A Walk Through The Word

Genesis 28:1-29:35, Matthew 9:18-38, Psalms 11:1-7, Proverbs 3:11-12

Today is the 13^th day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it’s great to be here with you as we get ready and come in and out of the cold and the chaos that life can bring and just come around the Global Campfire where everyone has a seat and we just let this fire burn and warm us and it’s this other place, this safe space we have, to allow God’s Word to speak into our day and into our week and for that matter into our lives, transforming us from within. So, we’ll pick up where we left off yesterday which will take us back into the book of Genesis. And there’s a bunch of drama going on in this third kinda generation. So, Abraham’s grandchildren, Jacob and Esau, brothers, they’ve had…well…there’s been some deception, some significant deception on the part of Jacob and his mom, Rebekah. So, Jacob took the blessing and the birth right from his brother Esau. His brother Esau is not happy. In fact, so upset about it that he’s willing to kill his brother Jacob. So, Jacobs got to go. And that’s where we pick up the story. Genesis chapters 28 and 29 and we’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week.

Commentary:

Okay. Oh…there’s a lot for us to…to look at today. Let’s go into the book of Genesis. There’s just a lot of things that are happening right now and they’re really important to the story that is unfolding. We can begin to read the Bible and read about different people’s lives like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and know that they’re important figures in the Bible, but not necessarily know how they’re all connected. And, yet, once we met Abram the story has been a cohesive story of Abram who became Abraham, his family, right? So, we are at the grandchildren level at this point, Jacob and Esau and we read the story of what happens. So, Jacob is on the run and he’s going back to Abraham’s family where he’s been sent. This is the same way that Abraham’s servant went and to the same people that Abraham’s servant went to get a wife for Isaac, right, Rebekah. So, this is where Jacob’s going and when he gets there, he meets Laban who is Rebekah’s brother. We already met him. He was much younger, when Abraham’s servant came but he would have been roughly the same general age as his sister Rebekah. So, now he’s grown up and in charge of things and Rebekah’s son Jacob comes to him and lives with him. But let’s not get ahead of the story. Jacob’s on the run and the sun sets so he finds place to sleep and it’s in this city that was known as Luz that became known as Bethel, which is biblical Bethel, a place that we’ll see many times on our journey through the Old Testament. And he is a dream and God appears to him. So, the third generation. God appeared to Abraham with a promise. God appeared to Isaac in Beersheba with a promise. And now He is communicating with Isaacs’s son and Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, reaffirming the promise. So, Esau gets up and says, surely God is here, and I was just unaware of it. Can I just tell you that that phrase out of the book of Genesis, that phrase right there much describes our whole lives? So often we live our lives as if we need to go through a certain set of rituals, kind of get ourselves into a certain state of organization or whatever within or without in order to approach God who is separate and apart from and distant and separated from us and then we can come into His presence and then…and then commune with Him and ask for the things that we need and offer our worship. When the truth is, as we are going to find out explicitly in the Bible that God is within us and never absent. We aren’t separated from Him. We have just become unaware of His presence. And, so, when we do become aware of His presence, which we can do at any point in time, we too, Like Jacob would say, “surely the Lord is here, and I was just unaware of it.” So, fold that up, put that in your purse or in your wallet and carry it around with you for the rest of this year. It can be a rescue when things get pretty crazy. And this place that Jacob spent the night, he’s got another night to spend in that place, but that is a story for another day. So, Jacob wakes up, you know, he’s realizing the presence of the Lord. And then he does something interesting and it’s something that we’ve already mentioned. So, he…he gets this rock and he…he stands it up and…and then he pours oil on top of it and he sets that stone as a standing stone. It's…it’s a marker the Bible says. And he does this, and we see this tradition throughout the Scriptures, he does this so that what happened there will not be forgotten. And one of the ways that we’ve brought that specific tradition into our rhythm of life in the Daily Audio Bible community is to encourage journaling. Write down the things that the Lord reveals to you in your heart as you move your way through His word. You don’t want to forget that. You want to be able to go back to that place and remember what happened there. So, then Jacob eventually does get to Laban as we mentioned a few minutes ago and he does become a part of Laban’s household and he begins to work as a shepherd because he’s fallen in love with Laban’s daughter Rachel. So, he does his work. He asks for his wife. He gets married. He has a wedding night he wakes up and finds out his bride is not the one he loves. It’s her sister. And, so, now he’s married to Leah but in love with Rachel. And a week goes by and then he marries Rachel. So, now he is the husband of two sisters and that, you just can’t imagine that’s gonna be a harmonious home, but I want to point out something here. Jacob had been a bit of a deceitful person all along. And in a very real way, the trickery that he used to deal with his father and his brother is the same kind of trickery that’s being used on him. And, so, we could say Jacob is one of the patriarchs, he is, you know, one of the pillars of the story that were telling and God used him, but the Bible goes to great lengths to show us the way that Jacob was a conniver. And we’ll see that it…it doesn’t ever really smooth out for Jacob until he learns that lesson and ceases that activity. And we will see that his…his trickery and deception, and his, you know, kind of trying to play the game, these things haunt him well into his adulthood, well into the establishment of his own household. So, we end our reading today with Jacob having married the two sisters and the sister that Jacob loves, Rachel, she’s not able to have children and meanwhile, the sister that Jacob doesn’t love, Leah, she has already given birth to four sons. Her firstborn was Ruben and then came Simeon and then Levi and then Judah. And those names, depending on how much you’ve ever been around the Bible, those names may sound familiar, and they should. These little children who are babies at the moment in our reading will one day grow up to have households of their own and we’ve met four of them, but there are more that we will meet. And these people will one day grow up and become tribes, 12 tribes making up one whole people called Israel. That’s the story we’re telling, the origin story of the Hebrew people who, for the most part populate the rest of the Bible

And then we get into the book of Matthew and we’re very, very quickly seeing the ministry of Jesus and the stories in the gospel of Jesus are just fantastic to read, but if we actually want to get to know Jesus and not just know the stories about Him then we need to look under the surface of these stories because we find such interesting things there, things that challenge…challenge what we think we know. So, we begin our reading today and one of the leaders of the village that Jesus was in, he comes and he’s like my…my daughter just died. So, you can only imagine that, He didn’t just come up to Jesus and wait his turn and kind of, you know, “my daughter just died but come and lay your hand on her and she will live.” Like, nobody does that if their daughter just died. So, you can imagine the situation but it’s an urgent situation. So, Jesus and the disciples they get up and they follow this guy and on their way…so Jesus is on His way to this urgent situation when He gets interrupted because there’s this woman who’s been kind of following Him around and she's…she’s been bleeding for 12 years, right? So…so…the thing is, as we will learn when we go through the Mosaic law, we will understand that this woman who is a Hebrew woman, she is ritually impure, okay, because of the bleeding for 12…so that means for 12 years she’s been ritually impure and kept outside of God’s presence. She thinks to herself, “if I can just get to Him. If I can just touch…touch his robe, I’ll be healed.” And, so, we know this super famous story and that happens, but what we…what we usually walk away from is that we look at this story as Jesus, the miracle worker, the proof we’re looking for to believe upon him. Ironically, it doesn’t appear that Jesus ever was angling to be perceived of as a miracle worker. Obviously, if miracles are being performed in your presence word is going to spread so He couldn’t keep a lid on that but that does not seem to be in any way what he was after. And if you don’t believe me, then just keep watching Jesus as we go through the Gospels over the next several months and watch what He does when the stuff happens. Let’s just take the story that we’re telling right now. This woman, she has touched Jesus and Jesus realized He was touched, and according to Matthew, Jesus turned and saw her and I’m quoting Jesus, “have courage daughter, your faith has saved you” and the woman was made well from that moment. So, unless Jesus has been misquoted here and that’s not what He meant to say at all then we would have to deduce from what He said that this woman’s healing was not simply something that happened to her, but rather something that she also collaborated in. “Have courage daughter, your faith has saved you.” And the woman was made well from that moment. That’s what the Bible says. Okay. So, then that scene gets over and Jesus does finally make it to this leader’s house whose daughter has just died, and there are a bunch of people there because he was a leader, and this was the common practice of the timHe ge. When there’s a loss of life then, you know, mourner’s friends and people…people will come to mourn. A lot of times outside, even…even they would be hired at times to come and professionally mourn just to let everyone know around that there’s been this loss. So, Jesus comes into that kind of situation where there’s a lot of crying and weeping and noise. And He says, “leave.” Like, that’s what the Bible says. Verse 24 “leave”, He said. Okay. Because the girl isn’t dead but she’s asleep. And all of a sudden, their mourning turned into laughing, which is something that is a rich metaphor in the Scriptures, but this is not the kind of joy that we’re talking about, they start laughing at Him sarcastically. They are unaware of the situation. They have accepted the reality, this person, this girl is dead. And, so, now they begin all of the rituals of death when a completely different reality is available, and Jesus gets everybody out and after they’re out he goes and gets the girl and she wakes up. So, in this scene we see Jesus describing, depicting, engaging with a reality or the opportunity of a reality that everybody else can’t see and has dismissed. And when they’re presented with this reality, the idea that the girl isn’t dead, they dismiss that. Like, hope doesn’t rise. They laugh at Him instead. Okay friends. We’re looking at ourselves here in the Scriptures because this is what’s intended to happen, that we look into these stories we feel all of the different elements of these stories and we find our heart in these stories. We locate where we are, and we find our orientation and the reality is that all too often the presence of Jesus is with us, just like Jacob, completely unaware of it and then we do become aware of it, but the situation seems impossible. We can’t wrap our minds around any other kind of reality besides what we seem to be crushed by and instead of reaching out, right, for the hem of His garment, instead of just reaching out we hear him say it doesn’t have to be this way son, it doesn’t have to be this way daughter and we laugh at him. And do you see the parallels here? So, you remember the story of the promise in the beginning with Abraham and Sarah, she laughed too. And we begin to realize, this is a pattern, this is a theme, these things keep happening over and over. They keep happening over and over in the Bible because they keep happening over and over in my life and they keep happening over and over in my life because they’re happening everywhere in the world. And then we become aware of the fact that maybe we are living blinded to the fact that there’s another way, that there’s a way to be in this world, continually in the presence of God because His presence is never taken from us. We are simply unaware of it. And we are watching a person when we watch Jesus. We are watching a person totally dialed in. Jesus is modeling for us who we are and how we’re supposed to be. So, this girl is raised up. Everyone obviously doesn’t laugh anymore. The news spreads all over the place and the next scene we see is two blind men asking for mercy. And Jesus gets them aside and he simply asks them a question…like He doesn’t heal them, He asks them a question, “do you believe that I can do this?” And they say, “yes. I do believe.” And then…and then…here's…and I’m quoting Jesus again, “let it be done for you according to your faith.” And their eyes were opened. Right? You see, again, this isn’t something that Jesus did to them, it’s something that was collaborative. Faith arose within them. Their awareness of the presence of God rose up and they experienced God. And then…and then the miracle worker, Jesus has some words. I’m quoting Jesus here, “be sure that no one finds out.” That’s what Jesus said after He opened the eyes of the blind. But according the Scriptures they didn’t listen to Jesus, they went and spread the news about Him everywhere. And then we are taken immediately to a scene in which Jesus is dealing with a person possessed by a demon and was mute because of it. And Jesus throws the demon out, the man begins to speak, the crowds are amazed. Alright. So, now we are about to encounter the two different reactions that happen and swirl around just about everything Jesus does. So, this person who couldn’t speak is now speaking and the crowds are amazed and they say, according to the Bible, “nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.” So, they are effectively saying, “we are seeing a new thing.” God is doing a new thing and they believe that it’s God doing this thing because the Scriptures tell us that they are in awe and worshiping God about it. Jesus is definitely gaining momentum. But the Pharisees, right? So, the religious leaders, the people who are charged with guarding the souls of God’s people, their response isn’t, “nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel.” Their response is, “He drives out demons by the ruler of the demons.” Those are two very different reactions to the presence of God in these stories and they reveal the different ways that we respond when we find ourselves encountering God. On the one hand, we could say, “I don’t know how to explain this. I do not know how to put this into language or words, but something has shifted, an awareness in me has changed. Something…something that wasn’t here is now here”, right? Like, maybe “my anxiety has fled, and I feel a presence of comfort with in me.” I mean…if we just begin to describe examples, we could go all day, but we realize that as much as we try to articulate this doesn’t need to be articulated, it’s something deep, it’s something true, it’s something that has shifted in us, and no one can take it away from us because it has been real to us, right? So, then we could say, “nothing like this has ever happened before.” Or we can have the same kind of experience and then immediately lose our body and soul and just go into our mind trying to figure out what the theology of our experience might have been, go deeply into our religion and go like, “do the rules say that this can happen?” And then we can easily find ourselves in the seat of the Pharisees. “This is an of God, this is of the devil.” Stuff happens all the time and we need to know what we’re seeing in the New Testament when it comes to Jesus. It’s religion and the keepers of God’s rules that are attempting to diminish and denigrate God and eventually to kill Him. Yikes! Like, that’s scary stuff and disruptive stuff and, like I’ve said, we need to get used to disruption because the Bible’s gonna shake us. So, after this encounter with the Pharisees where they’re like, “He drives out demons by the ruler of demons” Jesus continues to just move on doing what He…He does. Quoting from Matthew, “Jesus continued going around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness”, right? That’s what we would expect to find Jesus doing and that’s what we actually continue to pray that Jesus will do in this world. But what’s interesting is that Jesus comments on it. When He saw the crowds, He felt compassion for them because they were distressed and dejected. They were like sheep without a shepherd.” So, He felt…He felt bad about that. In another words He sees the plight of humans trying to navigate life, and yet Jesus is operating and navigating in and among these people and awakening something in them. He’s telling them about a kingdom that is within them. They are awakening to this and He sees…He sees this happening, but he realizes it’s not gonna happen with just one person with just Him alone. So, He said to His disciples, “the harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.” So, Jesus was seeing a human harvest, and He was in the harvest reaping the harvest. And we can look at Jesus as a wisdom teacher and miracle worker and prophet, and yes, divine son of the living most-high God, who was operating as a human being in some sort of special other nonhuman way, when Jesus continually is just operating as a human should be operating. And when we get to the writings of the apostle Paul this will become explicit. And in our reading today Jesus is saying, “I need…I…pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest…I need help. So, brothers and sisters. The harvest is still ripe. It…it will never not be. Humanity is asleep. We are still living backward, and help is still needed and that’s you and we’re gonna find what we usually lack is awareness. And that’s what we see in the Old and New Testaments today, and that’s what we need to begin to live into.

Prayer:

Father, we invite Your Holy Spirit because on our own we are blind, and we can’t see and we are like sheep without a shepherd, and we are floundering in life. We know that. We’ve experienced that. It's…it’s not a theory, we’ve lived it. And, so we come to You, You’ve rescued us, You’ve changed everything but so often we fall back into the patterns that we know and we look at the world in the way that it seems like everybody else is looking at the world and so we find ourselves at times even at odds with You because we’ll consult all the rules and all the regulations and all the things we think that we know and we miss when You do something new. And yet the Scriptures tell us it is the same Spirit that raised You from the dead, the same Spirit that You were operating in on this planet, the same, not a similar, the same one that lives within us. And, so, this idea of being Christ like isn’t a metaphor. This idea of being one body, the hands and feet, the physical representation of Christ on earth inside of us, this isn’t a metaphor. This is something we’re supposed to collaborate in. And, so, as we continue this journey that has just begun this year, we invite Your Holy Spirit to fully transform us from within, day by day, step-by-step so that the person that we see in the mirror at the end of this voyage is a different person, so that we are awake and aware in our lives. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home base, its the website, its where you find out what’s going on around here. I have highlighted some different resources that are in the Daily Audio Bible shop because they are…well…they….they’ve been created for the journey that we’re on. And one…one resource that I haven’t mentioned yet this year, but this is a good day to mention it, is…is a DVD…double DVD and digital download series called “Promise Land.” And we spent, I think six seasons in Israel filming so many of the biblical archaeological locations in all their beauty in an attempt to bring the biblical places closer to home. So, like we we’re talking about Luz today, Bethel, right, Bethel and this place where…where Jacob spent the night and a place where he’s going to come back to. So, we’ve…we’ve filmed that. So, like to get an idea of what he saw, what that looks like, you can see this. And so many of the different places around Jesus ministry, these villages and these places we’re Jesus ministered, they’re all filmed. And, so, it makes a fantastic resource to just be able to look in and actually see. And before I ever went Israel I never even wanted to go. It was like not the thing I thought it would be. I just kinda…I don’t know what I thought. I thought it would maybe ruin the Bible for me but it didn’t, it actually made it a real, like these things happened in real places. And I realized while all I’ve been looking at is, you know, pictures like static photographs on the Internet of these places, what it would it be like to try to provide a 360° view, like a real honest look at a place from the air and we using drones and from the ground and all of this. So, that’s Promise Land and it will serve as a fantastic resource throughout the year to refer to. It’s like, there’s over 70 different locations that we’ve filmed and are just, they’re short, like only 2 to 3 minutes in a place. So, real easy to access. Like, “okay. We were reading about Bethel today. Let me see that.” And in just a couple minutes you can see it and find out the significance biblically of what happened there. So, that is a resource that is available in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. Check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. 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, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment you can hit the Hotline button in the app, 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 will be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Genesis 26:17-27:46, Matthew 9:1-17, Psalms 10:16-18, Proverbs 3:9-10

Today is the 12^th day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it’s wonderful to be here with you today. How are you as we enter a new week? Can you believe it? Before this week is over, we will have passed through the center of January. Like, that’s how quickly…ahh its like hard to believe, just a couple…couple weeks ago we’re in like the last decade, it’s Christmas time, its…how quickly, how quickly we just…life just moves us forward and here we are about to cross through the middle of the first month. But it’s good to know where we are. It’s good to know, like, this is the 12^th day of the year, but a lot of time that pulls us forward, right? Like, that keeps us from being here and gets us out into the future. And, so, let’s be here. We’re beginning a brand-new sparkly shiny week and we’ll cross into this week together we’ll Let God’s words speak to us and then the reality is this week hasn’t been lived yet. So, we may be carrying all kinds of baggage into this week, but the choices that we make, the way that we conduct ourselves and live our lives in this week, that’s going to be the story of this week and it’s really good at the beginning of week to remind ourselves of that. This is a new day. This is a new week and we can make the next right decisions right now. And one right decision is to allow God’s Word to speak to us, which is what we’ve come here to do. And, so, let’s get to it. We’re…we’re in a new week. This week we’ll read from the Christian Standard Bible, and we’re picking up the story of Isaac and Rebekah, and Isaac has basically done the same thing his father Abraham had done in the same city. Like they went to this city called Gerar and Abraham had told the people there that his wife Sarah was his sister. So, Isaac has gone to this same place and said that Rebekah, his wife, is his sister, which has caused some unrest. And, so, we’re seeing a little bit of tension beginning to build as we move into the new generations. Today we’ll read Genesis chapter 26 verse 17 through 27 verse 46.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for bringing us into a new shiny week and we invite Your Holy Spirit into every aspect of our lives, ever thought, every word, every deed that is out in front of us. As we live into this new week, we cannot do this without You. Why we have ever tried to do anything without You is remarkably foolish, but we are learning. And, so, we invite You in advance into every aspect of all of our interactions this week and we take note, even in today’s reading from the book of Matthew, but in general now that we’re reading of You, Jesus, getting to know Your personality and getting to observe Your behaviors and the way that You moved in this world and the way that You were willing to be disruptive, especially to the people who thought…who thought they had control over the worship of God. And, so, we see You in today’s reading alone healing a person who couldn’t walk by saying Your sins are forgiven, which only served to disrupt the scribes who are thinking You’re a blasphemer, and using the whole scene to reveal its…its not about obeying the rituals of religion, its about how we are in this world. And You did that by quoting from Hosea, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” And, so continually, even…even we who love You, even we who are following You, are trying to be a disciple in this world, to be Your hands and feet in this world, we find ourselves continually invited to look at the motives of our hearts. And we do everything that we can to curate a life that looks religious and looks pious and looks like maybe we know You or do we not care about any of that because we actually know You and know Your will and know Your ways? Come Holy Spirit into that question we pray. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, home base, its where you find out find out what’s going on around here as I say most every day. So, stay tuned and stay connected in any way that you can, and in any way that you want to.

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

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, you can press the Hotline button in the app, 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 will be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi this is Gary speaking I’m from South Carolina and I’ve just completed 12 years of listening to the Daily Audio Bible. Today is January 5^th and I’m starting my 13^th year now. This is actually my first time calling in. I’ve been listening for so long hearing so many different people call and leave requests, I’ve finally gotten around to call in myself. I’m not really calling you with a prayer request. I just wanted to call and encourage anybody joining this year for the first time or maybe if you’ve been on a few years I just want to encourage anybody to stick with it. In fact, I would say stick with it indefinitely for years. I have found that…and it’s easy to do. If you’re commuting to work it’s easy to fit into your life, just to commit to listening to the hearing, to have the hearing of the Word happening in your life daily, it will do amazing things to you. It starts to sink in in a very unique way. After listening for a few years, you start associating parts of the Bible with months of the year. The stories of the Old Testament start to happen in ways where you know at certain times of the year what to expect. You start to memorize the flow of the Bible. And over time you start seeing how the gospel is clearly displayed throughout the Old and New Testament. And listening to all the people call in you can hear how it’s changing lives. You can also see that really everyone, all lives are broken and need saving. And just hearing that and being a part of that for this many years has really…it’s really it’s really deepened my faith. And Brian and Jill I thank you for having this ministry and I pray you continue it as long as well as long as I’m alive. I intend to listen to it indefinitely as long as it’s available…

Hello DAB family this is Alicia My God is Abundance and I just got finished listening to the January 3^rd broadcast on today, January 3^rd. And I heard Finding Peace sounding broken and asking for prayer and clinging to faith and right after that I heard God Smiles with that beautiful message. And I know, God Smiles, that you had that message for all of us and I thank you for that message. But Finding Peace, I…I couldn’t help but think the minute that I heard that message that that message was a message that you needed to hear, that you needed to hear and cling to. I mean we’re starting a…we’re starting the Bible over again. We are in Genesis and man oh man it’s…we are so quick to hear the serpent hiss and to listen to his voice and to ignore the loving whisper of our God, you know? So, I just pray for you, Finding Peace, that you can hear the loving whisper of our God and I think today that loving whisper might have come to you in the voice of God Smiles and I think that whisper came to us all God Smiles, so thank you so much for that. Finding Peace, I do pray for your peace, your wholeness, your shalom. Thank you DAB family and thank you Brian for being so faithful and continuing to read is God’s word every day.

One of the reasons I love this podcast is because Brian talks about choosing the narrow path to life and this has been a pretty big theme in my life. This is Cindy, by the way, the Silver Lining Miner from Seattle. I have been struggling with a couple things in my life, one was my job that, thank God I have a job and I start on January 20^th and I thank all those who prayed for me. The other one is choosing relationships and people and bringing people into our lives that will lead us toward the narrow path that leads to life. So, I would love to praise Brian for his reminder about choosing the narrow path. And, are you going to choose the…the way to sin and to desires, giving into your desires and things that you know might not lead to that narrow path or are you going to choose the narrow path? And, so, for everybody out there who has maybe been in a relationship that’s…they know is not healthy or they’re walking a line right now where they are close to choosing a relationship that’s not healthy or doing something that is not healthy for their current relationship, I just want to say that I stand with you and I pray for you. I made a choice today to avoid an unhealthy path and I knew I could do it because of my family that I have here and other family members in my history that have been strong and actions that I’ve taken that show that I can walk that narrow path and be strong. So, I stand with you all and I pray for all of you to make those right choices with me. Amen.

Hi DAB family, I’m…this is Anonymous, I’m calling in because it’s January 4^th and I just want to praise God for hearing prayers outside of time. I tell you what, I have never been so encouraged in my entire walk with Christ. You know, I grew up in a in a Christian household and, you know, I got saved at 14 and I’ve never felt so encouraged and I know it’s because God has heard everyone’s prayers outside of time. Everyone who heard the message I left that got played on the 27^th and I didn’t hear it, I didn’t know I got played, I thought it might’ve have been have been played on the community prayer or maybe not…not really in anyone’s hearing. And today, January 4^th, I heard a woman pray. The first prayer was for…for Anonymous. And I thought, “oh yeah. You know what? Anonymous prayers are always really…they’re really…they touch my heart because those are prayers of people who don’t have anything left to try to hide what they are dealing with, they don’t have any…any layers left.” And, so, I prayed for Anonymous. And then the gentleman who prayed next prayed for anonymous and I thought. “oh.” I thought, “that sounds familiar. I don’t know why that sounds familiar but that’s something that I…you know…that fel;t familiar to my heart.” And then the third woman who prayed identified the day and I was like, “Lord God. I’m gonna go back and listen but I think…I think these people are praying for me.” And I know that God hears prayers outside of time and I want to thank everyone who has prayed for me since the 27^th. I’ve felt that. God has done work in my life. So, thank you so much. I love every single one of you.

Hey this is PG from NC. Brian thank you for reading. While you are reading, I had a thought. All my life I have heard the fact that Jesus called us to be fishers of men. The reality was He was calling fishermen to be fishers of men. It was a metaphor. He was allowing them, helping them to see themselves with a kingdom purpose and vision. There’s our word for the year. And I think if He were walking the earth today, I think He would be calling people and using a metaphor for which they could truly understand and wrap the purpose and a vision of themselves around. If He were calling a waiter or waitress or server, He might be calling them to serve the bread of life to individuals. If He were calling a fireman, He might be calling them to help people…help people escape the fiery situations of life there in or protect them from perilous situations. If He were calling a pilot or a flight attendant, He might be asking them to divinely help transport people along the journey of life to their ultimate kingdom destination. I think that each of us has a way that we see, we identify ourselves by our occupation or by our skill set and I think that God would want to use of metaphor that to allow us to see the kingdom purpose behind how He created us and how we function. So, Lord I pray today for every DABber who’s listening. God, I pray You’d give us vision of ourselves with a metaphor or a thought or an understanding of how You designed us to function. And I pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.

This is Michaela from South Carolina. I’ve called a few times over the 14 years that I’ve been listening. Each time it has been for my sister Susan who suffers from bipolar. She’s currently in ICU having a medicine overdose. She almost made it through the holidays but just finally couldn’t cope. I’m asking for prayer for her recovery and her restoration. I am believing God for her to be an icon of His healing power. Thank you all for your prayers and support. My husband and I listen daily, and we pray for all of you.

Hello Daily Audio Bible this is Heather and my son Judah, hi. So, I’ve been listening to the Daily Audio Bible and this is my first time calling in. I’ve been listening for the past seven years and for this eighth year my son Judah, he’s now 10 years old, he’s committed to live…listen to the Daily Audio Bible with me daily. I’m excited to see him go through the whole Bible in a year with me. I’m glad I finally called in. I listen to prayers and pray for the prayers as they come in and it’s just been a part of my growth the past seven years. And, so, I’m finally glad to be able to call in. God bless you.

Genesis 24:52-26:16, Matthew 8:18-34, Psalms 10:1-15, Proverbs 3:7-8

Today is the 11^th day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian its great to be here with you as we continue our journey by taking the next step forward in the Scriptures. And the next step forward takes us back into the book of Genesis where we are…well…we’re kind of moving into a new generation. We’ve been traveling with Abraham and Sarah and Sarah has passed away and now Isaac, the son of promise is emerging into our story. So, we’ve been reading from the New International Version this week, which is what we’ll do today. Genesis chapter 24 verse 52 through 26 verse 16.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word and we thank You for…well…for bringing us into this new year and allowing us to begin to settle into the rhythm that will carry us each and every day through this year. I thank You for what You are speaking into our lives here at the beginning of a decade, in the beginning of a year because it’s challenging us and it’s shaking us in its re-orienting us and it's…it’s bringing us clarity. And, so, we invite Your Holy Spirit to continue to speak deeply into our souls and that we might be aware and awake and listening when You begin to shift things inside of us. Even today’s proverb, don’t be wise in Your own eyes. Just that right there, just that alone, we could probably sit with that the rest of our lives as a piece of constant wisdom that needs to be ever before us. Yes, we’re not wise on our own, but the proverb goes on to tell us to fear You and shun evil and this will bring us health. And it’s a physical thing, health to our bodies and nourishment to our bones. Physical healing and health can happen when we…when we become aware that there is a wisdom that is far deeper than what we think we know. So, come Holy Spirit into that because we are looking for this, we are hungry for this, we are asking for this, we are seeking, we are knocking, we are present. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website and that is home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here. So, be sure to…be sure to check it out.

Check out the Community section. That’s where the Prayer Wall lives. That’s where the links to the transcripts are, that’s where the links to all the different social media channels are. So, check that out.

Check out the resources that are available in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. They have been invented and crafted for the journey that we are on together this year. So, check…check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible in the mission that we are…that we are sharing to bring the spoken word of God to anyone who will listen anywhere on this planet at any time of day or night, and build community around that rhythm so that it’s not a solitary journey so that we know we’re not alone, that we’re in this together. If that…if that’s life…life-giving to you than thank you for being life-giving back. 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, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment 877-942-4253 is the number to dial or you can just press the Hotline button, little red button at the top of the app and off you go.

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

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi Daily Audio Bible this is Brooke Wright from Omaha Nebraska and I would just like to pray for my daddy who is now…right now he’s in Argentina and I pray that on Monday, by the way it’s Sunday, January 6^th and I would like to pray that today he has a good flight since he has more than one flight and he has to fly today and tomorrow. I would just like to pray that he would have a good trip and he would not have a bad day. This is Brooke Wright and I would just really like if you guys would pray for me and my brothers and my mom and that my mom would have…her cough would go away. Since I only have two minutes I’m going to end here. This is Brooke Wright and I’ll probably be calling very soon. Bye.

I want to pray for everyone listening and you are good people for listening and I hope it makes a change in your life. And try and remember I wish I could be like you guys. Shout out to my friend named Porshe. She listens to DAB and she’s disabled. She lost her leg, but she says that she __ God can help her through. She also had cancer and when she started listening to the DAB her life changed and she just wanted to thank God. Even at church she gets on her __ and prays. She does it for the Lord.

Hey DAB family this is Lori in Ohio I am a third-year DABber starting my 18^th year reading the Bible through in the year. In 2020 am stepping away from a 20 year long, long relationship that should have never…I should have never been in. It did not strengthen my walk in God, and it was awfully verbally abusive, sometimes physically and he really made me do things I didn’t want to do and gosh after work pressuring me every day to…to do things I didn’t want to do. That aside two decades of memories __ family blended and the loss of the best friend as well I’m coming off mutual friendships. It’s very painful, beyond painful. Exhilarating though, to get rid of this sin and to have nothing blocking me and God. Just praying once again like it used to be and walking in the light of Christ, a whole person now as God’s girl once again. I ask that you please pray for me as for my focus and strength on this journey as a finally reborn again, rebooting a brand-new life that pleases God, continually growing a strong godly support team that are very helpful and whenever or wherever He takes me. I’m free. Woo! Please call me…my handle here will be 202020. I’m looking forward to all God has in store. I love you guys. I need you as iron sharpens iron. Please pray for me. I…I know God is preparing for me something big and this is such a way of peace that it’s a brand-new life for me. I’m praying for Finding Peace, for Good Smile in England, Rebecca in Michigan, Denise with Louis the rescue dog and Dave in Colorado. Okay guys. Talk to you soon.

Hey Daily Audio Bible this is John calling from Bethlehem Pennsylvania it is the 4^th of January. It’s great to be here to be around the Global Campfire and toss a couple logs on and keep it burning and speak with you all in community as we do this, as we step through the Bible one day at a time, one step at a time as Brian says. I wanted to call in and let a couple people know I’m thinking of them here this morning. Of course, I’m keeping you all in prayer. I want to just mention a couple people. So, Finding Peace and also Dave from Colorado. Finding Peace, I want you to know that you are a child of the most-high God. You see yourself as stock but sees you as free. He sees you as released. He sees you as not in the place that you see you, but He sees you in His kingdom and doing a mighty thing. You are mighty in the land, you come from royal blood, you are a princess of the most-high God and what He has in store for you in 2020 is going to absolutely blow your mind. You are touched, you are equipped, you are well able, and there’s nothing that can stop you except the thinking that you have and that but that you put out there. So, my prayer for you is that you remove your but that you get your own “butt”, BUTT, and your “but” BUT out-of-the-way to be able to live into everything that God has for you. I’m praying for you sister and I can’t wait to hear your report when you call back to say that you’re out of the hole and it’s because of God’s grace and kindness that He’s taken you out of that hole. Don’t listen to anything that the enemy has to tell you it’s a lie and deceit. And then Dave, my brother from Colorado, listen I love your voice. Don’t hide under a rock and don’t put a bag over your head man your beautiful and your voice is beautiful to. You have nothing to be ashamed of you’re an awesome person. It was great to hear from you and if I were in Colorado I would totally…

Dear Anonymous, hey, this is Annette from Oklahoma City. I just want to start off by saying, I love you sister. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. I can tell you real quick in my life story I was pretty much beaten and abused by my mother and ignored by my father a lot of the times because of these things. I got…I tried to get away by joining the Air Force where I was taken advantage of by a supervisor. I was…thrashed around and taken sexual advantage of by there only to get into two marriages where I was abused and I can tell you I know exactly how you feel. I wondered many, many times if I just drove up this ditch if I just, you know, did the same thing, you know, that my life would be better because it would be over. I understand. I totally, totally understand but I can tell you this, these are the things that I would’ve missed had I done that, and this is a very, very short condensed list because the Lord has blessed me since then. And now I understand that maybe those things happened to me because I was strong enough to endure them so then later on, I could help other people who have been through this type of situation and these tragedies and these hardships. And, you know, I would have missed my husband that I have now. He loves me more than anything in this whole wide world and he takes good care of me. And I would’ve missed seeing my children to grow up and enjoying grandchildren. Riding my motorcycle out in the middle of the country and being able to pray for all of you…

Hi DAB family I’m calling in to ask for prayer for my daughter. She graduated high school and then went to college for a semester and then she’s not going to be returning and she’s really gotten into some really difficult times in her life and she carries a lot of weight from her childhood from…her dad committed suicide when she was four years old and that’s been coming up a lot. And she told me that she’s was having dreams and I can’t go into detail but there are some things that could cause a mother…afraid to have a lot of worry but that’s what I don’t want to do. I’m actually pregnant and I just pray that…I ask that you guys pray with us…my husband and I…for __ this down and we’ll have a healthy pregnancy but pray for my daughter. She really needs prayer right now. She is, I guess, what you would say a prodigal. And, so, she, I don’t think wants anything to do with God right now and just a very, very hard time in her life. Thank you so much.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family my name is Tammy I’m from Georgia today is January the 5^th. I’m calling specifically for anonymous. I’ve listened for 10 years completely and I have never called in, but your message has just really hit my heart. I would love to be your friend and I want you to know that you’re never alone and if you would love to reach out to me my email address is tammygrace23@gmail.com, tammygrace23@gmail.com. Anonymous, I’m praying for you and you are never alone. Jesus loves you and He has you honey. Please email me.

Genesis 23:1-24:51, Matthew 8:1-17, Psalms 9:13-20, Proverbs 3:1-6

Today is the 10^th day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian and it’s great to be here with you today. And well, this is the 10^th day of the year. So, 10 days equals a week and a half. So, that’s where we are in the year even as we approach the end of the week, the first full week of this year. So, we have indeed begun our voyage and we are sailing straight out into the deep, and probably by now we can see that the Bible hot to say that’s very, very, very poignant to the lives that we’re living right now. And, so, let’s continue that voyage. Today, we’re going to say goodbye to somebody that…that we’ve gotten to know a little bit and we’re gonna see ourselves beginning in the Old Testament to shift into a new generation. So, we’ve been reading from the New International Version this week and we’ll do that today. Genesis chapter 23 verse 1 through 24 verse 51.

Commentary:

Okay. So, a couple things just to point out today and consider as we prepare to go into our first weekend of the year.

So, let’s go to the book of Genesis. We said goodbye to Sarai, who’s name had become Sarah, who was, you know, when we got into the meat of the story, she was already kind of an elderly woman who then gave birth to a son of promise whose name is Isaac. And this is where we kind of begin to shift into the next generation. So, Abraham sends a trusted servant to go find a wife for this son of promise, Isaac. And, so, he sends the servant back to his own family because this is a child that…like there’s a huge promise over this and we will see how that story begins to play out as we continue it tomorrow. But Sarah, she dies. And, so, Abraham…Abraham is…he’s a foreigner so he’s not a landowner. He has plenty of…of material goods. He’s wealthy, but he’s not a landowner and he needs some land now to establish a burial ground. And this is kind of the first owned land by Abraham who’s received this promise in this land of promise, and it actually has some significance, some significance that we’re not going to really understand until we get a little bit further in the story, but let’s just remember where this burial cave is. It is near Hebron according to the Bible and it is the cave of Machpelah according to the Bible and it is in the Valley of Eshkol according to the Bible. We’re gonna see this place again in the Bible, but I should point out that this place still does exist until today. It’s called the tomb of the patriarchs at this point and it’s a kind of enclosed by…by a large structure that was built in the Herodian era. And, so, we’ve just basically buried Sarah. She’s the first person to be buried in this cave, but she’s certainly not going to be the last. And Abraham himself will eventually be buried in this cave. And, so, it’s the tomb of the patriarchs and it’s a bit of a contentious well-regarded place because of where it’s situated and what it represents. Obviously, the tomb of Abraham has significance for Jewish people and Christian believers as well as those who practice Islam. So, it is that one of the holiest pilgrimage sites in the world until today.

Then we move into the book of Proverbs and now Proverbs is almost pleading with us and simply reaching out her hand to say, “I have everything that you are struggling to figure out. I have everything you need, and I have everything you want. So, you can struggle, you can grasp and thrash and connive and deceive and manipulate. You can withhold information, you can curate, you can…you can make something false look true and even fool yourself. And you can think that you’ve accumulated all the things that you want and you’re surrounded by all this life and lifestyle that you think you deserve or that you think that you’re after and it won’t be what you’re looking for and it will collapse on you. And in some cases great will be that thunder or you can listen to me and I will just give you what you need to know to navigate this life. And none of the things you’re trying to hold onto or achieve our grasp will be able to enslave you because you will be wise.” So, I just want to give voice once again to what wisdom was speaking to us from the Scriptures. Let’s listen to these words again, because we’re only like a week and a half into the year and this is what we need to know to navigate the rest of the year. So, this is wisdom speaking, “do not forget my teaching. Keep my commands in your heart”, right? So, this is as deep as it goes if you’re gonna keep something in your heart. “But if you do”, She says, “if you keep them in your heart, they’ll prolong your life many years and bring you peace and prosperity. Let love and faithfulness never leave you.” Okay, love and faithfulness. “bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart, then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man”. Very different than a curated respect that we try to make in our lives that is ultimately propped up and false. This is…what wisdom is speaking to us is something that is a real and true. And She goes on to say what many of us may have memorized but all of us need to take to heart. This is something to put in our hearts as wisdom was suggesting. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”, right? Don’t lean on what you think you know. You do not know all that you think you know. “In all your ways submit to Him and He will make your paths straight.” So, I…again…I mean…well the question is, is that what you’re looking for because this is where the Bible is headed, So, we’re like a week and a half in and we’ve set sail and you’re like, you know, “this is not what I’m looking for. I was hoping for, you know, better ways to manipulate people and get things that I wanted.” Then this is not the right ship. But if you’ve been on a windy path that has taken you…taken you through territory that you never wanted to experience and you’re trying to find some sort of illuminated path that will lead you to somewhere that makes sense in life, here it is. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to Him and He will make your paths straight.”

Prayer:

Father, as we prepare to move ourselves into the end of a week and as we look back over just the first bit of time that we’ve had in the Scriptures this year, it's…ahh…yeah…we can already see where this is going and we want it because for the first time it feels like we might be able to go somewhere. And now we’re realizing that where we’re going is going to required trust and not understanding. And now we have pause because that can bring us a great amount of fear because You are simply exposing our need to be in control and our awareness that we must trust in You with all of our hearts if we want a straight path before us. So, come Holy Spirit into that as we meditate upon that and consider that during the events of today and in the days ahead. Come Jesus we pray. In Your mighty name, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here. And there’s always something or another going on around here. So, stay tuned and stay connected at the website.

Kind of been talking this week somewhat unintentionally about the Daily Audio Bible Shop just because of the different themes and stuff that we’ve been approaching in the Bible. So, I got guess I’ll do that again. The Daily Audio Bible Shop is available and the resources that are in the Daily Audio Bible Shop certainly…certainly everything that is shipped from the Shop helps to keep the lights on and keep…and keep the incredible amount of data bandwidth that gets used every day of flowing. But we certainly don’t exist on the Shop. The resources that are in the Shop have been created over time for this particular specific journey, the one that we’re on moving through the Bible in a year. And just understanding that that becomes a rhythm and that anything that we can bring into our lives that help us with a rhythm, a path that we are wanting to walk on, anything that we bring into our lives that remind us, that continually keep us focused, that’s very helpful. So, that’s why these resources exist. So, certainly check them out.

I will…I will mention the God of Your Story, which is the…the newest written resource that we have. And that came out late last year. That is a dated 365-day devotional format that follows the same plan we use at the Daily Audio Bible and offers the same kind of thoughts that we’re talking about. I mean, the Daily Audio Bible, it’s different every year, it’s different every day. Sometimes talking about the same things we talked about a year ago and sometimes we’ve…we’re talking about things…there’s things this year we’ve never talked about before already. But there is a path through the Scriptures. And, so, it took a couple of years, 600 writing days to do it, but it’s kind of a written tangible holdable version of the kind of story that we’re telling as we’re moving our way through the Bible. So, if you’re ever without Internet or you just kinda want to double dip, you wanna go through the Daily Audio Bible and hear what we’re talking about but then also kind of go back and review, then the God of your story is a fantastic resource for that and it can be found in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. So, check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com as well. There is a link that just kind of hangs out and lives on the homepage. And I thank you with all my heart 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 mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request comment 877-942-4253 is the number to dial or you can press the Hotline button in the app, the…well…its at the top. You can’t miss it, the little Hotline button and start sharing your story.

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

Genesis 20:1-22:24, Matthew 7:15-29, Psalms 9:1-12, Proverbs 2:16-22

Today is the 9^th day of January, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is wonderful…wonderful to be here with you on a great day out in front of us, the next day forward moving. We’re ourselves toward a week and a half now being in this new year and decade. So, it’s like we’re on this voyage together. If we look behind us we can still see the distant faint line of the shore and we’re just kind of getting moving but we are headed out into the deep, and I am so excited about sharing a little bit of every day has this rhythm of our lives becomes established and we allow God’s Word to speak into it each day. So, today’s a new day and we have new territory to cover. We’re reading from the New International Version this week. Today Genesis chapters 20, 21, 22.

Commentary:

Okay. Let’s look at a couple things, one thing in Genesis and one thing in Matthew today just to mainly point them out. We have experienced or touched on these ideas before and one of those is this language, “the angel of the Lord” or “the Lord.” We…we experience this in today’s reading, where God calls out to Hagar. And it says, “the Lord called out to Hagar from heaven”, right? And then he spoke to her about Ishmael. But then God told Abraham to take Isaac and sacrifice him. And during that story, the angel of the Lord called out from heaven, but then spoke in first person as God…as the most-high God. So, I point that out just to show the…the angel of the Lord is not necessarily like a messenger sent from God, the angel of the Lord is a way of…of identifying God. So, what we are seeing here in these early chapters of the Bible is God, very, very actively interacting and being around and upon the earth, interacting with human beings and we’re also seeing this divine family, for lack of a better word, this spiritual realm of beings that are doing the same thing. So, it’s interesting that we’re like, “okay. So, then when did this stop and all the sudden, we have these books that are named after prophets and we have all their writings in…in the Bible and God talked to them so that they could then talk to the people. But here were just seeing God speak on his own behalf about things. When we see this shift?” We’ll begin to see this shift when Moses begins to show up on the scene, which is several centuries from now, at least where we are in the Bible. And we’ll just…we’ll just keep exploring this as we go. There’s so many little things to see, so many little things to become aware of as we…as we continue make this journey.

So, then we go into the book of Matthew and Jesus is talking about prophets, right? People speaking in God’s name as if God has told them a message to give. And He’s also talking about true and false disciples. You know, I…I am a person who grew up in church. So, I’ve been around church people and church life pretty much my whole life. So, this idea of true and false prophets and true and false disciples, this is not a new concept. I’ve heard it my whole life. But since we’re reading it in the Bible, we see that it’s for sure not a new concept, it dates back to the very beginning. Those are labels and attached to them are judgments, right? If you say, “you are a false prophet” you are labeling that person and judging that person based on whatever criteria you are using to make that judgment or if you are saying, “you are a false disciple, you are not a true disciple of Jesus”, then that’s a label and that’s judgment and it comes out of criteria that has been established somehow. And we do this kind of stuff…like I see it now more than ever, probably because when I was growing up you couldn’t flame these things out on the Internet and just shoot the arrows out there and it’s so much easier. But the thing is, we label people false this and false that without having ever spoken a word to them and largely based on whatever swirl of information may be flying around. So, in this day and age eat, you know, you can become a false prophet by asking the wrong questions, right? So, we…we sort for our dogmas because we just want it to be very crystal black-and-white clear what the expectations of the faith are. And, so, if we can arrive at something that even resembles that, which is impossible really, but if we arrive at something that makes sense to us then we’ll defend that line, right? Because that’s what we believe, and anything that would disrupt that would make us feel unsteady and unstable in our faith. And, so, we can get really, really erratic when we feel like, right, when we’re being pressured in any way in our lives. Wrestling with your faith is not a sin, it’s an expectation. How will you grow? How do you grow in any way of your life without resistance, without being disrupted, without having to walk through valleys, without having to see the mountaintops and actually experience the valleys below? We are starting to read the story of a people. They are not formed yet. There is only two people involved. Right now, Abraham and Isaac but those two people are going to become a people and those people will eventually become Israel and they are the progeny of a person named Jacob and his name means one who wrestles with God. This is baked into our tradition. So, running around labeling people false this and false that without using the measuring criteria that Jesus gave, so in terms of like a false prophet Jesus said, “by their fruit you will recognize them.” Okay. So, that’s easy, that’s external. We can look around and go, “well, I judge that person’s fruit to be false.” And there you go. So, you make your judgment. But Jesus doesn’t just stop there with the external judgment which we might make about people. He brings it very, very, very close to home because after He talks about how you will understand a false prophet by their fruits he says, “not, everybody who tells me, “Lord, Lord” is going to enter the kingdom of heaven. Only the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. Many…many are gonna say, “didn’t we prophesy in your name? Didn’t we drive out demons in your name? Didn’t we perform miracles in your name?” So, let’s pause here for second and point out. Those must not be the criteria that make a person true. And, so, we could judge them as true. Even a person who can prophesy, even a person who can drive out demons, even a person who can perform miracles. Jesus is saying there will be people like that who do not enter the kingdom of heaven and there’s a reason. Jesus says, “I never knew you. I never knew you.” Could we just linger there for second? We can work our entire lives trying to get every dot dotted, get our theology perfect, get our doctrine bulletproof. And I…I am a person who has made those attempts. I am a person who thought if…if that…if I could just apply yourself that significantly to just finally getting it right, what is expected of me? Then maybe I could know God. And maybe I could stop constantly, constantly worrying about whether He’s mad at me or whether He loves me. And I started realizing like, how can…how can you call that a relationship? Like, how do…there’s no other relationship in my life that could work like that. How do you call that a relationship? And then it’s this verse, “I never knew you” that really helped me to realize, knowing all you can possibly know about God is not the same as being in a relationship with God any more than knowing everything that you can know about your spouse on paper represents the actual living relationship of your life. Jesus is basically saying the criteria that you use to make somebody a big shot, like somebody who can prophesy or drive out a demon or perform a miracle, that does not mean you even know me. Yeah, that’s disruptive indeed, isn’t it? Because all the blinking lights and flashing stuff that we look for as proof isn’t the fruit Jesus is looking for. And we will continue to talk about these things in the teachings of Jesus as long as we’re talking about Jesus, which means that we’re gonna be talking about this all year long.

Prayer:

Father we thank You for Your word and we thank You for another day, another…another step forward as we continue to journey, even though we’re just setting sail, You are already at work in our hearts in comforting and in shaking ways. We just open ourselves to You. We just invite Your Holy Spirit to come. You have promised that You would lead us into all truth and that's…that’s what we’re counting on, that You will. So, come Holy Spirit we pray. In the mighty name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what’s going on around here.

Yesterday I was talking about the Shop and journaling and…and stuff like that. Today I should probably, because of what we were just talking about, I should talk about some…some of the written resources that are in the Daily Audio Bible Shop, especially from today, a resource called Reframe. I mean, what we were just talking about very briefly, the fruit of a relationship, the difference between knowing about and actually knowing God was a lengthy, a lengthy theological pursuit for me that ended up becoming a book and it’s called Reframe. So, if some of the stuff we’re talking about here…if you’re like, “yeah, these are the kinds of things I’ve been wrestling with too”, then there’s much more lengthy discussion on that subject available in the book Reframe which you can find in audio form or in book form in the Daily Audio Bible Shop at dailyaudiobible.com.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible in the mission that we have as a community, which is to bring the spoken word of God read fresh every day and offer it to the world freely to anyone who will listen to it anywhere on this planet any time of day or night, and to build community around that rhythm so that as we take this voyage through the Scriptures we know that we’re not doing it alone and we know we will never be alone. If that is something that resonates and brings life to you then I thank you humbly, deeply, with the most gratitude I know how to have for your partnership. There’s 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, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

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