Category: DAB Transcripts

Jeremiah 42:1-44:23, 2 Timothy 2:1-21, Psalms 92:1-93:5, Proverbs 26:3-5

Today is the 23^rd day of October welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today as we continue the journey, the journey through the year, a journey through the month, a journey through life together in God’s word. And this week we been reading from the Christian Standard Bible, which is what we’ll continue to do until the end of the week, which we be tomorrow. But we’re here, we’re here now and we’re the book of Jeremiah and we’ll read today chapter 42 verse 1 through 44 verse 23.

Commentary:

Okay. I want to read a little piece of Scripture, little poem, or saying or maybe even lyrics from a very, very ancient worship song embedded into this letter that we’re reading right now called second Timothy. So, these are the words, “for if we died with Him, we will also live with Him. If we endure, we will also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He will also deny us. If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny himself.” Okay, so that little…that little saying, that little kind of creed that we just read, that’s really interesting actually. It’s one of the things that scholars would look at and say, “okay. when did this develop? When was that understanding solidified? Where…where does this go?” And, so, there’s debate like over this because why is…whoever wrote this…let’s just say, why did Paul in his final letter on earth put the piece of creed or song lyrics in here? So, it’s in his letter to remind the recipient of this letter, Timothy, what the core doctrine, like what the core beliefs are in the context that they’re being used, endurance. Paul’s telling Timothy to endure. And we’ve seen this come up. And I’ve mentioned that we won’t be able to get to the end of the Bible without…like…endurance becomes a central major…like major theme of the New Testament. And it’s so funny because it’s like the last thing we want to do or participate in or be involved in. And usually when we have to endure something, we’re not happy about it. We don’t see it as a positive thing in any sort of way and we just…all of our prayers and all of our energy is to make it go away when what we see in the New Testament in the early church is that they had to learn how to live with it because it wasn’t going to go away. So, Timothy this pastor at Ephesus, he is a trustworthy follower, he is a son in the faith to Paul, Paul had passed the faith onto Timothy, and he had passed the faith on the many others and that passing on of the faith is…was gonna cost him his life. And, so, for Paul to tell Timothy he’s going to have to endure is…is essentially Paul seeing the writing on the wall. The Empire had begun to truly actively systematically persecute Christians and marginalize them completely. And Paul was a ringleader of dispensing the faith, right? So, he’s in prison. He’s probably not getting out of prison. He didn’t. But at the time you would think that he’s probably gonna die. And, so, when he’s sitting in a dungeon and it’s dank and it’s cold and he’s thinking about all of his children in the faith and all of the churches, all of the places he will never go again, all of the people he will never see again, he can notice what’s happening, that the Empire is coming against this faith and it’s all gonna be…like they’re gonna be victorious, they’re gonna stamp it out. They will destroy it from the face of the earth unless God’s people endure it no matter what, to the last person. So, Paul knows even though his journey is coming to a close, endurance is going to have to live on in the church in order for it to survive. And, so, this little piece of a creed, this little piece of maybe a worship song that was song as a declaration of faith among the early churches is inserted here in the letter as a reminder to Timothy. And what gets really really interesting here is something that we’ve mentioned before, but it becomes really poignant here. When this letter was written, even if this was written later after Paul's…like, even if this is a really late first century writing or something like that, a decade or more after Paul’s death, it’s still really really early. It’s early church material here. And, so, we have to remember that when this letter’s written, when any of these letters that we’re reading in the New Testament were written they weren’t known as the New Testament. There was no such thing as the New Testament. So, Timothy as a pastor in Ephesus couldn’t refer to any of the passages that we now continually refer to in the New Testament. It didn’t exist. So, Timothy could’ve taught out of the Torah. He could’ve referred to any of the communications that Paul had with Ephesus, any of the copies of the letters that had been passed around and collected that they had. And…and they did do that. And then, of course, the, you know, the personal letters that…that might have existed in the churches. So, finding this…this statement in this letter gives us a glimpse into what our earliest brothers and sisters were holding on to, holding onto and singing, as a song, as a memorable thing and that they could continually sing or something that they could declare and state before there was a New Testament, right? So, this is…this is the kind of stuff that was being said in the churches before a cohesive New Testament was pulled together from all of the various, various wide library of things that were being written down before the New Testament was all cohesively collected together. So, kind of having that backdrop, it’s like really interesting then to know, okay, we have done plenty of exploration about the trials of the early church. We’ve pretty much demystified the fact that there was not ultimate harmony in the early church. There was all kinds of stuff going on, which gives us kind of a sense of hope that we haven’t digressed. We’re just continuing in the tradition of wrestling through what we believe. But our earliest brothers and sisters were trying…were sorting these things out, wrestling through these things trying to find practical ways to live into these things under pressure. And we see that pressure a lot in the church but now we’re like seeing that the Empire’s got a vendetta and Christians really are, at least in certain areas and in certain circumstances, really being pressed hard unto death. Christians are being killed. So, to look at what they were holding on to when there wasn’t a New Testament to hold on to, when all of the theology of the New Testament hadn’t been formed because the New Testament wasn’t a closed cannon at this point. So, we’re looking at things in formation, what these brothers and sisters who were holding on to Jesus were holding onto. “For if we died with Him, we will also live with Him. If we endure, we will also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He will also deny us. If we are faithless, He remains faithful for He cannot deny himself.” That’s looking back to a time, although this is in the New Testament, this is looking back to a time before the New Testament and seeing what our brothers and sisters were clinging to. And we need to cling to the same thing.

Prayer:

Father we thank You for Your word. As always, as always, something clicks, something is…is illuminated, something leads us forward, something takes us the next step. You are always there guiding and directing us. Your Holy Spirit is always present leading us the next step forward. And, so, we’re grateful for that. We appreciate it more than our words…like the vocabulary fails at some point because it's…it’s a changer…it’s a life changer. You have changed our lives and You continue to transform our lives as…as…as we are diligent at hearing the Scriptures, as we are diligent in pondering and meditating upon them, as we are diligent to quieting ourselves and following the leading of Your Holy Spirit. So, we are so grateful, and we are grateful that we are continuing an unbroken tradition leading all the way back to our earliest brothers and sisters. And, so, to have a glimpse back into what they were holding onto is a beautiful thing and we are grateful for it. And may we hold on and endure as well. We Pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it’s the website, it’s home for a virtual community like ours. So, it’s good to be aware of it. And check it out.

Check out the Community section. That’s where you can get connected. That’s where the Prayer Wall is. Check out the Shop, the Daily Audio Bible Shop. There are resources there for the journey that we are on.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, I cannot thank you enough other than to say this is happening, the Global Campfire exists because we all throw logs on and we wouldn’t be here and this wouldn’t be a blazing and warm and hospitable and cozy place for our community if we weren’t in this together. So, thank you for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if you prefer, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, of course, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement that's…that’s one thing we do well, is to love on each other and pray for each other and…and lock arms and hearts together and shoulder each other’s burdens. As far spread out as we are all over the world this is still happening and God’s Spirit hovers us and is in it all. No matter where we are the Spirit of the living God connects us. And, so, that is a beautiful thing. So, yeah, if you’re carrying some things you shouldn’t be carrying you can reach out. There’s a…there’s a hotline. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Hotline button. It’s the little red button at the top and just start to share from there no matter where you are in the world, or if you’d rather use the phone, 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:

Hey everybody this is Pelham in Alabama or addicted to Christ calling. I’m calling for T-Ray from Texas. You called. Your call played today on the 17^th of October. And you called for your children and you called for Ray Cross, your son who apparently is copying what I did. I wasn’t selling anything but boy I’ve got some stuff I’ve gotta take care of with the government as far as I messed up and I got a DUI and I’ve got all kind of hoops to jump through and I’ve got another case pending or something down in a different county that got put on the side because of coronavirus. And the Lord is in control. He’s on the throne, He is the King of Kings and the Lord of lords and He loves His children. Your daughter who claims she is a pagan, I just wanted you to know that my thoughts and prayers are with you, that this is the cost of freedom, this is the cost of free will. We have to find our own way with fear and trembling. We have to discover who we are in His kingdom and He is so cool, He’s such an incredible Father that He allows us to choose that. He allows us to explore this world, to have our anger, to have our doubt, to choose plots of the enemy, to choose paths that aren’t His path. But He has a way of taking the broken things and He has a way of taking those that are lost and bring them home and He does it poetically. He does it like the ultimate storyteller, which He doesn’t like a boring story. He likes a comeback story. He likes the underdog. He is the ultimate underdog. And I just wanted you to know that your call was the call for me today to…to reach out and pray for you. I love you guys.

Today I remember the warmth of your smile
your incredible love for me from the time I was just a child
the sound of your voices I can still hear in the wind
telling me Tony God’s love doesn’t end
I just want to thank you for your prayers and your tears
and for not giving up on me after so many fruitless years
there were times when I was stupid and selfish at best
but your love was consistent through many a test
in fact it was my anchor and the only thing sure
whenever there was trouble would help me endure
I’m sorry I failed you
my life was a mess
and I prayed every day for your forgiveness
you and dad were the best
and though everybody says their parents are the best
for me I know it’s true because I know I put you through the test
and the prayers that you prayed and the tears that you cried
condemned me in spirit deep down inside
four truly you were two of the best things that God ever placed in my life
and I hurt you so bad that it still cuts like a knife
but still you forgave me and I prayed every day
that God would allow me to show you someday
the love that I felt and to be the son I always wanted to be
for the two of you then as well as for all eternity
for you two were consistent in standing by me
and your love brought me closer every day to becoming free
thanks mom and dad

blindtony1016@gmail.com. Like to give a shout out to Candace and His little Cherry. Know you’re both loved and prayed for daily and once again Brian and the Hardin family than you for this wonderful podcast…

Hi Daily Audio Bible family this is Crowned in His Glory and this is the first time I’ve ever posted a message before. I did ask for prayer and you guys did pray for me on the Prayer Wall for my continued battle with cancer and I thank you. Bless all of you for that. First, I want to thank the Hardin family for this ministry. It has changed my life in the past…past few years. It’s just unbelievable. And I want to pray for Carmen in Orlando I believe. She is faced with the situation that she has to put her father in a care facility, and she is struggling with that. Father we…heavenly Father we pray for Carmen in Orlando and for her earthly father. Take care of them give them comfort and peace. Let this gentleman know that Carmen is only acting in his best interest, that if possible, if she had the ability, she would care for him herself for the rest of his life. Father heal this man, touch him, comfort him and give Carmen the strength to do what she has to do Lord. Give her comfort, give her the…the means and cut through the red tape to get her earthly father put into a care facility that will give this gentleman the proper, most professional care possible. And Lord we…we ask these things in the precious name of your son Jesus Christ.

Hi, my name is Rebecca from Michigan, we’re first-time callers. My husband Skye and I started listening in January. Just need prayer requests for my neck and my jaw. Took a fall when we went on a little mission trip to deliver a bike that we raised for a paraplegic named Eric. We just pray for Eric that he will be touched by the Holy Spirit to want to receive the free gift of salvation and the same for Scarlett, Dave, and John we also met on witness to that trip. And we also pray for this van that we’ve been traveling in to continue to be anointed by God, for open doors to witness to others. And others that we met this last week when we camped, TJ, CJ and Lorrie, that they will come to know the grace and love of Jesus in their hurting lives. And we just pray a blessing over Skye and I to protect our marriage. We need your prayers for…against the enemy for any backlash for doing kingdom work and we pray that over Brian, we pray that over others doing the kingdom work and we just need new means of income since Covid. And, so, just prayers for that and to be led where at where he wants us to be. And this winter as our landlord is selling our house. So, probably some more van evangelism because we’re just tent dwellers in the world anyway. And we believe that Jesus is coming soon, and he is good and I’m expecting good things to come and hope that for all of you. We love you guys and we want you to be encouraged to do the good work of the King of Kings. For He is our treasure and in him our inheritance is going to be amazing in heaven. So, we look forward to that and I just hope for a blessed day for all of you.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible family. I’m Xavier calling in from Cameron and I want to thank each and every one that takes time to pray for our various brothers and sisters  __ most especially those having problems in their marriage with their children trying to overcome some drug addiction and where listening to your beautiful voices, where listening to your prayers that you pray for one another gives me hope as well in my own little corner trying also to cope with my own addiction. I just want to thank Brian most especially for everything he says. I love you. It gives me a whole lot of comfort. It gives me a whole lot of peace inside and __ Daily Audio Bible family. It’s like it’s not even virtual. It’s like I have people talking to me right in my ears. So, it…it’s so comforting. I must say. In all of the years this is been my number one spot for comfort and peace and giving the job that I do which drains out all your energy listening to people __ in our country it just gives me a whole lot of peace to come here and know what people are going through and what people also are doing to make sure that they receive comfort in their various destinations. I’m thankful again Brian for your beautiful platform which gives out peace to people all around the world. And I also want to reach out to __ tough time in the family in their personal lives for you __ we’re there life there is hope. Tune into the Daily Audio Bible family every single day and you’ll find comfort like I have found comfort…

Hello DAB family this is Dimitri from Massachusetts. I’m a first-time caller but have been listening since the beginning of the year. Just stumbled over this podcast and been listening ever since and I would like to pray for Dimitri from Oregon or Washington not sure which state, but he called asking for his marriage…asking for prayer for his marriage. And I pray for God’s intervention. I pray for God’s restoration because for God nothing is impossible. And I pray for Christian as she asked for restoration for her parents and relationship with her parents. And I pray so God will restore that relationship because God is an Almighty God. And I pray for every needy heart in the community. I pray for freedom and deliverance from all addictions. I pray for their restoration to the family so God will turn…turn sons back to their fathers and fathers back to their sons and just restore the…the relationship with families and God’s pray…I pray for God’s intervention for every soul. __ and the type of the enemy in the name of Jesus. And I also love to ask prayer if somebody can just pray for me so I can reflect Christ in everything that I do. I have a ministry in church but it’s hard for me to reflect Christ in everything that I do. It’s just hard to work to with people but all things are possible with God. Thank you. DAB family thank you for everything you do Brian and the whole team. God bless you.

Jeremiah 39:1-41:18, 2 Timothy 1:1-18, Psalms 90:1-91:16, Proverbs 26:1-2

Today is the 22^nd day of October welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today like every day. It’s always, always a joy to be here with you as we take the next step forward and that next step forward….well…that will continue our journey in Jeremiah but when we get the New Testament we’re moving into the middle pastoral epistle known as second Timothy, and we’ll talk about that when we get there but let's…let’s dive into Jeremiah. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Jeremiah 39, 40 and 41 today.

Introduction to second Timothy:

Okay. As we said at the beginning, we are moving into another of the pastoral epistles. These are letters that are personal in the Bible, not like circular letters written to entire churches to be read and performed before a congregation and then past to another church. They are personal letters. They are attributed to the apostle Paul although as we talked about, these pastoral epistles are highly disputed and have been for centuries. And there are, you know, very few biblical scholars these days who would say the pastoral letters were actually written by the apostle Paul. That mostly comes because historians, church historians, who have watched like the development of church structure have been able to kind of observe that these pastoral epistles, they seem to have developments within church structures that came after the apostle Paul’s life. Nevertheless, the letters are like Pauline in…in nature and are…are written to be from the apostle Paul to these two pastors Timothy and Titus as personal letters that contain a lot of church structure instructions, yeah, that still provide controversies in certain sections and segments of the church today. But this letter, second Timothy is written in the name of Paul, may have been written by Paul, and would be the final of the pastoral epistles. And as its later, like a late letter, if the apostle Paul did write this letter than this is the last known writing of the apostle Paul’s life. And if Paul didn’t write it then somebody familiar, somebody of the Pauline school, somebody who’s theologically under Paul or under one of these pastors of the churches was…was indeed kind of counting the last days of Paul. And, so, Timothy who this letter is written to, like the last one that we read was the pastor the church in Ephesus. And this is a church that Paul spent a lot of time in. So, these people knew Paul and they know Pastor Timothy pretty well. And Paul at the time is in prison in Rome. He had appealed to Caesar. He’s waiting to find out whether he’s gonna live or die and as it turns out he's…he’s gonna die. And Paul’s imprisonment is also a matter of scholarly debate, not whether it happened or not, but it…it seems like laying out the timeline of Paul’s journeys that he may have been released for a time, and had freedom again for a time. So, when he first came under arrest when he was first imprisoned in Rome, he kinda had some freedoms. We see that written in the Scriptures. It was kind of more of a house arrest. He was under guard, but he had some freedoms. Like he wasn’t just in dungeon and then as the timeline kinda lays out it seems like he was released from custody and then he traveled again for a period of time, and then it would be during those, that small time of freedom that he wrote first Timothy and Titus, which we’ll read next. And then Paul was incarcerated again, and this would be A.D. 66. And not to get to technical, but this is some of the reasons like dating Paul’s life, you can’t date right down to the days on things, but you can get pretty close in when his wife would’ve been. And then looking at church structures etc. etc. knowing like some of these things came to be later that’s why a scholar would think about these letters being later than Paul’s life. But around 66 A.D. Paul then was arrested again, and this was under Emperor Nero who just was …was a savage to Christians and persecuting them and executing them and denigrating them. It was a…a bad time. And, so, when Paul was arrested again, he didn’t have the kind of freedoms that he had before. He was then at that point in a cold dungeon waiting to die pretty much. That’s the…the writing was on the wall. So, the idea then is that from this imprisonment, and we’ll see in the letter, that it’s full of melancholy, like it’s full of the type of hopeful language we would expect from a letter like this, but also just sobering realities of the circumstances and the likely outcome being martyrdom. This is the tone of second Timothy. And, so, we can take second Timothy as the last things we would hear from this apostle, sort of like the…the period at the end of the sentence, the last things that get said. So, I mean, the marginalization that was happening among the church, people would identify as Christians being completely set aside and really, really pressed in on and persecuted, most everybody had deserted Paul. Like people were waiting for Jesus to come back. He wasn’t coming back. Paul, the guy that had showed them this way, is imprisoned. The Empire has got a vendetta against people of this faith. So, there just like, “yeah. That’s not gonna work for me” and just went back into the wall work and back to whatever they were doing before. And, so, Paul is alone. Only Luke the physician who we believe to be the author of the gospel of Luke as well as is the book of Acts stayed in Rome with Paul. Paul knew that he was probably gonna die. From the tone of this letter he was hoping to see Timothy just one more time, like one more time in this life face-to-face and that he had some final counsel just in case that face-to-face couldn’t happen, some final words of encouragement, some final words of instruction. And given the backdrop that I just, you know, that I just said for us, that’s why we find famous verses in this letter, like “I have fought the good fight of faith. I have finished the race.” And, so, we begin. Second Timothy chapter 1.

Prayer:

Father we thank You for Your word. We are so, so grateful for Your word and Your direction and Your counsel and Your comfort in these days. And I…I’m sure the generations before us trailing back to the very day that these words were penned, that those who read them felt this way. Thank You, thank You, thank You for being here for us when things are confusing. Thank You for taking us back into this melancholy territory in the early formation of the church as we are reading a letter that…that gives us language for the end of the apostle Paul’s life and the convictions that were held intact, even as he faced…even as he faced like…like that his head was going to be severed from his body. That’s a pretty stark thing to think about. And, so, Holy Spirit, as we continue our journey through the New Testament, as we continue our journey through…through the books of prophecy. Come, lead us into all truth. Lead us in the way that we should go. Lead us on the narrow path that leads to life. Lead us deeper into our relationship with the Savior. And we ask in His name, the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, yeah, it’s home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here. It’s where the Global Campfire lives. It’s home for the community that we are. So, like I say most every day. Check it out. Stay connected. Check out the Community section. Check out the Prayer Wall that’s at the Community section. You can always, always, always pray for each other.

And 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 Daily Audio Bible app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if that’s your preference, 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, which is the little red button at the top 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 my fellow DABylonians this is Kevin in California checking in and real quick just want to ask that you would continue to pray for my three sons - Levi, Moses and Tekoa - that God would give them peace and wisdom and courage. But my main call is I wanted to call Chris in Florida. Wow man. That’s…that’s some heavy stuff. Thank you so much for calling in and reaching out. I’d be honored to pray for you and your 12-year-old daughter. So, let’s pray Familia. Holy Father, Son and Spirit thank You for this man Chris. He’s calling in for his…his beloved daughter and the mourning and grief and healing that she will have to go through with such a difficult thing as losing a mom. And I just pray God that Your Holy Spirit would fill this man Chris with great love and courage and wisdom to love and guide and comfort his daughter through this time of grief. May he and his daughter grieve well together. And I pray God that You’d give him great opportunities to let the tears flow Father. Give them places and opportunities to feel their grief and let it flow and heal through that God. Thank You, Father for what You’re going to do in this man Chris’s life and his 12-year-old daughter. Thank You, God that You have a plan and those plans are for good. Thank You, God that this lady is now with You Lord and I…

This is from junk to treasure. I’m calling because I heard Joel Maddox reach out for help. He was the first caller on Monday, October 19^th’s broadcast. Joel I just…you said you can’t stand to look at yourself in the mirror and you’ve lost everything and you’re ready to give up and you don’t know what to do. This is when you look at yourself in the mirror as a child of God and you start from where you are. You call upon the Holy Spirit and you ask for help and direction and you start by setting small goals each day of what you can do until you can get back on your feet and regain. I don’t know whether you lost possessions or what it is you lost but we just pray over you and we ask the Holy Spirit to circle around you and uplift you and we praise God that you called out for help because it’s not too late when you ask for help and just pray that God will hold on to you in a mighty strong way so that you can get your eyes set back on the right path. We pray these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Hello DAB family this is Shantay calling from Metro Detroit and I wanted to call and share some good news with you all. I just received a call from a company that I’ve been interviewing with and I hadn’t heard from them in a good while. And, so, I thought they just forgot about me. But anyway, I found out today they offered me a job in Florida. And, so, I am like so…so many emotions. I’m so grateful and thankful to God for just working everything out. I’ve been furloughed since April. It is now October and I have a job offer and I’m…I’m just…I’m so amazed and it’s just…ahh…thank you to each and every one of you that have prayed for me over all these years. This month, October marks my 10^th year of listening to the Daily Audio Bible and you all have seen me through so many ups, so many downs, so many back up’s, like just…you guys have been praying for me since the beginning and I just…I thank you all and I love you all so much. I’m so grateful for each and every one of you, for Brian and Jill I’m so grateful for you too…you…you have just blessed my life, your saying yes to doing the Daily Audio Bible and…and reading the Scripture in and out, day in and out, rain or shine has just blessed my life and so many others and I’m just…I…I’m so very thankful, so very thankful. So, I just want to call in with that praise report to everyone. Thank you for your prayers. I love each and every one of you. And, yeah, okay I know I’ve been cut off so I’m just gonna stop now. But if anyone else is still listening, I love you all so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for all that you do…

Hi, it’s Sherry from Kansas. I would like to ask you to continue praying for Jennifer. She’s the 13-year-old girl I told you about that her dad is super morbidly obese and her mom has mental issues and is very abusive. The dad can’t even get out of a chair or anything. And Jennifer started cutting herself and lying and doing a little stealing as well. But Jennifer’s mom told Jennifer that if she wasn’t dead before her 18^th birthday then Jennifer’s mom said she would kill herself, which is a horrible thing to say to a child. But this is the kind of things that Jennifer’s mom says. Anyway, CFS, child and family services has gotten involved and I’m just really praying for them for wisdom and for something to happen, but I don’t know what at this point. So, I just want to ask you to continue praying for her because Jennifer is really a wonderful girl and she’s acting out and doing the things she’s doing because of the abuse that she’s suffering. Anyway, thank you all for praying and God bless you.

Hello Daily Audio Bible audience I’m calling on October 17^th I’m a listener in Maryland and I’m calling for two people who call this week. One was a lady and I’m sorry I don’t remember your name, but she was very upset because she was alone, and she desperately wanted to be married and she had no children and she was 62. It spoke to me because it was near my birthday and I turned 64. I too have never been married and I have no children; however, I don’t feel alone in that I do know that the Holy Spirit watches out for me and makes it possible to for me to move through this journey. The other person whose name is James, he had sort of the same problem except he was a young man and he had been in foster care and he was alone, and he was going through rehab. James, your strong, I could tell it in your voice and you’re a good person. You were asking for prayer and hoping that your parents were still alive and well. You also have the Holy Spirit that is taking care of you. So, both of you, make it…you will make it to through the loneliness. You just have to get it in your heart and in your mind and in your spirit. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Jackie and I’m asking prayer for my brother Sonny who’s in the hospital with chest pain and stomach pain possibly due to stress. He has lost his job and battling with some financial __. Also for my sister, she’s a single mom, she’s not working, she has a college aged son in need of a financial blessing, in need of scholarships she’d applied for but due to COVID-19 everything is closed down. I’m also asking prayers for my son who’s single, hasn’t been married, has no kids, and is __ and lonely. And I’m asking God to cease the loneliness and I’m also worried sometimes, worried about my future, what’s gonna happen. I feel stuck __ that God would just relieve my stress, relieve the loneliness. __ pray for my DAB family I greatly appreciate it community. I love you all. I love you Brian and Jill and there are so many I keep praying for you. I thank God for this community. Have a blessed day.

Jeremiah 37:1-38:28, 1 Timothy 6:1-21, Psalms 89:38-52, Proverbs 25:28

Today is the 21^st day of October welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today as we just kinda come in and take our places around the Global Campfire. How is everyone? How are you doing? Well…no matter how you’re doing, no matter how any of us are doing we have kind of created a little oasis where when we come here things kind of get shifted, perspective gets reoriented because when we come in here and sit around the Global Campfire together we know we’re not alone and we’re simply letting God’s word speak to us in whatever way that it does. This is safe…this is a safe place that has been a rescue so many times. And, so, it is wonderful to be here with you today as we take the next step forward. And this week we are reading from the Christian Standard Bible. So, we’ll continue to do that throughout this week and continuing our journey through the book of Jeremiah today. So, today we’ll be diving into chapters 37 and 38.

Commentary:

Okay. So, I have been in ministry a long time and I have been around ministry my entire life. And, so, I have encountered the word prophetic or prophetic things plenty…plenty of times over…over the years and that's…that’s fine but I have also had people introduce themselves to me as profits many times in many kind of weird interesting sorts of ways. But with further conversations like, “no. I’m not sure this…I’m not sure where on the same page. I’m just not sure we’re having the same conversation.” So. well, like what does a prophet look like? What does a prophet do? What does a prophet have to face? That’s something we get a very clear view of in the book of Jeremiah today because in my experience most of the people who have introduced themselves to me as prophets are really really, really trying to be seen that way and are trying to live like a ultra-prosperous sort of life that draws attention to themselves as somebody with some sort of secret special direct line to God. So, we’re reading through the book of…a book of prophecy, the book of Jeremiah, who was a prophet in the Bible and he’s in Jerusalem and there’s a blockade around the city and everyone is trapped and the only thing keeping the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, from getting into Jerusalem is the wall. The thing is, the wall is protecting them from the invading army, but the invading army has surrounded the city. And, so, there is a wall between them, but society is falling apart inside the walls. There’s no food, right? Like, and…and there’s no law and order. It’s all falling apart because the writings kind of on the wall. We’ve been reading through Jeremiah and so in earlier times in Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry, there were other prophets around contradicting Jeremiah, like very aggressively contradicting Jeremiah. We’re not hearing any of those prophetic voices anymore. Those prophets, the ones who were like, “no. There’s a two-year plan. Everything’s coming back. No. Certainly the Chaldeans will never breach the walls.” We’re not hearing any of those voices anymore. Jeremiah is the remaining prophet of God with a voice here and he is continuing to say the message that God had given him from the beginning. He’s just the messenger. He doesn’t want to be seen. He’s not trying to get notoriety. He doesn’t want to be doing this job. Now he’s trapped inside Jerusalem with a blockade. Pharaoh’s army from Egypt, the rumor is that he’s coming and so the Chaldeans back off and so Jeremiah wants to go inspect the field that he bought. And he can’t even…he’s not even allowed to leave. Like his freedom is taken because the accusation is that he’s defecting to the Chaldeans, because he’s been saying to surrender to them all along as the word of the Lord. So, this famous prophet is then thrown into prison and then the king whose name is Zedekiah let him out but didn’t let him go free. He like kept him under house arrest in the courtyard. But it’s not too long then that people aren’t…they’re looking for somebody to scapegoat. Things are falling apart. Jeremiah’s word from the Lord has been consistent and is coming true and the people are furious at Jeremiah for saying the things that he said. So, Jeremiah ends up basically in quicksand at the bottom of a well to die there. That’s the life of this prophet. Then king Zedekiah comes to Jeremiah privately. Everybody’s watching everybody at this point inside the city. Everybody’s trying to figure out how to get out alive. The authority of the king has been diminished significantly. And Zedekiah comes to Jeremiah is like, “just tell me the truth. Just give me it straight.” And Jeremiah’s basically like, “I’ve been doing that, my friend. I’ve been doing that for more than a decade for more than two. I’ve been telling the truth. Nobody’s listening to me and if I tell you the truth, you’ll probably kill me. And if I give you good advice you’re not gonna listen, you never have.” That’s kind of how we see the prophetic voices in the Bible. That…that’s the response in the lives of the prophets, at least the ones that are portrayed in the Bible. They come with the word from the Lord and a lot of times the word from the Lord is a foretelling of what is to come. And what is to come is not usually a good thing. And the reason that they are foretelling what is to come is because the people are heading in that direction. The prophet seeing and hearing the word of the Lord can see where this is going and speak to it because that’s where the road is going. That’s where things will end up. And, so, a prophet lay’s that out. This is where you’re going. This is what’s going to happen. However, it’s not too late to change direction. And if you do repent, if you do change your mind, if you do change direction then the outcome will also change accordingly. But the people don’t listen. Only rarely do we see examples of people listening. So, the work of a biblical prophet is indeed difficult work, to say the least.

And then we come to Proverbs today and it brings it all very, very near. “A person lacking self-control is as a city with broken down walls.” In many ways that is a prophetic word into our own lives. In Jerusalem the wall was the only thing keeping the enemy out. According to Proverbs, when we lose control of ourselves the wall that keeps the enemy out of our lives falls down. In…in this scenario that we’re reading in the Bible, there were walled cities to keep enemies out and if those walls fell down then the enemy rushed in and conquered the city and in many cases destroyed the city. When we lose control of ourselves the enemy rushes in to destroy us. So, when we have not practiced…and remember we were talking about practicing just the other day, like practicing our faith. Like, this is how we train to be godly, we practice being godly. One way we practice is self-control. It’s a fruit of the Spirit. It’s a byproduct that is offered to us who…who have believed and who are practicing a godly life. If we lose that then the walls fall down and chaos rushes in, right? Fear rushes in, loss overwhelms, panic rushes in. You name it. Whatever it is that’s our enemy rushes in to conquer and destroy. And, yeah, similar to what Jeremiah’s saying, the way we will ultimately overcome is that we will surrender, we will surrender to God. And, so again, the Bible greets us as it does most every day with the illumination of pathways and where those pathways lead. The Bible once again…I mean we learn this very very much the very very beginning of the Bible, that wisdom is at every crossroads saying go this way and don’t go that way. If we would just listen and slow down. And, so, once again the Bible has brought to us the illumination of pathways and where they go. And what we can see is that if we do not practice self-control then we have a very, very vivid picture of what being surrounded by an enemy with chaos inside the walls, starvation inside the walls, and surrounded by the enemy on the outside, we see what that looks like and we know when the wall falls down that the enemy rushes in. We have a clear view of what happens to us spiritually when we do not practice self-control. Here’s the thing. I don’t think this is like new revelation. Like, you may have never heard it in this context before, but when you, when I, when we lose self-control it may not have been described as a wall falling down and an enemy rushing in, but we already know that’s exactly what it feels like. That’s what happens. And, so, let’s take the visual that the Bible has given us in Jeremiah and essentially the prophetic word that has been spoken to us from Proverbs and listen because that’s what the prophets were doing, saying this is where you’re going, this is where it will end, listen, change course. Listen. Are we gonna listen or are we gonna continue to have the wall fall down and our lives be a swirl of chaos? The choice is ours. We’re at the crossroads. Wisdom is speaking. This is the way to go. Don’t go that way. Here we are. Which way are we going?

Prayer:

Father, we know the way we want to go. We know the way were supposed to go. We just often don’t. Sometimes that is out of rebellion. Sometimes it’s just we’re overwhelmed and not paying attention. You have given us Yourself, Your presence. You are here and we get so distracted that we forget that’s real. And, so, we run around from chaos to conflict just trying to keep things afloat when there’s a better way. Come Holy Spirit and help us practice self-control. We need You now. Actually, maybe more than ever in our lifetimes we need You now. Come Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello Daily Audio Bible family this is the Joy of the Lord calling from the UK and I just want to first of all say thank you to Brian and the Hardin family for all the great work that you’re doing at the Daily Audio Bible. And I was just calling in response to Joel Maddox who called on the 19^th October, Monday the 19^th of October. Sounded very distressed and ready to give up. And I just want to encourage you Joel that don’t give up. That is exactly what the devil wants you to do. But please don’t give up. I know and I can hear that you are hurting but I know that even though everyone may have left you, even though you may feel alone, I know that Jesus is still with you. Jesus is reaching out. He can never give up on you. He can never leave you. He can never forsake you. He can never forget you. So, I just wanted to encourage you that God is with you at every single point in time. You may not feel like it. You may feel like you’re alone. You may feel like you’ve lost everything but do not give up. As far as there is life there is hope. So, just continue to put one foot in front of the other. Continue to just pray to God and cry out to God and I know that God will surely answer you and surely make you feel like you’re not alone and surely embrace you and encourage you in more ways than you can imagine. I look forward to an amazing praise report after this because I know that God is with you. So, I just want to call you to encourage you. And of course, I’m lifting you up in prayer and I know that my God will strengthen you beyond your capacity. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family this is Beautiful Soul from North Carolina. I wanted to call in and say a prayer for Joel Maddox. Joel, I know your pain and I know your…your loneliness and you feel like you’re not loved but you are loved. God loves you and He loves you through His people and you’re not alone. It’s not a time to give up. I’ve been there before where I wanted to just give up and throw in the towel but God kept me and He’s brought me out on the other side. And again, I also want to pray for God’s Smile. God’s Smile, she brought me through some really hard times in my life just by hearing her voice. My mother passed away 12 years ago and not having that mother’s comfort is really hard when you’re going through but to hear God’s Smile’s voice is just like my mother hugging me when I would hear voice. And I wanted God’s Smile to know that I’m praying for her too and I’m here for her to pray and lift her up as he goes through this difficult time and know that she is loved as well. Dear heavenly Father I pray for these two people in our lives that need You so desperately God. I ask that You go to their rescue God and deliver them from whatever the enemies put before them that’s causing them to suffer. I pray God that You get the glory out of the entire situation but most of all God that they draw closer to You. Lord let them know that their loved, they’re kept, and they should be carried through. When they can’t even take another step, You’ll carry them the rest of the way. Lord I not only pray for these two but all those who are suffering. We give You honor; we give You glory we give You praise. You are an awesome, awesome, awesome God and we praise You in Jesus’ name. Thank you, thank you daily audio Bible for this platform. Amen.

Hi siblings this is your sis His Little Cherry in Canada. Would you please say a prayer for my daughter joy? I got an emergency text from her this morning saying that things are not going well, things are not going well for her and for the whole first year class at the vet school. I don’t think I need to give a bunch of details because it’s really a Shakespearean tragedy is what it is. Drama, drama, and more drama with staff and deans and professors and power struggles and I guess there’s been a lot of mid…mid program choices…changes. Partly because of Covid, no one knows what they’re doing or what’s going on and just partly because of politics. And the first-year students are beside themselves as far as overwhelmed and stressed. It’s just…that school normally speaking is stressful enough and then things are just…what are they? Their inhumane, which is interesting for vet school students. So, Joy sent a long middle of the night email to the mental health counselor last night and I’m really worried about her. I’m worried about her marriage, which is only a year old and there’s lots of stress there too. So, I am clinging to Daddy for my treasure, my joyous and asking if you would have time to say a quick prayer for Joy I would sure appreciate it. I love you guys. Bye.

Hey DAB this is White as Snow from Tennessee. Just wanted to thank Soaring On Eagles Wings from Canada for praying for truck drivers. That was just an awesome prayer just lifting us up and, you know, the things we have to deal with. And I just want to thank you for…for praying for us. And I want to pray for unshavn’ misbehavn’ Tavin, which I…I love that. His Little Cherry’s son who had some pain who hopefully by now got the results of the test and just praying for just complete recovery if surgery needs to be involved just whatever that everything will go smoothly, and he’ll be doing great. And I’d also like to lift up his wife whose an atheist. And I just…just praying that God will open her eyes and she can come to know Him. And you never know how God’s working on someone. On the outside you may not see anything but, you know, God can still be working, you know, on their heart on the inside. So, just praying for her and just lifting you up and thanks again for praying for all of us.

Hello, my name is Glenda from central Missouri I’m a first-time caller, but I’ve been listening for about a year or so. Brian thank you so much for your program because I can no longer hold the Bible in my hands, yet I can still pick up the Bible every day. Right now, I’m fighting cancer. I’m not doing so good. I ask for prayer for that. I want to thank everybody for all the prayers in advance. Thank you so much. My names Glenda from central Missouri.

Hello Daily Audio Bible viewers my name is Juan __ and I just needed prayer for me and my girlfriend Cornetto. Me and her have not been going to the best of times right now but I will say this, she has brought me back to Christ when me and her got together and this feels like now she’s running astray now and since she’s been back in New York and her friend from jail got out it feels like she’s been losing her way with the Lord and I just want her to turn her favor back to God because he sent her to save me from myself and used her as a vessel to have me come back to the Lord when I felt like I was veering off and straying off. And there was never no judgment where…I just want the Lord to restore her heart, make her realize she’s woman of God and she needs to come home and that she has a man of God that loves her and I really do and I see the pain that she went through. Hopefully you guys get this, pray over it. And have a great day.

Jeremiah 35:1-36:32, 1 Timothy 5:1-25, Psalms 89:14-37, Proverbs 25:25-27

Today is the 20^th day of October welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is wonderful to be here with you today. It is a joy to come around the Global Campfire and take the next step forward, which is what we do every day. And, so, let’s dive in. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Jeremiah, chapters 35 and 36 today.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word and we thank You for continuing the journey and…and taking us deeper and deeper and deeper into it. We thank You for the admonition to respect those who are older than us, who are before us, who are wiser than us, who have lived longer than us who are brothers and sisters in Christ. We see them as Fathers and mothers and that we should see those that are contemporary with us as brothers and sisters, with all purity, that this is the posture that we have toward one another, the posture of a family and we thank You that You have made us a family, Your family, not just any group of people who have decided to bind themselves together in some sort of family apparatus, Your family on this earth. And, so, Father, it’s been a tense year and we’ve had every opportunity to do anything but treat each other like family. Or maybe we’ve treated each other like family in our darkest moments but when we’re really after each, when we’re really, really perturbed and the gloves are off but You have invited us to be unified, that You are the head of this household as it were, that You are the Father and that we are Your children and that we submit to You. And, so, as we move forward in these times, these pretty tense tenuous weeks that we find ourselves in, that You bind us together in love, that we treat each other in love, that we do what we do in Your name, that we stop and consider whether or not what we’re doing can be done in Your name because we represent You upon this earth. We are Your children and we are in this together. So, we represent the family, the family of God. And, so, Holy Spirit come and help us to behave appropriately we ask in the precious and mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

Community Prayer and Praise:

My name is David Browning from Savannah Georgia and this is my first time calling in and I’m calling in because on October 12^th I heard God’s Smiles and I heard her prayer request and I felt…I heard the agony in her voice and I felt the agony in her pain and it brought me to tears and I just…I just prayed for her, I just prayed in agony and…and in tears for her for the relief of her pain. She is…her attitude is so phenomenal, and she is so positive and upbeat and blesses me so much every day. I pray for you God’s Smiles, every day I pray for you and for relief from your pain and for healing for your condition. I love you all DAB. I thank you Brian Hardin and your family for everything you’ve done. The DAB has brought incredible changes in my life in the last six months. I love you all and keep on keeping on. Good night.

This is Valerie calling for the first time from __ Arkansas and I am calling in regard to our 35-year-old son. He is a very good-looking intelligent boy going to respiratory therapy school at the time. He’s had asthma all his life and wants to help others with breathing difficulties but right now he’s in a very dark place mentally. He’s always struggled with anxiety and depression most of his life but right now he says he sees no light at the end of the tunnel and he says his quality of life is so, so bad that he really wants to take his own life. He’s socially isolated taking online classes. His brother has quit having anything to do with him and he just feels like he’s totally alone in this world. He’s not found a suitable woman yet to be a wife. He would love to get married and have children and he’s given up all hope on that. He’s telling me that any day now is going to be his last. As you know, as a mom this is very, very distressing, it’s heartbreaking, it’s crushing. I just appreciate everyone’s prayers for him, and I thank you so much.

Hi DABbers this is Kira from Denver and I put this on Facebook already but I wanted to lead my DAB family know that I did make a huge, huge leap and confronted my boyfriend and said I didn’t want to fornicate anymore but also I didn’t want to get married and I can see us being together forever. He got really really upset. I said…he said I’ll do anything. What can I do to make it better? And I said we need help. But then he switched, started gathering his stuff, and he’s been out and coming back. So, we want prayer for that. But to avoid him yesterday I went on a solo outing myself and I was walking along beautiful area outside Denver sort of mountainous doing a stretch and this woman came…saw me and came up to me and apparently was warning me about stretching like this. Was rare, but you could get hurt. She had torn her clavicle and she was in so much pain for years and years and years, so bummed she couldn’t do yoga anymore to make it better. We started crying and I started telling her about my testimony and my story and my beliefs and we walked together and talked together for a while. I asked her if I could pray for her and she said yes. She said her mom had prayed for her for years and years. She’s a little older…older woman. So just older than me. Anyway, please pray for Tammy. I was thinking a lot of God’s Smile when she was telling me about her pain. Anyway, it was nice to share my testimony through this grief and really hard stuff I’m going through. I love you DABbers…

Dear DAB family this is Dove from Northern California calling on October 14^th, 2020. I’ve been a listener for seven years and this podcast has truly changed my life. I suffer from excessive self-reliance and a reluctance to ask for help but God has brought to me my knees with my son’s opioid addiction over the past 15 years. I admit my powerlessness over my son’s addiction. My son has not had faith in God, and he is also felt that he could solve his own problems despite his addiction. However, he has been in jail for the past 18 months and will go before a judge on Monday, November 23^rd for sentencing. Since being in jail my son has been a problem the communicative, intelligent, and thoughtful person that he was prior to his addiction. He has expressed gratitude for Bible verses that I send to him. Please pray with me that his court appointed attorney will prepare for the court date thoroughly and will represent my son to the best of his ability. Please also pray that my son will be able to express his remorse and that the judge will find that my son is worthy of a chance at rehabilitation through his placement recommendation after his sentencing. Primarily I ask you DAB family to pray for my son to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior for him to humble himself before the Lord and for him to accept the forgiveness Jesus offered…offers and for his ultimate redemption. This is a lot to ask in my first call, but I trust that you will include him in your prayers. Thank you DAB.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family this is Stanley from Maryland. I just wanted to shout out Brian for writing of the book…oh…what’s it called? The God of Your Story, yeah. One-year adventure with the God of Your Story. Man, it’s just incredible to kind of see words on page. I know Brian does a good job of explaining a lot of what we are reading like day after day but I just want to kind give praise for this book because it…it reads less like a book and more like a…man…just…I don’t know how to say it…just a kind of explanation….not an explanation but expanding on the reading and it’s so encouraging to just read after listening to the actual reading. It’s something I can…I can ponder for the rest of the day. I’m a visual person…person, I’d like to think. I learn more visually. So, for me and if you’re…for me it helps and if you’re like…like me and you like to see the words on the paper it helps a lot. And, so, I really appreciate it and…and just want to encourage you as you continue to go through this journey with…with…with the community, pick up the God of Your Story or buy it maybe for a Christmas gift so you can start it next year. It’s not too late and it’s definitely been a blessing in my life. I…I love it and I love the gold little placeholder in the middle, the ribbon. It’s…it’s just…it’s beautiful…it’s a beautiful, beautiful design. All right. Stay humble.

Hello DABbers, this is Kristen Brown at __ Louisiana I’m calling to say we’re about to have a double DABber baby. First, we had a DABber baby __ then we had we had the first grandbaby now we’re about to have a double DABBer baby. Congratulations Jill and Ben. Family I’m calling for prayers for my sister. She’s in the hospital with the virus and she’s in critical condition her name is Janice. Please lift Janice up in your prayers. She desperately needs it because she is in critical condition. Secondly, there’s a gentleman who called in, I think the other day about his abdominal pain after having a surgery and it felt like gas pain __ and I identify with that. Immediately my prayers went out for him. Family I desperately still need prayers…

Jeremiah 33:1-34:22, 1 Timothy 4:1-16, Psalms 89:1-13, Proverbs 25:23-24

Today is the 19^th day of October welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is a joy and a deep, deep privilege and honor to be here with you today as we just come in, come in out of whatever’s going on, come in out of the storm. Come in its…there’s a roaring Global Campfire here and we’re all seated around it, we’re all here together and we’re all coming in out of the storms of life to just reorient ourselves to God, just let His Scripture, let the word of God wash over us, wash into us transforming us little by little, day by day. And, so, it is always a joy and a privilege to be around the Global Campfire. And, so, let’s dive in for today. This week we’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible continuing our journey through Jeremiah. Today chapters 33 and 34.

Commentary:

Okay. In the letter that we are reading known as first Timothy instructions were given to Timothy the one who this letter is written to, that he should…that he should basically train, work himself out, like train to be godly. And training to be godly, I mean, all…aren’t we all on that page? Like, I want to train to be godly. How do you train to be godly? And we have to begin with a what…what is what is it to train for anything? And to train means to practice, right, to receive instruction on proper form or whatever it is we’re gonna train for, to receive instruction and then to practice until mastery and then to keep practicing and to see just how far we can take it. That’s what training is. And, so, for we who are believers in Jesus then to train to be godly would be to do whatever we need to do to practice being Christlike, to practice being like our Savior. That’s kind of the goal of this Christian faith, is to receive this precious gift of eternal life and then to live into it by becoming essentially, according the Bible, a mirror image - to be Christlike. So, how does that training work? And this is so good. This is so good for us to consider at this point in the in the year because every time we come to a new week we call it a shiny, sparkly, new week and we think about the fact that we get to live into that week and how we’re gonna live into that week is what’s gonna make our week. Like, we said that yesterday, right? So, here we are now in that week we were talking about and the choices and decisions and motivations that we are employing today are telling the story of today and they are also one of the chapters telling the story of this week. So, we string these weeks together, living into being Christlike and things begin to change. We might’ve thought it was gonna be like a magic when it was actually going to be just like training for anything else - hard work, endurance and sacrifice, right? You’re training for a marathon, that’s what’s going to be required. If you’re training in the gym, that’s what’s going to be required. If you’re training to get your masters then that is what’s going to be required – sacrifice, endurance, hard work. And then practicing what we have learned over and over and over and over until it’s like we don’t even think about it anymore, we have become masterful at what we’ve trained to do. So, instead of like going back to yesterday and looking into this shiny, sparkly, new week or going back a month ago, let’s go back to the day we started our journey. If my calendars right, including leap year than that was 293 days ago. We started…we got on this ship and we set sail with the intention of voyaging together through the entire year, an entire year together every day making the Bible the center of the rhythm of our lives around this Global Campfire. And then what we found out is that there was so much more this journey. There were other people on this journey. This is not a solitary journey and we’ve fallen in love with each other. This is what happens as we take this voyage in the same direction. There are some who are not hearing me say this today because they did not continue to train, right? Like somewhere along the path who knows who they are or where they are now but somewhere along the path they drifted off this voyage and they are doing whatever they are doing, but some of us are hearing this and we have voyaged, we have traveled the entire amount of days to get here and we can see that it makes a difference, likely because this is the way we are. Likely we had other goals 293 days ago on New Year’s Day. Likely we had some fitness goals, most people do, some dietary goals, most people do exist. It’s like we get between Christmas and New Year’s and we start thinking about all of the things that we are going to change to have a more productive love filled, joyous year. And, so, we’re gonna make some of those changes, we’re gonna work on the marriage, we’re gonna…we’re gonna try to do, you know, get the promotion, whatever. We have these goals that we set, and usually spiritual goals are one of the goals and fitness goals are one of the goals. So, maybe we bought a whole new wardrobe to work out, we’re 293 days into this year. Have you continued? We can all go, “yeah, not so much because Covid. I mean like the world shut down this year. So, instead of losing 19 pounds for Covid 19 I gained 19 pounds.” But some people actually pressed in, found alternative ways to continue the journey that they had committed to for the year. And, so, have worked on their fitness, and I’ve worked on their spirituality and are feeling drastically different than they did 293 days ago because they trained. They practiced and practiced and practiced until change came. And change isn’t an immediately noticeable thing. If you gotta ose 50 pounds and you lose 10 maybe people are starting to notice maybe not, but there is no doubt about how you are feeling. You may be discouraged that it’s not happening fast enough but there’s no doubt that you are feeling more healthy because you are eating more healthy and you are giving your body things that your body knows what to do with instead of junk that it’s not certain what to do with and so it will put it wherever it can. If you stick to that training if you practice change will come. It’s inevitable. Why do we not realize that that is a spiritual reality as well? If you train if you practice if we center ourselves in God’s word, and then start watching ourselves watching like when we become angry and how a switch can be pulled and that anger ratchets up to like rage, how does that happen? We have to train to watch ourselves so that in the moment at the crossroads when wisdom is saying go this way and don’t go that way, we have trained ourselves to listen and obey and catch ourselves. And this can be about any aspect of our lives. This is how we submit ourselves to God. This is how we train to listen to the Holy Spirit. And if we will continue to practice change is inevitable. This is kind of what is being said to Timothy, “train yourself. Train yourself to be godly, to be Christlike.” May we all take that one on board and carry it forward into this week because we’re still at the beginning of the week and we still have the story of this week to tell. And maybe we can train, we practice being Christlike. And maybe, maybe if we keep doing that, maybe we can master it because the Bible seems to indicate that that’s where this is all going. That’s where we’re headed. Will we master it in our own strength? No. We’re not on our own though. We never have been. We do have to endure. We do have to practice. We do have to train. We do have to stay focused. This is what training is but it’s possible. What do we have to lose? Like how many times have we said that this year? Look in the mirror. Just look around. Like, is everything perfect? Is it how you want it? If not than what is there to lose by trying to be Christlike, which is the goal of our faith?

Prayer:

Father we invite You into that. Jesus come. It is Your face that we seek, it is Your life, Your character that we read of that we are trying to live into and Your Holy Spirit has promised to lead us into all truth to reveal this narrow path that leads to life that You spoke of. And, so, we are here, we are open, we are once again resetting, we are once again repenting. Your word continually presses in upon us to show us the way to go and here we are, and this is the way to go. And, so, come Holy Spirit, well up within us as we start to train as we pay attention to what we are doing and how it is we lose control in any way, how we lose…when we relinquish control of ourselves we have abandoned what You are doing in our lives. And, so, we don’t want another day like that. It’s counterproductive. It’s leading us in the wrong direction. And, so, lead us forward as we pay attention as we train ourselves to be godly in the name of Jesus we as. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it is our little presence on the World Wide Web. Does anybody even call it that anymore? It’s our little spot out there in…in the…on the Internet and virtual community like ours that’s spread out all over every time zone and every continent, well we need a place…we need a place to call home and this is our place. So, check it out.

Check out the resources that are available in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. Check out the Community section. This is where the Prayer Wall lives. This is where links are to get connected on social media. So, check it out.

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

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, there are number of ways you can reach out. If you’re using the app, you can press the Hotline button, the little red button at the top and just share from there no matter where you are on this planet or if you prefer dialing the telephone there are a number of numbers that you can use depending on where you are. If you’re in the Americas 877-942-4253 is the number to call. If you are in the UR K…UK…if you are in the UK or Europe 44-20-3608-8078 is the number or if you are in Australia or that part of the world 61-3-8820 5459 is the number to call.

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:

Yeah, my name is Joel Maddox and I was just calling in because I need prayer. I have a lot of stuff going on in my life and I’m ready to give up and throw in the towel. I’ve lost everything because of stupid choices and decisions in my life. I lost loved…a loved one that I cared about more than anything and I can’t stand to see myself in the mirror anymore. I don’t know what to do. Everybody has kinda left me and then, you know, you get these scriptures where they’re trying to say, “hey, you’re still gonna make it, you’re gonna make it” and all I want is a hug and then to be told that I’m loved and actually be loved. So, I need you guys to pray for me. I need it so badly because I’m some so ready to just give up. I’m so tired. I’m just so tired. Please God help me.

Good morning everyone this is Joyful J in the Everglades. I just listened to October 11^th, 12^th, and 13^th kind of doing a little catch-up and there was a gentle man I believe is…he said it was the Mosher family who’s nephew’s life was taken by the hands of another person on October 2^nd. Oh, my goodness my heart is so going out to you and your family and your sister. Lord I just thank You so much that You do care enough that we can come as a family before You and we can lift up this family who is hurting so bad. To lose four family members in four years, oh my, I can’t even imagine. But my heart is crying for this family, for this sister. Lord, You know what they need. I can’t even…like to have a family members life taken from them at the hands of another person. Oh. I pray for protection for all of the people in this country, in this world. Protect us from the evil that lingers out there in the streets. Protect us from the evil that wants to knock on our doors and wants to knock on our souls that wants to take over our minds Lord. I pray Lord that You are just push that away, let us learn to come into Your hand. Let us learn to put on the armor of God. Let us seek You, let us get comfort sitting in Your hand Lord. I just have no words. There are no words. Lord but my heart is crying for this family…

This is Candace from Oregon speaking specifically to God’s smile. You’ve been in such deep waters, floods threatening to engulf you. Sister we love you so much. I feel God leading me to lead all of us in prayer for you. From Psalm 69 is where most of these words and thoughts have come from. Lord for all that God’s Smile must endure we pray to You Lord in the time of Your favor in Your great love oh God answer God’s Smile with Your sure salvation. Rescue her from the mire. Do not sink. Deliver her from those who hate You Lord. We rebuke all foul spirits who torment her in any way and ask You to lift her from the deep waters. Do not let them engulf her or the depths swallow her up. Answer God’s Smile Lord out of the goodness of Your love in Your great mercy. Do not hide Your face from Your servant. Answer her quickly when she is in trouble. Come near and rescue her Lord. We think about that time Lord when You were dying for us on the cross and they put vinegar up to Your lips. Oh Lord be with God’s Smile afflicted and in pain may Your salvation protect her. She presses Your name along she glorifies You Lord with Thanksgiving. It pleases You. Thank You so much for how she has blessed us all.

Good morning everybody. Hey this is Annette Allison from Oklahoma City actually in the middle of nowhere east of Amarillo Texas coming back from a wonderful vacation with my sons in Colorado, Durango. It was wonderful. It was great to see them both. God’s Smile this morning you were on my mind. I was listening to your heart just pouring out paying that you’re going through, and I wanted you to know sister that I am praying for you and that I love you. I understand how it feels to go through pain that’s just unmanageable and I do I do I do, I lift you up and I want you to know that when you were on the…on the prayer request line, I’m a few days behind, I’m trying to catch up today I was praying for you and something crazy happened. I was driving down the road and I’m sitting here praying and praying and I come over this rise and there is this giant cross on the…in the middle of the highway. When I get off the road, I’m going to send this picture to you. It’s like crazy. I…I…I just have to take it that that’s a sign that God says He hears you. I know, I know every time that the Lord hears I know that He always like gives an answer, doesn’t He? And, so, I don’t know what His answer and His plan is for you, but I just have to say that I think, I know that the Lord hears you. I know that He does. So, I love you sister. I hope you feel better very, very soon and I just want you to know that I love you very much. All right? Have a great day. Bye, Bye.

Hello Daily Audio Bible this is Duane from Wisconsin. All praise and glory to our wonderful Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Calling in today for God’s Smile. All of us on the Daily Audio Bible know who God’s Smile is and her wonderful praises that she sings and gives out encouragement she gives out to everybody. What a blessing she is for this community as well a number of others of you, for all of…all of you. But today she needs us to lift her up. Dear Lord, we’re lifting up God’s Smile to You. The pain that she is suffering Lord, we pray, we’re on our knees. We’re begging, we’re pleading with You that You would take that pain away from her. Lord she is such a good and faithful Christian. We are asking, though we know we have no right to ask, but we are. We’re on our knees, we’re begging and pleading that You would please take away the pain. Allow her to sing for us Lord, to lift praises up for You, to encourage others Lord without any pain. Our heart is breaking for her. We’re reaching out to You Lord. Please Lord we are begging You that You would relieve her of this pain. We ask this in our wonderful Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Brian and Jill, we again thank you for this wonderful podcast.

Hi Jeannie from Florida this is God’s Grace for Japan, my prayer for Japan. And I’m going to pray for you. You asked for us to pray for you to lose weight so I’m going to do that. Lord I pray that You take Jeannie’s hand and that You encourage her that she is fearfully and wonderfully made, that You love this beautiful glorious body that You have provided for her. You care for it You want her to care for it too. You want her to nurture it You want her to train it and make it strong You want her to feed it well with really beautiful good things that You have provided for her to eat. I pray that You encourage her to use her body as the temple for Your Spirit that You have asked her to use it for. I thank You so much that You encourage us and equip us with these beautiful bodies that You have given us and I pray that You will take her on a wonderful journey to learn how to glorify You with her body through how she uses it through how she feeds it through how she loves it and cherishes it. But I also ask that You encourage her to know that this is Your beautiful body that You’ve already given her. And You will heal the parts of it that need to be healed and You will carry her through the journey of healing that is necessary. So, if there’s something wrong or if there’s something sick or she has too much weight on it, something holding her down preventing her body from being the temple that You require it to be Lord I ask that You guide her through that journey of finding that and coming to a healing place so that she can glorify You with this beautiful temple that You’ve given her. Love you Jeannie. Bye.

Hello family my name is Chris from Florida. I’ve been listening about two years now out of a recommendation of a friend of mine. I listen to the reading. I listen to the explanations and I’ve gotten a lot from this community. I listen to everybody’s prayers after. Don’t always get to the community prayers just due to the length of time, how many there are. But today I come to you in need of prayer for my daughter. She’s 12 years old and her mom passed last night. So, if you could, keep us lifted up for peace and healing. She’s a believer so we know that she’s home, but I can’t imagine going through what she’s about to go through at that age and she’s gonna need everybody in her corner that’s willing to be there for her. Thank you.

Jeremiah 31:27-32:44, 1 Timothy 3:1-16, Psalms 88:1-18, Proverbs 25:20-22

Today is the 18^th day of October welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you today as we greet another shiny, sparkly, new week. And it’s all there waiting for us. We pay attention to that most every beginning of a new week. It’s all out in front of us. And we can look back from this vantage point and see what last week was about. It was the culmination of the choices and decisions that we made and how that worked out. And we’re here at a brand-new week and we can make some adjustments if necessary and live into this new week with new purpose. So, we’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Jeremiah chapter 31 verse 27 through 32 verse 44.

Prayer:

Father we thank you for your word and we thank you for escorting us, pulling us forward, day by day step-by-step to this day, which is the brand-new sparkly beginning of a new week and we certainly thank you because there have been days where we didn’t know how we were going to swim across, or where we didn’t know how we were not gonna be stuck in the mud. And you have brought us here. You have been faithful even when we haven’t, and we are certainly reading the repercussions of that as we read Jeremiah. We’re seeing where the roads of unfaithfulness end up and we are choosing to not walk the road of unfaithfulness and idolatry. We choose to worship you and you alone and place our faith and hope and trust in you and you alone because you and you alone have brought us here and you have been faithful even when we haven’t. And, so at the beginning of another week we come to you, we repent, we change our minds, we change our direction and we begin to walk into this week with newness of spirit and ask that your Holy Spirit lead and guide our choices, our conversations, and the motivations of our heart. Come Holy Spirit, well up within and lead us into all truth we pray. In Jesus name we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it’s the website, it’s how you get connected, it’s how you find resources that are available. It's…well…it’s where Global Community and a Global Campfire like ours…well…it’s month where we live. It’s home base. So, check it out. Check out the resources that are available in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. These resources have been crafted over many years and just tailored to the experience of going through the Scriptures. So, things to write in, things to write with, things to drink from, things to make to drink, things to carry around, things to wear, things to read to take the journey deeper, things to watch to take…to take that journey deeper and make the Bible come to life. So, check out the resources that are available in the Shop.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link and it lives on the homepage and I thank you humbly and profoundly for your partnership. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer the mail, 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, which is the little red button at the top, pretty tough to miss. I would say virtually impossible to miss if you’re looking for it. And, so, you can hit the hot line button, 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.

Jeremiah 30:1-31:26, 1 Timothy 2:1-15, Psalms 87:1-7, Proverbs 25:18-19

Today is the 17^th day of October welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you as we put the finishing touches on another one of our weeks together. And, yeah, we’re just moving along, and we will continue this journey every single day all the way until we dock on the other shore having spent an entire year together. And then we’ll grab some…well some stuff, whatever we for the journey and start over again. But this is where we are. And, so, we’re in the book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament and we’re reading to first Timothy in the New. We’re reading from the New International version this week, which is today. Jeremiah chapter 30 verse 1 through 31 verse 26.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for bringing us successfully through another week. We are grateful. It is kind of our custom to get to the end of the week and just acknowledge it, that You have brought us through, that we’re here, that You’ve spoken to us, that You continue to speak to us, that You speak to us in profoundly comforting ways, and then You speak to us in profoundly challenging ways. Like a Father You are Fathering us, You are leading us. And we pray Holy Spirit that we become more and more aware of Your guidance and leadership in our lives. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home. And, so be aware of home wherever you are. You can always…always get connected in the community here. Check out the Community section. That’s what it’s for is to get connected. And the Prayer Wall, of course, is the Community section. And, so, no matter what time of day or night it is, no matter what continent, no matter what part of the world you are in, there’s always a place ask, there’s always a place to give – prayer. And just the connection that we share with each other as we understand that we’re…we’re all going through things. And just to know that we’re not alone makes a world of difference. And, so, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There’s a link on the homepage. I…I…I’ve run out of ways to say thank you. Thank you, I guess is the right way. We wouldn’t be what we are, we wouldn’t be a community. we wouldn’t be going through the Scriptures every day if we weren’t doing this together. And, so, thank you for your partnership. So, there’s a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, and hopefully you are. The Daily Audio Bible app is…is definitely the…the primary way and will continue to be the primary way to experience the community here and experience the Scriptures every day. So, check it out if you haven’t. If you’re using the app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if that is your preference, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

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

Jeremiah 28:1-29:32, 1 Timothy 1:1-20, Psalms 86:1-17, Proverbs 25:17

Today is the 16^th day of October welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is wonderful to be here with you today as we continue our journey and, yeah, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover today. In the Old Testament we’re gonna cover, probably if not the most, one of the most famous passages in the Scriptures right now. And then when we get to the New Testament, we’ve got a brand-new letter in a whole new kind of series of letters that we’ll talk about when we get there. So, we’re reading from the New International Version this week. Jeremiah chapters 28 and 29.

Introduction to first Timothy:

Okay. So, now we come to our New Testament portion for today and we enter this new grouping of letters, three letters. They are known as the pastoral letters or the pastoral epistles, and the first one is known as first Timothy and the other two are second Timothy and…and then the letter to Titus. Now these are highly disputed letters of Paul. There’s very few biblical scholars who would affirm that Paul wrote these letters, much like we’ve talked about before, like the letter to the Hebrews. We…we don’t know who the author actually is. There are those that say these are letters from Paul, there Pauline in their kind of ethos, but this is not like a new debate. This is a centuries old thing that’s been going on for a very long time, whether or not Paul wrote these letters, which letters Paul actually wrote, which came from Pauline influences but maybe later than Paul. And that kind of debate is a vigorous thing until this very day. And, so, those that would favor that Paul didn’t write the pastoral letters would say that in these letters there’s church structure, right, polity church governance. There’s ways of things being done that…that’s being said in these letters that were later inventions after Paul’s lifetime. And as a side note, I mean Paul has only ever been a controversial figure, I mean from the beginning of his ministry. And, so, we’ve talked about why, especially the Jew, Gentile, kind of rub there, the tension that existed but Paul’s still controversial today. And if he’s controversial today, it’s around church governance things that get said in some of his letters that then get hotly, hotly debated and vigorously defended. And, so, for those that are like, yeah, these things that were laid down, they came after Paul, Paul did not put these in place then we’re looking at like just a little bit after Paul, how as the church grew, how structures were put into place. And there’s pretty much no scholars out there that…that don’t affirm the fact that the language in the pastoral letters is a bit different than the language in any of the other letters but then  those would be more persuaded to for Paul’s authorship would…would like, you know, they authenticate themselves, the author claims to be Paul in the letters, these letters were referred to by the early church fathers. And then maybe that the language differences are because these weren’t circular letters, like these weren’t letters to be performed in front of an audience at church to be sort of read as a word of encouragement directly to a church. These are personal letters. And, so, they weren’t supposed to be passed around even though they obviously were passed around or we wouldn’t have them today. But that’s kind of what's…what’s going on around these three letters, the pastoral epistles. They are correspondences to two different pastors who were very, very close to Paul, - Timothy and Titus - who had under Paul’s leadership become pastors themselves. And, so, they were directly caring for churches that…that had been established by Paul. And the churched needed leadership, strong leaders who understood the doctrine or the teachings of Paul regarding the faith, the faith itself and how to live into it in community. So, you know, we’ll talk about Titus when we get to Titus. But the very first pastoral letter is to Timothy. And Timothy is somebody we know. We’ve been hearing of his name a lot. He is a protégé. He grew up in the shadow of the ministry of the apostle Paul and we met him in the book of Acts. So, we know a little bit about Timothy. His mother’s name was Eunice, his grandmother’s name was Lois, they were from the city of Lystra, they were some of the early believers. And Lystra is now in modern-day Turkey. Paul introduced the faith the Timothy. Timothy received that faith, believed in Jesus and became a loyal follower and…and disciple of Paul. Paul loved Timothy enough to call him a son, like a spiritual son in the faith, and not just like a son in the faith that was distant. Like, Paul directly mentored Timothy in the faith and in church leadership for that matter. And Timothy was kind of Paul’s go to messenger. So, we hear Timothy mentioned in six of the other letters of Paul in the New Testament and often in the context of Paul sending Timothy with a letter or Paul sending Timothy to a church, and Timothy returning with news of how things were going. So, Paul’s kind of a stand in, a representative…or I’m sorry…Timothy’s a representative of Paul during his ministry. And, so, Timothy knows the churches. He’s been around church leadership enough to know people. So, he’s got some skill and he’s got some experience. And when this letter is written it is near the end of Paul’s ministry if…if Paul wrote this. I mean, the context of that it’s set in. And Timothy’s a pastor. He’s a pastor of the church in Ephesus a strong church where…where Paul spent a lot of time. And it’s just a spiritual father writing to his spiritual son, guiding him, giving him counsel, giving him encouragement. And there’s a lot of personal personality, like love and hope. It’s personal to Timothy, not just to the entire church itself. This is the letter where Paul says to his son in the faith Timothy to fight the good fight of faith. And, so, we begin the short letters, personal letters, known as the Pastoral letters. First Timothy chapter 1.

Commentary:

Okay. So, you probably recognize the very, very famous Scripture that we passed through in the book of Jeremiah today and maybe even when you heard it in its context you were like, wow, that’s a different story kind of like the one I’ve been thinking or quoting. And if you’ve been, you know, one or more revolutions around the sun hear the Daily Audio Bible then you kinda know this. But this is one of the greatest examples of how context matters while reading the stories in the Bible as there are. And…and really, really one of the most helpful examples because this is one of the most famous Scriptures, “for I know the plans I have for you says the Lord,” right? “And there plans for good and not for harm or disaster. They are plans to give you a future and a hope.” Chances are you can quote that. It’s like one of the most memorized verses in the Bible, one of the most quoted verses in the Bible. And, I mean, those couple of sentences they’re actually lifted out of a letter that Jeremiah had sent. So, Jeremiah is in the holy city of Jerusalem that is basically a conquered land that is now deporting people. Many, many people, like all of the aristocracy, the royalty, the best laborers, the smartest thinkers, kinda like the cream of the crop best of the best, these people have already been sent away into exile in Babylon. And Babylon’s not like just a town, it’s an empire. So, people are being dispersed all over the place. Families are being broken up, people have died, there’s a bunch of stuff going on in the disruption and dislocation of people. There are those who are left in Jerusalem. Jeremiah the prophet is still in Jerusalem prophesying from Jerusalem. And there are those who are speaking for God in Babylon. There are people, prophets, who are speaking for God in Jerusalem. And since there are still people in Jerusalem these profits are like going, “you know, this is all gonna be over soon. This is all gonna be over really quick. Within two years all the stuff that’s been taken from here is coming back. It’s not gonna take that long. It’s gonna be a quick thing.” Jeremiah, on the other hand, has been saying all along, “it’s not. It’s not gonna be as quick of a thing as what you’re saying anyways. And there were all kinds of points where this story could have turned, the plot could’ve shifted. You were warned. You were warned.” Of course, we’ve already talked about how difficult of a scenario this is, the faith that the people would have to put into the surrender to the Empire that they saw as their enemy - Babylon. Babylon is coming. So, they looked at this invading nation, this invading Empire as the enemy, when Jeremiah is prophesying, “they’re not really the enemy. They will be your protector ultimately. They’re kind of going to be used in my master plan as a bulldozer. We are starting some things over. It’s gonna take a minute, we gotta build new foundations, we gotta start this thing over because the trajectory is only evil and I’m not putting up with it anymore. The covenant has been broken for the last time”, basically. So, this is what Jeremiah’s kind of been saying, but there are other prophets who are saying, “no it’s not gonna be like that at all. The mighty arm of the mighty God is gonna do some mighty arm mighty God things and He’s gonna use that mightiness and this is all gonna be over quickly even though it never had to happen.” And even though God’s saying through Jeremiah, “that’s not the plan. These quick fixes these Band-Aids, they’re not working anymore. You keep returning to only evil. So, we’re gonna do something different and it’s gonna take a little longer.” Okay. Are you with me? Because that’s the backdrop for this very famous passage. Jeremiah from Jerusalem writes a letter to the exiles who have already been taken away to Babylon. This letter is supposed to be distributed and…and move around kind of like Paul’s letters only much earlier. And, so, now I read from the letter placing our famous passage in context. “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. Build houses, settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce, marry and have sons and daughters, find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there”, right? So, in exile. “Increase in number there. Do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it because if it prospers you too will prosper. Yes, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says. Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them declares the Lord. This is what the Lord says. When 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” These people did not specifically particularly want this message. They would have very much preferred the two-year plan that other prophets were prophesying in the name of the Lord about how quickly this plague, this exile was gonna be over which ironically is…is sort of the general use of these famous sentences, “behold, I know the plans I have for you”, right? Somehow embedded into our quotation of this is a short time span, that God knows the plans that He has for us and they are coming quickly, which is not the context for this verse or what’s being said here at all. What God is saying to those people is it’s gonna take 70 years. So, basically a generation. And what God says is, and I’m quoting, “build houses and settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce, marry and have sons and daughters, find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters.” In other words, like the next generation. “Increase in number there. Do not decrease. Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it because if it prospers you to will prosper.” And then basically goes on to tell the people. “Don’t let people lie to you. This is what I’m saying.” So, for those of us who like quote, “behold I know the plans I have for you” to ourselves or to others who are in or like basically feel like they’re in exile. Some of us feel like we’re just…we…we’ve been in exile forever, but this is not where we believe, we need to move out from here, we need you to be moving in some other direction, the path has to lead somewhere other than this. We feel trapped. We feel stuck and we keep telling us God’s got a plan. God does and He did have a plan here. What he told him was, “settle in. This is gonna take a minute. You don’t have to be upside down in all this. You don’t have to be only longing for what you no longer have. You don’t have to be all anxious and all uptight about what you…you don’t have right now. You can settle in. We are restarting something. It’s gonna take a minute. I have plans and they are good, and they don’t have to start in 70 years they can start now. You can prosper where you are while you wait. And then you will fully bloom and fully prosper later, right where you are while you wait, you can prosper.” That is the message of Jeremiah 29:11. That is not as flashy of a prophecy as some of the other prophets were speaking which is like “this is all gonna be over so quick. You’re gonna barely remember it even happened. Within two years all the exiles, all the stuff’s coming back.” The problem is that just wasn’t true and is not the context of this verse. God is giving His people though permission to thrive where they are, even if they don’t want to be where they are. They can thrive. The thriving doesn’t have to start when they finally get to where they want to be. It can start now and continue as God’s plan unfolds. Some of us, yeah, we’d still like the two-year plan, right? We’d like the six-month plan. We’d like the 30-day plan. Like we just want this all to go away when actually what’s being invited here is a shift of internal focus, a settling down, a ceasing of striving towards something that we just keep bashing our head against over and over and over. Maybe it’s gonna take a minute but maybe we can thrive. Maybe we can prosper where we are while we wait. I mean, if we’re honest isn’t this really kind of the backdrop of life itself. Like haven’t we come to a place of the now and the not yet? Haven’t we come to a place in our faith where we are living into it? And yes, we fall down, and we get up and we fall down and we are continuing to press forward. But ultimately, we’re waiting. We’re waiting. We’re waiting for God to do what’s next; we’re waiting for Jesus. Same as the people that we’re reading about in the letters in the New Testament. So, maybe we can prosper where we are while we wait.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit we invite You into that. We don’t like waiting. It’s hard. It can be really, really, really hard sometimes knowing that the best is out in front of us, but not being able to get anything but a glimpse once in a while. It’s hard. And, so, You are inviting us to stop worrying about what is out in front of us because that isn’t happening. It has not yet happened, but things are happening now. And when all of our focus is out in front of us on things that are not happening, we are missing what is happening, that You have given us permission to thrive. And, so, come Holy Spirit and help us appreciate with deepest gratitude where we are. And may we settle in as You have said and follow Your time and follow Your plan instead of the anxiousness of our own. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

Song:

While I Wait - Lincoln Brewster

Deep within my heart, I know You’ve won
I know You’ve overcome
And even in the dark, when I’m undone
I still believe it

I live by faith, and not by sight
Sometimes miracles take time

While I wait, I will worship
Lord, I’ll worship Your name
While I wait, I will trust You
Lord, I’ll trust You all the same

When I fall apart, You are my strength
Help me not forget
Seeing every scar, You make me whole
You’re my healer

I live by faith, and not by sight
Sometimes miracles take time
I live by faith, and not by sight
Sometimes miracles take time

While I wait, I will worship
Lord, I’ll worship Your name
While I wait, I will trust You
Lord, I’ll trust You all the same

You’re faithful every day
Your promises remain
You’re faithful every day
Your promises remain
You’re faithful every day
Your promises remain
You’re faithful every day
Your promises remain

Though I don’t understand it
I will worship with my pain
You are God, You are worthy
You are with me all the way

So while I wait, I will worship
Lord, I’ll worship Your name
Though I don’t have all the answers
Still I trust You all the same

Jeremiah 26:1-27:22, 2 Thessalonians 3:1-18, Psalms 85:1-13, Proverbs 25:16

Today is the 15^th day of October welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian and it is a joy to be here with you right…right now wherever you are. I’m here in the rolling hills of Tennessee. Whatever rolling hills or flat planes or high mountains or seacoasts that you are at, it is a joy that we live at a time that we can reach out and be together. Even though geography separates us, we are united in spirit as we continue our journey through the Scriptures. And that is remarkable. So, let’s take that remarkable technology and this remarkable time and dive in and take the next step forward on our voyage through the Scriptures this year. We’re reading from the New International Version this week. Jeremiah chapters 26 and 27 today.

Commentary:

Alright. So, in the book of Jeremiah today, God has instructed the prophet to do some things that he most assuredly would rather not do. Like he’s kind of in a no-win situation that could be life-threatening and as it turns out was life-threatening and yet God told the prophet to do it. Basically, God told Jeremiah, go into the temple courtyard, like go to the holiest place in the world and tell the people that what they’re gonna have to do to survive ultimately is to surrender to Babylon an invading nation in order to keep the city of Jerusalem and the temple…like to keep things from being essentially being bulldozed, although they did have bulldozers, but essentially from being flattened and burned down completely they’re gonna need to surrender the invading army and that God had sent prophets for a long time telling people to change their ways, but they won’t. And so, it’s God’s intention to destroy the temple. Okay, the people that are at the temple have come from all over the place. This is a central place of worship, like, this is God’s temple. And, so, here’s Jeremiah in the courtyards of God’s temple saying these things. And I mean, can you imagine? Like the people there are trying to worship God and they’re hearing this voice tell them of destruction and surrender and they’re just not on board. And, so, a mob forms and Jeremiah’s life is in danger and ultimately reason comes in Jeremiah isn’t executed, but the…the thing that God tells Jeremiah to do next is like just as hard, just as difficult. So, he’s gone to the holy site and spoken the word of the Lord, and now he’s on his way over basically to, like the capital building, the palace complex because there are ambassadors from all of the nearby countries having a summit in Jerusalem. And Jeremiah is going over to these ambassadors and Israel’s included…Judah’s included in this to tell them the same thing. All of you nations surrender to the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar. Those are some pretty hard things. One, to the people of faith who have decided that God operates in a certain way and in a certain way only and wouldn’t be saying these things. So, they reject the word of the Lord. And then he goes to the ambassadors of nations saying surrender. Like if they take that message back the nations aren’t gonna surrender. We rarely have examples of that throughout history. Usually that’s what war is about, right, fighting over boundaries or the threat from another. So, Jeremiah is like in a no-win situation with the religious people and in a no-win situation with…with the political people. Why? Like, why is he putting Jeremiah whose a loyal servant who keeps doing things and saying things that he doesn’t want to do and doesn’t really want to say but it’s like fire in his bones and he has to speak the word of the Lord, why is God putting him in these no-win situations? We have that answer. I quote, and this is God speaking from the Scriptures, “perhaps they will listen and each will turn from their evil ways, then I will relent and not inflict on them the disaster I was planning because of the evil they have done.” So, basically Jeremiah’s been saying this stuff is gonna happen for a long time and now he’s being…like things are getting amped up and he has to speak to high-ranking political figures and he has to speak to religious…the elite religious leaders and they don’t believe him, but the message ultimately is, “if you’ll repent…in other words, if you’ll change your mind about where you’re going, then I the most-high God will also change my mind about what’s gonna happen to you.” In a way Jeremiah then becomes like an icon, a representation of God’s patience, of God’s long-suffering, of God’s mercy. The potential for repentance still exists. It’s not too late. But what we see in Jeremiah is very similar to what we see in Jesus, right? The people do not respond to Jeremiah and want to do away with Jeremiah. They reject his message, very similar to what the story of Jesus in the Gospels is like. He’s bringing the message and the words of the Lord and showing a new way of life on earth, but especially the religious people will not tolerate it, reject it, and do away with Jesus. It’s funny how we can read the words of doom and destruction and picture God as just in a really, really bad mood and wanting to kill people when really the people are bringing upon themselves their own destruction and God is coming to say, “it will be too late but it’s not yet too late. You could still turn this thing around even though I know you’re not going to.” So, remember where we are here because what we’re reading is a part of a prophetic book, right? And, so, this story is gonna continue tomorrow and tomorrow we’re gonna reach likely the most quoted piece of Scripture in the world right now, maybe second only to John 3:16. And it’s important that we see how we get to that important Scripture so that once again we have context because the context is everything here.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for the people that we have gotten to meet throughout this year in Your word, stories that we’ve gotten to follow along with and travel with. We thank You for the dusty miles in the Scriptures. And indeed, there have been dusty miles in our lives this year. Very, very strange times that You’ve chosen us to live in. And it’s very easy to get distracted by all that and distracted by what’s happening to us and why You won’t just make it go away when maybe You are calling us to examine our ways and giving us an opportunity to change course, to change direction, to understand why it is that You have good plans for us. And, so, we invite Your Holy Spirit to help us ponder this, to continue to think it over throughout this day, even as we continue to reflect upon yesterday and where our hearts passions and where our hearts desires are focused. Come Holy Spirit we pray in the mighty name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it’s the website and it’s where you find out what’s going on around here. It’s also where you get connected. For example, in the Community section…and by the way if you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, all of this is accessible from the app as well, just press the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner. But in the community section, this is different links to different social media channels. So, for example if you’re a woman and you’re not part of the Daily Audio Bible women’s group yet, you should get connected there. My wife Jill is…I mean there’s…there’s just a fantastic thing that’s going on among the women there. So, if you’re not a part of that become a part of that. Just find the link in the Community section. But also, the Prayer Wall lives in the Community section. And, so, day and night, night and day it never closes and so no matter where you are in the world, no matter what time zone it is, no matter what season it is, no matter what season you’re in you can always reach out and pray. You can always reach out and ask for prayer. There’s always a way to reach out. And, so be aware of that.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There’s a link that lives right smack on the homepage. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if that’s your preference, 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, which is the red button at the top 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:

Hi Daily Audio Bible family my name’s Matt I’m from Pennsylvania this is the first time I’ve ever called in. I’ve been listening to the Daily Audio Bible for several years and I was just calling for prayer for a new job that I just God. It’s the same company, same title, same pay but I…I just got a new assignment really is what I should say and it’s just really daunting. I feel like I’m…I’m in over my head in a lot of respects and I’m just asking for prayer from all you folks out there that I’ll be able to rise to the occasion and do this job to the glory of God and be successful in it. Thank you.

Saul one day was willing to kill his own son but then the next day was unwilling to kill the heathen king Agag even though God had demanded it. We must never be two-sided. Plants must be tied to a stick as they grow to keep them straight and we too must remain tied to the Lord as we grow for it is only He they can keep us straight. It is the sail and not the gale that determines our course. Don’t let comfort overshadow commitment for the tempter without works closely with the traitor within to ensure our defeat. The spirit will always crowd for faith, but the soul will always reach for unbelief. What’s in your wallet? blindtony1016@gmail.com. Like to give a shout out to Mark Creed, know you are thought of, that your loved very much and prayed for daily. Hope all is well and once again Brian and the Hardin family thank you for this wonderful podcast for God’s Holy Spirit to flow keep it flowin’ y’all. All right. Bye-bye.

What about DAB family, Mike in Awe here in Kansas City Missouri. After yesterday October 10^ths  reading there was a first time caller asking for prayer saying that people at his school were treating him bad without cause and it was really hurting them asking for his family to pray for him. I’m praying for you today brother. Reminded me of the plight of Joseph and David. Joseph when he was sold into slavery and locked up after Potiphar’s wife lied on him and David how Saul was trying to kill him for no reason. And David wrote a lot of the Psalms out of that place saying why are they seeking my life without cause. In the likeness of those two patriarchs, Lord I ask You to bless my brother, lift him up out of this situation and put those people that are causing this pain to shame Lord. Help them to see the error of their ways. Help them to see the prayer that he’s playing for them Lord like he’s following the command of Jesus to pray for Your enemy…pray for his enemies. Help them to see that and turn to repentance and return to You ultimately Lord. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Aloha this is Robin from Hawaii. I listen every day and pray along but sometimes God just taps you on the shoulder and says you need to pray extra hard for this person and that happened today when I heard Christina call about her wedding. Lord I lift up Christina and her fiancé and her parents and this wedding. God it’s gonna look different than what Christina had envisioned but I pray that it will be even more magical than she can imagine right now. Lord I pray that she is able to hand over the details to You and that You arrange it and that just as You turned water into wine at a wedding You can do the same for this wedding. So, Lord we lift it up to You and we look forward to hearing how…how You work it all out for her. And after she called a gentleman called about his nephew who had been gunned down. Dear Lord, what a tragedy for this family to go through losing four family members in the…in the past just…four years. God, I pray Your love upon this family. Just cover them with Your wings. And may they somehow find hope in the midst of such extreme sadness. Lord I pray for justice to be done. I pray for the person that killed him to be to be brought to justice. And Lord I pray for Your hand on our nation and especially though upon this family and all families like this that are hurting in such major ways. Thank You, Daily Audio Bible. Love You all. Aloha Kalakaua - God is love.

Dear God’s Smile it breaks my heart to hear the pain in your voice, but even to the pain I hear a smile, the smile of God coming through you and I can’t wait to one day be worshiping in heaven with you. I pray Lord Jesus, bring comfort and peace. Give her endurance Lord through these times of pain. I ask that You would fill her heart with joy, that the joy of the Lord would give…be her strength and that You would fill her mouth continually with praises for Your glorious name. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Good morning family my name is Regis I’m calling from Nairobi Kenya. The reason I’m calling today is first of all to thank everyone who prayed for my daughter __ who had eczema and it was really spreading and it was really affecting her so much. Thank you so much for everyone who prayed, those who called in and those who prayed without calling. I know you prayed. I know we pray for each other. Thank you, so much. May God bless you and may God grant you your heart desires. Thank you so much everyone. Thank you, family. There’s a lot of progress her skin is improving, and we thank God for that and I know it’s because of your prayers. I wanted to give you this update and to thank everyone of you. Thank you and may God bless you. The second reason I’m calling for is to pray for God’s smile. I’ve just heard today the 12^th of October she called in, and usually when she calls she’s very happy and smiling but today when she called she was very in pain I think and I pray Lord that you will heal God’s Smile and I pray that you will be her healer and you’ll restore health back to normal Father. Father we stop that morphine and whatever pain, whatever the reason she’s feeling pain father we stop it in Jesus’ mighty name. I counsel all the pain. I pray Almighty God that God’s Smile will bring always the smile that she brings when she calls. We thank you and honor you. We pray for Peter. We bless him. And we thank you for your grace and…and for your healing power on her in Jesus’ mighty name we pray. Amen. Regis here calling from Nairobi. I love you. Bye-bye.

Jeremiah 23:21-25:38, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-17, Psalms 84:1-12, Proverbs 25:15

Today is the 14^th day of October, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is wonderful to be here with you and we’re approaching the middle of another month and I…I don’t know where the times going because it seems like it’s dragging on but it’s not. It’s moving fast. And, so, here we are almost to the middle of October these next couple of days will send us through the middle. And speaking of the middle, we’re in the middle of another week as we continue our journey. This week we’ve been reading from the New International Version, which is what we’ll continue to do. Jeremiah chapter 23 verse 21 through 25 verse 38 today.

Commentary:

Okay. So, we read Psalm 84 today and I can’t help but coming by this territory every year and talking about this. Like there’s all…so many things that happen in a year that have never happened before because the Bible is alive and it speaks to the depths of our souls in new ways, different things, even if we’ve been through the territory before strike us in new ways and apply in new and unique and inspiring ways, but there are some kind of like road posts along the way along this trail where it’s like, “yeah, this is always…we never need to forget this, we need to remember this always, this needs to get locked in for all time. And Psalm 84’s like that because it holds like very…like a very important key to how to live and it explains so much. So, if I say the word desire what is the first thing that comes up? Like a lot of times it’s like a sexual thing in nature. That word kind of evokes a…or if I say the word passion kinda the same thing happens. And if I say passionate desire we can apply that to, you know, like an athlete who’s training for the Olympics who’s like left everything else in their lives and focused on this one goal in life, while they, you know, are at a specific age and have specific abilities and are tuning those things so that as a world-class athlete they can compete. But normally these kind words, you put these kind words together and it gets erotic, which isn’t a bad thing, either one of them…like pursuing a goal or…or…or sexual desire or whatever that’s not like inherently a bad thing. Either way we can kind of understand the words. But we don’t usually use those words when we’re talking about God, an intimacy with God. And yet, let me read, let me just read from the Psalm. “My soul yearns even faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” You see, that’s passionate desire. And we understand passionate desire. We just used a couple of examples, but we could find other ones but we’ve already kind of placed ourselves in those words, but we don’t usually think about them toward God. And yet in the Bible, we see the psalmist passionate with desire for God. A little bit later in the Psalm we read, “better is one day in your courts than a thousand anywhere else. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.” This is a person whose focus is upon the Lord and the presence of God, to be in the presence of God is the most important passionate pursuit of desire. So, we can look at this and we can say, “yeah, I…I mean that’s true. I don't…like the level of passion that I feel toward my spirituality and my union with God is different than any of the other things that I’m pursuing in life. It’s different. I want that though. Like I would love to feel the way that the psalmist feels. I would love to live into that, with all of my heart. How? How does it happen?” And this is where we get handed the key. Worship. And the thing is, worship means a lot of things to a lot of people. Worship can be the songs that you sing in church when you are in church. But worship can be the records that you put on and play when you’re feeling low and depressed. So, this word kind of is more broad than we understand and yet we kind of define it pretty narrowly and it’s all kinds of religious baggage associated with it. I mean worship is a whole genre of music now, but if we want to get to the baseline then we would have to go back to the words that we spoke at the beginning - passion, desire. And one precedes the other, right? Desire precedes passion. Our desires lead our passions. So, it all begins with desire. So, when we apply our passionate desire in any direction it’s quickly going to become worship, especially if the expectation is life in some form in return. Worship is a word that describes where we focus our passionate desire in hopes of attaining life, which on the one hand means that we can worship just about anything and in just about any direction, but it also means if we acknowledge our source of life, like if that is a primary thing upon our minds, that God is our source of life, then all of life can become an act of worship, right down to our very breathing. Our breath is a gift of God and with every inhale we are receiving the gift of life. And with every exhale, we are releasing it in faith, that there will be another one. Th psalmist here isn’t speaking of theories. The psalmist here is speaking of experiences. The Psalm is attributed to the sons of Korah. Whoever wrote these words experienced union with God and could by comparison and say, “there’s nothing that can compare. Like no matter what the circumstances of life are, there’s nothing that I can pour my passionate desire into, give myself over to but my very source of life itself. Once that has been tasted, hard to…hard…there’s nothing that can compare. It’s hard to go back.” And, so, let’s aim our hearts in that direction. And the way to begin is to begin to observe ourselves, watch ourselves throughout the day with the idea that every breath, everything is an act of worship, everything that we do has the ability to open our eyes and make us aware of God’s presence because He is no less present to us. Like, we’re just usually not paying attention. Just because we’ve become aware of God’s presence doesn’t mean that God has come, that God showed up as we like to say. He never went anywhere. He didn’t show up. We did. He’s always with us. We just once in a while become aware of it. What if we stayed aware of it with this posture that our primary passion, that our primary desire is toward the source of life itself? There’s this old hymn that I heard growing up. I mean it’s still a famous hymn it’s still around but it's….it’s called “turn your eyes upon Jesus” and it describes what we’re talking about here because it says that the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. What if we put that into practice today? What if we practice it for the rest of the week and then just look back at how our week went and just see if any of this is true? What we find is that it is true and when we live into this with our passions and our desires focused toward the source of life, which is our Savior remarkable shifts can happen in very, very shortds amount…short amount…amounts of time.

Prayer:

Father, we invite You into that. You’ve given us an example. We see an example in the psalms. Now we have some understanding and we turn our eyes upon You. We turn our passion toward You. You are our hearts desire. Ultimately, You are our hearts desire. You are the source of life. And, so, why we have orbited around the lesser things that have promised us life is a mystery when You are the only source. And, so, we turn to You and ask that You open our eyes and make us aware of Your presence all around us, everywhere. You will never leave us. You will never forsake us, which means that You are here right now and always whether we’re paying attention to it or aware of it or not. But we want to be aware of it. Our passions and desires, they need to grow. We need to become more and more in tune, more and more aware and less and less asleep to it. And, so, come Holy Spirit lead us deeper into our desire for You we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, it's…it’s the website, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here. So, certainly do indeed stay connected in any way that you can.

Check out the Daily Audio Bible Shop. There are resources there for this journey including the God of Your Story, the latest book, which is kind of a written…not kind of…it is an attempt to follow the path or some of the paths that we follow through the Scriptures each year and put that in the written form so if we’re ever disconnected from the Internet etc. etc. we can just keep the journey going, keep moving forward. And often, there’s just more context. And it’s just having it as part of the rhythm of life that resource was a very, very, hard, hard labor for this…for this purpose and to serve this community. And, so, God of Your Story is there in the Shop. Actually, one thing external to the Shop is a release that we had this year, a guided prayer and musical journey that we released back in July for the Long Walk called Heart, songs of the heart, a contemplative journey. And you get that wherever you get your music, so at iTunes or Google Play or whatever. You just have to go to the Shop. You can’t stream these. You have to purchase these albums. The reason is that all of these prayers, if you stream it, then all of these prayers get disembodied from the rest of the project and it’s just very weird, kind of like trying to read the Bible without any Hebrew context at all. But that album it seemed to have come at the right time in the summer time and struck a nerve and continue…the stories that I continue to hear from the project are…are incredible, the way that just taking a long walk, just going for a walk and puttin’ some earbuds on and just moving through and praying through the different emotions that we have really, really felt deeply this year and to invite Jesus into that and into the story moving us forward. That is a great resource. So, certainly, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link on the homepage, and I thank you, I thank you for everyone who’s ever pressed that link or any of the links. Like pressing that link is why we’re here. And, so, thank you for those of you who have partnered with the Daily Audio Bible over the years. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if you prefer, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement 877-942-4253 is number to dial or you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the red Hotline button that lives at the top. Be very, very difficult to miss that. You can press the Hotline button no matter where you are in the world and you can share from there.

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:

Last week I sat down with the Lord and He began to speak and brought me to a place where I could feel His love and I struggle with that like sometimes when I hear the verse perfect love casts out all fear, I feel like I’m missing something but that was the first time in a long time, 30 years of Christian, I actually felt His love, I felt loved and all I could think of was first John, you love Him because He first loved us and my heart just soared. I was going to go out for a walk and I’ve heard the words Daily Audio Bible and honestly I haven’t listened in two years but when I’m out on the walk and Brian began to read and to talk about God’s love and actually quoted that verse out of first John my heart just soared and I laughed right outload because God is so very faithful to give us what we need, to meet us where we are and that’s why I love Him because He always loves me first and always…

Hello, my name is James Blackstone and I’m calling in regards to prayer. I’m struggling with my faith and my belief in Jesus Christ because I’m at a time in my life where I feel like nothing is working out for me. I’ve been complaining a lot and getting angry lately. Truth is I’ve been struggling with drugs and alcohol the majority of my life. I went to the Dream Center program and did a year and I graduated. But when the coronavirus hit our program stopped. I chose to go back out on the streets and a relapsed. I messed up. So, here I am back in rehab. I need prayer for strength and that God will bring the right people in my life. I miss my mother. I haven’t seen or heard from her in over 20 years. I was in and out of foster homes when I was a kid. Please pray that my mom and family is healthy and protected in Jesus’ name. Thank you for everything and God bless all of you.

Good afternoon family this is Soaring on Eagles Wings from Canada. I, as we are approaching our long weekend or a Thanksgiving weekend, I want to pray for all the truckers in our family. I’ve always admired truckers and the skills that they used to navigate those trucks back and forth and reverse them and this year was going to take a driving course in how to…to drive a truck, not that I’m planning to go anywhere but I just wanted to learn how to drive. But Covid has put a stop to that. So, Father God we have a number of truckers in our family, they do long distances. It’s very…it’s not easy going all those miles and trying to be alert. I ask you therefore God to be their pilot. Cover their hands over the steering wheel with your hands so that you can turn it whichever way they ought to go. Give them far-reaching vision so that they can see ahead Lord God. Give them ears to hear what’s happening round about them and the skill to navigate these trucks in all the areas that they go. And Father, I pray that you keep them safe from Covid. Watch over their families as they do these long distances and leave their families. Protect them from danger. Provide for them. You know their every need. And, so, as I lift them all up to you, we thank God for truckers because they are the ones who move goods and services back-and-forth so that we can eat and drink and be thankful. So, every one of you today, be blessed. Know I’m praying for you. God loves you and so does your family.

Hi friends at Daily Audio Bible this is Karen in Florida and just calling in for prayer today. As I’ve listened to so many prayer requests, I’m praying with you. I’d like you to remember me. About two weeks ago I woke up at 4:30 AM and I’m a single lady, I have a 12-year-old child and I woke up to the sound of someone scratching on my screen at my bedroom window and I…I thought it was just an animal or something and I waited for a while and it was someone at my window and of course I called the police but no one was around that time when they showed up and…and didn’t do a whole lot really about it, just took a report and said, you know, it’s probably just not gonna happen anymore and I doubt we would find anybody and…and it was kind of disheartening but the screen is torn up and so now I am trying to figure out how to finance getting some better windows put in my house or getting an alarm system definitely getting some better lighting outside. It’s been a bit of a challenge to try to even get people over here to…to do anything. And, so, I had to wait a week for an electrician to…to show up to give me an estimate on the lighting for outside and I’d like to get some cameras and I’ve just become fearful it’s 2 AM on Saturday, October 9^th or 10^th and I’m awake calling in asking for prayers. So, please pray for me. I would appreciate it.

Good morning DAB family this is Paul of the Child Advocate from the LA area calling. I wanted first to do a shout out for all the first-time callers. Many of you who share that your longtime listeners, it’s so encouraging to hear your you say your first-time caller and just increasing our family so much and it’s just nice to get to hear another voice and start to recognize your voice. And I wanted to stay congratulations to China and Ben. I actually met China quite a few years ago now when Brian and family were in Los Angeles. She was just a little girl then and she was manning the table, the greeting table, and we chatted for a few minutes and she was just a darling girl. So, I’m so happy for the whole Hardin family. And by the way Brian, I’m going to become a grandmother again soon too. My daughter Allie, our daughter Allie is pregnant, and I wanted to ask for prayers for her. She has a rare condition known as cholestasis, it happens during pregnancy and this is her third pregnancy and she had it with one of her other boys. This one is gonna be a girl by the way. Anyway, it’s a liver disease and it’s very dangerous towards the end of her pregnancy. So, please keep Allie and her baby girl in your prayers. And I also wanted to give a little shout out to Brian on your book the God of Your Story. I faithfully read it along with listening and I have to say it enhances the reading…the listening and the reading so much. I mean you just kind of, you know, expand on what you’ve said, and I just enjoy it. Thank you so much.

Good morning or afternoon depending on where you are, I’m calling from sunny South Florida and I’m calling today in reference to the young man who called this morning regarding the issues that he’s having on his job. He said that he was a first-time caller and did not identify himself, but God knows who you are. I would just like to encourage you to just hang in on in there. I understand exactly where you’re coming from. Several years ago, I had the same issue. I was going to work doing everything that I needed to do, meeting all the deadlines that needed to be met, having all the parent conferences and student conferences as necessary; however, I was the target for the year. I continue to pray for them, and God delivered me from them. So, I want to say to you, be encouraged. Look to the hills from whence cometh your help. God knows all about us. One thing about it is He has promised never to forsake us. We’ve got to pray for the workplace bullies. Trust God forever. Cherish the moments.