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Daily Transcripts
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08/31/2015
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Job 37:1-39:30 ~ 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:10 ~ Psalm 44:9-26 ~ Proverbs 22:13
Today is the 31st of August. Wow, here we are finishing the 8th month of the year. We’ve been through a lot together, haven’t we? We’re deep in the Bible now. Well done! I can’t believe we’re finishing August, but I could just go off on a rant that time is getting shorter and the days are flying by and all of that and I'm just getting older, 10 years of Daily Audio Bible and all. Speaking of getting older (and will you permit me for a second?), I have to tell you something. I would normally always, always wait until the end to tell you anything because we always, always move right into the scriptures. That is why we’re here, but I’ve gotta tell you something personal.
We have 5 kids. My 2nd son, Cristian is married and we’ve been sitting on this for weeks and now I can tell you – I'm going to be a grandpa in January. Now even saying that, hearing that back in my headphones that I'm wearing right now, that sounds like the most bizarre thing I have ever spoken out of the my mouth. And I’ve had some time to get used to the idea, but it is not helping. So I’ll have to take the advice from many of you who have already crossed that threshold and know what the experience is like to help me along the way, but Jill and I couldn’t be more excited and wanted to share the news with you. Zekey, our baby boy, who is actually more of a toddler now, he just turned 3, he's decided he is not ready to be an uncle and so he's not Uncle Zekey, but I think he just needs a little more time and he might grow to like the idea.
Anyway, that is my announcement and now we can turn to the scriptures and this is a special day in the book of Job because today God shows up.
Commentary:
So, in his letter to the Corinthians, Paul is continuing to describe the shape of spiritual reality which he’s done a lot in this letter. Today he’s describing a simple fact that we are all in transition. He uses our humanity and its transitions as the example. He talks about how our body is wearing out. That’s just a reality from the moment we are born, right? From the moment we’re born we are in the process of transition. What that transition looks like, we all know, right? There’s an infant that becomes a toddler that becomes a little boy or girl that becomes an adolescent that becomes an adult that moves into middle age that moves into old age as the body has always been wearing out. That’s like a biological fact we can all agree on. Paul is saying that’s how it is. But, the thing is we’re in this transition because our spirits aren’t wearing out, they’re growing stronger every day. They will last eternally. When our earthly bodies, the house that we live in on this earth, as Paul put it, wears out then we will reside in another heavenly body.
That transition is called change. It’s one of the most sought after things and feared things in our lives. We know we need it. We fight against it at every turn. Especially, especially in our faith. But, we have been in constant transition from the moment we were conceived until this very day. We don’t like to think about the end of our earthly lives even though we have faith in the fact of what Paul is saying. Our spirits continue to transition and grow stronger. There is more. We long for that more. We intuitively know there’s more. But, there’s the great unknown of what that actually looks like.
You can see this kind of chasm, this sort of black hole of fear about the unknown after life as we would call it because we’ll flock to any book or person who has any momentary knowledge of it. We want to know what that transition actually looks like so we can process it. Yet, the end of our humanity, our earthly life, the house that we live in is an interesting point that everyone eventually will reach. Our lives, as they transition, pull us toward a leap of faith that no one can avoid. The death of our earthly bodies is the ultimate leap of faith. It is the absolute ultimate statement about what we believe and what we are trusting in and the God that we know.
With that as the backdrop, I just read this paragraph from 2nd Corinthians as Paul unpacks it. While we are in this body we cry inside ourselves because things are hard for us. It is not that we want to die, instead we want to live in our new bodies. We want this dying body to be changed into a living body that lasts forever.
It is God who has made us ready for this change. He has given us his spirit to show us what he has for us. We’re sure of this, we know that while we’re at home in this body we’re not with the Lord. Our life is lived by faith. We do not live by what we see in front of us. We are sure we will be glad to be free of these bodies. It will be good to be at home with the Lord. This explains perfectly why a lot of the time, underneath all the things that are going on, underneath it all there’s this in between feeling like we are transitioning, like we are in between, like things haven’t completely been settled. That’s because they haven’t. We are in transition. We are about the business of transformation. We are about the business of change and the sooner that we reframe that idea, the more beautiful the journey becomes, the more adventure this life becomes because it’s all a gift. It is all constantly changing. We are being transformed into the image of God day by day, step by step. As Paul says, “As we are changed, we reflect his glory more and more.”
So may we work to be more and more comfortable with transformation. We’ll pray for it. We’ll ask it of God that we be transformed, that we be renewed, that we be recreated. We believe these things but we also fight them because change or transformation or re-creation is a very disruptive thing. It’s a very pervasive thing. On our own terms, we want to initiate it and instigate it and complete it only to realize that our attempts to change inside of ourselves are dismal failures most of the time allowing the process that is already in place, that has already been happening all along to take its course, to allow the Holy Spirit to walk with us intimately, as friends, in an intimate friendship and allow that process to utterly and irreversibly change us will allow us to be made new again. So, may we embrace the change that is already going on and that we are invited into.
Prayer:
Father, that’s pretty hard. It exposes our tight grip on control of ourselves when, actually, a loose grip and complete trust and hope and faith in you and in the friendship and intimacy you offer us is the only way we’re ever going to get comfortable with ourselves and with transformation, change. So, we want to invite your Holy Spirit into all this today and in the weeks ahead. We just invite you to expose the areas that we have an unwillingness to allow transformation to take place. The places that we’ve kind of locked in and these are our anchor points of identity and we wouldn’t let you change them even if you asked when you are actually inviting us to have a complete identity shift change, change from a person that was trying to live life fully self-controlled as a stand-alone sovereign to a person that has been assimilated into your body, grafted into your family and going through the process of transformation, sanctification, change. Come, Holy Spirit, and begin to do a new work in us as it relates to change. May we trust you in it all, obey you in it all, walk with you through it all and see the beauty of it all. We ask this in your precious name. Amen.
Announcements:
Www.Dailyaudiobible.com is home base. It is where you find out what’s going on around here. A couple of big announcements coming tomorrow, looking forward to sharing that with you. The website is home so that’s where you find out what’s up.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if the community that we are together is life giving and a part of that transformation, that change in you, then thank you for your partnership in allowing it to exist at all. There’s a link on the home page in the upper right hand corner of www.Dailyaudiobible.com or the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996, Spring Hill, Tennessee, 37174.
Of course, 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 guys this is Alleah or Exalted. I was just … I need a prayer request for my friend that I recently met at college. Her name is Clarissa and she is struggling with anxiety and depression. I ask you guys to just lift her up and let her know the love of God will never end, you know, for her. Anyway, I love you all and I am praying for you all. Bye-bye. Have a good day.
Hello family, this is Andrew. Drew, from the Bay Area, calling you today with sorrow in my heart. I’m going to ask you to pray for a friend of mine, of my son’s, young Drew’s, son, Trevor, his parents. Trevor is no longer with us. He was murdered by another classmate of my son’s. Used to ditch a lot of school. Could you just pray with me? Heavenly Father, Lord God you are a holy, holy God. Lord, we live in troubled times and we can’t even hope to try to explain away why things happen the way they do but we have sorrow in our heart, Lord, when we see evil and the response of sin in the world. Lord, you are truly a wonderful God. You created everything. Everything you created was good. But, Lord, sometimes these things just don’t make any sense to us. So, Father, we come before you right now as a family, adopted into your family. We thank you that we did not deserve what we have, the ability to come before you as heirs to your kingdom, Lord, but we’re asking you to intervene on behalf of Trevor’s parents and for young Drew and all those people that are connected to this terrible crime. Lord, we ask you to make your presence known to the murderer, another classmate and his family and ask you to be with them, that your presence would be known. Lord, that you would draw them to you and that through this you would raise up a thousand more saints, Lord.
Hi family. This is Jim from New Hampshire calling. I’m calling today because I just got off the phone with my dear friend. He and his wife are missionaries and they just got back from Jordan. They were ministering to many of the refugees who’ve been affected by ISIS or ISIL, however you want to say it. They were just relaying to me some of the awful suffering that these people have gone through and how there’s just so much indiscriminate killing. It doesn’t matter who you are. They’ll kill you and simply just to keep people in line and to keep them quiet. They also emphasized that there are people who are still there in the affected regions who they’ll get on Facebook and they’ll just post like everything is okay because they’re afraid of speaking out about what’s really going on. One of the stories I heard was that somebody they knew personally, somebody my friends knew personally had his family … his wife was killed and his children were thrown out the window. Then he shortly died thereafter and they lost contact with him. Please just pray for these people, for the suffering that’s occurring, that God would minister to them and that God would minister to the people who are committing these horrendous acts. I know we hear some of these things but this just brought it a little bit closer to home. I thank you for that. That’s all I’ve got. Thanks very much and love you all. Praying for many, many of you. Bye now.
Good morning Daily Audio Bible. This is Tony from Oklahoma calling for a prayer request for my son Landon. Had to move him out of the house after about a year. Had a little physical violence going on. Got him in a motel, not a good place, not a safe place. Found somewhere I’d like to move him into, may not go because he’s only 20 and he’s not 21. We’re having a hard time. We pray, please pray he can move into a decent motel or get an apartment soon. The reality of him being in the motel, being in a pit of hell, has made its impact on him. It really has. He’s ready to come flying back to our arms or flying into the arms of Jesus. That’s what we need. He hit rock bottom. He’s ready to surge up now. If we could pray for him, that would be wonderful. Bring him back into the fold. I love it as I love you guys. Some of you know me … God bless you all and I love you all. Thank you in advance for the prayers for my son Landon.
This is Steve from New Hampshire. I’ve been listening to Daily Audio Bible for a bit now and really been blessed. I’ve heard a lot of the prayer requests and prayed for a lot of people and been stirred at various times. I was listening this morning. It is Friday, August 28th. I heard Christi from Ohio call in and my heart was really touched with your request in terms of the fears that you’re dealing with and even just the suicidal thoughts. I wanted to pray for you. Father, I thank you for Christi, in the name of Jesus, she’s your daughter. You have not given her a spirit of fear but one of power, love and a sound mind. I pray that you would just cause her to be so overwhelmed with the peace of God that passes all understanding and give her wisdom and courage to take the steps she needs to take. Lord, make her number one desire for approval be from you and you said in your Word that we are indeed accepted in the beloved. Lord, I pray that she would be filled with the shalom of God this day and in the days to come, Lord God, may she know your direction in her life. May she know that you have a plan and that you are fulfilling that plan and she’ll keep her eyes on you. We just bless you, Christi, in Jesus’ name, amen.
Good morning DAB family. This is Walta from Charlotte. I am definitely a burning bush that will not be consumed for the glory of God. Bonnie, originally from Nepal, thank you so much for calling and sharing your story. You remind me of my own story. 2012, I lived happily in Arizona with my family, lost my job and so my immigration status also lost. So that I wouldn’t be illegal, I had to leave the country within a month. I ended up leaving my house, my cars, my earthly possessions that I had here and relocating what I could take back to Africa. Last year, Ebola happened and now all my earthly possessions are in West Africa. So, listening to Job is hard for me mainly because I know I am not righteous like Job. So, you know, there’s a part of me like, “I cannot even …” But, anyway, thank you for sharing that. Also, Christi from Ohio, your prayers, once you call, those prayers are heard and prayed for no matter whether you hear it or not. God is going to … I’m going to continue to pray for you, pray for the relationship with you and your dad that your dad will understand you better and God will give you favor in preparing for your next step. Rebecca from Nebraska, your song put tears in my eyes. I’m not even sure why. Maybe it’s the Hebrew. Love you so much for that. Strong in His Grace Richard from Mississippi, thank you for praying. Megan from Japan, shout out. Daniel Johnson, Jr., praying for you, your dad and your step-dad. God bless you all. One more thing, oh, all our listeners from North Carolina, every time I hear it I’m like, “Oh it would be so cool to see you guys one day.” I love you all, all of you guys - Slave of Jesus, Sinner, all of you guys and I’ll talk to you later. Have a good weekend. God bless.
Father God, we come before you in time of grace and mercy, Lord. We pray your Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth, Father God. Lord, we pray for Christi in Ohio who called in, said she’s battling anxiety and depression. Father God, it is by no coincidence that on this very day that she called, that we read in the scriptures in Psalm 42, why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God. I will praise Him again and my Savior and my God. Yes, it is by no coincidence that that Psalm was read today because He is our encouragement. He is the one that we will praise while we are fighting during the time of suffering. Christi, I encourage you to do that. Praise him in your discouragement and God will turn things around for you. Self-speak is important. Make sure you’re speaking God’s promises into your life because that will help you find that job. That will give you the encouragement to begin writing because see, I know God is up to something good because his promises never fail. This is Delta Alpha Foxtrot reporting from the Southern Texas Front, want to thank you all for praying for Marri, she is 100% better. She is back at work. Claire is doing great also. Thank you so much guys for lifting up our friend. Love you all. Love you, Brian. Goodbye.
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Tamarie 08/31/2015 15:00 |
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