2 Kings 3:1-4:17, Acts 14:8-28, Psalms 140:1-13, Proverbs 17:22
Today is the 22nd day of June. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It is a pleasure and a joy to be here with you today as we center ourselves in God’s word and allow it to wash into and over our lives. So, we began the book of 2 Kings yesterday and transitioned between the prophet Elijah and Elisha as we continue forward in the annals of the kings and the generations of the kings of Israel. So, we’re reading from the Contemporary English Version this week. 2 Kings chapter 3 verse 1 through 4, verse 17 today.
Commentary:
Okay. So, in the book of Acts we’re watching now as the apostle Paul becomes more of a prominent figure in the book of Acts. And we’re watching his journeys and travels and what we should notice both in Peter’s life and in Paul’s life, which are two, kind of, the main figures that are featured in the book of Acts, everywhere they go, everywhere that they share the gospel, it is a disruptive thing. It shakes things up. It causes a reaction in people. So, for example, just today Paul is preaching in Lystra. He makes eye contact with this person in the audience who can’t walk, but he sees that this man has faith and he calls it out and the man can walk and everybody…I mean…Paul’s preaching the gospel…and then God comes for this man and everybody wants to sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas as if they are God’s. And barely before they can stop the people from like sacrificing to them as God’s, other Jewish people have come from other towns and the crowd turns against them, and then rather than sacrificing a bull to Paul as a God, they stone Paul and leave him for dead. That’s how disruptive the gospel can be. And we watched all this happen in Jesus ministry as well. And normally, if we do think about these things, we just think about the authority of the gospel and that we’re carrying that along with us into our lives and into the discussions that we might have. But have we ever stopped and thought, is the gospel still disrupting me? Does it still shake things up in me? Does it still bring up the things that need to be brought up in me? Does it still confront me in the same way? Does it pull me deeper into intimacy and union with God or has a become a relic, something that I just do, something that I just kind of am? According to the apostle, Paul, and we’ll see this over and over as we move through his writings, the gospel is changing us, literally transforming us. The end of this destination is union with Christ, oneness with Christ. That’s disruptive and it’s going to disrupt anything that will be in the way of that, that full sanctification, that full wholeness and restoration that we are headed toward. The gospel is always going to disrupt anything that would interrupt that. So, rather than reading a story like this and going, wow, you know, wherever these early people went, they caused problems. The gospel was highly inflammatory in all kinds of ways to all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. We need to look into our own lives and say, just, does this still set my heart on fire? Is this still transforming me? Am I running into this full force with all my heart mind soul and strength? Some things to invite the Holy Spirit into today.
Prayer:
Holy Spirit, come. We ask for that. We invite you into that. We invite you into everything that the Scriptures bring up in our lives. And, so, we invite you into this. Show us the ways that we’ve grown numb. Show us the ways that we’ve grown cold. Show us the ways that we’ve kind of walled ourselves off from the disruption that the truth brings into our lives because when we wall ourselves off from the disruption we’re also walling ourselves off from the transformation. Come Holy Spirit, we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.
Announcements:
dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, it’s where you find out what’s going on…
…and we’ve been talking the last couple of days about the upcoming tradition that we have as the Daily Audio Bible community. It’s called the Long Walk, the Daily Audio Bible Long Walk and it takes place every July 7th. And this year, the 7th July falls on a Saturday. So, that makes it fairly easy for us all to participate. And, fundamentally, what the long walk is is exactly what it sounds like. You go somewhere beautiful. You take the day, set it aside, give it to God, go somewhere beautiful whether near or far from where you are and go for a long walk. And, in part, this is a living parable of our lives. We walk with God. But the truth is, there’s so many distractions, so many entanglements, that we are walking with God but we’re not always paying attention to that fact. So, a lot of times we reflect back on decisions and choices that we made, that we really didn’t talk with God on, we just had to make the choice. We didn’t slow down enough to stay present to what He might have to say. This is an opportunity to reset that and it takes place right here as we approach the hearts of the year, like right in the middle of the year. So, it’s this reset button, an opportunity to go for a long walk with God, somewhere beautiful, beautiful enough that if we’re distracted by anything, it is the beauty of His creation and His presence all around us. And just take that walk. Review the year so far. Consider how the Scriptures have spoken. Consider what God is doing in our lives and then allow Him to speak into what the second half of our year is supposed to look like. So, it is a rich and beautiful time that I look forward to every year because I’m as busy as the next guy. So, you know, there’s all the stuff that’s going on. So, to set this aside and just slow it all down and have a moment to just look back and look forward in hope is beautiful. So, take your phone or something. Don’t be distracted by it, but make sure you take a video or snap a picture. You’ll want to remember. You’ll want this for yourself. You’ll want to remember that time that you went for this long walk and what God spoke to you and all that happened, what you saw and how that felt. But take a picture that you can post back up to the Daily Audio Bible Facebook page, which is Facebook.com/dailyaudiobible. And as hundreds and hundreds of pictures come in, they become windows into each other’s lives. We get to kind of look through the lens of your camera at what you captured and what you found important and what it meant to you and share in that as a community. So, the Daily Audio Bible long walk is a solitary thing, but it’s also a very communal thing because we’re all doing it at the same time. And, so, when we post up the pictures, it just becomes…I love it…I look forward to it every year. Looking forward to it this year. So, that’s the Daily Audio Bible long walk. Make plans for the 7th of July and we’ll do this together.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for here is tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Good morning DAB family. This is Paula calling from Albuquerque. It is Monday, June 18th. I just had to call. I listened to the podcast. I always listen first thing in the morning. This is my devotion time. But on Mondays I always listen to the community prayer afterward. Well, I was listening to the community prayer and stop playing so I went back to the app. It went back to today’s reading and Brian’s commentary on Elijah running from Jezebel. And with everything I’ve been going through with my daughter and her husband and my job and just life, I call them gut punches. So, you touched on that Brian and I thank you for that because it was what I needed to hear. God is not in all the drama. He’s in that still small voice. So, I’m just…I’m praying that all of us listened to that because marriages are being attacked, jobs are being attacked, our peace at home is being attacked. Marriages, oh my gosh, I cannot tell you how many marriages I know of right now. People’s faith being challenged. The list goes on and on and on and I know you all know that. So, anyway, I just wanted to let you all know that, you know, God is so much bigger than all of this. Thank you Mark Street, my brother, for praying for my daughter and her husband. I ask that you guys…we need to lift up prayers for marriages. There was a man that used to loosen that used to do a list and I just used to always read that list. So, anyways, stay on top of this ya’ll. So, I love you all so much and…
Hi family. It’s Shannon from Texas. I keep thinking that every time I call for myself that it will be the last time that I call but here I am calling again. And I hate to keep calling about a job. I just really feel like a fool even though I know that I’m not. I’m just really struggling right now needing a job. I definitely lost my way after many years with a man in just being, you know, I owned several businesses but I was just kind of half-wife and I took care of my family but after leaving him in that abusive relationship. He was a narcissist and the PTSD that I’ve suffered after has definitely…I’m realizing how much…even though it’s four years later…I’m just looking back thinking I have had a terrible time figuring out what I’m supposed to be doing now. And, I know the Lord has guided me, but I feel like it’s just going from worse to worse. And here I am two months after quitting a government job that I called in several times about and just utterly failing at. And I was able to get that job with a felony but now I have a felony on my record and I’ve been applying for jobs left and right and I just feel like I’m getting exposed everywhere that I go and I don’t know what God’s trying to do with it. He’s definitely up to something. I just need your prayer. I’m running out of money and bills are due and I know he’s got me but I just don’t want my mind to crumble in the meantime if that makes sense. I love you guys. I’m praying for all of you. Bye-bye.
Hello. My name is Elizabeth or in Hebrew that name also Ellushiva, which means, my God is abundance and he certainly is. It’s June the 18th and I spent a bit of the time today in prayer for God to raise up prayer warriors because there’s so many of us who are hurting. And I just was praying for God to raise us up to pray for those people. And then I listened to the June 17th podcast. And at the very end there were three amazing prayers by three amazing prayer warriors, one for Muslims and the bread of life, one for Cherry Chase Cherry Pie - all is well, and the last gentleman, who exhorting us to remember that God’s yoke is easy. So, my God is abundance. I prayed for prayer warriors and, wow, I can tell you that I was blessed with those prayer as I’m blessed with you every day that I listen to this wonderful podcast. So, thank you, family. Thank you, Brian. And God bless you.
Hi beautiful family. This is Pastor Gene from Bradenton Florida. I want to thank you so much for your prayers for me as I go through my trials, for the prayers for Victoria. She was told yesterday in the audition that she’s cute and very talented but she’s not quite ready. And we are okay with that, that the Lord is the Lord that opens and closes doors. So, we really can pray that and then when he closes, we’re really ___ . So, we just love the Lord for that. You know, in this industry, we are very, very used to no’s and we’re just speaking up and pushing on. But I love you family and I thank you for your prayers. I just want to give a shout out to our sister Christine from Washington. Sister, thank you so much for your call regarding your struggles in your marriage. You are always in my prayers. And you were talking about narcissism. And I want to talk a little bit about that from the perspective of someone that has narcissistic traits. And that is me. I was raised by a narcissistic mom but for me that was normal and I had no idea what narcissism was or what you __ defeat with. So, as I started realizing the abuse that I had been raised in then I realized that my mom was a narcissist, I realized that I had a lot of the same traits. And, so, for me prayer was not enough. I needed to relearn a way of life. And, so, I saw a Christian counselor and I focused on working and I read and I studied and I prayed and the Bible says, in Habakkuk, my people die for lack of knowledge. And I was literally dying and my marriage would have eventually died if I had not found myself with knowledge about this. So, I put that out there for whoever has to do it. I love you family. Pastor Gene from Bradenton Florida. Bye.