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Daily Transcripts
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06/24/2015
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2 Kings 6:1-7:20 ~ Acts 15:36-16:15 ~ Psalm 142:1-7 ~ Proverbs 17:24-25
Today is June 24th. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian. It’s great to be here with you today, a travel day as the summer festival tour begins. So here we go. Get ready for living out of a suitcase for a little bit because I’ve got you in mine. We always have fun when we travel around together. Then I never have to be alone and I love that very much about this community. Many, many times I’ve been alone traveling and had the feeling like, nope, we’re never alone. Certainly we’re never alone with God, but we’re never alone with each other and I love that.
So we are reading from The Voice translation this week, picking up in 2 Kings and the story of the kings, certainly, but also right now the prophet Elisha.
Commentary:
We encounter two significant stories in Elisha's journey in the book of 2 Kings today and they both involve conflict between the Arameans and the Israelites and they both center themselves around the capital city of Samaria.
Samaria is the capital of the northern kingdom, so it is like the Jerusalem of the north. It is the country's capital city. It is a big deal and Samaria's ruins still exist until today, although they are very, very rarely visited now simply because of their geographical location and the tension in the region. But we did have the chance to visit Samaria and go in with some cameras this past visit. It was one of the places that I had wanted to visit for several years and we just couldn’t get in. It is pretty remarkable even as we read this story, but even then to stand at the top of this mound and look at its strategic location and the ancient ruins that are there, blocks of stone still sit there from this palace all these thousands of years ago around these stories.
The first story that is almost comical in nature is where the Aramean army is so angry that somebody is spying and giving away to Israel the secrets of their movement and it is really God speaking to Elisha. So they surround the city of Dothan where Elisha is staying and Elisha's servant wakes up to see the city surrounded. His fear is palpable and he says what we would all say, right? He says to his master, Elisha, “What are we going to do now?” It is a very human thing to say. “What are we going to do now?”
Elisha says what we should do now. “Have no fear. We have more on our side than they do.”
Let that sink in for a second. That is the response to “what are we going to do now?” That should be the response to ‘what are we going to do now’ from now on.
God opens the servant's eyes and he begins to see the Heavenly Host. He begins to see that that is a reality, not just words of comfort, a reality. God strikes the army that is in pursuit of Elisha blind and he leads them into the city of Samaria. He leads them into the capital city. So when the gates close behind them, the army is captive. When God opens their eyes, the shock must have been quite a shock. Israel could have done away with her enemies right then and there, but instead they fed them and gave them drink and patted them on the back and sent them on their way, thus ending the conflict.
The second story happens with the Arameans again and they have decided they are going to capture Samaria. They’ve got it surrounded. There is already famine, but there is brutal famine inside the city because there is no way to resupply it and it has been a long time. People are so desperate that, as we read, they are eating each other. That is as dire and desperate as it gets. The king is on the wall mourning, trying to figure out what he is going to do next when he hears that tragic story of two mothers eating their kids. That is horrible and the king's response is appropriate. It is horrible. He tears his robe. He puts on sackcloth. What he does next, though, is fascinating. He decides that he has to do something. This is such a dire situation. He is so hopeless that he needs to react and what he decides to do in his reaction is to kill Elisha the prophet who is in the city suffering as well. He decides he is going to kill Elisha because Elisha is the prophet of God and God is doing all of this and that is the plan.
That is a fascinating plan, to go kill the ambassador of the only one that can save you, to turn your anger on the only one that can save you. This is also our story. We are so often reactionary and so often our reaction is in anger against the only one who can save us.
These kings have had this problem, as we’ve read over and over and over. They want to go after the prophets because they want to go after God because the suffering is God's fault when continually they are reminded this is not God's fault. This is your fault. You have brought this down on your own head.
We can see this clearly when we disassociate it and read it as a story in someone else's life. When we read it as a story from the scriptures, we can see that clearly. This is when the Bible becomes a mirror that we have to stare into, because we don’t often see that we just want to react until it becomes clear that we actually have volition. We actually have a will. We actually make choices. We actually have the dignity of those choices mattering, but we do have the choice to walk with God as we are designed and we also have the choice not to. It is not fair, just like it wasn’t in these stories in 1 and 2 Kings to blame God for what he didn’t do. Again, we have the opportunity to reframe the way we respond and react to God.
The way this story plays out is that Elisha prophesies an impossible thing that nobody can really imagine, how the entire economic system can be so transformed that there will be commerce in the marketplace within a day, but that is exactly what happens in the city of Samaria and the city is saved.
Prayer:
There is much to learn from these stories. Holy Spirit, we invite you to plant them into our lives, till them into the soil of our hearts, plant them deep, plant them at the level of our identity that they may go deeper than some intellectual knowledge, that they may become a part of the fabric of our lives, of our identities, that they will change us irreversibly. This is what we ask for and we ask in the name of Jesus, amen.
Www.DailyAudioBible.com is home. It is the website. It is where you find out what’s going on around here, and what's going on around here now is this summer festival tour that I have been invited to participate in a little bit. So there will be some travel. I’ll be sure to post some pictures and stuff to all the social media channels so you can follow along. If you are out and about doing the summer festivals in your neck of the woods, be sure to come and say hello. Love to meet you.
I also started mentioning yesterday, July 7th. So it is two weeks from yesterday, this little tradition we have in this family – the Daily Audio Bible Long Walk. It is as simple as its name and as profound as your deepest heart. It is a day we set aside as a community. You're not out of the community if you don’t do this, but so many thousands of people do. It is just every July 7th we set aside to walk with God. It is kind of a long story how it became a Daily Audio Bible tradition, but it goes all the way back to 2007.
So Daily Audio Bible was just a year old and there was this big massive prayer gathering in Nashville, but part of it was this multiple thousand person march from a place called Centennial Park in Nashville all the way to the stadium where this prayer event was happening. It is like a 3-mile walk and it was in silence. It was a repentance kind of walk and an intercession kind of day. Walking that walk and seeing that sea of humanity first of all made me feel like this is similar to what the Daily Audio Bible is looking like if we were to get together.
This event was televised and so it was really interesting that so many people that could get it from all over the place and were watching while this was happening. It was like that moment where technology started to click. Nothing like what we have now, it has advanced so much in the years since 2007 even, which isn’t that long ago, but it was like we were all together in this and it became a tradition.
There was one person who was a listener that went for like a 20-mile walk, a really long, long, long walk and was like sort of posting the reflections per mile sort of thing and it just all knit together to become The Long Walk the next year and we’ve been doing it ever since, just as a physical representation of the community, but also permission to walk with God, something we’re supposed to be doing all the time throughout our lives in fellowship and interaction and friendship and this deep abiding that is offered to us in the scriptures. We don’t do that very much. Life is very, very busy. Yet if we did walk with God every day, like that was the priority was to walk with God, then what would that do to revolutionize our lives?
So The Long Walk is a one-day representation. Find somewhere beautiful, whether it is a local park on your lunch break or whether you drive a couple of hours to somewhere that you find beautiful and spend the day, spend intentional time, time that you can even waste just being together with God. Not like diving in and saying, ‘okay, I’ve got 10 minutes. Here are the things that I need you to do.” That just isn’t really a relationship. A relationship is in the silence. It is in the spoken. It is in the presence of one another.
So we invite God's presence all the time, but we don’t always offer our presence back. We’re not always present to God. We’re usually asking him to do something. What if we went somewhere? Somewhere that was beautiful, somewhere that would remind us of how carefully God has crafted this lavish place for us to live in beauty that reminds us and pulls us back to him. What if we went out among that, spent intentional time pouring all that is in our hearts out and allowing him to speak back to us? That is The Long Walk.
So plan for it July 7th. Thousands of people will be doing it all over the world. The one thing that we ask from the Daily Audio Bible perspective is just snap a picture out there. Take a short video out there. Wherever it is that you go, whether it is just a quick thing that you can do or whether it is an all day thing that you can do, snap a picture, a reminder for yourself. Then go to the Facebook page, www.Facebook.com/DailyAudioBible and post it up. That is fun because it becomes this little window. It doesn’t have to be a picture of you. It can be a picture of you or it can just be a picture of where you went. It gives this little window into each other's lives and it's awesome. So plan for the Daily Audio Bible Long Walk July 7th.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at the website, www.DailyAudioBible.com. There is a link, upper right-hand corner of the home page. 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 Dabbers. This is my first time calling in. What an excellent blessing it is to hear the Word of God spoken every day. I felt led to call in. I pray very specific prayers but sometimes I'm prompted by the Holy Spirit to pray a general prayer. Today is one of those days. Would you pray with me? All praise and glory to God of Heaven. Thank you, Lord. Dear God, I pray in Jesus’ name according to John 17:15 that you protect us, us meaning the body of Christ. Protect us from the evil one. You are our refuge and our rock. Thank you for the full armor of God. We put on the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the girdle of truthfulness, the shoes of peace. We lift up the shield of faith and the sword of the spirit which is the Word of God. Father, in accordance with Jesus’ prayer, deliver us from all evil. Lord, I ask you to expose and destroy the schemes of the enemy planned against your children and I ask you to assign your angels in the guard and protect your children according to your perfect will. That is in Psalms 91:11-13, Matthew 18:10, and Hebrews 1:14. Thank you, Father, that we can stand on the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ for your protection and by faith I receive that protection for my family. Thank you that no weapon formed against us will prevail and we will refute every tongue that accuses us. This is our heritage and vindication from you, Lord. Just like the chains fell off Peter, I pray for the imprisoned American Pastor Abedini, for the chains to fall off of him and for ministering angels to visit him and encourage him and for supernatural healing for him. Specifically, I also pray, Lord, for a huge wave of your supernatural healing to flow over all the Dabbers who are praying for a healing and for the chains that bind them to fall off. I boldly ask…
Hi my friends. Good morning. This is Pastor Gene M. from Bradenton, FL. I want to say that I love you guys and praying for you guys and I enjoy this friendship, this camaraderie with this hotline, through the DAB Friends on Facebook, and those relationships I’ve been able to forge personally. I will never be able to thank you guys enough for your friendship and love, but I'm really calling to wish Happy Father's Day to all my DAB fathers. Happy Man Day to all my DAB friends. Guys, I salute your courage to follow and worship Christ. The world would be a better place if other men would follow in your footsteps and take note of the truth that He has given them that you guys represent. My hat is off to each and every one of you for drawing your strength from the Father of all fathers. My prayer early this morning for each and every one of you is that the spirit of God would be close to you today and will remind you constantly how much the Father loves you, how much he wants to strengthen you, how much he wants to fight your battles, how much he wants to help you to walk in obedience, how much he yearns for the day when he will place the crown on your head, embrace you and say ‘well done, my loyal and faithful servant. Come and experience the life I give you forever.’ So Happy Father's Day, my dear brothers. Special greetings to you, Brian Hardin, for being the father of your family and also the father of the DAB and for allowing God to use you year after year after year. We love you guys. I love you all. God bless you. Pastor Gene from Bradenton, FL. Bye.
Good morning Daily Audio Bible family. I greet you in the name of Jesus Christ, the Lord and Savior. Happy Father's Day to all the fathers throughout the world. I’ve called in a couple of prayer requests that were never actually aired. Know that a lot of times when we don’t hear our requests over the air, we know that God knows our thoughts before us and he hears it and he knows what is best for us. Just know that you have to continue to believe in God, trust in him and know that the outcome will work together for the good of those that love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. My prayer request was for a job situation that I'm currently in and that God would show favor concerning myself. Thank all the people behind the scenes. Brian and your family, thank you. All the prayer warriors, Blind Tony, Biola, you know who you are. I'm just blessed to just be a part of this forum and I'm grateful. Continue to pray for me and I’ll pray for you and may God continue to encamp around you and your families throughout the world, those that are being persecuted for His name, that he would comfort their hearts and comfort their families' hearts as well, in the name of Jesus. So thankful and I'm grateful that God has called me out of darkness into his marvelous light. Such a privilege. I'm just very thankful to be a part of this vast army that is fighting against the darkness of this age. God bless. I’ll talk with you soon. Bye-bye.
Everyone is special and is given a gift, something unique that always will lift the spirit of someone who will appreciate what you do. You’ll also be storing up treasure for when the work is finally through. All gifts are different but they are all meant to be used to help someone else who is down and confused. You don’t have to always win but always be willing to play. You may not be the best but give your best anyway. To whom much is given, much will be asked. You might set the record, but that too will pass. It isn’t the gift. It is more how it is used and when you're giving to others, you surely can’t lose. But those who are lazy and just sit on what they’ve got will lose all their gifts. You can believe it or not. Our bodies, time and money are gifts from God too and the way that we use them will say a lot about you. The reward for all good work on top of well done is simply worth more, for you’ve only just begun. The harvest is great. The workers are few. No one else on earth can do things the way that you do. BlindTony1016@gmail.com. I was out playing street music with a friend of mine named Tony T. and the heat got to him and he started getting dizzy. We came to my house and he laid down and he didn’t get any better and I had to call EMS. It got so bad they took him to the hospital. They had to send him to another hospital. They had to hit him with the paddles, the defibrillator. Actually, he is not doing that great right now, so please pray for him and his wife, Tony T. and Chloe.
Dear Audio Bible family. This is Sheree calling from Lake Forest, CA for two reasons. First, I want to say I am so grateful for this community and I wanted to give you an update on my 17-year-old son who in January was at great risk to harm himself after a couple of years of just strife in the family. I placed a call to the Daily Audio Bible and God delivered in a huge way. He was at a point where he had to make choices between the culture and God's plan for him. The process was about a 3-month process. It was like being in a pressure cooker. A lot of shaking up occurred and I can say light and truth broke in and all of those that were involved in his life, myself, my husband, his father, and those that love him all got shaken up into alignment. He is doing well. He has a bright future and I have my son back. He is happy and healthy. I need your help again as my nephew, my 16-year-old nephew needs prayer. We need prayer for wisdom and for protection over him. He has been raised by my parents and when he and his brother were 3 and 4 years old, their father murdered their mother. This has been a very, very tough situation. They’ve done fairly well, but now that they are in their teenage years, it has been too much for my parents to handle, the one son. Would you please pray that God's plan for his life does get delivered? That he does hear clearly from God? We’re all at a point. He's in juvenile hall right now and the question is where does he go after this? It is not safe to go to my parent’s…
Hi DAB family. Walta calling from Charlotte, NC with my 7-year-old. Hi. That is my baby! Thank you guys for praying. He arrived safely from Romania yesterday. How was your flight? Good. Yeah, he did good and daddy is still in Romania, right? Yeah. Okay, so we’re waiting for daddy to come. We’re praying for him to get his immigration paperwork so he can come home. When do want him to come? I want him to come on my birthday. And your birthday is on…? July 30th. Okay, DAB, that's my baby, David. He's not a baby. He's going to be 8 years old on July 30th and we’re reunited. You want to say hi to Max? Hi Max! Okay, so how do you know Max? You listen to him on what? Daily Audio Bible on my iPad. Awesome! Alright, guys, thank you so much for praying for my family. I love you guys. My baby is here. Praise God! He traveled safely and he is with me again. So we’re just praying for daddy to get here now, praying for his immigration paperwork. I love you guys. Thank you so, so, so much. I'm so happy. Alright, bye. Bye.
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Tamarie 06/24/2015 08:26 |
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