2 Chronicles 8:11-10:19, Romans 8:9-25, Psalms 18:16-36, Proverbs 19:26
Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. Today is the 23rd day of July. I’m Brian. It’s great to be here with you as we kind of buckle up and prepare for today’s reading allowing God’s word to speak to us as we do every day just kind of calming our minds down. There’s so much going on for each of us in our own ways. Just letting that kind of recede into the background. It’s not going away. Maybe when we come out of this time, we’ll look at it differently. And, so, we just give ourselves permission to let the Holy Spirit to come as we take the next step forward through the Scriptures this year. This week we’re reading from the English Standard Version and today second Chronicles chapter 8 verse 11 through 10 verse 19.
Commentary:
Okay. So, we’ve been traveling with the apostle Paul through this letter to the Romans and listening to him lay out his argument about the law and its purpose and so today we reach this point where we can start to see the implications of what this argument is, and it should bring us unbelievable hope. So, Paul says, “it’s the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead that lives in you.” Okay, can we just sit without for second? Like, I know where at the end here and we’re kind of getting ready to enter…to move into prayers and move back into our day but can we stay here for second and slow down and let that just kind of turnover in our minds? Because we’ll hold it as a theological concept or some kind of metaphor and not as a reality that penetrates our hearts. Say this with me, “the Spirit of God raised Jesus from the dead, lives in me.” What else is there to say my friends? Like, what if we embrace that as a reality? What would change? Because we know it. Like it’s this famous passage. Like, we know this, but do we know this? Like is this our reality? How could we ever feel abandoned by God, ever again if we believed that the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead lives in me? Like, how could you be abandoned by the Spirit that lives with in you? And if you take some time today to just meditate upon that alone. It’s the Spirit of God that’s in me, the Spirit of God Almighty lives within me. Like, you know, I don’t know how to…I don’t know the right words to use to describe the magnificence of what we’re talking about here the monumental shift of what that would mean if we were continually aware of it. If we just meditate upon this one thing today and just think of the implications, just look at all of the different anxieties and I’m speaking to myself here and all the different obligations and responsibilities. Like, my life is no less chaotic than your life and I have no fewer invitations to lose it than you do. So, if we just actually took some time today to think about all of the different things that seem to be flying at us like bullets, all the anxieties that we have inside that are just churning in there and consider the implications of what Paul has told us, “the spirit of God, the same one that raised Jesus to life from death after being brutally crucified as we witnessed in the gospel, that same spirit lives in me.” It’s like the biggest game changer you could possibly imagine. So, why aren’t we living like this? Because we’re choosing not to. We’re choosing other voices, we’re choosing our own voice, we’re choosing the voices of other people over the voice of the Spirit within us and frankly we’re gonna be obedient to whatever we have submitted ourselves to. So, let’s consider today when the anxiety begins to churn up or when the depression seems to come down like a low hanging cloud around our head, let’s consider whose voice we’re listening to because the reality remains the reality - if we are in Christ then the Spirit of God who raised Christ from the dead lives in you.
Prayer:
So, Holy Spirit, we invite you into that because it’s your Spirit that we’re talking about here and you are never not available to us. You have not abandoned us, you are within us. And we…we acknowledge…like…there’s a lot of voices going on inside of our heads at any given time, like there’s all kinds of things that pull us, whether it’s the voice of fear or the voice of judgment or whatever. We’re looking for your voice and your voice alone to lead us into all truth, to illuminate our path, to lead us on the narrow path that leads to life. We’re looking for your voice and your voice alone. And, so, help us to silence the voices that are within us and reveal to us the voices that are outside of us that we’re giving a place that they do not deserve and show us how to silence that. We want to hear you. We want to walk with you and enjoy this life in you. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.