Month: November 2021

Ezekiel 23:1-49, Hebrews 10:18-39, Psalm 109:1-31, Proverbs 27:13

Today is the 11th day of November, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible, I’m Brian. It’s a joy to be here with you today as we come around this Global Campfire together and find a place, relax, exhale, release, release the stresses and anxieties that present themselves to us on a continual basis, let it go and just have this little oasis that we create each and every day. The little place in a day that is a peaceful place, a serene place, a place for us to learn, a place for us to experience rest together as the Scriptures come alive and wash into our lives and so let’s just do that. Let’s exhale, let’s relax, let’s rest as the Scriptures come into our minds and hearts. And later when our reading is over for today, stick around. There is an important resource announcement that I’m excited to share. We have been reading from the Evangelical Heritage Version this week. We have been reading from the book of Ezekiel and the letter to the Hebrews. We’re going to continue doing that until we complete both of those books, today, Ezekiel chapter 23.

Commentary:

Okay, so continuing our journey in Hebrews and just remembering, the remembering that Hebrews was written to Hebrews, to Hebrew people, to Jewish people. It’s written primarily to Jewish people who were believers in Jesus and it’s unpacking, in a Hebrew context from a Jewish perspective, a religious Jewish perspective, how…how the good news is good news and…and what the implications are. And so, we’ve spent some time talking about those implications; on one level, this is the good news and the implications are eternal life for all those who believe so, there’s an implication. But we’ve also talked about how this was perceived and could very easily be perceived as heresy or blasphemy. So, it’s good news, it’s such good news that it’s almost impossible to get our minds around, and yet from a religious perspective it’s setting aside the Mosaic law, it seems, and so that is the perfect law of God. That’s how you are made righteous and it’s setting aside atonement and sacrifice by saying that has come to an end and the final sacrifice has been made and that final sacrifice was God made flesh himself. And we’ve talked about how if no sacrifices is, if no sacrifice is necessary any longer than all of the apparatus that keeps the momentum, that keeps the whole thing going, then that’s not needed anymore, like you don’t have to, you don’t need an altar anymore if you’re not gonna be sacrificing on an altar. And…and then there’s the temple and there is the holy place and then there’s the holy of holies, or the most holy place and that place could only be entered once per year by these serving high priest at the time. And the high priest could go into the most holy place the very presence of God as it were, to make atonement, this one time per year. And so, this most holy place, that’s what it was, the most holy place. Right, so for a Hebrew person no, only the high priest can even go in there, that is the most holy place there is and a human being in the person of the…the high priest could enter it once a year. So, you weren’t going to have people just come storming the temple and getting into the holy of holies without…without being stopped. So, understanding all of that and remembering all of that I quote from our reading today “we have confidence to enter the most holy place through the blood of Jesus. It is a new and living way he opened for us through the curtain at his flash. We also have a great priest over the house of God. So let us approach with a sincere heart and the full confidence of faith because our hearts have been sprinkled to take away a bad conscience and our bodies have been washed with pure water. Let us hold on firmly to the confession of our hope without wavering since He who promised is faithful.” Okay so, like me just reading that verse, we could say as believers in Jesus, yeah, that’s what I believe, that’s what I was taught, that’s what I believe. But do we understand what we’re saying when we take it from the Hebrew perspective because what we’re saying is that, that most holy place, the most holy place that could only be entered by a human being once per year, we can go there with confidence anytime we want to because of Jesus. That’s pretty radical. And so, we should once again be able to get this glimpse of why people following Jesus believing this, speaking this out, teaching or telling of this, why they were facing marginalization, why they were facing persecution and why this letter was written to encourage them, to remind them of what actually really is going on here, but to also encourage them to not back down, to not disappear because that’s what was happening. People were facing challenge to this message and it was starting to hurt. And they were having to endure and so they’re being affected economically, there being affected in getting a good job, there being affected in by their neighbors like, there beginning to be isolated. And so, many people are just deciding maybe to go ahead and trust Jesus but just sort of fade into the culture and continue to worship God using the rituals and customs that they’ve always known, while other people are going this is just crazy, what am I doing and then and just leaving the faith and going back into to what would be considered more Orthodox Judaism. We can see the struggle here and it should give us a profound understanding what people were facing, but also a profound gratitude that there were those who endured and that the good news continued forward, and that we’re standing here or sitting here around this Global Campfire as beneficiaries of the endurance that was necessary to fly in the face of what had been traditionally understood by bringing new revelation.

Prayer:

And so, Father, we thank You, we thank You for your word. Thank You for the way that it instructs our lives and develops us as people, we thank You that it informs us, that things have shifted and that we have a great high priest, and that is our Savior Jesus, who was making intercession for us before You each and every day that we, through Jesus, can come into the most holy place that…that we can enter Your presence. I know that You are our Father and that You love us as Your children because of Jesus, and no matter how many ways this is told to us then no matter how many contexts we can understand this in, it is still revolutionary, it…it changes everything about our lives and we are grateful for that change. And yet we admit so often that we’re ignoring it and that we’re just trying to make life work on our own, in our own strength by what we can manage to arrange for, when we are allowed to come into the most holy place anytime we want with confidence. So, Holy Spirit, we ask that You would help us to remain aware of this and not get tossed to and fro by everything that comes our way. We pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

Okay, so for that announcement that I was talking about at the beginning, first, yesterday we announced the arrival of the clean canteens, 2021 Global Campfire addition and I had expected that they would last a few days anyway but they didn’t make it till noon so the clean canteens, 2021 addition is sold out. Which allows me to talk about something that I have been waiting to talk about for years, for real, four years. So, my first trip to the land of the Bible was about a decade ago now and after that we began to travel there each year and take a group out of the community here to the land of the Bible to walk the land. We obviously weren’t able to go this year due to COVID restrictions which will be true of 2022 as well. But previous to that disruption, we had been annually taking a couple of buses over and rooting ourselves in the places that the Bible happened. And I’ve said many times over the years that visiting Israel was never really a bucket item for me but once I did go and once I saw the power, at least in my own heart and spirit of standing in a place and being able to turn in a circle and look all around and feel the air on my face and smell the smells of the trees and not just the experience of being somewhere, but to be somewhere that you’ve been reading about or that you’ve been aware of from Sunday school for most of your life, to be somewhere where you’re like that happened here, like here, I’m standing here, that was a profound experience to me. I wasn’t imagining stories anymore, I was there, I was looking around and the ancient hills look the same as they did in biblical times and I realize the power and that which is why we…we continued to go back. For many seasons after that we started filming in the land of the Bible. Not only the more popular and well-known places and archaeological sites to visit, but also some of the really obscure things that are hard to get to, sometimes you can’t even get to some of these biblical locations without a four-wheel-drive vehicle. So, obviously that rules out a bus full of people, but it doesn’t rule out the importance of what happened there. And so, for many seasons we filmed and filmed and filmed and filmed the land of the Bible which became the Promised Land films that have been available for a while now, several years. And those films are available in the Daily Audio Bible shop. There the little snippet kind of, 2/3 minutes in a location but many, many biblical locations. The idea, the goal was how close can we bring this land to a person who may never be able to go. How can we bring it near? And all during this time of filming photographs were being taken the entire way and those began to accumulate into thousands and thousands of photographs using a lot of different cameras and lenses over a lot of years. About a decade worth of photographs with the intention that maybe one day this could be a tangible thing, like a coffee table book something beautiful, something to hold onto and treasure with the same intention as the Promised Land films, to give us context, to root us in a place that, that…that the Bible happened, to understand that, that story, the one that I knew for so long, that happened here. So, a couple of years ago, it would’ve been 2019. I began to collect all of those together and I kind of began to curate them and kind of narrow things down and many, many passes and it wasn’t something that I could just devote like a whole month to and just block out everything else going on and just focus on this project. So, in fits and starts and many phases I worked through all of the photographs that I’d taken over all of the years, narrowing them down, with the intention that there would be a Promised Land coffee table book. Of course, you know once it’s all distilled down and kind of broken down into categories and the frames are selected and the whole thing has to be designed and laid out and so that was a phase. We went through all of that and then the manufacturing process and I thought if we’re going to do this, I want to do it like we do everything else around here with excellence, the best that we can as an act of worship. So, going through the process of selecting the art paper that would be printed on and the kind of spine that it would have, the thickness of the board used for the cover and the dust cover and how can that really be preservative. Just all of the little things that go into this kind of creative project were accomplished and then there have been ever escalating supply chain issues in the world affecting everybody in some sort of way, whether we know it or not. We’re just trying to see if they could arrive before the year is out. All that just took a long time over many phases, over several years, but I am here to tell you today that Promised Land, Photographs from the Land of the Bible is available today and no corners were cut. This is a beautiful heirloom piece. Something to hold onto and the craftsmanship in the manufacturing process is evident. It is a beautifully crafted book and the last book that I published was God of Your story a couple years ago, so this is a brand-new offering just a little different than only the written page. Although there are definitely words to read in this book. It’s a visual experience. I’ve experienced a number of proofs along the way. But now that I’ve been able to hold in my hand the final addition, like this is what it is, it is, it is gorgeous. It’s 12 x 12 to 12" x 12". It’s like a, it’s like a square approximately the size of a vinyl album, and has been manufactured to pretty exacting specifications and it contains photographs from the different regions of the land of the Bible. So, there’s the wilderness right, and so much of the Bible happens in the wilderness and it’s a such a backdrop and metaphor for our own life experiences so there are photographs from the wilderness that we read about. And there’s the Galilee region which is where Jesus lived and conducted his ministry and then Israel, its western border is the Mediterranean Sea and so there are many things in the Bible that happen along the coast. And then there is the interior both north and south, the northern regions is really rocky and craggy. This is where places like Shiloh are, or Bethel and then there is sort of the southern central area, this is known as the Shufala, the low lands, which is famous for all kinds of stories like the story of David and Goliath. And then of course Jerusalem, a city with more biblical heritage, both old and new Testaments than really any other place on earth. Promised Land, Photographs from the Land of the Bible visits these regions and connects the dots to the biblical heritage. So, I’ll probably be able to share some more things as I think of them over the next coming days, but I wanted to let you know about this resource as soon as we had them in hand. This book is beautiful and it is worth holding onto. But it is also very worthy of being given away and we are clearly moving into the time of year where we’re thinking about stuff like that so, I wanted to let you know as soon as possible. You can find Promised Land Photographs from the Land of the Bible in the Daily Audio Bible Shop at dailyaudiobible.com. Or if you’re using the app you can press that drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner and go to the shop from there. You’ll find Promised Land in the lifestyle category as well as the books and audiobooks category. It is available as of today, which means it’s available now and I’m looking forward to hearing what you think so check it out if you can.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com or if you’re using the app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner of the main screen or the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996 Springhill, Tennessee 37174.

And as always if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can at the Hotline button in the app or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian, I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Ezekiel 21:1-22:31, Hebrews 10:1-17, Psalms 108:1-13, Proverbs 27:12

Today is the 10^th day of November welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is wonderful to be here with you today as we take the next step forward, find ourselves around the Global Campfire and move forward together. And that of course will lead us…well that’ll lead us right to where we left off yesterday, which will put us back in the book of Ezekiel and the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament. We’ve been reading from the evangelical heritage version this week which we will continue to do while it’s still this week. Today Ezekiel chapters 21 and 22.

Commentary:

Okay. We were talking yesterday from our reading in the letter to the Hebrews about the Hebrew centric nature of Hebrews, that Hebrews is written to Hebrew people, to Jewish people who were…who were familiar with the Hebrew culture, but also very familiar with the Hebrew religion, which is what we read when we read the…the Hebrew Scriptures or the Old Testament. And we were talking about the…the controversial nature of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ and why a Hebrew person would’ve been intrigued, likely because boy it’s good news. That’s the thing. It’s good news. If it’s true, it’s good news. But how difficult it was for them to accept that this was actually good news from God. And so, let’s just go back into that today and look at it a little bit more because we were talking about sacrifices yesterday and the end of the sacrificial system. Essentially, a…the end of a way of life that these people had known for centuries, many many centuries. So, Hebrews chapter 10, which is where we spent our time today begins by saying, and I quote…and before I even quote this, before I even quote this, if you put yourself back in the mindset that you’ve grown up Hebrew, right? And, so, sacrifice and all of the rituals associated with Judaism are a part of your life. You…you celebrate the holidays and the festivals. You practice the Sabbath. You…you are involved in this, so you understand what it is that you think is expected of you by God. And sacrifice is part of the thing that you believe is…is expected of you by God. This atones for your sins. This washes away your sin and separation from God. So now, with that in mind we begin Hebrews chapter 10. “The law is only a shadow of the good things to come, not the actual realization of those things. It will never be able to make perfect those who continually offer the same sacrifices year after year. If it could do this, would they not have stopped bringing sacrifices because the worshipers once they were cleansed would no longer have a bad conscience about sins. Instead, these sacrifices reminded them of their sins, year after year. The fact is that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins.” We can read that from the book of Hebrews and not even know that that is a very very controversial statement. Once again, what they have to wrap their minds around is that they were waiting for a Savior who did come. Like that would be the first place, the first point of belief, who did come. He was Jesus, the one who was crucified. And then that crucified, that executed portion, that’s a leap of faith to get…a hurdle to get over as well because they were not expecting their Savior to come and be dead. They were expecting their Savior to come and take over Jerusalem, not die on a cross outside the walls of Jerusalem. And, so, many people hearing this message just considered it to be heretical. Like it's…it’s heresy. It's…it's…it’s blasphemy even. And there are many levels that this goes on. Let’s remember the Hebrew identity. We have a read of it. We…that’s what we’ve been reading since January in the Old Testament, this formation of a people through this man named Abraham who was in covenant with God, and these were God’s chosen people. And through these people they received God’s law through…through their Prophet Moses. These are not people that feel unfamiliar with God or unfamiliar…unfamiliar with what they think God wants from them. They believe they’re chosen by God, and they have been given a perfect and holy law that is exclusive and perfect for the Hebrew people. So, they’re being told that that’s done, like it’s accomplished. Or as Jesus said on the cross, “it is finished.” And that is hard for them to get their minds around. And an easy enough way for us to try to put ourselves in that same position is to imagine now as believers in Jesus, some of us new believers in Jesus, maybe some of you are here, and maybe you have known the Lord for a month and you’ve come here to find out about the Bible and then some of your seasoned and have been walking with Jesus maybe most of your life. Nevertheless, you have come to an understanding about what you think you know at this point in time. And, so, as believers right now, we…we…we don’t practice sacrifice, right? Like nobody’s planning to sacrifice a sheep or goat or a puppy or anything anytime soon, especially in some sort of religious ritual that we believe that is necessary that…that…that it’s something that God desires and wants. What we understand is that we are a living sacrifice to God, that we…that we live sacrificially on behalf of the kingdom of God as…as we let this good news be known in the world. But that’s about as far as it goes in terms of like blood sacrifice. So, what we would have to imagine, then, is that somebody super famous in the Christian ranks, somebody with the really really monstrous megaphone is able to get word out that they feel like they’ve heard from God and that the sacrificial system is to be reinstated, thus saith the Lord, and in that next year on the first of January this is to go into effect. And, so, it will be again necessary than for us to atone for our sins with blood sacrifice. And, so, we need…you know…and we need to prepare for that. You can only imagine how that would light up social media among Christian people because the Internet gets lit up by Christian people for way less than something like that. And people…people get thrown under the bus or chastised or even persecuted for believing way, way less than that. So, for us to get our minds around returning to a sacrificial system, it’s like we can’t even…we wouldn’t even know how to go there. And we certainly would dismiss it. And for some, we would call it heresy. We would…yeah…go after the…the messenger. Any number of things would happen that wouldn’t be good because we wouldn’t be able to believe that that’s what God wants. That’s not too…I mean…that’s just the reverse of what Hebrew people were needing to become aware of and believe about Jesus. So, the only real way for that to work and the only opening for a person’s mind and heart that was Hebrew practicing Mosaic law, God’s law, who are being told that that law has reached its conclusion and a new covenant is being initiated, the only way to get your mind around that would be to understand in your culture that there was a Savior foretold. And that is what we’re beginning to see develop in the letter to the Hebrews. The argument is this is not a newfangled religion. This isn’t some kind of messed up version of the religion that we already have. This was expected. This new covenant was expected. It was foretold. We’ve been waiting for this. The prophets have spoken about this. This isn’t heresy. This isn’t a new religion even. And God surely isn’t trying to get other people to believe in a different God. Rather, He’s trying to expand their awareness of God and His presence. And it was foretold. It was to be expected. That is really the only way for them to approach this good news in a way that they can understand and appreciate and accept and begin to live into it. This isn’t new. It has been expected for a very long time and it’s happening now. And that’s good. That gives us some context for what we’re reading through and helps us to put ourselves in the position of first century Jewish people who are…who are hearing the good news and how they would’ve received it. But kind of putting ourselves in a position of modern times and like having some new thing revealed if it hadn’t been foretold…if we didn’t have any context for it, we would be doing the same thing, but that does give us the opportunity to consider because God talks about doing new things a lot in the Bible. What if God did do a new thing and you didn’t understand it? How would you respond Would you go, “that’s heresy” and then persecute the messenger? What if God was doing a new thing that brought our awareness of His presence in our lives and His activity in the world more clear to us? Would we reject it because it’s new or because it messes with our own paradigms? Because what we’re seeing in the letter to the Hebrews is that God did do that and He didn’t seem to mind that He was messing with peoples paradigms, that He was messing with what they thought they had figured out about Him and what had been sort of cemented in place so that it is immovable. God didn’t seem to mind coming the way that He did and doing the work that He did and disrupting things the way that He did. He didn’t seem to mind that. We, 2000 years in the future who aren’t Jewish, who mostly are Gentile who are reading these things and may have read them our entire lives, we should now be beginning to understand that the gospel is disruptive and it always has been. And anything that we cement in place that will thwart our awareness of His presence and guidance in our lives, He just…He just doesn’t seem to care about that stuff. We’ve been reading the Bible an awful long time, like we’re so close now to concluding our journey that we…we should have a pretty good grasp on the personality and essence of the Scriptures and we should be pretty clear that God does what God does. God is God. And what we think about it often times is less important to God than doing what is what God’s will is. And God’s will is perfect and right and just and true and good, but He also does not mind shaking things up to shake us awake and shake us free.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit as we look back and are assured of how our salvation were…as we understand the good news from the letter to the Hebrews we also understand how this would’ve been received. And then we have to put the mirror in front of our own eyes and think of the ways in which we are the same way or would’ve done the same thing and rejected what You were doing. And Holy Spirt come and help us to become aware of some of the maybe smaller ways that we’ve thwarted what You wanted to do. We’ve just rejected it because we can’t imagine that You would do things in a certain way, we think You do things only a certain way with certain people at certain times for certain reasons and we go around telling everybody what You do and don’t do when…when that’s pretty arrogant. You are the God of all things, the Creator of all things, the Sustainer of all things. You will do what is right. You will do what You will do regardless of what we think about it. Help us to humble ourselves to become aware of the myriad of ways that You are working all around us that we ignore, that we don’t pay any attention to because we don’t have a context, we don’t have a paradigm for it. Holy Spirit come, we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the home base and its where you find out what’s going on around here and somethings going on around. There’s always something going on around here but sometimes there are new things going on around here. And that will be the case in the next couple of weeks. So, today I want to announce the arrival…and boy there really have been supply-chain problems in the world this year, but the arrival of our Klean Canteens, the 2021 edition. And I know a lot of folks out there wait for these to come in stock because we don’t keep them in stock because they’re really expensive for us to get manufactured. And, so, once or twice a year we’ll bring them in, and this will be our time for this year. Brand-new look. This year we have a cream, a beautiful, creamy kind or pearly finish with a tope lid, dark gray Global Campfire logo, super classy. I love them. And if you’re hear and you’re like, “this is my first year. I’ve never really heard…what is this about?” Well…we’re kind of coffee people around here, which is not to say they we’re not tea people around here. I drink tea just about every day as well as coffee. And it’s been well over a decade now that we’ve had the Windfarm coffee brand and roasted our own coffee at altitude in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and we ship them all over the world. And we source the finest quality teas for our Windfarm tea. So, lots of people have this delivered every…every month because we ship out a new shipment every month to those who receive it every month. Or you can just go and kind of get some tea or pick out which varietal of coffee that you want and have that shipped to you fresh. And for the longest time I was on a search for the best possible thing to drink coffee or tea out of, like some…something that would keep my coffee warm because I like to sip it. I don’t like just sit down usually and drink a full cup of coffee in the space of 15 minutes or whatever. I…I like to kinda carry my coffee all along the way through my morning all the way through the Daily Audio Bible sometime kinda sipping it along the way. And it was super hard to find kinda what I was looking for. So, I’d like get a thermos and it’s like okay that’ll kinda keep it warm, but I gotta keep pouring cups of coffee out of this thermos. I want something that’s just standalone, that I could just reach over and take a drink out of and then everyone. And then I remember one year kinda finding one of those coaster things, right, that you can plug in and you put your…you put your coffee mug on it and it sort of heats the bottom of your coffee mug keeping your coffee warm. Problem with that is it’s easy to spill, but the bigger problem is…it makes it…for me…to my taste buds…it made my coffee taste like I was drinking a liquid pencil. And I remember kind of frequenting you know out…outdoor outfitter kind of places and like REI or whatever and they had Klean canteens. I didn’t really know what they were. And several years ago I’d have to count back, but many years ago now we were traveling, we were in Portland, Oregon. And that region of the United States is kinda known for being a coffee region. And I was in a coffee shop and found thee Klean canteens that were self-contained and they were double-walled and they used food grade stainless steel and they were conscientious in the manufacturing process. So, there’s a lot of good things going for it, but it was kind of expensive. And I was like, “I don’t Know” but I ended up going for it and have never looked back. Loved it so much, used it so often, carried all over the world with me that I finally was like who is…like I want to find this company and see if we can make these because that coffee shop did. And. So, what do you gotta do. And it took a while and then we were able to make our own Klean canteens and it’s an offering that’s the best I have been able to find for that perfect coffee mug, that thing that will keep the coffee warm and drinkable pretty much the whole day. And although I mostly use it for hot beverages I have also tried cold beverages. Got in the car for a long car drive, put some ice in my Klean canteen, filled it up with water and it’s ice in the evening. And what better way to drink excellent coffee then in a container that’s gonna treat it properly. And, so, these Klean canteens are that, our offering, our pairing with our coffee. When we are able to bring them in stock they last about a week. And, so, maybe a week maybe less and they’ll be gone, at least from us and they’ll be all over the world serving their purpose, hopefully bringing enjoyment and hopefully they come alongside you as we take the next step forward every day through the Scriptures. So, the 2021 edition of the Klean canteen Global Campfire edition is available in the Daily Audio Bible Shop now while supplies last. If you go to dailyaudiobible.com you’ll find a little navigation thing at the top. One of those says Shop. They’re in the Shop. Or if you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you can push the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner and when that drawer pops open one of those categories is the Shop. And once you’re in the shop there’s a bunch of categories but if you go like into the Global Campfire section or the Lifestyle section you’ll find the Klean canteen 2021 edition. There’s some nice pictures to show you what it looks like. And, so, this is the announcement and I fully expect because this is what always happens, they won’t last long. In fact, I know people who wait for this. So, like I haven’t even been able to get through this announcement before it’s already ordered. So, plenty of things in life that we can procrastinate about. This is probably not one of them if you’re interested. When they are gone they will be gone. So, don’t miss out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link on the homepage. If you’re using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner, or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app or you can dial 877-942-4253.

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 DAB family this is Greg from Bothell WA it is November 6^th and I’m behind. I’m listening to November 4^th and I just want to start praying for some people. Aussie Bear. I heard you and I’m praying for you and Jody, your…your bully contact. Lord Jesus I just pray that this enemy that our hearts could be turned to her Jody all of us that hear this prayer from Aussie Bear that we would come alongside and we would find a way that our hearts could turn toward compassion and a vision that You have for Aussie and You have a vision for Jody and that empathy and kindness and love that we would pray this prayer Lord that father forgive them they know not what they do. I also want You to just come alongside Aussie because Aussie Bear is…is struggling with finding a place in her heart to connect with someone she doesn’t like. And I know what that’s like Lord. And I pray that You would help Aussie Bear just to…to find a place that You…You would find that You would come…Your heart would come…would fill her up and that when she goes into that grocery store and runs into Aussie….I mean she runs into Jody that she would know that…that she is hurting inside that…that she is sad inside and that she has darkness and she needs the light, she needs the salt of Your word and Your truth and Your Spirit. Lord Jesus I just pray Aussie Bear would continue to call in and let us know how she’s doing, that we can continue to encourage her to love.

Greetings Daily Audio Bible family I’ve called in before seeking prayer just about the fact that I am the sole caregiver for my mom who has dementia and how challenging that’s been over the last couple of years. I’m calling in again because I’ve reached a bit of a tough decision point about whether or not it’s possible for my mom to continue to stay in the home with me doing this by myself. It’s just…it’s impacting my…my work and mental health and personal life and I’m hitting…hitting a wall in terms of just needing to get back to some element of normalcy. But this process of finding a facility that I can be comfortable with that’s also affordable, and you know that I think my mom will be happy in is just turning out to be so extremely difficult. And I have a couple of options I’m looking at right now and I just…it’s just such a hard decision. I’m sure a lot of it is just me being guilt ridden. So, I’m just asking for prayer that I have, you know, a clear head and I’m able to see clearly, you know, what the best options and next steps are and that whatever those are it…it creates safety and peace and happiness for my mom but also just peace and comfort from me. Thank you in advance for the prayers. I…I just feel so lost and stuck in this process right now.

I want to give thanks to Brian and the Hardin family just for the gift of scripture for the context. I mean just the simple words of Hebrews and…and who the audience is it’s being written for. I cherish that you use…you use the gift of context of things sharing how it affects us in our lives. I am so grateful, and I thank you so much for this Bible study, daily scripture, how much I have been blessed by this. I pray for all of you. I pray for you as you go through the holidays that you’ll be protected from illness, protected from greed and be given anything that you need, food, groceries, utilities. I pray for all of you who are in those needs. I thank You and praise You Lord for the goodness that You have for all of us here at the global campsite. Thank you.

Hello this is Faith Walker of Tennessee I am calling today to encourage and to pray for Rodney who is paralyzed and is just believing God for his wife to come back. God has done great and miraculous things in my life. 15 years ago, I became paralyzed, and the doctors did all they could to try to get me to walk again and my limbs to operate. After my situation of becoming paralyzed I began to just seek the Lord with all my heart, soul, in mind. I in the word and all I could do. It was during that season that I found Daily Audio Bible which became a daily and still is a daily encouragement to me. I’m so glad to be in this community and I’m glad you found this community because prayer change things. Over the years the Lord has begun to heal my body bringing limbs back to operation again. Today I’m still para…paraplegic but I’m paraplegic incomplete. That means I have some movement returning in my body. I’m up walking now with a limp and a cane whereas before I was in a wheelchair and could not move one limb of my legs. Hey, I give God the glory today. Rodney you be encouraged. God, we pray for Rodney today that he should have faith to believe the impossible. God, we pray God that he will stand forth on the word of God as he continues to commit himself in the word and we believe that for his family being put back together. God…

Hello DAB family I am a first-time caller. I’ve been in this community since January 1^st of this year, and you all have been such a blessing to my life. Thank you so much. I’m going to go by the game Colorado Cab and I’m calling because I think we are due for a praise report, and I couldn’t wait to share mine with you. I have a niece and several nephews I have been praying for since the moment they came out of the womb. I have prayed that they would live a life coming to know the Lord Jesus. I live so far away from them, and my brother and sister and their families are not Christ followers. And it’s always weighed heavily on my heart that these kids might not be exposed to the love of Christ. And boy my prayers have been answered. My 19-year-old nephew is a marine and he attends church regularly on his base praise the Lord. My other nephew just began his freshman year of college and of all places he chose a private Christian School. Praise the Lord. My prayers have been answered. I am so thankful. Even my 13-year-old niece has shared with me that she has a Bible in her room, and I know it’s because she has friends from school who have invited her to go to church. Praise the Lord. These children are becoming to know the Lord and being exposed to people who love Jesus. I’m so thankful. I wanted to let all of the parents know in this in this community that I pray for your children as well. No matter their age, whether they’re teenagers 20s, 30s, 40s. 50s it is never too late for your children to return to the Lord. There is always hope and I am standing in prayer and agreement to all of you who are calling out in prayer for your sons and daughters. And Brian I also wanted to let you know I’ve heard callers mention that they love hearing those words I love you at the end of your podcast. I do not have my own children. I am single and I don’t hear those words often. So, thank you so so much. They mean a lot to me. I love you too. I love…

Good morning, DABbers this is Running Desperately to Jesus also known as Staying Desperately Connected to Jesus. And I cannot say desperately more than I can with emphasis as of right now. This call goes out to Jeremy. You called into the community prayer line on October 16^th. Today is November 9^th…excuse me…6^th I believe, and you called in because you felt that you didn’t have any friends and that, you know, you reach out to people, but it seems like it’s rarely done to you. And that you desperately would like to have friends. Jeremy, as I said today is November beginning of November and I was just crying out to God this morning, God why do I not have friends? Why does no one ever invite me over? Why is it that when I try and be friends with other people they’ve already created or developed or have a closed circle that's…that I cannot break into. So, I’m alone. I’m alone all the time. I’m alone through holidays. I’m alone on my birthday. I’m alone on any holiday that you can think of. I live by myself, everything. I go every place by myself. So, Jeremy the only thing I can say to you as well as I’m encouraging myself is hang on to God. Because this sometimes can be a cold lonely world and when we don’t have someone down here to go and cry to or laugh with, we know that we have a Father…a Father a friend that will never leave us nor forsake us. And that is God. So, I’m standing in the gap for both of us that God one day if it is His will to send us someone a godly person that will also have something in common with us. Running Desperately to Jesus. Stay encouraged.

Ezekiel 20:1-49, Hebrews 9:11-28, Psalm 107:1-43, Proverbs 27:11

Today is the 9th day of November, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is a true privilege to have a seat here. All of us together around this Global Campfire, just to be here, to gather, to come together to allow the Scriptures to speak into our lives and allow the cares of this life to diminish for a little while anyway while we take a breather and allow God to speak to us through the Scriptures and so let’s dive in. We are reading through the book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament and the letter to the Hebrews in the new; we’re reading from the Evangelical Heritage version this week, Ezekiel chapter 20.

Commentary:

Okay, in the book of Hebrews today we have another opportunity just to see once again that Hebrews is written to the Hebrew people and it is written within the context of Jewish worship and Jewish understanding of God. And often we, especially if we’ve been believers in Jesus for a while and have spent any time in the Bible than some of the things, we the kind of grew up in and just they’ve always been an understanding or we’ve learned them over time. So, we accept them, there in the Bible, but its context, the magnitude of what’s being said is…is lost on us often. For example, I had, I mean, I grew up in the faith, and so I had always heard that the good news, the gospel of Jesus was revolutionary and was controversial. I never understood that, like I’m just reading of Jesus and I’m like, who’s got any beef with Jesus, he’s awesome. Who wouldn’t want to be like this guy? Not understanding how delicate the situation was and how controversial things were so, it was hard to see the faith as controversial or revolutionary. But in today’s reading we can see it if we’re looking for it. So, just imagine with me for a second that you have no understanding of that there is the Hebrew Scriptures, what Christian people understand as the Old Testament, we don’t know the Torah, we don’t know the prophets, we don’t really know anything, we’ve never heard these stories before. Imagine maybe that you have heard the name of Jesus before but you don’t know what the fuss is about, except for that He has a good reputation of being a wise person, a good teacher, somebody that a lot of people try to live up to, but that’s kind of the long and short of your understanding. And then, you start reading the book of Hebrews with no context, just to kind of understand some of the back story about what the fuss might be about, and you encounter our reading today. And so, I quote from the letter to the Hebrews and actually what I’m going to be quoting is a core thing, a core understanding of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, I quote “He entered once into the most holy place and obtained eternal redemption, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood. Now if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who were unclean sanctifies them so that their flesh is clean, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works so that we worship the living God”. So, if you’re imagining that you’ve never heard any of this stuff before and you don’t know the context, then we are talking about some strange things, indeed. If we’d never heard the back story at all then what is a most holy place, and why does it matter? And going into a most holy place obtained eternal redemption somehow? But it wasn’t by the blood of a goat or a calf? Is this not the point that were like wait a second, by his own blood, not the blood of gold goats and calves? Who needs the blood, where is the blood of goats and calves coming from? How does this play into the story? What is happening here? Now let’s say we have heard the good news of the gospel, we have believed and we are in a fellowship with one another as the body of Christ, and we are in deep, loving relationship with our Savior and we know that He died on the cross, He was executed mercilessly and that it was that death that made things right. He shed His blood and washed away our sins. And so, we understand that part of it. We still may not understand the magnitude, the revolutionary things, even controversial things that are being said in these small portions of Scripture that we’re looking at from the book of Hebrews. If we do bring things into context, then, as we have read the Old Testament, we saw God give the law through Moses, the Mosaic law on Mount Sinai. We saw the institution of a sacrificial system whereby animals would be sacrificed to God, to atone for the sins of the people that they had committed against God, and we can go that’s weird. Who does that? And that might be true but if we lived, you know, if we go back 3000/4000 years ago to a tribal world where this is not strange but is very normal and it would be very strange if we weren’t participating in this kind of a system than we would have a better understanding. People thought they needed to give sacrifices to appease the gods. All the nations around this area of the world were doing this. Where that became a little bit different was that God came to the Hebrew people and said I’m choosing you to be a a nation of priests to the world. We’re gonna establish a new way of doing culture and it’s going to be oriented around specific things and the main specific thing is that I, your God will be in the midst of you, I will go with you. I will lead you. I am in your midst. I am here. So, this sacrificial system became less about seeing whether or not God, the gods or whatever the local god was would give rain so the crops could grow and more about the people understanding that breaking covenant with God was sin. Sin needed to be covered and washed away so that righteousness prevailed and was a dominant part of the culture. So, if everybody was on the same page, living a righteous life then sacrifices wouldn’t have been necessary, but everybody knew their failures and so this is a constant reminder and these sacrifices went on for generation after generation after generation after generation, until the point that everybody that was alive had grown up this way. There was no knowledge of any other way. This is how you live; you are oriented around this Mosaic law and this is what you do, you have all these festivals, all these different sacrifices for all these different things and you do these rituals and this is how your culture is reminded continually of the story of who they are. It’s the origin story. It’s where they’re going and who God is and how they got here. And so, they lived with sacrifice being a part of their religious worship and it had been that way for a long, like I said, generation after generation after generation, centuries. This system eventually included a temple which was a permanent structure that replaced the portable structure known as the tabernacle. There is a temple, and in that temple was a most holy place and there was a high priest who served and was able to go into this holy place, most holy place, once a year to sacrifice for everybody. So, we can be like okay yeah, heard that, know that, kind of understand that, I’ve definitely been taught that before. What does that got to do with Jesus? How does this become revolutionary, why is this controversial? What the letter to the Hebrews is saying today to Hebrews, right so, to Jewish people who have never known it any other way than the understanding of this sacrificial system, though the writer of Hebrews is announcing that the last sacrifice in this system has occurred. That last sacrifice was God made flesh, God becoming the sacrifice to…for all people, ending this system. It is no longer necessary to atone for your sins with the sacrifice of an animal, the blood of Christ, which is God in the flesh, willingly paying the price that no one could ever pay, you could only ever try to atone for yourself with some sort of sacrifice of an antlike blood. Something had to be lost in order for your life to be preserved, that has ended. Christ has covered it all, for all time. So, you can begin to see that if you were a Jewish person who had grown up and known it no other way and you’re being told this, on the one hand you’d have to thing okay no more blood sacrifice, which rituals do we need to keep, how does this work. You have to begin to re-think how everything is done because you’ve been using all of these rituals and in obedience to this law in order to have fellowship with God and now you are being told, God has come for you to be in fellowship with you. There’s nothing else that you have to do. In fact, there’s nothing else that you could do. You can’t earn it. It’s being given to you as a gift that you don’t deserve, nor will you ever deserve, it’s a gift to you. You can now consider yourself a child of the most high God with all of the benefits that would go along with being an heir, an heir of God. That’s revolutionary, my friends, that is a revolutionary and as we can see clearly from the Scriptures, not everybody was on board and not everybody bought it. In fact, it was so controversial that people died in the process of it, not the least of which was Jesus. And again, like taking this like one step further, if we have no previous knowledge whatsoever of the idea of covenant or of covenantal language that we have seen in in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, where covenants are entered into and ratified and of course broken repeatedly, than repentance and kind of a re-inauguration or a re-commitment to a covenant, if we don’t understand that that was part of the story, then we don’t understand that what Christ had done, according to the letter to the Hebrews, is to inaugurate or to institute, and then to mediate a new covenant and this new covenant is more perfect and replaces the old covenant, the sacrificial system of the old covenant is retired once and for all time, redemption has been offered through Jesus Christ, the new covenant. So, maybe we can at least get a glimpse into the controversy of it. How many people who were devout and had only been taught one thing, one way we’re being told things have changed and how difficult that would have been for them to accept and understand why they would’ve moved against it and why it would’ve become a problem which we see in the New Testament. So, we can see the difficulty of believing it but at the same time what’s being told about this new covenant is something that they had been hoping for, something that they had thought was coming in some configuration somehow there would be a savior, that’s part of the story and so they did expect somehow but what they were expecting was military overthrow, what they expected was that they could storm Jerusalem, which is the holy city, the capital city. They could storm the capital city and defeat the enemies. The Romans pushed them out, that God would against all odds, restore their land to their own governance. It’s just that we’ve been reading the Old Testament and we know that God did that for them many times, rescued them many times and it didn’t work. This is a whole different paradigm. Everything has shifted here. So, let me quote from the letter to the Hebrews once again “Christ was offered only once to take away the sins of many, and He will appear a second time without sin, to bring salvation to those who are eagerly waiting for Him.” So, that’s like the new promise and that’s the promise that we live into as believers in Jesus. Understanding that this letter was written to Jewish people who did believe this to bolster and reinforce what they believed but to also explain to nonbelievers, who do not believe in this paradigm shift, what we’re even talking about here. Like, explaining it in a way that they can understand, giving a Hebrew context, for what has been going on here. And so, hopefully that helps us, once again, kind of glimpse into the situation so that we can understand the challenges that were being faced. And for us to once again appreciates deeply, maybe even more deeply than we’ve ever been able to grasp before, how good the good news actually is.

Prayer:

And so, Father, we invite You into that, these are the things that have come up in the Scriptures today, these are the things that we’re thinking about and meditating upon. So, Holy Spirit, come and lead our thoughts, lead us into the things that we’re considering as we consider the good news and what a change that it has made in our lives but what a change, what a shift it was in the world. Help us to appreciate this and know what kind of story we are in. We ask this in the name of Jesus, the Savior, the one who made this conversation and all of this redemption possible and we thank You Jesus, we worship You with deeper humility and appreciation as we become more and more aware of the story that You entered and shifted and the way that You changed the story in ways that we take for granted. We thank You for the gift of relationship. We thank You that once and for all You have covered our sins, that You have restored us and made us right with God so that we can…we can call him Father and not be intimidated or afraid. We are children of the most high. We thank You for this and we appreciate this anew from what we’ve learned from the Scriptures today. So, we invite Your Holy Spirit to come and plant it deep within us that we might hold onto these things for dear life. And we pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the home base and that is the website. It’s where you find out what’s going on around here and were moving into the holiday season, so things begin to be going on around here, and everywhere else in the world and so they’ll be some things coming here in the next weeks and we’ll get to that as we take steps forward day-by-day, step-by-step. I just want to remind us again about the Community section where the Prayer Wall lives. I think we’ve said plenty of times why the Prayer Wall exists and its importance in the grand scheme of things around the Global Campfire but it is important for us to remember that it’s there and where it is because these holidays, you know this time of the year. We can be on cloud nine in the morning and down in the depths in the evening and it can be really stressful at times. So, knowing that were not alone, that goes a long way, knowing that we can reach out, knowing that we can reach back is important and the Prayer Wall is a wonderful place to do that, that’s in the Community section so check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if the mission that we are on together to bring the spoken word of God read fresh every day and given freely to anyone who will listen, anywhere on this planet, any time of day or night and to continue to build community around that rhythm, that is the Global Campfire. So, if what’s happening here every day is life-giving to you, then thank you for being life-giving. There is a link on the homepage, dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996 Springhill, Tennessee 37174.

And if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that’s it for today. I’m Brian, I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here, tomorrow.

Ezekiel 18:1-19:14, Hebrews 9:1-10, Psalms 106:32-48, Proverbs 27:10

Today is the 8^th day of November welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today continuing this journey forward launching into a workweek and stepping into it together. So, our next step will be the step after the one we took yesterday, which will lead us back into the book of Ezekiel. Today chapters 18 and 19.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we are reading through the books of prophecy in the Old Testament, and we have been in the books of prophecy for a while now. And, so, we see that they have kind of a different complexion about them than some of the other narrative stories that we’ve read in some of the other books. And as we read through the books of prophecy we can hear the frustration, if we want to call it that, from God through these profits, the things that He’s speaking, foretelling of judgments that are not gonna be good, that are pretty harsh to go through, that are gonna be difficult. And we read page after page of this, even book after book of this and so often…so often the first part of a prophetic book is that judgment with than the latter part of a book or at least a portion of the book with the alternative, or even a promise of restoration. But it’s kind of this doom and gloom that we lock into day after day after day and that’s how we get this angry God idea. The prophecies are…like a book of prophecy from a profit may be full of prophecies that spanned decades and were aimed at all kinds of people. But they’re consolidated and it’s not really in narrative form so it’s prophecy after prophecy after prophecy that just feels like God got up on the wrong side of the bed and penned a bunch of books full of doom and gloom and anger and retribution. And, so let’s look at that idea because we have…we have some clues here in the book of Ezekiel today, and I’m quoting…and I’m quoting God. “Do I really find any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord God? Don’t I want him to turn from his ways and live?” So, when we hear stuff like that, which we do hear stuff like that, promises of restoration or questions like this in the prophets, we should pay attention. That should set us right. It’s easy for our eyes to glaze over and we’re just listening to all these prophecies and their harsh and we think that’s the whole thing. What we need to understand is these are prophecies of things that are in the future. They hadn’t happened yet, which means there was an alternate path that could have been taken, the pathway of redemption. the pathway of repentance. I mean all of these thousands of years in the future now that billions of people have read through these prophecies, including us as we’re moving through them now. Do we really think that these are just Chronicles of God’s bad days when he was just exceptionally mad? Or if we look closer, are we not seeing God reaching out to His people in very stark language saying, “this is where you’re going. If you continue to go on this road this is where that leads. This is how that’s gonna play out and this is how I’m gonna be involved in the playing out of it. If you’re gonna enter into an agreement…a covenant, if you’re can enter into a covenant with me and then you’re going to repeatedly commit spiritual adultery by breaking that covenant over and over and over all the way to crazy things that I haven’t even thought of like sacrificing your children to the demons, than I’m going to have something to say that was not the plan. You’ve made the plan and are trying to co-opt me, and I never made that plan and that’s not where I’m going. And, so, if you’re gonna go in that direction here’s what’s going to happen”, right? So, there’s a choice here. But as we’ve seen throughout most of the Bible it’s this back and forth and back and forth and the children of Israel never stay true to the covenant, and they keep growing. Like for every revolution they return to God and then they go further away than they ever were before and then they’d return to God and then go even further away from God than they were before. And, so, they are ultimately going to reap the curses of the covenant, what…what happens when you break the covenant. We should understand this, at least conceptually. Some of us would understand this very intimately. If you enter into the covenant of marriage and you have given your heart and your life and your body and all of your possessions…you’ve combined all these things so that you become one with another person and then that person repeatedly breaks the covenant, they keep stepping outside of the marriage, doesn’t…does…does that not typically bring destruction and pain and confusion? Do you not end up reaping what you sowed? And is that God’s fault that you got to go in the direction you wanted to go and then you got to reap the fruits of that choice even though these are negative things? And, so, the prophets are sent by God to say, “this isn’t going anywhere. This isn’t going anywhere good. In fact, if you keep doing this it’s going somewhere really bad and here’s what that’s gonna look like.” But we also see God always extending a…an alternate, a path of redemption, a path home – return, come back. That is kind that is caring. That is patient. That is long-suffering. That is loving, right? Because God didn’t have to do any of that. They broke the covenant. And, so, God could be like, “you broke the covenant. Now what happens when you break the covenant is coming upon you.” He didn’t have to send any warning. He didn’t have to give any alternative. He didn’t have to say you could repent and come home. We could…we could talk about this. We could rework this covenant. We could re-inaugurate this covenant together. You could come home and be redeemed. He didn’t have to do any of that. He could have just let what was coming upon them come upon them. And, so, as we continue our journey through Ezekiel, but also through the rest of the prophets, let’s look for that. We will nearly always see the shift. And yes, we may see promises even or foretelling’s of a fortune that is unfavorable should the people continue their journey in the direction that they’re going, which is headed toward destruction. But we will nearly always see an alternative path presented. And let’s watch for that because in so many ways that mimics our own lives. And really it should unpack a lot of things for us because we have reaped the things that we have sown. And at times we have reaped things that are unfavorable and blamed God for them when we got exactly what we wanted. We got exactly where we were going. The direction we were headed in was where we ended up but there was always the path of repentance in front of us. And, so, let’s watch for that as we continue to move through the prophets, because in the prophets, we can find a relentless pursuit of God for His people. He could’ve washed His hands of the whole mess at any point. He didn’t have to keep coming to the people. He didn’t have to keep sending prophets to speak to the people who wouldn’t listen any other way and didn’t even listen to them. He doesn’t owe anybody anything. It is we who owe Him everything.

Prayer:

Father, we invite Your Holy Spirit into this as we continue the journey through the prophets, the way things are constructed, at times we can lose our context, so we don’t know exactly why this prophecy is happening and what time it’s happening and we try to keep up with all that but there’s a lot of oracles here, and often they are words of warning. And, so, help us to receive that, the words of warning, but help us to see it for what it is, not a bitter, vengeful, angry God but a pleading, hopeful God that says there could be a different story here. If you change your direction, you change your story. Help us to member that, not only as we see it in the Scriptures, but as we live it in our daily lives, we can always change course. We can always return. We can always repent. Holy Spirit come into this because we need to do it every day. Every day we’ve stepped out of line in some area, and we need to realign ourselves with Your will and Your leadership. And, so, we do that now humbly, asking forgiveness for the ways that we have taken matters into our own hands and are heading in a direction that will land us right exactly where were going and that may not be where we want to go. Help us to see this we pray. In the mighty name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, that is the website, and it’s where you can find out what’s happening around here and dig a little deeper. So, check it out. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you can access these things by pushing the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner of the app screen. It’ll open up a little drawer and you find things like the Community section there.

And the Community section is important because it’s where to get connected, it’s where we’re connected on social media. It’s also the home of the Prayer Wall, which is a resource that we…it…we hold so deeply valuable. This community is…is amazing in its ability to pray for one another and our willingness to accept each other. It’s so fascinating because we’re all over the world, literally all over the world and we can hear from one another without any of the back story or any of the drama. We can just hear each other’s heart and pray for one another. And it allows us to share some of our…our most difficult struggles, some of the things that we are really truly learning how to endure in. And one of the ways to endure, which is something that the Bible is…is repetitively teaching us at this point is to understand that solitary endurance can go only so far but when you’re enduring together and when you’re learning to do it intentionally, that allows us to go a lot further. And, so, praying for one another…yeah…we’ve just always kind of accepted each other as we are where we are knowing that we’re moving forward. There’s only one way to go and that’s forward. And it might feel like we’re going backwards sometimes, but that’s just because we’re going forward while repeating the things that we’ve done in the past. But sometimes it’s time to just move forward. And it’s a lot easier to do when you know you’re not alone. And, so, we accept each other and we pray for one another and we rejoice as we move forward together. And, so, praying for one another is a beautiful thing. And the Prayer Wall is a wonderful place to do that. It’s always on. It’s never off. You can always go there if you can’t sleep and pray for brothers and sisters around the world. Or maybe you’re just really enduring and feel like you’ve reached the end of your endurance and you can reach out for prayer. It helps to know that there are people care enough to go to the Father on your behalf and let you know about it. So, check out the Prayer Wall.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There’s a link on the homepage. And I thank you humbly, humbly, with all of my heart for your partnership. If you are using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app and share from there, no matter where you are in the world or you can dial 877-942-4253.

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:

This is Tim from Florida I’ve been listening to DAB for a few years now and love it. I have never called in, but I heard this morning, Paul. I can’t remember where you’re from Paul, but God knows. You called in because your daughter is following the world and she’s wayward. We also had a daughter who was wayward for a few years, and I had a wise mentor tell me this, because I’m a fixer, and he just said your daughter knows the truth, she’s heard your sermons, now it’s time to love her. That didn’t mean I had to accept everything that she was doing, the drug and the everything else that was involved. She ended up getting in an abusive relationship. And Paul, hear me, and there’s many others that are listening to this that have felt the pain and that are going through the pain and went through it longer and worse than what I did. I fully understand that. But trust in Christ and remember that He’s not just putting your daughter on a path. He’s sovereign over all things and He knows and He’s working in your heart as He worked in my heart and my wife’s heart. And my daughter now is leading a book study with girls. She's…she’s been baptized now. She thought she was a Christian before. She realized she probably wasn’t a Christian. So, she was baptized, and her testimony is unbelievable about what God can do in a young woman’s life and she has just become so strong in her faith and we are just in awe about what God did in her. So, keep the faith brother and keep praying and we’ll be…

Hello DAB family today is November 4^th and this is Elisheva. I just want to reply to some of the prayer requests I’ve heard today, the lady who was bullied and had to leave her job that she loved and is asking for prayer, for help to…to come to terms with the lady that bullied her. Sister, I’m standing with you. I think this is a good thing that you’re doing, seeking help to pray for the person who…who has stretched you and hurt you so…so much. May you find healing as you pray for her. May God bless you with just a supernatural love and understanding for the people in your life that continue to stretch you, especially this person who you’re asking for help praying for today. Couple of prayers for children. The son who…who has been given the wrong message in identity from his natural father telling him that he is worthless. May those…oh gosh…just may those thoughts be abolished. May he find his true identity in our Lord Jesus, his true worth in the Christ that paid it all for him. And for the father who is seeking prayer for his daughter who has followed the world. You’re praying for your daughter, and I lift her up as well. Lord I pray for all of our children for sound minds, for eyes to see the truth about the world that pulls and tugs at their heart and for hearing God call them back home.

DAB family my name is Cathy and I live in Western New York. I really need your prayer covering. I’m feeling so tired and so worn down. And I am so grateful for this community. It will be two years when we finish the Bible this year that the Lord has brought you into my life. I’m only 56 but I feel so much older. I live with two special needs children. The world sees them as normal and bright beautiful people as they are, but they are on the spectrum as is their dad. I’ve been married 30 years to a lovely man but it’s really hard living with someone who admittedly says he…he doesn’t have compassion, or he has no empathy and yet he loves the Lord, and he loves fixing things, and he is able to be wonderfully employed doing that. And, so, I’ve had a great helpmate in that. But then I have two children. My youngest went off to public university and came back an atheist. And momma’s heart is broken thinking that he will not be in heaven with us. And then there’s my lovely bright beautiful daughter who suffers from an autoimmune disease which has allowed her brain to slip to the back of her skull and it…the stem is protruding into her spinal column. My lovely artist of a daughter has changed. She’s different. She struggles to…to be independent this world and she’s fragile and at every turn she’s hurt and broken and abused and used because she is now a person who has a different mental capacity, and she struggles. Please pray for her Lord…DAB family. Please pray for her. I ask for help in Jesus’ name.

Hey DAB family it’s Clyde here from Michigan. It’s Thursday November 4^th and I’d like to ask everyone to join me in prayer for Blind Tony’s grandson. Lord Jesus we come to you today with heavy hearts and we pray that you might guide and heal all the people involved in…in such a tragedy. And we pray that out of such sadness and loss you might lift up the people involved, heal their hearts, their hurt, but most of all to bring Blind Tony’s grandson back to you, back to your living embrace…

Hi, my name is Sandy and I’ve been listening for the length the entire year. I called to ask for prayer for my papa who is 90 and hasn’t been feeling well for a couple days. He’s basically the rock of our family. So, if you could pray for him that would be great. Thank you. Bye.

Hi DABbers this is miss Sandra in Florida I’m lifting up Vicki, I believe her name is Vicki, Lisa from Arizona who lost her son to suicide. He was a nurse at Eli hospital. Father God I just lift up this beautiful woman to You who had called in to pray for other nurses and doctors and first responders about a month ago or six weeks ago. And Lord God I just pray that You give her comfort in her heart. Her heart is broken. She lost her son. And I…I can relate because I lost friends, family, brother to suicide but I’ve never lost a son or a daughter. And Lord God I just pray that You help her to carry on and move on in life and never to let go of course. But I just feel…I just feel like we need to keep her uplifted and support her and keep praying the…the blood of Jesus over her, that she can overcome her cracked broken heart in Jesus’ name. And Lord God we just pray that the peace just floods for and her mind and her heart and that He would just put the joy back in her, give her…give her…just give her some happiness again and we just ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen. We thank You Jesus. We thank You Father that You are there for her, that You are her refuge, that You are her comforter. We thank You Father in Jesus’ name. We thank You Lord. Thank You, Lord.

Ezekiel 16:42-17:24, Hebrews 8:1-13, Psalm 106:13-31, Proverbs 27:7-9

Today is the 7th day of November, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible, I’m Brian it is wonderful to be here with you today just like it is every day but it’s wonderful to be here at the beginning of a new week that we can greet together, walk into together, look out across the vista of what is out before us, knowing that none of that has happened yet and we can choose to live into it to the fullest if we’re paying attention. And so, let’s do that, let’s pay attention to the voice of wisdom in our lives, the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the Council of the Scriptures, which is what we come here for every single day and we will be picking up where we left off yesterday which is last week, in the book of Ezekiel today, Ezekiel chapter 16 verse 42 through 17 verse 24 and we will read from the Evangelical Heritage Version this week.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for a brand-new week to live, well, to live, we thank You for a brand-new week to live and as we become aware, we become aware of the bountiful gifts that You have bestowed upon us, the gift of life, the gift of community, the gift of the Scriptures, the gift of Your Holy Spirit, and we could go on and on and on. May we be aware that we are bountifully blessed as we entered this week and as we begin to make decisions and choices, help us Holy Spirit to think first of the bountiful blessings of our lives that You have bestowed upon us and the Council of the Scriptures to lead our choices and actions. Holy Spirit come, we pray, in the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

Prayer and Encouragements:

Hi Daily Audio Bible, this is Jenny from the Bay Area, I’m a 10-year listener, I don’t think I’ve called in for about two years. And I just wanna say first, thank you, thank you, Brian. And thank you for what you guys have done with this Daily Audio Bible it has transformed my life. I started off as a broken woman from an abusive marriage and God just used this ministry to pour over my heart His word and to transform my life. I’m now a single mom of two and I am finishing up my masters in April so that I can found a non-profit or continue to work with a non-profit. I’m leaving for Paraguay with my program in a few days to do some work with a non-profit help there and I would love, love, love the prayers of everybody for covering for my children cause it’s hard for me to leave them. That God would just be with them, they are 11 and 15 girls, two girls. That God would cover them, that He would pour over their hearts and their souls and their minds and protect them while I’m gone. And I also pray that, just for protection for myself, that He would wrap His, His protection around me and that He would give me wisdom on this trip. My top request would be that He would use me to glorify Him and that He would use me to be a light to my classmates that are there as well as the people that I’ll interact with and that He would give me wisdom and that I would have a teachable heart and be able to just get everything that He wants me to learn on this trip. And that’s my request I guess, that I would bring Him glory and again just thank you, everybody is such an inspiration on here, just to hear everybody’s prayers from around the world. I love this family, it’s awesome. Thanks so much you guys. Bye.

Dear DAB family, here I come again to, you guys, into the Lord, into the Lord first and foremost. This is Heather from California I want to ask you to pray for my grandson Jackson. Jackson has been involved in like, he’s eight years old and he’s had some special needs like ADHD or ADD, I’m not sure which one he went. And at one time they thought he, anyways, he has gotten so much better and we worked with during COVID and he’s able to be in a regular classroom now. But he has problems with getting to know other kids in the class and one little girl wrote him a mean note one day and kids can be so mean and then there was a little boy in the class who just called him a really bad name and come to find out my other daughter said it was his mother. So, I mean we could go there but we’re just praying for Jackson to make a friend and not let this hurt him or harbor him. And we’re asking the Lord just to be there with him and praying for this other little boy that is not being nice to him. And just pray for Jackson and pray for this little boy Tyson to be nice to my grandson and let Jackson make a friend. Thank you guys I love you, thank you very much. I pray for you guys. I’ll talk to you soon. I’ll let you know how it’s going. Thanks.

Good morning DABers. It’s so sweet to trust in Jesus. Just to take Him at His word, just to rest upon His promises. O Father God, You’ve heard the cries of your people. You hear the request for prayers for families with broken marriages for bereaved families, for alcoholism, for resentment, for bitterness, for grace and for mercy. But O Lord, I pray that You’ve heard and You will answer accordingly. Help us to humble ourselves before You so that You will exalt us in Jesus’ season, Father God. You know all the names, You know them by the nature, You know them just by even if their bald on top of the head, You still know them right down to the soles of their feet. I pray this morning that You will touch, heal and deliver those who are in despair, Lord. When we lose loved ones, the pain does not go away, but we feel the pain of our brothers and sisters because that’s what You said, when one hurts, we all hurt. Father God, healed them, heal all manner of diseases in this prayer group, this DAB family that have become acquainted with. Thank you, Brian, Jill, and little Ezekiel, my granddaughter loves listening to Zeeky when she visits. That’s the first thing she does, she says mumma, could we listen to kids. Thank you so much because the word of God is true, the word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.

Hi, this is Jordan from Kansas City. I’m calling for prayer for a friend of mine who’s, I’ve been friends with for ten years and he’s been in and out of prison, really his entire life. In this last stint you know he talked all the talk and you know, I’m gonna change my life, I’m really excited, I was able to help him transition to a healthy place to live in and it’s been about two weeks since he was released and his name is Reggie by the way, and he’s already been kicked out of or left two different halfway houses and I haven’t heard from him, he’s not reporting to his PO and it’s looking like the same story again. So, I’m just feeling really hurt and really burdened but more concerned about him cause really, it’s like he doesn’t know anything else and he just goes back to what he knows. I’ve worked in the prison industry for a while and I’m really just burdened for, he represents thousands of people across the country who were never shown anything else and so they just go to what they know and don’t have the tools to succeed. I see a successful future for him but he doesn’t. So, I’m just feeling really burdened about that. I know that God’s in control and He reigns but just kind of feeling frustrated with that. The prison system in general and I want to see people live and flourish but yet it’s just so difficult. Please pray.

Hey, it’s Sparky again. I was gonna give another praise report, we’re working out of town for where we’re driving about two hours every morning and every night. And I have an 18-year-old apprentice with me. And we’ve, of course, you ride with each other, you talk about your lives. And he was telling me about his parents and he, the subject came up of his dad’s never touched a beer in his life and things of that sort. And being an 18-year-old kid, he’s just questioning everything. And I ask him, I said, are your parents very Christian? And he goes nope. And I said well, that, that’s okay. And he goes, yeah I know. He said but I been trying to get into it. And I said really? And he goes, I live here in Amarillo and he goes yeah, I’ve been going to Hillside. And I go really kid? And he goes, yeah I love it. And the rest of the ride we explained, I explained, he couldn’t figure out the Old Testament and the New Testament and the laws. And I never would have known any of that had I not listened to this for a couple of years. And it was so awesome to explain and make him nod his head up and down like ohhh. And I showed him this app and man guys, this thing has changed my life in the last couple years and it’s pretty awesome.

Good evening DABers, this is God’s Chosen from Georgia. Listening to today’s podcast, November 4th 2021. I’m lifting up Dave before the thrown of mercy for healing, for restoration, for divine touch. Praying for Cathy for strength, for peach, for comfort. Praying also for Paula. Lord, we know that the world is fragmented. The world is falling apart. But we need You Jesus because we know You are alive and You are more than able. When things don’t go right, we need You. When things are working well, we need You. And for all the needs of Your children on this podcast, Father we pray that You would move with might and with power. We thank You Lord for all those whom You have called to intercede on behalf of all those who are hurting, on behalf of all those who’s minds are almost destroyed, on behalf of all those who are dealing with mental issues, for parents who are crying and for those who are sick, for different things that we deal with. Lord, we lift all these needs before You because we know that You are the God that is able to turn things around and we’ll give You praise for it. Amen.