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Daily Transcripts
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06/23/2015
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2 Kings 4:18-5:27 ~ Acts 15:1-31 ~ Psalm 141:1-10 ~ Proverbs 17:23
Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. Today is June 23rd. I'm Brian. It is wonderful to be here with you today, excited to dive into the scriptures and into all that God will speak to us through his Word today. This week we’re spending reading from The Voice translation and picking up where we left off yesterday with the kings of Israel, the kings of Judah, but also the incredible work of right now the prophet Elisha in all of that.
Commentary:
There is plenty we could talk about today. In the book of Acts we see this first church council, this first time where there are differing opinions that need to be formed into one cohesive message. It is regarding what to do with people who come to the faith in Jesus Christ but are not Jewish people because in the Jerusalem church to this time, Jewish believers were living into the fact that Jesus completed the law, that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. They were living into that very Jewishness in their religion and so had just assumed that faith in Christ would invite a person to essentially come into faith in the Mosaic Law and to a Jewish lifestyle, whereas those evangelists out on the ground among these people were trying to figure out why their salvation was predicated upon the Jewish religious traditions, including the tradition of circumcision, especially when the evidence of the Holy Spirit's activity in their lives was overwhelmingly evident. So they come together to sort this out.
We read the proclamation ‘Live your life, a true life of faith devoted to Christ, but adhere to these things - stay away from sexual immorality, stay away from blood, stay away from food that has been strangled, stay away from food that has been sacrificed to an idol.’ James put it clearly. This stuff is common. This stuff is known all over the place, found in synagogues everywhere and so this became the proclamation of the church.
It was a costly thing historically because although it was liberating to those who were coming to faith in Jesus Christ who were not Jewish people by ethnicity or by conversion, it clearly set the church of Jesus Christ apart as something separate from Judaism, it was already either persecuted or barely tolerated and now those outside of the church, outside of those who had found faith in Christ had really no friends. We begin to see clearly the sacrifice it took for the freedoms that most of us have today spiritually in this world.
Of course, in the Old Testament, 2 Kings, we’re getting to know Elisha pretty well. We have this very dramatic story of Naaman, the Aramenian warrior who has leprosy and all of the drama of the letter to the king and him coming before Elisha but Elisha not being willing to come out and acknowledge him. This is a guy of prestige. He is certainly a military warrior, an excellent strategist who has gotten used to being honored and revered among his people so to be bopped from the king of Israel over to this prophet who will not come out and wave the magic wand and do this incredibly difficult ceremony and hopefully cleanse him, he is kind of ticked. He takes it as an insult for Elisha to send out somebody who just says ‘hey, go wash in the Jordan River 7 times and you’ll be healed.’ He takes his insult with him and rides away.
It is fascinating because his offense is more important to him than his redemption. It is more important to him that he keep his pride than find healing. You can see the parallels there. So often it is more important that we be right than that we find restoration, that we are able to hold onto some sort of fences as a badge of honor and a piece of our identity that sort of defines everything that we do, whether we become victims in everything or whether we become high and mighty and Lord it over other people because of these offenses, that we miss the fact that it is pretty simple to become healed, pretty simple to find restoration and redemption but we have to set it down and let it go and become pliant and obedient. It is Naaman's servants that kind of come up to him with heads bowed and humility. They know what he is capable of. And they just say, ‘Look, the thing is, Naaman, if he had come and told you some massively difficult thing you needed to achieve or do, if he had come and done the song and dance, you would have done anything. He told you something super, super, super simple and what do you have to lose?’
It was really not until this point that Naaman is like, ‘That's right. That's true. What do I have to lose besides my pride? I can take my pride, I can take my offense back across the Jordan River and go back to Aram and die of this. This can eat me alive,’ which is what offenses do in our lives. When we hold onto that bitterness, it becomes exactly that, a poison that will eat us to death from the inside out, killing our hearts. So Naaman is like, ‘I can go back to Aram and I can die or I can dip in the Jordan River and probably just go back to Aram and die, but who knows?’ And he does. He does the simple thing. He jumps down into the Jordan River and has a quick bath. Then he comes up out of that water healed.
We all have things that are kind of stuck in places of our history that have become seething, oozing boils in our lives. They’ve become diseased in our history and they bleed themselves into our present and out in front of us, inviting us into a different future than one that is free. What if it is as simple as being cleansed and letting it go? What if it is as simple as releasing them to God and understanding you're not carrying around anything that is going to do anything good in your life? A lot of times we’re carrying them around because we want justice, we want to be the sovereign in the situation, we want to be the Lord of it. Once again we realize we can’t because we’re not. We can’t be the lord of it because we’re not the Lord.
One thing we can do is release it to the Lord, the Sovereign, the God who has created us lovingly as we read in Psalms 2 days ago. He crafted us as an artisan, beautifully, wonderfully. There is nowhere we can go that he is not. There is nowhere that we are that he is not. We can turn it over now. May we accept the offer and release that situation, that person, that season, that thing that has been festering, may we release it to God so that we might be made whole.
Prayer:
Father, we do. As an act of our will, we release that. We release that thing that happened. We release that person. We release that season. We release whatever that is in our story that has been so deeply wounding and has become festered and oozing and poisonous in our system and is killing us as we try to manage it and try to hold onto it, looking for a way to be the Sovereign Lord in judgment of it. We release it to you. We invite your Holy Spirit to come, heal us, restore us, renew us, make us new again, just like you made Naaman's skin new again, like that of an infant. Renew us. Make us new again. Give us a whole heart back that we might love you with all of it. We need all of you in order to be all of us. Come Holy Spirit, we pray. We are begging for your mercy and your forgiveness. We’ve held onto this stuff too long. Come Holy Spirit, we need you now and there is nowhere we can go that you are not and so you are here now. We are simply acknowledging that fact and with all that we have in us, we release all of that to you. Come Jesus, we pray in your precious and mighty name, amen.
Www.DailyAudioBible.com is the website, is home base, it's where you find out what’s going on around here, and what's going on around here is travel. It's back on the road. This first event in our summer travels with the Shock and Awe Show at these music festivals begins tomorrow. It's Creation Festival, Mount Union, PA. I think it is Friday that I’ll be participating for a little bit, so if you're attending Creation, make sure to come say hello at some point. Love the chance to meet you.
Next week it will be up in Maine at River Rock. The weekend after that it will be in Lexington, KY at Ichthus Festival. The weekend after that it will be up in Minneapolis at the Sonshine Festival and then the tour will end as the month of July ends at Creation Northwest, the Tri-Cities of Washington. And then the focus will start turning toward Reframe. I’ll be speaking at the Penn Theatre in Plymouth, MI at The Heartbeat of Plymouth the 15th and 16th of August, both evenings. If you are in that area, love to see you. Love to shake your hand, hug your neck, hear your story, so be sure to come out.
Okay, one more thing. Two weeks from today is a special day in the Daily Audio Bible Community. It is July 7th, so if you’ve been around for more than 1 year, then you already know this. If this is your first time through with the Daily Audio Bible Community, July 7th is a special day for us. It is a day that we call The Long Walk. It is something that we do individually but together. It is just kind of where we’re at the halfway point of the year, we’re right in that area where we’ve journeyed halfway through the Bible and we set aside a day or a part of a day to go for a long walk with God, which might sound strange or it might sound like that is exactly what I need or whatever. It's an invitation to find somewhere beautiful near where you live or travel to somewhere beautiful, wherever you want to be. Give yourself permission to take a day and walk with God.
When we are first falling in love or we have a good friend, it is not unusual that we would go on a long walk together and just spend time, even waste time together getting to know each other, growing deeper in the friendship. That is what The Long Walk is all about. It's we’re halfway through the scriptures, we’ve been walking with God, life doesn’t stop being chaotic, right? So it is permission that we grant ourselves to go somewhere, slow it all down, reorient ourselves to God by spending time talking and saying everything that needs to be said that we can’t find the time to say and take the time to hear back, inviting Jesus to share his hopes and dreams for the rest of this year. That's The Long Walk.
That is something we’ll be doing all over the world together but individually. We just say hey, wherever it is that you go, whatever it is that you do for The Long Walk, snap a picture or shoot a short little video while you're out there among the beauty near you and then come back to the Daily Audio Bible Facebook page, which is www.Facebook.com/DailyAudioBible, post to the page and all of a sudden we have this beautiful thing that happens – little tiny windows into each other's lives where we can just look in, peer in just for a quick snapshot, quick little video and it is just a beautiful mosaic of our community for the year. It is also a beautiful window into each other's lives. So put July 7th on your calendar and we’ll look forward to doing this together.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, thank you. Humbly thank you. This is how it all exists. So if the Daily Audio Bible and the community and the rhythm of life is a life-giving thing to you, then thank you for your partnership. There is a link on the home page, upper right-hand corner of the website, www.DailyAudioBible.com or, if you prefer, the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996, Spring Hill, TN 37174.
As always, if you have a prayer request or comment, (877) 942-4253 is the number to call.
That’s it for today. I’m Brian. I love you. I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports
Hey DAB family. This is Byron out in Florida, just calling to give praise and thanks to the Lord and God for how good he has been to me lately. We had a mishap here at the house and the plumbing backed up and the toilet flooded and saturated our bedroom carpet and just made a big mess of things. My wife was here with all three of the kids because it's summertime. She called me at work about what was going on and she was awesome about it. She was amazing about it. We took care of the issue and it was just great. In the past, a mess like this would have just resulted in an argument and just a really rough time. It was the complete opposite. This thing brought us closer together. When I think about what has made a difference between that happening in the past and what just happened, all I can say is that your prayers are making a huge difference. Thank you guys so much for lifting us up with __________. Specifically, I'm still months behind, for Chris and Pastor Gene, thank you so much for lifting me up. And my good friend Jim with the list of marriages there, thank you for keeping me and my wife on that. It is really making a difference. And thank you for all those who I haven’t heard yet or are just praying in secret. Thank you so much. Your prayers are making a difference in my marriage, in my home, in my family. Please continue to do so and I’ll do that for you. Thank you, Brian and Jill for this wonderful, amazing thing that we have that is so unique. I love you guys and I’ll talk to you later. Bye.
Good morning family. This is Biola from Maryland. I hope you're all doing well. Jill, still been praying for you. Thank you, Lord, for your healing power over Jill's life. Father, Lord of Heaven, thank you, God, for the removal of everything that doesn’t belong in her body and I thank you for healing, complete, total healing, in the name of Jesus. And I thank you for Brian's ministry. God of Heaven, I pray that you’ll continue to provide for his needs. People, it is time to start thinking about how to __________ your finances and start giving unto Brian's ministry, in the name of Jesus. Lisa from North Carolina, I heard your prayer request. I stand in agreement with you in the name of Jesus and I come against every force of darkness that has been aligned against you and I begin to cancel their work in your life, in the name of Jesus. Every spirit sent to harass you I begin to confound their language, in Jesus’ name. The Word of God says that every device of the crafty will come to nothing and so I begin to pray that over your life, that every device of the crafty will come to nothing, in the name of Jesus. Sister, keep in prayer. Stay under the covering of God concerning the Word of God and __________. God bless you. Megan, I did not quite hear your __________. I played the message twice to listen to your message again. Thank God that you finished your college. I'm praying for that internship. The Lord who made a way and provided it will also provide the funds. Keep holding on, sister, for that. Pray, O God, for opened heavens, O God, even over Megan. Megan? You know her name. I pray, O God, that you will provide that money, in Jesus’ name. That brother that gave the testimony about when he gets angry his wife plays the Daily Audio Bible, oh, how I laughed. I laughed so hard, brother. You did not give your name, but God bless you. Sister, if you're listening, the brother's wife, thank you for being a wise woman. God bless you. Anyway, I'm also praying for Janet. Janet, I'm praying for your business, your husband's business. I pray that God will restore everything that __________ stolen, he will restore finances unto you, he will build you up. Thank you, Lord, for Janet's husband's health, in Jesus’ name. God bless you.
Good morning, family. This is Shannon calling from Seattle. I really need prayer. I am in the process of moving out of my house and selling it, but I really don’t want to, so I'm asking you to please pray that if there is some way for me to stay in my home, God will come through because I know he can if it is meant to be. So if you could keep me in your prayers, I would sure appreciate it. I just have so many attacks coming against me. I hurt my back. I'm having some relationship problems that I would really love to see restored and mended and healed. So please pray. Drew from the Bay Area, I had called in because, brother, I was praying for you and I still am for your graduation. I just had my son's college graduation last night. Woo-hoo! Praise God! Thank you for all your prayers along the way for me and my family. I have the same situation. Everything went fine. Brother, I'm believing the same for you. I also want to give a praise report for a family friend, Barbara, who had pancreatic cancer surgery last December. She is doing well. So thank you for all the prayers there. Despite everything that is going through and everything, God is good. God is so good. I love you all. I pray for you all daily when I hear your prayers. Hope to call in and I will call in. I will call in with a praise report very soon. Thank you.
Hello Daily Audio Bible. This is formerly Amy from Columbus, GA, who lost her husband in September 2013, police officer husband, and I'm now Amy of East Tennessee. I moved back home to my home state after my husband died. Stuck it out for a little while, but bad things happen. When your husband had been a police officer for 37-1/2 years, pretty bad things can happen after he goes, after he dies. People are cruel. So I ran for the hills and that is where I'm at. I'm hidden out in far east Tennessee, backed up against the North Carolina line. I'm doing well. Girl twin stood right by me while it happened and got me through it. Boy twin didn’t. Now they have reversed. Girl twin has freaked out at the 1-year anniversary mark, September, and boy twin has stepped up and is beside me and the roles have reversed. It is such a rollercoaster still. There is a new man in my life which has caused me to lose a lot of friendships, people judging and apparently people just not ready to hear the words I’ve got a man in my life, but God puts people in our path that he wants to be there and I'm just rolling with it. But I'm still alive, still a listener, just have felt the need to stay quiet. Several of you have touched me lately with your requests and I wanted all of you to know, especially you police officer wives, that I'm praying for you every single day. I'm still here, part of the community. Love all of you.
Hello DAB family. This is __________ in Texas. I’ve been wanting to call in for many, many months now but I felt too shy and I thought my reason for prayer against those __________, but the devil is a liar. I __________ mentioned that I'm a third year medical student from Canada and I'm doing my internship in Texas. For over a year I’ve been feeling like I’ve been under attack mentally. I find myself doubting my intelligence and my abilities and these thoughts have really crippled me. I'm just at a point where I feel as though I’ve lost my fervor and most importantly my focus to get done. I'm not one who fears hard work, so this isn’t an issue of being lazy. I just really need your prayers, family, to clear my mind of distractions and grant me the focus and the vigor to complete my studies to my fullest potential. I really love this community. I listen every day. I pray for you all during my bus ride to clinic or at home when I'm getting ready for work and I really truly appreciate any and all prayers. I feel that I'm desperate for them. I completely believe in the power of prayer, so I welcome many prayers. Thank you very much in advance and God bless you all.
Good morning, Daily Audio Bible family. This is Alphaio calling from Delaware. Wanted to call in today to wish all the fathers Happy Father's Day. I came across a poem that I wanted to share with all the fathers and it is entitled What Makes a Dad? God took the strength of a mountain, the majesty of a tree, the warmth of a summer sun, the calm of a quiet sea, the generous soul of nature, the comforting arm of night, the wisdom of the ages, the power of the eagle's flight, the joy of a morning in the spring, the faith of a mustard seed, the patience of eternity, the depth of a family need then combined these qualities. When there was nothing more to add, he knew his masterpiece was complete and so he called it dad. Happy Father's Day to all the fathers in this community and all over the world. God bless you.
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Tamarie 06/23/2015 07:58 |
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