Deuteronomy 16:1-17:20, Luke 9:7-27, Psalms 72:1-20, Proverbs 12:8-9
Today is the 31st day of March welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it’s right to be here with you around the Global Campfire as we take the next step forward. And our next steps forward have led us to this day, which is the final day of the third month of the year. So, when we finish today’s reading and we have completed 25% of our journey. Hard to believe at least for me. Feels like we just got going, but that’s normal. I’ve done this like enough years to know, like how does that happen. But here we are, end of the first quarter of the year and that leads us back to where we left off yesterday in the book of Deuteronomy. We’re reading from the New International Version this week. Deuteronomy chapters 16 and 17 today.
Commentary:
Okay, a couple of things from our reading today as we conclude the third month on our journey together. First from the gospel of Luke, we come to the central question of the Gospels really, a question that it seems like the Gospels are all leading us to be asked and we must answer. And that is, “who do you say that I am?” So, we have this story in other Gospels. In other places were told Jesus on His way to Caesarea Philippi and He is more to say about the gates of hell, not prevailing, etc. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus is praying, His friends are with Him. He asks what the crowd…just like what do people assume about me? What are people saying? What’s the story going around about me? And the story that’s going around is that He’s a resurrected John the Baptist, which even, apparently, according to the Scriptures, Herod is kind of on that page because he knows he killed John and now there’s rumors of somebody kinda like that. So, Herod’s wondering if John the Baptist has been resurrected. Some people think that. Others think it’s Elijah, the great prophet of old, that has returned, come back. And they would think that because we’re told in Scripture that Elijah doesn’t die a natural death. He is taken up in a whirlwind to God. So, for them to think this person on this earth who has these powers to heal and power over nature and is spreading good news in awakening the hearts of people, this must be Elijah. And then others think, maybe not Elijah just one of the old prophets of old, long ago has been resurrected and come back to life. That’s what people were thinking about Jesus. We all have been told all kinds of things about Jesus. If we’ve been around the Christian faith very long we’ve been told every conceivable thing to believe about Jesus, but it really still does come down…like no matter what we’ve been told, it does come down to, “who do you say that Jesus is.” And as we complete 25% of our journey as we’re at this place and we’re transitioning into a new month and a new quarter that’s fair. That’s a fair thing to…to spend the day thinking about. What does my life say? Who do I say…by the way that I am living who do I say that Jesus is? That can be a very very deep question. It’s supposed to be. We find it repeatedly in the New Testament. We’re supposed to answer this question. And, so, let’s spend some time with that today.
And then from the book of Proverbs. “Better to be in nobody and yet have a servant then pretend to be somebody and have no food.” Right? Pretending to be what you are not, how has that ever really worked out to your advantage? Whether it’s that were pretending to have more than we do, or any other kind of posturing that human beings are capable of, if we would just push pause for a second and think about that. That kind of behavior, those behaviors when we’re more posturing, what we are doing is presenting a falsehood as a truth about us. In other words, we’re lying about ourselves to everybody so that they’ll think we’re something different than we actually are. That is not freedom. That is false. That is presenting something false that…that we have to try to keep pretending, keep it going. When we are given permission to be who we are and chase after God who cares what people think? Chase after God into complete freedom. We’re we really don’t care. We are utterly dependent upon God. There is only one to please here. And we cannot put up a false posture affront to God. He sees right through it all. We cannot fake our way with odd even though we try. God sees us as we are and loves us and that is a life changer. We don’t have to be anything else. And pretending is lying. And, so, there’s some things for us to think about as we end our first quarter together.
Prayer:
Holy Spirit, we invite You into all of these things. Who do we say that You are? If we are putting out a false image of who we are then we are certainly not able to put out true perspective of who You are in our lives. And, so, these things are connected, and we need You because we are so intertwined. We are so stiff necked. We are…we are a lot of things and as much as we try, we can’t even figure ourselves out. And, so, we need You. We need You completely. We confess our absolute need for You. More than ever, we need You. Come Jesus and lead us into the truth, the truth about who we are, the truth about who You are and may the truth flow from us into this world we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Hey DAB fam I can use prayer to pray more. This is Mike in New York and, yeah, I just haven’t been spending time really just talking and listening to God. And when I do think about it I start to just pray or talk and then I get interrupted. And I just don’t prioritize time to go and spend with Jesus. Yeah, just decisions to make in how to succeed down the path of life, you know, to get a job and do something to get more money to be able to do more things and make a charity. I mean, you know behind there there’s like an aspect of charity and love and how it will benefit other people and then there’s also the aspect of me just being selfish like all of us are, just wanting more for myself. And, yeah, I just gotta listen to God more. I gotta talk to Him, I gotta listen. Yeah. So, I ask for prayer to help me do that, to help me prioritize and remember. ‘cause really is remembering. Like I wake up and I’ll with the new puppy and I don’t remember to go spend time with God or I put on a video game, or I do something else as opposed to just being, you know, a child of the Lord of Yahweh and being with Him talking to him. So, pray for me for that. Thank you. Bye bye.
Hi Daily Audio Bible family this is Renzo in Florida and I just want to say just thank you to the Daily Audio Bible family. Thank you to all the DABbers. Thank you for His Sojourner Lord God. Thank you for all the encouragers and just thank you guys for your encouragement and thank you guys for all of your prayers praying for everybody. This is a real community. I just thank God that my aunt was able to share with me this app and I just…I just wanna pray for…I wanna pray for the Michael and Elijah and I just thank all they for their encouragement that she was basically saying for their family and I. Thanks Susan for prayers for all the other people in the DAB community and for their encouragement and for everybody’s encouragement Lord God. But let me start off. Father God, I just thank You for all the encouragement that You have in this community. And Father God I just pray for Michael, and I pray for Elijah. I pray for Elijah especially in his school. Let him to just be a light in the darkness Lord God. Let him to just keep shining Your light. Let him to be a positive influence to others. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. God bless you guys. I love you guys. Bye.
Hey DAB, Zach here. I’m a four-year listener and I just wanna say thanks to the Hardin family for all your work. So, my wife is in the last few weeks of pregnancy with our third kid, and she seems to be struggling a lot. This has been a rough pregnancy for her. So, I’d love it if you guys could pray for her and just keep her in her your hearts. I really try to help her out as best I can but in the end she’s just having a hard time. So, thank you and have a wonderful day.
Hello, DAB I wanna say thanks for being there for spiritual misfits like myself. I’m really not sure what I believe. I’ve gone down a lot of paths from ultra conservative Christian, progressive, Christian atheist, wiccan and I’m still not sure I fit neatly into the Christian umbrella. I do know that every time I’ve been in a dark place the only thing that kept me from hurting myself was believing Jesus loved me. So, my theology’s probably a lot different than most people listening to this but I’m glad to be able to listen and hear the Bible as a force for good instead of a weapon used by my church to make me hate myself. I’m on a journey, but I’m trying to find happiness and peace instead of fear and self-judgment. Thank you and have a great day.
Hi everyone, it’s Christy from Kentucky I wanted to call today to talk to Whitney and to Vicki into Latisha. First of all, I just wanted to say for Whitney, and Vicki I have been holding your close at heart and I am praying for you sisters. I lost both my parents and 2017 five months apart and I…I can’t even put words to the grief that I experienced and continue to experience at times. Yet I know that God is love and that my mom and daddy’s blood runs through my veins and that their love is still alive because I know the word says that love never dies. So, never ends. So, knowing that my heavenly Father loves me and knowing that my parents were such good parents, and I was so blessed. Latisha, I wanted to let you know sister that I am thinking of you and praying for you. The love your daddy’s so so apparent in your call and I just want you to know that that love is precious. Hold onto it. Hold onto it forever. Also, I wanted to speak to the husbands and wives. The gentleman that called in that’s celebrating 60 years of marriage…almost…congratulations, that’s awesome. 38 grandchildren and great grandchildren? Oh my! I had to stop and go back to just to make sure I heard that correctly. So, I know you said you had your ups and downs in your marriage as all marriages do you. But I just thank you for your testimony of how you worked it out because it is a covenant that we make to one another that we should not just throw aside. We need to really work on our marriages when we’re having a hard time. It’s an example not only to your children and your children…children and great grandchildren but your it’s a testimony for us. God bless you.