2 Kings 3:1-4:17, Acts 14:8-28, Psalm 140:1-13, Proverbs 17:22
Today is the 22nd day of June welcome to the Daily Audio Bible, I’m Brian, it is wonderful to be here with you today as we come together around the Global Campfire and move forward step-by-step and today we have another step, like we do each day. And that next step will take us into, well, into the new book that we’re in, 2 Kings, and so let’s dive in, we’re reading from the Contemporary English Version this week, 2 Kings chapter 3 verse 1 through 4 verse 17.
Commentary:
Okay, so in the Book of Acts we are the first missionary journey along with the Apostle Paul now and Barnabas. We have moved in the Book of Acts through some of Peter’s ministry and now we’re kind of tagging along with Paul and what we should be seeing pretty clearly is that the early church at its foundational level was highly disrupted on a very regular basis for all kinds of reasons but one reason that is really, really beginning to bubble forth is the Jew/Gentile separation like, this ministry is happening among the Jews and the Gentiles at this point and that is a big deal. But the gospel is having a disruptive effect on Jew and Gentile alike. So, we find Paul moving around from…around cities today with Barnabas mostly in modern day Turkey, so Lystra is one of the cities that they’re in today. And a healing occurs which is a miracle right, it was a move of God the Gentiles who had witnessed this are not irreligious they’re just Pagan, they worshiped a lot of gods. But they have actually seen a miracle take place so it is…it is super natural right, it is from the gods in some sort of way and so in their interpretation of what has just happened, they determine that Barnabas is Zeus and Paul is Hermes and they’re gonna sacrifice to these guys who are gods in human form right before their very eyes. This is their determination, this is their interpretation, so much so that they go get the priests of Zeus right and they’re bringing bowls and it’s like about to go down. That’s when Paul has to jump in and wave his hands and like no, no, like you can’t do that, you can’t sacrifice to us we’re human beings. And even still they are determined that they’re gonna make these sacrifices until some Jews who had been in other cities that Paul and Barnabas had been in they show up, there’s commotion, they see what’s going on, they recognize Paul and Barnabas. And so, within a very short time the crowd that was so determined to worship, to sacrifice, to bow down to Paul and Barnabas, very, very quickly, the mob mentality turns and they’re trying to kill them. Which in so many ways is not unlike the mob mentality that was yelling crucify when Jesus was brought out. It’s pretty incredible what can happen when a mob mentality forms. In today’s reading from the New Testament Paul ends up getting stoned and left for dead. So, he was Hermes, a god to be worshiped and then he was stoned and left for dead all as part of the same story. The point here is certainly to stay in the story as we’re moving through the formation of the church and read everything and examine everything and contemplate everything. But probably the deeper story underneath it all that we need to get our minds around is that disruption and challenge are kind of part of it. I don’t like that, I wish, you know, you just wake up in the morning and the sun is shining and spirits are high and you move into your day and you do productive work and all…all in the presence of God and aware of it and just kind of move through everything like…like Christ, Christ-like, like Jesus. But even when we look at Jesus we see that disruption was part of it, everywhere he went, disruption and challenge were part of it. And we can often feel pressed or crushed or tested in those times of disruption or challenge and so all of our efforts really go to make those challenges go away and so often we don’t even invite the interpretation of the Holy Spirit. Like so often our efforts, our prayers are to make it go away and our efforts are to make it go away when maybe it’s an invitation to go through and come out stronger on the other side. This is what we’re seeing in the Book of Acts, we’re seeing that as they face the challenges and the disruptions and they are…they are significant, way more significant than most of us face. They are significant challenges but as they go through them, instead of trying to navigate around them, as they go through them, they become stronger and their resolve becomes stronger and then their sense of ownership over their own lives is yielded to God. They are in God’s hands, they will not survive if God is not before them and so they have this almost loose hold on their very lives, knowing that they are on a mission and they are not their own. These lessons that, our brothers and sisters who went before us, the lessons that they had to learn, we can certainly learn through them but they also give us clues about how this works. And that sometimes shaking and challenge and disruption are part of it and if we would allow those to be categories that God can use to challenge us toward growth we can often find perspective in the murkiness of it all. And so, let’s give that some thought today as we apply it to some of the things that maybe we feel disrupted in or maybe we feel challenged by and invite the Holy Spirit into that.
Prayer:
In fact, Holy Spirit come into that we invite You into that, here and now, the disruptions and challenges of our lives. The things that take us off our plans and throw us into the weeds, in the ditch somewhere and we’re trying to figure out how to make it all work. You are with us as we spoke of yesterday, there’s nowhere that we can flee that You are not, You are with us in it all. And so, help us Holy Spirit to interpret the challenges that we face in our lives. Because certainly sometimes these are things that we do need to stare down and become victorious over and other times You are inviting us to build strength and endurance. And so, come Holy Spirit and show us, may we see clearly what You are doing because what You are doing is for our good and we trust You and so we pray these things and ask them in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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Daily Audio Bible Long Walk Introduction:
And we have something coming up around here that is…that is ours, our own little holiday that we have every year and have, I think since the third year of the Daily Audio Bible so, well over a decade. Every July 7th we take the day and we call it the Long Walk and we take the day as a community, everyone who can and give yourself permission to take a day off if possible and take that day specifically not to catch up on all the chores but take that day to go somewhere beautiful, whether near or far, whether you drive a couple of hours or whether you just you know, go across the street to the local park or whatever. Find somewhere that you consider beautiful and take that day to go for a Long Walk with God. We find ourselves approaching the center of the year and we sure have no problem thinking about what the New Year is gonna look like when we’re doing our New Year’s resolutions right, when we’re coming into the brand-new year, we have an agenda. But we don’t always look at that agenda and it kind of goes by the wayside, a lot of those things do go by the wayside. But to check-in in the middle of the year, reflect back-on what God has done in your life, look at those goals and dreams and go for a Long Walk and pour out our hearts in worship and in life sharing out of our soul what’s going on. It’s something that we like grab-at, it’s something that we get little moments of time here and there but this is a day to take and just spend that day. And it doesn’t have to spent in talk-talk-talk-talk-talk actually we can say everything that we need to say and then spend generous amounts of time listening, just listening. Listening to the birds, the rustle of the leaves, nature, how much life is actually happening all around us that we almost never pay attention to when it’s flourishing all around us giving us reminders that, not only is God in control but is the author of life including our own. And all of our confusion, when we pour it out in the presence of God, the comfort that can come from that, the direction and clarity that can come from that, that’s certainly what the Long Walk is about. And so, that will occur on the 7th of July which is two weeks from tomorrow and so we have time to get it on our calendar and kind of get prepared and then go. Go for that walk and all we ask is well, certainly you’ll probably take a phone or a tablet with you, maybe listen to the Daily Audio Bible, maybe listen to some music and stuff along the time of your day. There is a resource available specifically that’s really specifically tailored for these kinds of experiences. It is called Songs of the Heart, it is available wherever you can download and buy music, like the iTunes store or the Google Play store, wherever you get your music. This Heart album isn’t stream…like you can’t just stream it, if you don’t have it you’d have to go to the store where you can purchase it, there’s a reason for that. And it’s not like oh can we sell a bunch of records, it’s not like that at all. It’s that this is a prayer and contemplation journey. So, there are prayers and then there is music that comes in, beyond, behind those prayers just to open our hearts and let us focus on what we’ve just prayed. And it moves through all of the kinds of the different emotions that we will have been feeling as human beings and the different things like loss or memory, things like comfort, things like transition, the transitions that happen in our lives. We go into all of these things and allow music to heal and speak to our souls beyond words but allow prayer to lead our hearts to where it needs to go so that we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit. And so, that resource, it’s always available but I mention it now because it’s a really rich experience for the Long Walk. So, just look for Songs from the Heart or just look for Heart and my name Brian Hardin and you should be able to find it and download that in advance of the Long Walk. And the other thing is you’ll probably have your phone or whatever, and the trick is to stay off of it right, like not spend the whole day just surfing social media instead of walking with God. Well, when you get out there in nature and you find a beautiful place where you’ve been sitting for a while and you’ve been walking and it’s just lovely and you have that moment where you’re like “ah, I should do this more often” yeah, take a picture or maybe a little video or something. So, you have it to remember but that’s something that you can post. We will put a post on the Daily Audio Bible Facebook page which is Facebook.com/DailyAudioBible and then you can post in the post right, comment to the post and put your pictures in there, little stories about what you did and it’s so fun. Like we get to do this Long Walk in a solitary way just us and God and we get to have that time that unique special connection to reorient ourselves to God for the second half of the year and then when it’s over we can go to social media and go to that post and it’s almost like a little mini-vacation because we’ll open windows into each other’s lives all over the world and see the beauty of God’s creation all over the world. And so that is the the Daily Audio Bible Long Walk. That is coming up on the 7th of July. I’m really looking forward, I always am, very much looking forward to it. And so, put it on your calendar we’ll continue to talk about it as we move toward it. And yeah, go for a Long Walk with God. Set up the second half of your year in a meaningful way.
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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.