beta test with the app last year. For those of you who are new, that’s new news. For those of you who were here last year, you know that. And we did it with 500 people to identify any issues that would come up that we could. And then it’s, you know, it’s quite a different thing when you’ve got tens of thousands of people using the app. That reveals a lot more. So, one of the primary things that we experienced going into the new year was simple server meltdown, like, overload. There were 5 to 10 requests per second at the server level, which forced some significant upgrades. And I talked about that back at the beginning of January, which helped alleviate a bunch of stuff. And then, so after we got that in place, we could see residual things. And it’s important to at least acknowledge what we released is 1.0. So, like, the beginning point. So, we released the first update to the app addressing so many of the different issues, especially with the different flavors of Android that are out there. So, I just want to let everyone know to update your app. I mean, if you have automatic updates on your Apple or Android device then your good. But if you don’t and you update manually, then update. There aren’t a lot of cosmetic changes or anything like that. It’s more back end stuff. We got this out over the weekend and were able to just see what it was doing on server load and was drastically, even those who have automatically updated, it was drastically reducing the calls to the server, which immediately made everything work better. So, when you update the app it should be a little bit more responsive, a little bit more zippy, and be more stable. Those of you who were experiencing app crashes on Androids around the, you know, 8, 10, 12 minute mark, where it would just kind of crash on you, that had to do a lot with the way that Android does power saving measures. The way that it was explained to me is that there’s a couple of levels of that on an Android. And the second one is when the phone goes to sleep. And when that was happening it cuts off all streams. It cuts off, it actually cuts off the Internet in general. And, so, that’s been fixed and you should stop experiencing that. And that’s a pretty significant update for Android. Those of you using an iPhone or iPad or some other Apple device should experience just a lot more responsiveness.
And one other thing that I want to talk about, because we hear from a lot of people about it, is the checkboxes. So, we built the checkboxes, you know, to show you when you’ve listened to a day automatically. And that hasn’t been working right. And it hasn’t been working right for a couple of reasons, but one of the main reasons is server overload. So, with this new update we’re drastically reducing that load, so things should smooth out. But I know that’s been a little bit confusing. So, I can tell you this. The next update to the app, what’s being worked on right now, will enable you to do this manually. So, when you go into an episode page and push play and listen to the Daily Audio Bible, at the bottom, you’ll see a little checkbox, and you can check that box off yourself. Now, that’s not in this update that I’m talking about right now. But I will certainly be announcing it once we get that in place and out there. So, that will be in the next update. So, I don’t have an exact ETA on that, other than that’s what’s being worked on right now and that it has to be tested and testing for a gazillion devices is not the easiest thing in the world do. But that’s coming in the next update. But in the meantime, things should smooth out significantly and be much more responsive.
So, if you haven’t updated to the newest version of the app, do that and you should experience a good improvement in performance.
Okay. One other thing I want to say about the app, because we’ve received a number of inquiries about it, is making episodes available off-line. Now, when you load up the app and go to a page for an episode, you’ll see the tab that says ‘make available off-line’. If you check that, that’s what it will do going forward. If you want to manage that, then what you need to do is click the little drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner. It’s like three lines, it’s a little drawer. If you click that button, a little drawer will pop out. And that’s how you get to the Daily Audio Bible shop, that’s how you get to the Prayer Wall, that’s where that stuff is. At the very bottom of that page is your account. If you’re using the app as a guest, then you don’t have one, but if you’re logged in, so that you can take notes, write in the journal that kind of stuff. Down at the bottom, you’ll see a little gear icon. That’s the settings. Click that. You can manage all of the settings for your account, including how you want to manage off-line episodes that are being downloaded.
So, we’re off and running with 1.05. We’ve got a little update, that’s actually a huge update behind the scenes and will help everything run smoother and more responsively for everyone. And, I mean, like I said last year when we were just about to make this go into the wild world out there, pray. I mean, if you experience a difficulty on the app, let us know, sure. Also pray, because I can’t understate this, this whole thing has been under a canopy of prayer the whole time, all 12 years. The prayers of God’s people has sustained what we’ve done together over all of these years. And I don’t think it will ever be any different. So, continue to pray as we continue to build the best experience for moving through the Bible in a year in community that we can dream up. Thank you for your prayers.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link that lives right on the homepage. And I thank you, profoundly, for your partnership. This is truly, truly a community endeavor. We are truly doing this together, and if we didn’t do it together we wouldn’t be able to do it all. So, thank you. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.
And, as always, if you have a prayer request or 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 and Praise:
Hello Daily Audio Bible family. This is Nathan from Bloomington Illinois. I hope everybody is doing okay and surviving the frosty winter at least in the United States Midwest section. Hey, the last few days Brian has mentioned a few things that’s been consistent about when things happen, you know, a column is built or a stone or stones are piled in remembrance of. So, when people pass by, they recall, this is what this is for. Actually, what I look at is very similar to hiking. Now, I like hiking in the upper altitudes of the Colorado Rockies because a lot of people to get up there and you see some really cool things, but when you get so high, sometimes a trail is really hard to decipher. And, so, hikers, have piled rocks so you can find from one point to another where to get to. They’re called Cairn’s. So, when you get to one Cairn, you look for the next one and it guides you to the next path, and you follow the Cairn until your destination. Well, I guess, from that perspective, God is our Cairn and we look for guidance, we look for that direction so we know where to go. If those stone piles were not there we could possibly get lost, or get off the path, wondering into an area that we shouldn’t be in. And that’s the way that God provides guidance to us. He provides reminders of which direction should be heading, which path we should be on, and that comes right out of the Bible. The Bible is pretty clear on how we need to live our lives. And I know we fail daily, but I just thought I’d throw that out there to you. Hope you have a great day. Make it a great day.
Hi Daily Audio Bible family. It’s Linda calling. I listened to the January 13th podcast and to the prayer requests __. Vicki, I am so sorry to hear that your son took his own life. My daughter took her life in 2003. And it’s a difficult situation to deal with. I know for sure. I only gotten through this, I’ve been in way or another in leaning on God every single day. I have questions that I think will never be answered here on earth. I miss my daughter terribly. We’re moving up to her 35th birthday and I still wonder what she would be doing and what we would be doing together. I know it’s difficult Vicki. I know it’s so hard to deal with and my heart goes out to you. And I send you all my love and you’ll be in my prayers. Take care Vicki. Bye-bye.
Good morning DAB family this is Joyful Noise from Southern California. I am calling in today to share how much I love you and how much I love this community. It is a privilege to lift one another up in prayer. And scripture tells us that prayer opens the floodgates of heaven. Like, imagine the biggest power on this earth, like a nuclear bomb, I don’t even know what the biggest power is now, but it’s so much more than that. It’s the most powerful thing in the universe, like the power of God, it unleashes the power of heaven. My gosh, it’s like we just can even get our minds around it, or I can’t. And, so, it is a privilege to be able to join with you all in requesting God’s favor, God’s deliverance, God’s protection, whatever it is that we are seeking as a community and as a family, it is a privilege. So, thank you again, Brian, Jill, and also the Hardin family for all you do to keep this ministry going. I cannot even imagine the __ stuff that you guys deal with and have to do every single day no matter what No period. Matter period. What period. Way period. So, I’m calling in today because I heard some prayer request and I just want to let you all know that I’m partnering with you in prayer. First off, his little Sharif, who is praying for all of us and she’s also praying for her son and his several months new, I believe new, marriage. And, so, little Shariff, I just want you to know that I’m praying for your son and daughter-in-law. And I’m going to be lifting them up. I’m also praying for a woman, and I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name, but you were talking about China and how impressed you were that she’s been reading the Bible through for 10 years, and how we are all impressed. And then you mentioned your prodigal son who was a heroin addict. And I just want to come alongside you my sister, oh my gosh, just such a burden there, and do not be in a place where you compare yourself at all. It sounded like you were doing…
Hi. This message is for Sherry the social worker from Colorado Springs. I’m Abby from Nashville and I was just calling to pray for you. I heard you and just wanted you to know that you are not alone. So, let me pray for you. Dear God, I just pray for my sister. I pray that You would just strengthen her. Lord God, I ask that You restore to her the joy of salvation. Father, I pray that she could walk into any empty and unclear situation Lord __ because her center is in You, and her joy is in You. Father, I just ask that You would honor Your word because You say in Isaiah, when we fast and we seek you, that you break the prisoners free, that the chains fall off Lord God, and that the captives are relieved. And so, I just, in Jesus name, declare Your promises over Sherry in her life Lord God, that right now You are speaking to her, and that right now You are giving her clarity, and that right now You will strengthen her because You never leave us Lord God. Father, I just pray for her situation at work, that You would bring light. Lord God that you would bring life to that, that You would remind her of her purpose there Lord God, and if it’s the right time to deliver her from this situation, that You would just open doors and close doors Lord God. I pray for clarity for her. Lord God I just pray that You would mix up her life for the better and that she would know You more today than she did yesterday. Father, bless my sister, bless her staff. I pray you would speak loudly and I thank you for her. In Jesus name. Amen.
Hey family. This is Jordan from Michigan. I just wanted to call and thank you all for your prayers. They really do make a huge difference in ___. Thank you for interceding on my behalf. I want to humbly request more prayer. I am at a crossroads in my life. I don’t necessarily like my job right now. On my free time I find myself thinking about the things of God. And when at the school teaching, at a secular school, it seems to distract me from the things of God and there are evils in the school system that are very insidious and are a stumbling block for me. And, right now, I am in sin. There’s some sin in my life that is…that’s what the job is…I’m just miserable. So…not all the time but enough to call in and ask for prayer, urgently. But I will say this, I’m thankful for God. I’m thankful for His mercy. I’m thankful for His grace. And I would be so thankful if you would take the time to pray for me. Thank you. And I love you. Bye.
Good morning family my name is Erin from Michigan and I am __ thrilled to call in this morning. Today is Friday morning, January 19th and I’m headed off to the final day of exams for my seniors in high school. And I just praise the Lord for this class that I have today. It’s a two-hour class and it’s just, it’s everything I believe about education. It’s problem-solving, it’s having students be able to choose what they study and really go with their interests. So, I am very blessed and praise Jesus every day that I get to teach that class. So that’s A, praise the Lord. B) I would like to talk about today how Brian talked about the unforgivable sin, the unpardonable sin. I too was raised in a church that, praise Jesus, taught the power of the blood and the need for salvation, but this looming and very ominous unforgivable sin was just always out there, always on the young mind. And I was one of those that would ask Jesus to save me again every Sunday to make sure I didn’t burn in hell’s fire. And I don’t at all mean to make light of any of that, but thank you Brian for your commentary today about the unpardonable sin and how we come close to it but should steer very far away. And in my last few seconds I’d like to lift up my brother Bruce and my niece Jackie and just Lord God, wrap them in the hollow of your hand, keep them safe from __ and from themselves. And Lord help me to be a support and a love and the light for you. Thank you, family. I love you and have a most fabulous weekend. Bye.