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Daily Transcripts
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10/05/2015
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Today is the 5th of October. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian, what a pleasure it is to be here with you. I’m glad that we can have this time together. How is it going? It is absolutely making the shift toward autumn here in the rolling hills of Tennessee. It rained a lot last week and that’s kind of shifted things. It was that kind of rain that we get (at least here in the United States) in the Pacific Northwest it’s kind of what they’re known for, it’s constant. The clouds kind of come in and there’s no horizon, and it’s just always kind of threatening, and there’s always this misty thing going on. You folks who live up there, I love you, and you certainly do have heaven on earth in the summertime, but it’s been kind of like your weather here for many days in a row and it has began to shift us into the fall season. Of course, I know that when we talk like that, we’re talking very USA-centric and we are a global community and I know some of you are experiencing springtime and warm weather and summer’s coming. It’s so weird! We live on this fascinating, beautiful planet that God gave us and no matter where we are, we get together and center ourselves around his word. So, let’s go there. Let’s dive in. We’re reading from the Holman Christian Standard Bible this week.
Commentary
Okay, so we’re in the book of Jeremiah and it is a book of prophesy and you know we can kind of dive in every day and some of it is doom and gloom and can get tedious because everything is about to fall apart; and when you’re listening to that you’re just like, ‘what is going on here?’ ‘How do I work this out, how do I get the context?’ And it’s important to remember just the posture of Jeremiah. This isn’t stuff he’s excited about saying. We can look at these prophets in our mind’s eye and just see these straggly long-haired guys, long grey hair, a staff, a dirty robe, old sandals, scruffy, outcast. And for sure, I’m sure that’s part of the deal. These were very bold guys who were willing to come in and say these kinds of things. But you’ve just got to imagine that Jeremiah doesn’t really want to be doing this. You’ve got to imagine how it looks. He’s not stupid. He knows how this looks as he’s saying these things. So, imagine where you live, just kind of going to the grocery store, getting gas, whatever town it is you live in. Somebody is there and they’re saying these kinds of things, and you immediately marginalize them because it is like ‘this guy is just crazy, he’s mentally unstable.’ You just dismiss them. That’s kind of what Jeremiah is in. People are not really listening. They’ve kind of developed this culture and this society that was once God’s chosen people, but has now moved on past that. And there’s all kinds of mixture happening, and Jeremiah is simply saying a message: ‘This isn’t going to go well, this isn’t going to work out, this isn’t going to work out in the short-term even. There are problems that are brewing. We’re undoing ourselves; we’ve abandoned our God.’
It’s easy to get into the judgment pieces of these prophetic books and either embrace them and translate it to our time and then go ‘yeah, it’s the same thing, bad things are coming’ or to just look at the pronounced judgments and go ‘this is so judgmental, where’s the mercy in all of this?’ And this is one of the points when we have to reframe. We have to begin with ourselves and understand that we have to own our actions and our lives. We know this. There is the law of the land that we live in and we know if we break it in a small way or in a big way and get caught doing that, there will be a judgment against us and a penalty to pay to society to make reparations for the wrong that we’ve done against our fellow citizens. We kind of know that, we just grow up. That’s what holds society together.
So we have to understand that Jeremiah is being sent as a forerunner with a warning message of where the road is headed. He even says: ‘roam the streets of Jerusalem and take note, and search in the squares and if you find one person (and this is God speaking through him), one person, any who acts justly, who seeks to be faithful then I will forgive her. But when they swear ‘as the Lord lives,’ they’re swearing falsely.’ We begin to see God’s posture here in just one line that he speaks through Jeremiah and he uses marital imagery. ‘I satisfied their needs yet they committed adultery.’
So if you’re married, you can understand what that statement would bring up in you. Some have experienced this, you know what it brings up in you, the emotion that it brings up in you. So rather than depersonalizing God and going toward ‘why is He so judgmental? And just assuming that he doesn’t care what we do, he’s just merciful to us and we can always just come slinking back to him (although that is true because that’s what he said a second ago). ‘If anyone, anyone, just one person wants to be faithful, (again, a term we can understand in terms of marriage), if they want to be faithful, then I’ll forgive her.’ ‘If she would be faithful, I’d forgive the fact that she cheated on me.’ That’s a big deal!
‘I satisfied her needs and she still committed adultery.’ That is where God’s heart is as he’s speaking through Jeremiah, the prophet, to the people that he loves, that he has chosen, that he has protected, that he has given a land to, that he has built a culture over hundreds of years with.
So as we continue to move through books of prophecy, this is kind of where we’re at in the scriptures, we get a glimpse of the time, we get a color of the people and where they’re at in their culture, but we also get a lot of forceful words, a lot of words of warning, and it can kind of turn us. It feels judgmental. But if we understand the context that it’s coming from, this heart of a God who has been betrayed, betrayed in a way that it feels like his love is cheating on him, well then you’d begin to understand the posture of heart with which all of these things are being said. Then we can begin to look in our own lives and begin with the intimacy of the Holy Spirit to invite God to show us areas that we might be breaking his heart in the same way, because that’s not what we want to do, that’s not where we’re at. I don’t want to break the heart of one I love. I don’t want to break my wife’s heart, I love her. But I don’t want to break my God’s heart! He loves me and I love Him. We are invited into an intimate collaboration in life. If I cheat on him, then I am breaking trust in the relationship and the relationship can’t survive that way.
What that actually looks like is going to be different for each of us, we have our own story; we have our own personal relationship with God. The only way we can know is what it’s like in the relationship. I know my wife’s likes and dislikes. I know her. I’m in a relationship with her. So things that might break her heart or cause her suffering may not for another woman in another marriage. We have a personal relationship. We are also invited into a personal relationship with God.
So as we move through the books of prophecy, we can allow these things to be forceful in our own lives. Rather than just going ‘I don’t like this, it’s all doom and gloom, I don’t want to deal with all of that and it doesn’t even make sense to me,’ we can begin to allow the forceful words be probing words in our own hearts and lives and allow the Father to come by the power of his Holy Spirit into all the things that these prophecies can bring up.
Prayer
So Father, that’s what we’re asking for, clarity in that, showing us what it is that it means to us and our relationship. We love you. We just want to declare that right now, we love you! We’ve been deceived plenty of times in our lives. We’ve been the one that’s cheated and you’ve been the one that’s remained faithful to us, not the other way around. And it’s odd that we think of it that way, it’s odd that we think that you’re the one that’s kind of unavailable, that you’re the one that’s gone somewhere, you’re the one that’s not coming through, you’re the one that is mysterious and we can’t really find any way to connect with you. It’s actually been us all along, and we’ve had this transference problem, where we’re transferring what we’re doing onto you and blaming you for it. Very, very twisted stuff we’ve been doing to you; and we’re sorry. It’s not just us. We’ve been doing this to you for a long time, we’re sorry. We may not be able to change the heart of every person on the face of this earth, but it really does start with us reframing you, looking at this differently. It does start with us owning our part of the relationship. And even in that, who are we? We are so incapable. We think we’re so strong and wise and smart, but we’re not. Without you, we really are nothing. Without the power of the resurrection indwelling us, we have nothing, we are nothing. So everything that we do, even being in relationship with you is something that you are a part of. You’ve given us life. So we invite you into all this and into this day and everything. Every moment of this day is consecrated to you. We want to spend it with you, come. In every decision we make, every conversation we have, every thought we have, every doubt, every fear, everything! Come Holy Spirit. We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Announcements
Www.DailyAudioBible.com is the website. It is home base; it is absolutely where you find out what’s going on around here. Plenty. Reframe is out and about and in all the stores now, so certainly let everyone you know know; especially if you’ve had a chance to participate in reading some of the book.
This week we’re going to start our large small group where we’re going to begin to go through the book together. So this Thursday, toward evening, I haven’t decided the time yet, this Thursday, which is the 8th will be the first Periscope. I’ll kind of get on and just intro some of the thoughts and background of the book and we’ll spend, I don’t know, three or four Thursdays going through it together. And so you can email questions that you might want answered or that you might want to participate in. I’ll try to take questions from Periscope, but things fly by so fast and I don’t have the best eyes in the world that I’ll try to do it there, like that a little bit. But you can also email questions that I can try to get to by emailing Reframe@DailyAudioBible.com. So that I’ll have those handy and move into that territory. But we’ll spend a little bit of time together talking. If you don’t have the Periscope app yet, go grab it, it’s free. Whether you are on an Android or whether you’re on an Apple device, it’s free. If you come across one that you and it’s like you’ve got to pay $1.99 or something like that, it’s the wrong one. It’s free. I’ve seen some people who have IPads saying ‘I can’t find it.’ You’ve got to click iPhone. If you are looking at apps for iPad only, you won’t find the right one. You’ve got to include the phones because it’s a phone app, even though it will work on your iPad. Download it and then search for DAB and you’ll find us, and when we do go live, you’ll get a little chirping sound and it will tell you we’re live, and Boom! We’ll all be together and it’ll be fun. We’ll spend some time.
Then if you haven’t joined the Facebook group for Reframe yet, you should. Wonderful conversation happening there already, that is at www.Facebook.com/Groups/ReframeBook and get in the group. So we’ll do Periscope, talk about it a little bit, answer some questions and then move our way over and I’ll spend some time at the Facebook Group where we can continue the discussion and I think we’ll have some fun. We haven’t done anything quite like this, but we certainly have live-broadcasted things from all over the world for years and so this will be fun. We’ll have a good time.
And then let’s see, let me look at the calendar here. This Sunday the 11th of October, the Reframe Tour post book launch kicks off in earnest and we’ll be doing six straight weekends on the road before we actually get to the Thanksgiving holiday and move into the Christmas season. So this weekend I get to start in my hometown. So, Nashville, I want to meet you. I do. I haven’t gotten to do this before and I’m looking forward to it. So I’ll be speaking in Spring Hill, TN, suburb of Nashville, at SouthView Church. The website there is www.SouthView.cc. You can get more information, their address, etc., service times and all. So looking forward to being with you ‘reframing’ this weekend.
The 18th I will be with the family in Charleston, SC at Daniel Island Fellowship. Their website is www.DanielIslandFellowship.org. Absolutely come out. This is a good friend of mine, church planter, church plant, and I’m really looking forward to being there.
Weekend after that is the 25th of October, I will be in Richland, WA at Columbia Christian Church and looking forward to that. So that’s the next 3 weekends for us. Looking forward to seeing you out on the road.
Okay, if you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if the community means something to you, if the family here is life-giving to you, thank you for helping give life back to it so it can exist at all. There’s a link on the homepage of www.DailyAudioBible.com in the upper right-hand corner. 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
Hello family, this is Cherry C., Cherry Pie. I’ll make it quick because 2 minutes goes real fast. First, I’d like to make a shout out to my best, dearest friend. She’s my lifetime friend. I’ve been telling her about this Daily Audio Bible and she’s listening to it today, and she said it was the best thing that could ever have happened to her today. She said she seemed like it changed her today, she just felt so relieved just by listening to it. My girlfriend is Cynthia N., so I want everybody to welcome her. I also want to tell Pastor Genie, you’re unbelievable to me. You go through so much, and then you’ll still come on through all your struggles, you’ll still come on and say “let us pray.” You have so much to give, that it just blows me away. All the stuff that you go through you still come on and you still touch everybody, and you still pray for everybody. I want to say I thank you. I want to thank everybody that covered me in prayer. I thank each and every one of you guys, I love you. Joe the police officer, I want to say Joe, you’re my warrior, so I want to say I love each and every one of you guys and I thank you so much. And Jill, if you can just give us 2 minutes of a praise and worship song, I would love to hear that. So Brian, if you can pass this message on to Jill, if she could just give us 2 minutes of praise and worship, just 2 minutes of her praise and worship! And everybody, please welcome my best friend, my lifetime friend, who’s now listening to the Daily Audio Bible and I’m so excited for her. I’m just excited. God is good, regardless of the circumstances we go through, God is still good. He is still on the throne and I am still truly blessed. I love each and every one of you guys. I wouldn’t know what to do without you guys, thank you so much for all your prayers. I will continue to lift each and every one of you up. Thank you so much. Thank you, Cynthia, for tuning in!
Yeah, this is Blind Tony. I wanted to reach out to that lady that called in, said she’d been listening for 6 years but first call, and her son, a 23-year-old heroin addict. I just wanted to tell you your call really touched me because overcoming drug addiction was the hardest battle of my life. I fought for over 40 years to get clean. I tried everything; I tried a 36-month residential program twice, a 24-month residential program twice, an 18-month residential. I tried NA, I tried to just say no, I tried everything. My family loved me through it all, but you know what? Eventually I gave up on my own self and I said to God, you know what? It’s just who I am, this is who you made me to be. I tried everything I could God and I give up, you know. It was like Paul said, the things I wanted to do I couldn’t do, and the things I didn’t want to do I was always doing. So anyway, when I got to the point where I just gave up, one day, I said this is who I am; I’m just going to try to control it, God stepped in and He did the miracle that I had been trying to do for over 40 years. It’s like he said “you know what? You finished now? Okay, get out the way so I can show you why I’m God and you are you.” And he did what I could never do in my own strength. You know, if you cut a tree down and you could cut it down so low that you could run a lawn mower over it and never know that there was a tree there. But as long as those roots are in the ground, that tree will come back to life, and that’s the way addiction is. You know, I would stay clean for a while but eventually it would come back to life. But when God did it, He took the root out. Hallelujah! I’m free! Praise the Lord, I’m free! It’s like Blessed Like Me said the other day. There’s something about that name Jesus, you know what I’m saying? Anyway, my message to you is: Don’t give up!
Good afternoon Brian and the rest of the Daily Audio Bible family. This is Shondra calling from Maryland. I just wanted to ask that you all keep my father, Robert B., in your prayers, because I know for a fact that he hears the voice of the Lord, but he is in a spiritual battle because he is trying to justify and trying to make excuses why he isn’t submitting to the voice of the Lord. I know that he hears the voice of the Holy Spirit talking to him based on conversations that he and I have had. He has tried to look for other purposes and reasons like other religions and other sources to find reasoning and explanation, but anyway, please just keep him in prayer as I continue to intercede for him. Thank you very much, love you guys and hope to hear from everyone else and answered prayers and testimonies. Bye.
Hey DAB, this is Curtis from Cali. I’m just calling in for Jill, who was saying her son is a heroin addict and she’s looking for help. You’ve been a listener now for 6 years, it’s your first time calling in. I could tell just from your voice the tears you’re holding back just relaying the message. Just hearing a mother’s plea for her child, for help, it broke my heart. I’m driving to work right now and I had to just pick up my phone and call in and let you know that I’m thinking of you, I’m praying for you and your family. We have a similar situation in ours as well and I understand the pain that that brings to everyone, not just your son and not just you. I want you to know that Ohana, I think that was awesome what you said. I have Hawaiian blood in me, so I totally get that, and I have little kids who watch Lilo and Stitch. Ohana, though, you know, we are a family, too. DAB, all of its members, we’re all family, and no one gets left behind. So DAB, I pray that we lift up this family, that God hears our prayers, and that this long time listener of ours, who’s walked with us, who’s prayed with us, that we can do the same thing for her and her child. So, Lord, lift us this family, lift up Jill and her son, and show us a changed life, a changed man. We love you. Amen.
Good morning. This is Matthew F. from Du Quoin, IL. A co-worker who we had put a prayer request on here for on September 27th for his niece Lauren, we were praying on the 27th for healing and awakening from a coma from a car wreck. She was in a coma. He came up to me and wanted to thank me for praying and he says she‘s awake and they’re talking about bringing her home. There is a lingering concern about her legs, so in Jesus’ name, we believe for completion, that what the Lord has started shall be finished in Jesus’ mighty name. As long as the Lord Jesus is our healer, He’s our provider, and we love him, love him, love him. Thank you for your prayers. I just love this family. In Jesus’ name.
Hello dear family, this is Janice in Hot Springs, AR. Excuse my voice. I'm a little ill. I’m having one of those nights where I’m in a lot of pain with my arthritis, and my __________ with my doctor, and I haven’t slept for days and trying to do what’s best and right for everybody and I’m losing my grip sometimes on how I handle myself and feel sad that I haven’t made a difference today because I’ve had another day in bed. I thought if I reached out to my family, you could help me remember that I can pray while I’m in bed all day and I can give thanks to the Lord and I can read his Word and I listen to my DAB family once, twice, three times a day because you’re a lifeline for me when I get down like this. I just wanted to remind you also that these times we’re headed for are getting darker and darker and darker, and we need to remember that we have to hang on to the Lord every single day, and by doing that, we hang on to each other as a family and pray for this family daily because we don’t know how long we’ll have this ability, our ability to be in touch like we do now with Brian, so let’s make a pact that we pray for each other as a family every single day, and that God keeps us close no matter what. I love you all so very much and it’s been very comforting for me to have this time to talk to you. God bless you all, you’ve been such a blessing. Officer Joe, nice to hear from you.
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Tamarie 10/05/2015 20:26 |
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