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Daily Transcripts

10/03/2015
Jeremiah 1:1-2:30 ~ Philippians 4:1-23 ~ Psalm 75:1-10 ~ Proverbs 24:17-20
Today is October 3rd. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is certainly my pleasure and an honor to be here with you today as we close out the first week of October even though we’re just getting going. We’re at the end of a week and it has been a great week. As we close the week, we actually have a new beginning in front of us. We are going to take the journey through the book of Jeremiah beginning today.

Introduction of a New Book

Jeremiah is one of the most intriguing books of prophesy in the Bible partly because of Jeremiah himself, his authenticity. Jeremiah is committed to obeying God, but he doesn’t like everything that he is being asked to do. He wants to wash his hands of the whole business a lot of the time because it seems like nobody is listening.

It is also incredibly fascinating because of the time period that Jeremiah lives in. Israel has turned their back on God and for more than two decades Jeremiah is prophesying and warning them of impending doom and judgment and it often lands him in jail. Once he is even thrown into a pit to die because his prophesies, the things he is talking about are frankly not good for business. It is not good to have a guy running up and down the streets talking this sort of talk and yet he endures in obedience to God.

Sure enough the warnings come to fruition and Babylonia invades in 587. Jerusalem falls. Solomon's stunning palace and the great temple to God built at the pinnacle, at the apex of Solomon's reign, at the pinnacle of Jewish civilization are utterly and completely destroyed. Many are taken captive and exiled in Babylon. Others are flushed out and flee to surrounding nations as immigrants. We get a bird's eye view of the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah, which is the southern kingdom. And it looks remarkably familiar. It reminds us that as the body of Christ, we are the salt of the earth, a preservative that can turn back the tide and hold off a repeat performance. So we dive in today, beginning with Jeremiah chapter 1.

Commentary

It is fascinating what Paul is able to say from the confines of prison. It is really remarkable that he is able to have this certain posture of heart even when his freedom has been taken from him. And it is fascinating. Even as he writes this letter, he is certainly writing it to the Philippians, but he knows his mail is being censored. We can see this in his writing where he is like:

Greetings to everyone there, all of God’s people, especially those who work in the service of the emperor.

He's in prison!! The emperor is going to make a judgment about his life and he is able to say some really remarkably encouraging things to the Philippians who are poor and who keep giving out of their need to take care of Paul. From prison, from being under complete total watch, waiting for a thumbs up or a thumbs die, like ‘will I live or will I die?’ that gives us a better context, ‘will I live or will I die?’ he is writing this:
Don’t worry about anything.

Just let that sink in for a second. He's waiting to find out if he is going to be set free or if he is going to be executed.

Don’t worry about anything, but pray and ask God for everything you need, always giving thanks for what you have.

We’re not under that kind of duress. I don’t think anybody who is hearing me today is under that sort of predicament – ‘I'm sitting here waiting to find out if I'm going to be executed Roman style.’ Since Paul is a Roman citizen, he won't have a torture death like being beaten to death or crucified. He’ll have a swift, what would be considered an honorable death but a death nonetheless. We’re not facing that. Yet, we have the hardest time with this.

Don’t worry about anything, but pray and ask God for everything you need, always giving thanks for what you have. And because you belong to Christ Jesus, God’s peace will stand guard over all your thoughts and feelings. His peace can do this far better than our human minds.

Is that not the truth? Is that not the truth? Because our human minds, the way we try to chew through something and find peace is to figure it out. And a lot of times there is no way to figure something out because we don’t have all the parameters, we don’t know what is going to happen. So we’re constantly running and running and running in our heads. We don’t sleep well. We keep waking up because of all the stress, all the stuff that is going on is running through our minds even while we’re asleep. We’re not good at this.

Paul is saying the peace of Jesus will guard you and the peace of Christ can do this far better than you can. It is available. That's the thing. The peace of Christ is available. We just don’t rely on it or we don’t even acknowledge it. It is like one of these things that exposes our hearts and our true posture of heart toward our faith in Christ because if we actually believe that Christ is present to us and will provide for our needs, and not just physical needs, but our wellbeing in spirit, and that he will stand guard over us and be in this with us, well then we really wouldn’t have a reason to worry about anything now would we? So it exposes us and it exposes the fact that we’re like – ‘I kind of believe, but I’ve kind of got to figure this out, too.’ That's double minded which means that is an unstable place to live which means it is not going to work out.

It is elementary, my dear friends, and yet we’re still struggling with the elementary tenets of the faith. We don’t have to be in all of this worry. We don’t have to. We choose to. The things that are consuming us are less than life and death. That is where Paul is coming from. We have less of a burden to carry than that and we don’t have to live the way we’re living.

What we want Christ for most of the time is just to make it go away. That's just not how it works. Christ comes into it, is in it with us. The power of the Holy Spirit is advising our every step. The peace of God is within us. The things that we are facing are put into proper context and perspective when we have an eternal view. All of a sudden none of this is forever and whatever ‘this’ is that I'm going through right now, this isn’t the end of the story either, especially when I have the Almighty God as my Father and his Holy Spirit within me. None of this is eternal. My Father is eternal and he has placed eternity in my heart. We zoom out and all of a sudden we have a horizon and we have an orientation to what is actually going on. We’re obsessing about things we don’t have to obsess about.

Paul goes on to say:

I don’t really need anything. I can use things. I have needs, but have learned to be satisfied with what I have and also to be satisfied with whatever happens. I know how to live when I am poor and I know how to live with plenty. I have learned the secret…

I love that.

…I have learned the secret of how to live through any kind of situation.

We hear all these tips and tricks in our lives. There are all kinds of step-by-step books out there--here’s the traits of a person who can do this. Here's the four traits of the person who can do this. Here are the five laws of this. Here are the seven steps of that. Paul is just saying it is kind of simpler than that.

I have learned the secret of how to live through any kind of situation.

That should make us all sit up because we all face all kinds of situations.

I have learned the secret—when I have enough to eat or when I am hungry. I have learned the secret-- when I have everything I need or when I have nothing.

Those are both filled with their own challenges. When you have everything you need, that presents its own set of challenges about self-reliance and kind of going—yeah, I’ve got this figured out. I’ve got it from here.

Also I have learned the secret for when I have nothing.

So here’s the big secret.

Jesus is the one who gives me the strength I need to do whatever I must do.

We’re like Naaman back in the Old Testament. He was like the king's right-hand man and he was sent to the prophet who won't even see him and tells him to dip in the Jordan River and he is furious, not only because he doesn’t get an audience with this prophet, so that is kind of like a slight, he is not getting the honor he thinks he deserves, but he is being told to go dip in a river, something easy. He is like—if that were the deal about curing my skin disease, we have better rivers where we’re from. What's up with this dirty Jordan River, dip in this? His friends are like—yeah, here's the thing. You came all this way and he told you something easy to do. If he had told you something complex and hard to do, you would have done it. Why can’t you just dip in the Jordan River?

So Naaman goes and dips in the Jordan River and he is healed. It is like that here. The secret is actually quite simple. If Paul has laid out the nine steps, the 14 hoops to jump through and they were kind of complicated and hard and quite a journey and maybe not achievable, well then we would resonate. But he is saying it is easy. For you who are in Christ, it is just easy if you can orient yourself right and see what is really going on. It's simple. The answer is this—Christ is the one who will give you the strength to do whatever you have to do.

May we remember that. May we drink deep until we are full of that. May it permeate every cell of our physical bodies and drip its way down into the identity of our spirits. This is the only thing we’ve got to remember. It is Christ and Christ alone. Christ and Christ alone for everything we are facing. There is no other strength needed and there is no other strength. It is that simple.

Prayer

Holy Spirit, it is that simple and it is that hard because we have to believe that is true. And not just kind of believe it is true theoretically or theologically, but actually just believe it is true period and to be thinking through those lenses, just being aware always it is your strength and your strength alone that will lead us and protect us and guard our hearts. There is no other way. This is how we’re made. So we have to have that faith that this is true. That becomes a battle in our own hearts and minds when we’re facing a precipice and there seems to be no way of escape. Come Holy Spirit, fill us. Fill us full of the faith that we need to live this out. It is Christ who gives us our strength to do whatever we must do. We pray this in the mighty name of Jesus, amen.

Announcements

Www.DailyAudioBible.com is the website. That is home base. It is certainly where you do find out what is going on around here and what is going on around here is Reframe. Reframe released officially everywhere a couple days ago. You can get your copy at www.ReframeBook.com where there are some links to lots of places you can get it online if you want to order it. But you can also just go to your local Christian book store or Barnes and Noble or whatever and get it there.

We will be starting our kind of Reframe Group Study. We’re going to do like a small group together virtually. It is going to be fun. We’re going to use Periscope and I'm going to kind of get on Periscope and talk through a couple of chapters for a few weeks. There are seven chapters in this book and we’ll spend like three weeks, maybe four weeks once a week share some things and we’ll ask questions and discuss. So you have to grab the Periscope app which is free, by the way, for your Android or Apple device. If it is not free, then it is the wrong one. It is free. So you just get it, download it, and search for Daily Audio Bible, follow us, and then you’ll be alerted when we go live. I’ll let you know when that is going to be. Probably next Thursday is when we’ll start—the 8th, that's the plan. So it will be the 8th of October when we’ll do our first one.

Then there is a Facebook Group around Reframe: www.Facebook.com/Groups/ReframeBook and y can get into the group there where there is already just amazing pictures of people and thoughts from people who are kind of reading the book. I’ve loved that a ton. It has been great to interact there. There is a discussion already going on. Jump into that. It is going to be fun.

If you haven’t gotten your Reframe book yet, grab it. If you haven’t gotten Periscope yet, grab it. If you haven’t joined the group yet, do so. We’re going to have a lot of fun together exploring what a reframed life looks like.

Okay, coming up on the calendar, the 11th of October is when Reframe Tour starts. We’ve been doing Reframe but Reframe Tour after the book launch starts October 11th right here in the Nashville area, right here in the rolling hills of Tennessee, so I would love to see you, Nashville. You’ve got to come out. I’ll be speaking at SouthView Church in Spring Hill, TN—www.SouthView.cc is their website so you can get more information there. Looking forward to seeing you.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at the website: www.DailyAudioBible.com. Thank you profoundly for your partnership. If you prefer, the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996, Spring Hill, TN 37174.

And of course, as always, we are a community. We are a family which means we are not alone. We are together. We have each other. If you have a prayer request or comment, (877) 942-4253 is the number to call.

And 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, what's up everyone? This is Curtis from Cali. Just calling in. I heard a guy. I believe your name was Ollie or Alex from Florida. I'm sorry, it was a little choppy on the call, but you were asking about suggestions on if you should tell your wife to listen to the DAB or if you should kind of keep it to yourself and let it be your own little thing, your own, I don’t know, thing that is just strictly yours. My suggestion to that, man, since you asked for suggestions is to tell her. I don’t understand why we would want to keep this a secret from anybody. It's the message of Jesus Christ and if it is helping you to grow and I know you said something that you guys are kind of on different levels right now, picture what it could do for her and her spiritual walk and then picture how your marriage could be if you guys were both doing this together. You can have some dialogue on what is being talked about on the DAB. You're supposed to honor and cherish your wife. If you’ve found something good, whatever that is in life, and it is beneficial for her, especially her spiritual walk, then share it. Share it with everybody. Share it with the world. It's not a message that should be hidden from anybody whatsoever. So yeah, that would be my advice and I’ll talk to you guys later.

Hi. This is Lisa from California. I’ve listened for about a year and a half and it has helped me tremendously since the death of my 17-year-old son. I'm calling today for the first time to ask for your prayer for my 6-year-old nephew. He has a very swollen lymph node and doctors are watching it to see how it progresses. I ask that you please pray for the complete healing of Connor. I thank you and ask the Lord to bless you for helping and praying for Connor. Thank you.

Hi DAB family. This is Janet from Tennessee. I was calling for a prayer request for myself. I am guilty and I know that I am. I'm just asking for mercy on the court. I was speeding trying to get to work on time and what I did not realize was there was a certain spot that had dropped down from 66 to 55 miles an hour and I was going 76 miles an hour. So obviously 20 miles over the speed limit is considered reckless driving and, like I said, I know I am guilty, but I just need to plead mercy and take my fine, but I just don’t want that to be going on my record. I'm not sure…I haven’t had a speeding ticket in like 15 years. I don’t even remember what I did the last time, but anyway, if you all could pray for me, I would certainly appreciate it. And also my sister is still wanting her husband, of course, Adam, still asking for prayers for him and the paperwork to go through so he can come to the States and be with her. So we appreciate all your prayers. We love you and are praying for every one of you. Bye-bye.

Hey family, this is Meliesa from Alabama. Thank you, Brian and Jill, for all you do. I have two special prayer requests. My nephew that I called about before that has autism, he is getting so hard to handle and my little sister just got me crying. He has autism. He is 4 years old and she can’t do anything with him. Also, my other nephew is 15. He has alopecia. That means all of his hair came out and he is in a really bad depression right now. He talked to his mom today and said that he needed help before he does something to himself. I know it is the enemy attacking my family, so you all please keep us in prayer. Their names are Joshua and Elijah. And pray for my sisters, Donna and Candy. I love you all so much. Thomas, I heard your call today and I'm praying for you, praying for Chante and Pastor Gene. I love you. Please keep my family in prayer. Thank you.

Lord, as I walk in your spirit today, please keep my pride and my ego at bay. They oftentimes surface and get in the way, negatively affecting the things that I say. Lead me, guide me. I don’t want to stray. I long to be yours, Lord, I want to obey. Because Satan is watching, just waiting to slay. Being cut off from you, Lord, is just too much to pay. Help me stay humble and spiritually led. It's not just the words, Lord, it's how they are said. And not just the how, Lord, please teach me when. If the time is not right, then the words won't get in. The flow from my lips to the listener's ear may inflate my ego, but the listener won't hear. He’ll just get resentful and throw my words back. Anger will enter and we’ll both go off track. Lord, what is my purpose as I go through this day? That is a rhetorical question. Lord, show me the way. Help me keep ego and pride out of the way. Place on my lips, Lord, the right words to say. Help me walk upright and continually pray. I want to be yours, Lord, come whatever may. BlindTony1016@gmail.com. I’d like to give a shout-out to my brother Garth. Haven’t heard from you in a while, brother. Love to hear your voice right about now. And I’d like to give a shout-out to Dean and Debra C. and also to Sherlock. Okay, thank you, Brian, for this wonderful forum. Give blessings to your whole entire family and our whole entire extended DAB family. Love you. Keep the faith. Love you.

Morning, this is Michaela from Gloucester, UK and I have an overdue praise report. I want to thank you guys so much for praying for my cousin William. He has done his __________. He didn’t do as well as he could, I know, but he did get enough to get his college. So thank you so much for your prayers and I just… God is amazing. He gives us what we need. __________ what you need and William got what he needed to get on a college course and hopefully move on with his life. Everything in that situation is far from perfect and so still wanting your prayers for my family and his family. I thank you so much for that. Also, I'm been struggling with a few things lately or wrestling with a few things about just working out who I am and my place in the world, my place with God, my place in the Bible and being a single woman is one of those things. So Rebecca from Michigan, I just heard your phone call. Thanks so much for sharing that. I will look into that because that is something I’ve been working out recently in the last couple of months, years. Marriage is a calling, but singleness is also a calling and it is really hard to consider that option when you're surrounded by a world that kind of holds up marriage or being together with someone as what you're going for, especially with the people your age kind of settling down, getting married and having kids. So if anyone wants to talk about it some more, come find me on Facebook. I'm Michaela B. Yeah, so thanks guys. Bye.

Tamarie 10/03/2015 17:40

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