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Daily Transcripts
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08/21/2015
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Job 1:1-3:26 ~ 1 Corinthians 14:1-17 ~ Psalm 37:12-29 ~ Proverbs 21:25-26
Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. Today is the 21st of August. If I'm slipping up over my words right now we’ll see how this goes. Every once in a while it is like that – I can’t talk. My mind is moving faster than my body will move my mouth. Maybe I should just take a deep breath, drink some coffee and come back, or maybe just a sip. We don’t have to go anywhere. Hold on.
Okay, much better. How are you today? Hope this day is wonderful, beginning or ending or somewhere in between, whenever it is that we mind find ourselves together and that you are well. So we finished the book of Esther yesterday which brings us to an important section of the scriptures that we’ll spend some time with for the next while in our Old Testament readings. We will be dealing with some very human things – angst, suffering, hardship, confusion, things that we don’t necessarily voluntarily want to dive into, but things that are very, very, very important in our stories.
Introduction of a New Book:
We begin today with the book of Job and it is really, sincerely one of the most beautiful pieces of literature in the Bible, for that matter in all of history. Job deals with the problem of evil and human suffering, begging the question that we all end up asking at some point. Why me? And then wrestling and groping for the answers to this question.
Job's origins are disputed because it is probably unbelievably old. It is widely accepted that Job may very well be the oldest book in the Bible, even predating the patriarchs. Jewish tradition has Moses as the author, but it is unknown whether he was writing down for the first time oral traditions that had been passed down for millennia as he would have done with the creation story and everything up to the time of his leadership or whether he was writing a bit of theological treatise dealing with the issue of suffering and pain as a parable. Either way, it is beautifully done and contains some of the most beautiful literature in all of the world to help us wrestle with these issues.
There is nothing wrong with wrestling with these issues. In the end we find that as we demand an answer for our suffering and juxtapose it against the glory of God, we are struck speechless, for God's glory is infinite, his power and strength unknowable, his beauty indescribable and we see ourselves in comparison to him utterly insignificant. It's just God and God alone who bestows value upon us and without him, we can do nothing.
But often when we have suffering in our lives, we ask the question why? There is often not an answer to that. We can spend our whole lives looking for an answer or we can have God and rest in the fact that there is always much more going on than we ever know. But that God has loved us and has cherished us and cared for us and although his ways are different because they are so far beyond us, they are much higher than our ways, we have the comfort of having a personal and conversational relationship with our Father, our Creator.
So we’re spending this week reading from the Names of God Bible and we begin Job.
Commentary:
So we talked about Job, just kind of the origins and what the story deals with and as we get into the story, because we’ll be living through it for many days, it is important to watch what is going to happen. So what we got today was the backdrop and what Job went through. So he is just going along in life, things are going perfect – wealth, status, family, influence, all of these things, all of the things that we’re still seeking today. All the things that would denote success in life, Job has those things. It is here that we can see clearly the heart of man, the things that drive man forward, those haven’t changed. It looks different. I mean if this is the oldest book in the Bible, then we’re going way, way, way back. So it looks different for Job to have wealth. He has a lot of animals, etc., whereas maybe here in the West we would look at that as something else. But the things that make Job be perceived as a success and a righteous person, they haven’t changed. Our culture constantly is changing its clothes and the Bible gives us thousands of years of that and we live into that now, but down deep in the identity, at the heart of a person, it really doesn’t matter when they were alive, we’ve all been looking for the same thing.
So Job has everything, basically everything that anyone would want and in a string of events, one after the other after the other after the other he loses it all in one day. That is the backdrop for all the conversation that will come next. But what we find and what I talk about just about every year that I come by this passage because every year that I come by it I'm riveted by it is Job's reaction. To me it is one of the most riveting passages in scripture because we’ve just watched a man lose everything in the space of hours. Everything. Not just like one setback like the company is going down or something like that. Everything. His response is certainly to acknowledge the pain, to tear his clothes, to put ashes over himself, the custom at the time that would show grief and suffering and mourning. So he has the reaction. He's feeling all this with all of the force that you would imagine, but then he falls to the ground and worships God. And that – something about that, I think because it is beyond what I can imagine, the suffering that has been inflicted on Job is beyond what I can imagine and for him the have this reaction is just beautiful in its horribleness (if that makes sense). I just don’t know if that would be my reaction. For him to have that perspective of ‘I'm in this with God. God gives. God takes away. I'm in this with God, blessed be his name. He is the Almighty,’ it is riveting. Then when Job gets sick and his wife tells him just to die, curse God and die, I don’t know…
So what we’ve got is an isolated man all alone in unbelievable, truly unspeakable suffering, that gives us the backdrop and we don’t have a better example. That is the worst day ever. Who do you know has had a worse day than that? So we can all understand that Job is in physical and emotional and spiritual suffering, deep hardship, deep grief and that is the backdrop to the rest of the story. So his friends come and they see him and they realize wow, this is worse than we thought. And Job does begin to finally speak after they sit around for a week, just waiting, just sitting, just being a presence in his life, being with him in his grief. He begins to speak and there is going to be all kinds of conversation that happens next. It's important. Every day as we move through this, just watch the conversation that takes place between the friends and Job. Watch as they speak to him. Watch as Job speaks back because they are going to try to process all this with him.
So it is like friends getting together in hardship, something we can all understand. Maybe not to the degree of Job, but something we can all understand. We go to be a comfort and then we try to fix the problem by processing it with the person who is suffering, trying to come up with an answer, trying to come up with an explanation. They are all going to give it their best shot. Job is going to give it his best shot. They’ll debate with one another and most of the book is this verbal processing, trying to figure out why this happened. The reality is most of the things that are going to get said, especially by Job's friends, make sense, make perfect sense. We’ll find that we would probably say something like that. That would be my counsel. That is what I would say. And we just have to watch the whole thing unfold because what Job wants in the end is not an audience with his friends or an explanation. He wants God. He wants God to explain. He wants an audience with God. And he is going to get it, but it is not going to be anything like what he thinks. So there is a lot of drama, but a lot to apply to our own lives. None of us have suffered like Job, but some of us have suffered deep enough to know what we’re talking about when we’re talking about suffering. In fact, in some ways all of us know this, so there is much richness that we can find in the book of Job.
Prayer:
Father, we invite you into this turn of another corner, moving into new territory for the next while as we continue our journey through the scriptures this year. We certainly invite you into all this and ask you to plant it deep in our lives and we certainly invite you into our hardship, one of the places that we need you most but actually hold you at arm's length the most because somehow we want to blame you and it estranges us. So we invite you into all of this over these next days. Come Holy Spirit, we pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Announcements:
Www.DailyAudioBible.com is the website, is home base, certainly where you find out what is going on around here. We’ve been kind of wall-to-wall Reframe right now. A couple of days ago I released an explanation or just a talk on where this book came from and why. I certainly encourage you to check that out. It was the 19th, so just a couple days ago that was released. It is called Hashtag Reframe, and so if you have the app, just scroll back and find it. If you're listening on some other device or some other pod catcher or pod feed reader, just go back and you’ll find that. I encourage you to listen to it. It gives some backdrop to why we are talking about Reframe and why I think it is important enough to spend time talking about, so I encourage you to check that out.
The Reframe book is certainly coming a little over a month, barely over a month and we will be there. I can’t believe it. It has been so long in the making and so long in the planning and so long in the coming. You can absolutely pre-order your copy today at www.ReframeBook.com and if you do pre-order, we’ve got some cool stuff that you can have access to and download immediately to kind of get you going on Reframe. So visit www.ReframeBook.com for more information.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at www.DailyAudioBible.com. There is a link in the upper right-hand corner. I thank you profoundly and humbly. This is how we live and exist as a community, through your partnership. There is no other way to keep it all moving, so thank you for your partnership. If you prefer, the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996, Spring Hill, TN 37174.
If you have a prayer request or comment, (877) 942-4253 is the number to call.
And that is it for today. I'm Brian. I love you. I'll be waiting for you here, tomorrow.
Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports
Hello Daily Audio Bible community and family. This is Matt calling in from Windsor, Ontario Canada with a couple of prayer requests, please. On Sunday morning my sister and I are living together and our house that we live in was broken into and my computer and my iPad were stolen along with my sister's work phone. The police have been notified. The insurance has been notified so we are now in the process of getting hopefully everything back. Please pray that the police will find these two kids and do what they need to do. Also please pray for my Oma. She has cancer, stage IV stomach cancer and we’re not quite sure how long she will be with us. Thank you, guys. God bless you all. I lift up all of you. Love you all. Take care. Bye-bye.
Hello and good morning Daily Audio Bible family. This is Jay from New Jersey just calling to check in with everybody. God bless all of you. Just wanted to let everyone know that me and my lovely wife have finally made the decision to have a baby. So I'm asking that everyone pray with me and pray for us that we will accomplish God's will according to his time and if it is his will for us to have a baby, that we will and it will happen according to his perfect plan. Heavenly Father, Creator of everything seen and unseen in heaven and on earth and everything in between, Father, we thank you now for being good, kind, and __________. We thank you for your love. We thank you for your mercy. We thank you for your unbelievable grace and your forgiveness. We thank you for this precious gift of your Son, Jesus Christ who died for our sins and the provider of our salvation. We thank you, Lord God, for waking us up this morning and keeping us safe from all hurt, harm, and danger. We thank you for a clear mind that we’re able to sit, listen and pray together. Father, we lift our issues to you. Father, I bring before you me and my wife's desire to have a baby. Father, I bring before you every issue, problem and concern our Daily Audio Bible family bring to you, God, because you are the only one that can handle these things. You are the only one that controls these things. You are the only governor of our lives and we thank you for that. In your perfect will we pray, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior, amen. Daily Audio Bible family, have an amazing, amazing day. Find something positive and enjoy it. Love you. Bye-bye.
Hello family. How are you? This is Biola from Maryland. I hope you're all doing well. Brian and Jill, God bless you. Brian, I read the first few chapters of Reframe that you sent after I ordered the audio book. I know it is going to be a powerful book. People, go and pre-order Reframe so that Brian can be on the best-selling list. Hallelujah! Heather from North Carolina, I'm praying that God will hold you and help you through all what you're going through, that you would come to know him in a deeper, more intimate way, in the name of Jesus. That God would draw your husband to him and touch him so that there is reconciliation in your marriage, in the name of Jesus. There is nothing that God cannot do. Billie, I'm praying for David, that God would set him free from the power of addiction, in the name of Jesus, and that God would create a strong dislike between him and those drugs, in Jesus’ name. I'm also praying that your coworker who lost a 5-year-old. O Father, I pray that you would comfort this lady and bless her and her fiancé, O God. Draw them closer to you through this, O God. I know you did not cause this, but you are able to use it for their good, in the name of Jesus. Comfort them, Lord, and give them double for their trouble. Shaniqa, God bless you for the compassion you have for Kendra and Ron. Father, I pray that you will have mercy on Ron. I bind every demonic influence on this man's life, in the name of Jesus. I pray that he will open up to you and turn to you in his pain. Father, deliver Ron from his addiction, Daddy Lord, in the name of Jesus. Pick him up and clean him up, O God. Pull him out of the miry clay, Father, and set his feet firmly on the rock to stay in Jesus’ name. Father, I pray for strength and peace, O God, to envelope Kendra, O God, and calm her spirit, that she will lean on God and trust him through this difficult time in their lives, in the name of Jesus, for your Word says, O God, that we do not have any sufficiency in ourselves, not to think anything of ourselves, Father. Our sufficiency is of you, Lord, and I just want to thank you, O God, for this family. Heather from California, my heart is saddened by what happened to your daughter. I'm praying to God for favor at the __________ hearing, that the truth will be revealed and the school officials will now know through their hearts and minds, with compassion to hear her. God bless you.
Hi Daily Audio Bible family. This is Nancy from Michigan. I'm calling because I need prayer for a friend of mine. Actually, it is a former student of mine named Garrett B. He is in the hospital. He is only 31 years old and he is in need of a heart transplant. He has been in the hospital for about a month now and it has been a really hard journey and a complete surprise. I just pray that God will continue to just be his comfort and his strength. He doesn’t have a lot of faith and so I’ve had an opportunity but he is really seeking and asking that we pray over him. I came in the other day and prayed over him and he is also the artistic director of our local community theater which I'm also a part of and it is so cool because everybody is praying together and we’re doing amazing things. So it is just really cool to see God work and I feel so blessed to be in the middle of it all, but it is also really scary for everybody. I just pray for peace. I pray for healing. I pray for the family of the heart that he needs because someone has to give their life so he can have life and that it is just a little bit of a burden for him, too. I just pray that you will completely pray over him. Lord, we just know that he is going to do some great things, so we just pray that you will bless him, Lord. Thank you for Garrett's life and I pray that you will continue to look over him and just heal his body and may his story be so good that all he can talk about is you. In Jesus’ name, amen. Thanks family.
Hi family. This is Shannon from Texas and I just heard the woman caller from the Community Prayer. I believe she said her name was Ann that was calling about her daughter, who said that she was abused by a narcissist. I’ve been through that and only someone who has been in that situation can truly understand what that spirit can do to you, but I also know, being on the other side, that you have victory and you will, your daughter and her children will have the victory and that the enemy sometimes wants us to believe that we will not get through things and in our darkest hour wants us to feel like we have no hope and that it is over for us. Especially that spirit wants us to crush us and I just want you to know that this is not it. I know it is dark for you right now, but God will see you through. He did not bring you this far, he did not bring your daughter this far to not see you through and to have even a greater life, a better life than what you had known before. You know, the devil doesn’t want to rob somebody that has an empty purse. Sometimes we feel like we are just constantly pursued and we wonder why, why. It's because we have so much to offer and we know so much about what God can do and who he is, so we must not give up. We must keep running the race and keep declaring that God is God and He is the Almighty and the Omega and that victory is ours. I love you, family.
Brothers and sisters, this is Soldier, Psalm 143:7-12. I feel led to pour myself into three brothers who are going through some difficult times right now. One who is separated from his wife and needs financial counsel from me, but more than that, needs fellowship and encouragement. His name is Alan. I lift Alan up to you. I lift another brother up to you. His name is Troy. He is going through some difficult times in his early, young life. He is 25 years old. He needs encouragement. He needs fellowship and he needs a mentor and I'm willing to pour myself into him with that regard. Please lift up Troy in prayers. I also lift up another brother in Christ who needs guidance and sometimes some roping in. His name is Josh. He is an independent filmmaker. He is a believer. Sometimes he needs to be held accountable for some things. I give him to you as well as he tries to reach the world for Christ through film. Brothers and sisters, I need guidance myself in how to be a proper mentor to these individuals, so please, I ask for your prayers as well in that regard, for the Lord to give me wisdom and strength. Thank you.
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Tamarie 08/22/2015 00:35 |
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