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Daily Transcripts
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09/04/2015
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Ecclesiastes 7:1-9:18 ~ 2 Corinthians 7:8-16 ~ Psalm 48:1-14 ~ Proverbs 22:17-19
Today is the 4th of September. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It is great to be here with you today, a lovely day here in the rolling hills of Tennessee and trusting all is well wherever it is that my voice is coming to you at. So glad to be together for another step forward as we make our way on the grand adventure through the scriptures this year. So we’ve been working our way into the book of Ecclesiastes which is essentially the look through the eyes of a man who has had it all and done it all and has gotten a little later in life and is looking back through his regrets, through his falling away from God and processing life. It's raw and it’s beautiful and we’ll take a step forward today.
Commentary:
Interesting contrast today between the reading that we had in Ecclesiastes and in Paul's letter to the Corinthians. Paul in effect interprets what we’re reading. We’ve got Ecclesiastes and we’ve got King Solomon who literally, as we’ve spoken of before, had nothing off-limits to him. Literally nothing off-limits to him. The most beautiful women in all of the land available to him for every pleasure he could imagine, all of the money that he could ever spend, all of the projects and developments and they were substantial. Some of Solomon’s developments and structures and the way that he ruled are still standing today. We’re talking thousands and thousands of years. There are ancient gate structures in places like Megiddo and Dor and Gezir that still exist from the reign of Solomon. He knew what he was doing and he had wisdom to govern and govern pretty well because his reign was really the apex of Jewish civilization in the Old Testament.
This is a guy that had it all and now we are looking at his reflections on life. His reflections on life are like ‘do your best to be happy, nothing means anything.’ What is coming to the surface in context is the fact Solomon had explored everything and then he began to explore the worship of other gods, began to explore other religious thought and all of this came from a very wise man trying to figure it all out. He had applied himself intellectually and he was a man of great intellect to figure it all out, to figure God all out, to figure what he did and what he didn’t do all out all in his own head based on his own observations. We see where this leads and we, as we look into the book of Ecclesiastes, have to understand that in a lot of ways we’re in our own heads too, trying to figure out the recipe, trying to figure out the program, trying to figure out how all of this works and it can be a frustrating endeavor because God is not going to ever fit into our own heads and into our own individual experiences alone. There is always more going on. We will find the same frustration and we will find the same conclusions if it is all only ever in our heads. We’re trying to figure all of this out, but we’re largely trying to figure things out about God without really having God involved. That will never work. It will be like chasing the wind. It will end up feeling meaningless, which can bring about much angst and depression and sorrow and the insatiable longing, the hunger, the knowing there is more and not knowing how to get there.
But that can be used as fuel, which brings up what Paul said. The sorrow that God uses makes people sorry for their sin and leads them to turn from it so they can be saved from the punishment of it. We should be happy for that kind of sorrow, but the sorrow of this world, that brings death. See how this sorrow (and he's talking to the Corinthians) allowed you to have this worked in you? You had a desire to be free of that sin I wrote about. You were angry about it. You were afraid. You wanted to do something about it. In every way you did what you could to make it right.
So we come to this point in the year and we spend our time in Job and we wrestle through that and we get to the book of Ecclesiastes and we begin to wrestle through that and later we’ll come into the book of Lamentations and wrestle through that, but it is very important that we do. It is very important because it is in the scriptures, but it is very important that we do in our lives, that we wrestle, that we allow ourselves to move into those places that kind of shake us, that even make us uneasy, that challenge us, that burst through the paradigms, that crack the walls, that reframe the conversation because if we don’t, we end up one of two places. One, where Solomon has landed, things don’t seem to matter. Or two, in an effort to protect the faith we have, we become a stagnant pond with a huge wall around it all locked into our theological formulas and dogma that isn’t working but we don’t know what else to do. I wonder what Solomon's last writings would have looked like if he hadn’t gotten lost in his own head and completely seduced away? What wisdom would we have now if he had taken a different path? There is only one to find that out, because the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and Solomon is your God, the Almighty, the Magnificent One. He actually knows what is going on and we can only ever step forward in an intimate, profoundly penetrating relationship with him.
Prayer
Father, we welcome the shaking. We welcome the walls falling down. We welcome the paradigms being expanded and contracted. We confess that we don’t know all that we think we know about you, but one thing that we do know, that we know for certain is that you are good and your mercy endures forever. So we fall upon that and invite your Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth which is to lead us to you which is to lead us to wisdom. We can’t box you in our own heads and we cannot box you in everything we think we know because that is much too small. That isn’t even scratching the surface. And yet you still want to be with us, leading us forward, walking with us, being involved in everything. We’ve just kept you out of so much and then had the audacity to be mad at you about it. Forgive us, God. Everything without you involved is meaningless and it is frustrating. How many meaningless days we spend without you. Come, we are desperate. We are that desperate. We need you. We need you bad. Because your mercy endures forever and because you are good, we have hope. Hope that you are here and want to be involved. So we open ourselves wholly and completely to you. Come Holy Spirit, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Announcements
Www.DailyAudioBible.com is the website. It is home base. It is where you find out what is going on around here and certainly what is going on around here is Reframe and Promised Land: The Essential Pilgrim’s Edition. They are married together in an interesting way. If you would be willing to pre-order Reframe, and it comes out in a couple of weeks, we’ll give you way more back than you invested in a book that I think will change your life. If you pre-order Reframe this month, the month of September, you will immediately get the audio edition of my first book, Passages, and you will also get a voucher to get $10 off of the brand new Promised Land which is double the locations and just far, far…it is the quintessential, it is the essential. The Pilgrim's Edition – it is the end of that story. So you can check all of that out at www.ReframeBook.com, so thank you kindly for checking that out.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible in keeping everything moving, I thank you profoundly. There is a link on the home page of www.DailyAudioBible.com. If you prefer, the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996, Spring Hill, TN 37174.
And, 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 Request and Praise Reports
Hello Daily Audio Bible friends and family and community. This is Nathan, formerly spray paint artist of Illinois. That is what I’ve been before, but I'm changing that. Also be Nathan – let me tell you a story. We often sometimes are known by our name. I'm Nathan. There is a Joe. There is a Walta. There is a Biola. There is all of us, many names, and when I was a kid I decided, hey, I'm going to look up what my name means. You know, one of those bibles that has definitions and things? So I looked it up. In the Hebrew it is ‘gift of God.’ Instantly I thought, oh my, what a burden is that? And I thought ‘now I have to be a gift of God.’ And I looked at it initially as a burden until I changed my attitude and God enlightened me and said this is not a burden. This is a gift. Gift of God is your name so therefore go and become a gift to others. Sometimes it is so easy to focus on the burden and not the gift. My mother-in-law has been known to say the situation you're in may be the only situation that you're going to learn something that God wants you to learn. Sometimes it is so hard to focus, but I encourage you each and every day to look at your so-called burdens and look at what's the gift? What is it that God wants me to learn from this situation that nobody else, including myself, can learn except from this situation? I listen every day. I’ve been listening for many years and I listen to all your prayers. I pray for you. I listen to you. I feel your burdens and pain. Go be a gift to somebody else today.
Hey DAB family. This is Byron out in Florida. Hope everything is going well with you guys. I would like you all to pray. Just went out soul-winning with a gentleman from my church and a lady at one of the houses we knocked on prayed the prayer of salvation, accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as her Savior. Her name is Alyssa. Please pray for her. She is going through a lot of difficulties, social anxieties and things like that, so please pray. She is going to try and make it to church. Even that activity might be difficult and stressful for her, so just praying that the Lord will speak to her nature, tear down any barriers from going to church and that she can find that place to be loving and warm and that she can start to put on the faith. I’ve been going out soul-winning with an older gentleman who is very experienced as an evangelist. He has taken up to training me and I am learning a lot and a lot of it is counterintuitive. I ask you guys to pray for me as I learn, kind of push my pride and my own ideas aside for a bit and just to absorb what I can learn and grow and taking what I can to tell them a bit about the Lord Christ. So please continue praying for Melissa. I asked you guys earlier to pray for Joe and __________, that family that got saved. Please keep them up in prayer as well. I love you guys. Talk to you later.
This is Peg in Texas. God of all power and great love, I place before you Pat who has given up, extremely depressed, who is so anxious she can’t sit still. She is so filled with fear. She has no thoughts except fear and __________. Frightened, unable to pray. O Father, free Pat from the grips of this darkness. May she know your encouragement. I pray the same for Christie. Yes, may Pat and Christie be overwhelmed with the love and peace and power that you give. Manifest yourself to them. I pray, Lord, that they would give you the sacrifice of praise, praising you when they don’t feel like it, praising you for your power, for your plan, for your love for them. I pray for all those that have let us know that they suffer from depression and anxiousness. O minister, Lord. And for those struggling with addiction to drugs, to alcohol, to pornography, to food, to be given the desire, O Father, and the courage to take steps to turn away from that which just steals their life. O Father, I pray for Andrew, joining in prayer for the family of Trevor, the young man murdered and for the one who sinned greatly, taking the life of the young boy. O God, meet his needs. I pray for the Jordan missionaries who have witnessed such awful, heartless acts and under those, Lord, who are filled with fear, who are suffering, whose very lives are being threatened all because they know Christ and they bear the name of Christian. Father, for Tony's son, Langdon, who had to be removed from his home, I pray that you will meet his heart need. Humbly I come, realizing that prayer is made possible only in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Hello Bible family. This is Verna from Gainesville, FL. I haven’t called in a good while and wanted to give an update. My husband, Howard, has been moving forward with the Mayo Clinic protocol for his liver cancer and it is going well. I wanted to encourage the man who called in very sad about his family that is damaged from his infidelity __________. I think his name was Brad and __________ regrets. Brad, I believe the Lord can and will turn everything around if you are willing to fight on a daily basis. I don’t know if you pray the Daily Prayer, but I can testify it is a powerful weapon. Praying scripture is another one and finding someone to pray with you greatly increases the artillery. __________ your apology in person to any injured individuals is essential. I’ve employed all these in repairing the broken relationships in my family, particularly with three daughters. So much lost ground has been regained. Those relationships are now restored. I had asked for prayer in the past for three of my six children who are estranged from the Lord. My son, Moesha, is still holding out and I'm interceding for him every day, but his sister who has been involved in the homosexual lifestyle for the past 10 years has been __________ lately and has started attending a church where she lives. Her younger sister who lives at home told me about a month ago that she wanted to follow Jesus. She was baptized last Sunday. David from Kansas, I remember you from when you called in long ago and I pray for your complete healing. If you haven’t implemented the advice from James 5 of asking the elders of your church to anoint you and pray over you, I recommend that. Liberian Walta, I'm praying for grace for you and for your entire family to be reunited. Peter from Toronto, I pray for strength, healing, justice, and encouragement for you. I love you all. Thank you, Brian and Jill and everyone involved in Daily Audio Bible.
Hi DAB family. It's Chris from the mountains of Colorado. I just need your prayers. I need to confess some sins. I left my fiancée and her kids at the beginning of the summer because I thought that is what God wanted me to do, but right after that I found myself doing terrible things, heartless things, unforgiveable things. I still have a real problem with lust and sex addiction and marijuana addiction. I try to get into the Word and listen so much. I want God and I want Jesus in my heart and I want clarity on what to do because I’ve hurt people around me so bad. I’ve hurt them and I'm hurting too. I repent of those things and I don’t want those things. I feel things changing in me, but I know that I’ve confessed things to you guys before and I know that you’ve prayed for me before and it has made such a difference. You guys are so powerful, such an amazing group of believers and I love you all so much. I want to know the love of God more and I want to know the love of Jesus more and I want to be able to truly love the people around me more, not just for myself but for God. I want to be a better man. I'm working so hard on it, but right now I'm just so broken. Please, please pray for me. I’ll be listening. I’ll be praying for you. I love you all. Thank you so much. Thank you, Brian and Jill. Thank you everybody.
Good morning DAB family. This is Cheryl from Arkansas and today is September 1st. It is my birthday and I just wanted to call on this day and tell the whole community thank you for what you’ve been to me and how you made a marked difference in my life since I first started in 2015. I can actually remember where I was and what I was doing when I found you guys. When I actually googled you guys. I was just looking for something. I was looking for something which I could commit to because I’ve always loved the Lord. I’ve always loved being a decent person, a kind person, a good person, but I didn’t have a connect in it, and I needed that. I was missing that. I found you guys. I found you guys in June of 2015 and I was sitting on the balcony in California at my daughter's house and I found you. You guys have made a big difference in my life ever since. I just want to thank you for that, all of you, every one of you guys. You have been such wonderful people and you’ve been wonderful to me, even though you may not even know who I am. Again, thank you so much. You guys have a wonderful day. Bye-bye.
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Tamarie 09/05/2015 08:49 |
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