1 Chronicles 4:5-5:17, Acts 25:1-27, Psalm 5:1-12, Proverbs 18:19
Today is the 7th day of July, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian. It’s great to be here with you as we cross through the center of the week together and continue the journey forward, step-by-step, day by day may find ourselves in the middle of the week with this is the 7th day of the month so this is a full week into the month. Of course, today is the 7th day of July, so this is our own little family holiday that we have around here around the Global Campfire. This is the day of the Long Walk and so I’m sure I’m talking to many of you who are walking and I am very much looking forward to the same. Looking forward to seeing all of the different pictures and videos and posts that come in throughout the day. I love this time it let’s us, just little windows into each other’s lives and so enjoy your day walking with God, re-setting for the second half of the year. One of the ways we do that is step-by-step, day by day and so let’s dive in. We are reading from the English Standard Version this week, 1 Chronicles chapter 4 verse 5 through 5 verse 17 today. And just reminding us, we are moving through right now what is the famous part of the Bible, the famous genealogy part of the Bible and we talked about it. We’ve talked about how this is so they would not forget. So, that these people would be remembered and as we read through this portion of the Bible than that is exactly what’s happening there being remembered, so, 1 Chronicles chapter 4.
Commentary:
Okay, so this year we have a word ‘mend’ and as we come to this point in the book of Proverbs today’s it just gives us a very good opportunity to look at that. The Proverbs have a way of speaking a sentence that says a book worth of knowledge or wisdom. And today is, kind of like. A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city and quarreling is like the bars of a castle. So, this starts out a brother offended. So, what is that a person who’s been offended whose carrying an offense and what is that? Well, I mean, offenses can come in a lot of different shapes. Big, small, wide, narrow they just seem to find a way to fit wherever they can fit in our lives and causes all kinds of grief, but typically they form because somehow, our territory likely has been disrespected. Boundaries have been crossed. We’ve been disrespected in some way and so we resent that and it’s that resentment that is this offense and when that happens, according to Proverbs here, a person is more unyielding than a strong city. So, in this context we’ll be talking about a walled city and if we just take our knowledge of some of the stories that we’ve read in the Bible, we have seen walled cities get attacked and we’ve seen how they get surrounded and then starved out because they can’t just, they can’t just come and break the walls down. So that’s what we become when we’re carrying an offense toward somebody. We are unyielding like a walled city, a strong city, and when we’ve been the offender and we’re trying to like, get past the walls, we use this analogy all the time. The walls have come up I can’t get through to him. I can’t get through to her. I can’t get past her walls and when we say that we’re simply saying that this proverb is very accurate. We get an offense, we put up the walls, we’re protecting ourselves, we’re withdrawing emotionally, we’re becoming aloof, we’re stepping back, these are kind of natural reactions, but if we stay inside that wall, if we stay inside that fortified city than we’re going to start starving. The offense isn’t going to get dealt with and so it’s going to rot. It’s going to boil itself down into the blackness of bitterness. Both parties at some point give up and kinda become silent and then kinda become enemies because things get replayed over and over and over in our minds, we just solidify our position and our need to be right and it becomes a mess, actually, it becomes more like an unyielding city. So, maybe we finally, there is a conversation and maybe it’s not done with humility and maybe the second part of the proverb comes true. Quarreling is like the bars of a castle. So, I mean what can we say about what we’re saying. We could say basically that carrying the resentment of an offense and then quarreling, this is a way to get locked out of a relationship altogether and interestingly enough, we probably should all already know this, you probably have all already experienced this whether we’ve ever read this Proverb before or not this Proverb is true because we’ve probably all lived it at some point or another. So, how could we seek the deeper wisdom here, like what would fix this because truly like in the sound of my voice right now some of you are in a walled city of offense and some of you are on the outside of the wall because you are the offender and you’re trying to get past the walls. This is always coming on so pretty hard for me to think that nobody knows what we’re talking about right now. So, if a brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city then perhaps the reverse applies if the offense makes the walls go up maybe be grace and repentance make the walls come down. If quarreling is like the bars of a castle, then maybe kindness, kind words, humility grace, maybe those are like the garden of the castle. This is kind of how wisdom works. There it is, there it is laid out in black and white before us. Here it is for us to read and understand and she has spoken to us at the crossroads. It’s just a matter of which way we’re going to go because we get to choose whether to listen or not but if we want mending and mending is actively getting involved and repairing. Sometimes that’s just resting and healing, but often if you want to mend something you might have to tear out what’s broken down and replace it with something that’s not. Like, if you want to mend a fence then you’re probably remove the broken pieces of wood and replace them with new ones, its work. It doesn’t just happen. So, if we have people in our lives that are like behind the walls in a strong city, cut off from us and we don’t want it to be that way, then we may have to be the agent of the mending, we may have to step into it with hat in hand, no matter what and just come with grace, come with the peace and calm of the Holy Spirit. Come not needing to be right, incredible things can happen. Walls can come down; relationships can be mended.
Prayer:
And
Holy Spirit, we acknowledge that reconciliation it, this is the underpinning of
the gospel story that You came even while we were Your enemies, and rescued us
and reconciled us and in like fashion we need to be willing to do the same. So,
come Holy Spirit, and lead us in this regard. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Announcements:
dailyaudiobible.com is home base. It’s the websites it’s where you find out what’s going on around here and really it’s the Long Walk, that’s what’s going on around here right now as we, all over the place, in one way or another, try to find moments or the whole day with God in nature somewhere beautiful, just drink it in to have that uninterrupted space to have a conversation that doesn’t, doesn’t have to have an objective, it’s just about us pouring out our hearts and having time to say everything we needed saying, conversations are reciprocal so giving space to feel the Spirit leading and guiding, directing us, comforting us. To feel our hearts opening as we relax, as we get out in nature and all of a sudden we find that there’s a lot going on in this world that we’re not paying attention to: the beauty of the leaves, the beauty of the birds and their song, and the little creatures going about their day enjoying their lives. We begin to understand there’s healing in this, the serenity brings a calm and the Lord is in it and leads us and so, yeah, enjoy that time. Enjoy that conversation, enjoy just regrouping, looking forward into the second half of the year. Looking back at the first half of the year, and making some choices about the trajectory, where were going and allowing the Holy Spirit to lead and direct us in those choices. So, yeah, enjoy that. I have mentioned for last couple of weeks about the resource called Heart: A Contemplative Journey that is a prayer, guided prayer and musical resource that you can get wherever you get your music, just like the iTunes store, like YouTube music, just search for Heart: A Contemplative Journey or search for my name and you’ll find it and that is a resource that really is a perfect accompaniment for a day like today because it begins to guide us, we would pray and open our emotions and open our heart. That’s why it’s called Heart: A Contemplative Journey, as it were opening ourselves to what we’ve been feeling and, in some cases, what we been stuffing down inside, but it still there we’re just trying to do everything we can to cover it over. In this case, were actually in a safe place in nature. Walking with God opening ourselves to his healing. So check that resource out. And also mentioning that we have a post at the Daily Audio Bible Facebook page so Facebook.com/dailyaudiobible.com is a post for the Long Walk today. So, wherever you may be in the world, walking with God, if you happen to take a picture or little video or whatever you can post that in the Long Walk post, and then we have this place we can all come to, look at the beauty of God’s creation all over the world today. And just interact, know that we were out there alone that we were not out there alone, our brothers and sisters were all over the world doing the same thing. So, we have that post ready, looking forward to that myself looking forward to that a little later this afternoon. Probably this evening but very much looking forward to it. So, check that out.
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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.