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Daily Transcripts
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10/11/2015
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Jeremiah 16:16-18:23 ~ 1 Thessalonians 4:1-5:3 ~ Psalm 81:1-16 ~ Proverbs 25:6-8
Today is October 11th. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible and we greet a brand new week, stretching out in front of us and I'm excited to be here with you at the beginning of this week and for every day as we take the journey through the scriptures this year, which also includes this week. So we’ll read from the International Standard Version and pick up where we left off yesterday.
Commentary
Paul had gotten some questions about death, those who had died, and he got some questions about how this whole thing winds down and comes to a conclusion, what is the end of things. We can realize those questions remain with us – what does that all look like? That is the big mystery, isn’t it? We need to know and we want to know. So when somebody has had some sort of afterlife experience, we’ll flock to that just so we can get a glimpse, just so we can get to know. This was no different in Paul's time.
He says, look, here's the deal. You don’t have to grieve like people who have no hope because that is not how it is. There is a resurrected one who will bind us all up in his resurrection. As far as how this whole thing comes down, you don’t need to be worried about times and dates.
This is fascinating because a lot of people are worrying about times and dates, predicting times and dates. It's not a new phenomenon. It has been going on all along. I don’t know how to say this delicately. It has been incorrect every time, every single time up until this point.
If I paraphrase all that Paul said, it would be this – it's unpredictable, like a thief in the night would be unpredictable. You don’t know. I don’t know. We don’t know. However, brothers, Paul says, you're not in the darkness in order that the day of the Lord might surprise you like a thief. You're children of the light. You're children of the day. You don’t belong to the night or the darkness. So live like it.
I imagine there is no more poignant, honest and genuine moment of truth than the moment of a person's death. At that point there isn’t a theological statement to be made or a dogma to be recited. At that moment you are face to face with what you actually believe is the truth. You are jumping over a precipice and you have no choice whatsoever but to take the leap of faith. I imagine that is exactly how it is supposed to be because we come face to face with all that we think that we know and realize we do not know all that there is and we must take the leap of faith.
Paul says God hasn’t destined us to receive wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus who died for us in order that whether we’re awake or asleep, we may be together with him. Or maybe, in other words, take the leap of faith now and don’t look back. Control yourself in your humanity. Have hope. You don’t have to live as a person without hope and don’t worry about dates and times. You're not in the darkness. Don’t worry about it. You're a child of the day. You don’t belong to the night or the darkness so don’t fall asleep like the others do. Stay away and be sober. Live into this. Let's be awake and alert. Take the leap now and never look back.
May we stop worrying about the things that are beyond our control. Let's stop worrying about the things that we can’t know. There will always be something that we can’t know and there will always be something that is out of our control. But man, if we’re in an intimate relationship with God, seriously, if we really actually are in an intimate relationship with God like we claim to be, if that is actually for real, what do we possibly have to fear in life or in death? At the end of our days or at the end of the world, what do we possibly have to fear? This is important because it brings up what we really believe the truth is and it is important that we settle those things and not flip-flop around. Otherwise, that is what we’re going to do, flip-flop around throughout life, never being certain of anything when certainty is offered. What is required is a leap of faith. May we take the leap.
Prayer
Father, the leap is into your arms and we know this. Yet, we want to try to rationalize it, intellectualize it, make it a formula, make it a statement, create a recipe from it and then try to follow that recipe and that is just not how a relationship works. You are far and vastly beyond all that we can think we know. So the only thing that we really can do is what you’ve been asking us to do throughout all of human history, come to you, return to you, stay with you and don’t leave you, don’t depart. Don’t abandon you. Don’t commit adultery against you. Don’t chase other lovers in search of life separate from you. Don’t betray you. We can understand this in our lives. We can understand this in our relationships with people that we’re trusting in and we’ve had enough life to know that people can let us down and for some reason we’ve gotten in to the practice of blaming you for every bad thing that ever happens and never owning what we do. You haven’t been unfaithful to us. You have never been unfaithful to us. You have never abandoned us. You have never left us. We have only ever left you and then blamed you for it. So it is time we take some serious consideration and understand that there is only one leap of faith to be had here and that is a leap into your arms. In that leap we find our only hope. There is no other hope, so we take the leap and we come to you, ask for your forgiveness. We’re sorry for the mess that we’ve made of things over the course of time. Your unspeakable grace and kindness and patience is beyond our capacity and we don’t know how to define it other than to know that it is never-ending. Even that is something we can’t really process. You are beyond us and yet you are present to us. How we make sense of this is impossible other than we take the leap of faith. We come to you with open hands and open hearts, never to leave again, never to betray you again, never to abandon you again, never to commit adultery on you again, never to chase another lover in search of life without you again. There is no other hope but you. We put all of our hope and faith in you and you alone. Come Holy Spirit, draw us deeper into Jesus that we may never look back. We ask this in the name of the resurrected Christ, the one in whom we place our hope and we declare it so, in His name, amen.
Announcements
Www.DailyAudioBible.com is home. It is where you find out what’s going on around here, and this morning I’ll be reframing at SouthView Church in Spring Hill, TN. I'm excited about that. So that will launch six straight weekends here. So I'm looking forward to seeing you out on the road. Be sure to come out if we’re in your area.
If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at www.DailyAudioBible.com. There is a link on the home page. If you prefer, the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996, Spring Hill, TN, 37174.
And 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
Good morning. This is Claire from Anderson Island, WA and I'm calling in td to pray for some people. I heard Sarah concerning her sister Candace, her husband Mark, and their unborn baby Trevor Nathan and her bipolar condition. And also for Chante who called in with a frazzled mind, for Morgan and Cassandra who called a while back, bipolar and schizophrenic, and for Lauren who is my sister's niece and she has some brain injury. So I just wanted to lift them up in prayer right now. Father God, I thank you that you are more powerful and above any illness, any condition. You reign, Lord. You are sovereign and there is purpose in all this, Lord. Father, I just ask for direction and clear wisdom for Chante, first of all. If she needs to go see a doctor, Lord, if she is feeling just overwhelmed and frazzled and that her mind just won't let her relax, I just pray that you would direct her to somebody who might be able to help her, Lord. We know you're the ultimate Father, God, and we know that you are her light and her salvation and you are the strength of her life, Lord God. So I just pray that you would begin a work in her even right now, that you're using this time and it is not for waste and I thank you that she thinks on the scripture from Matthew about trusting in you, about when she is weary to just cast her cares on you. I just thank you, Lord, that her mind is directed towards you. Father, for Morgan and Cassandra and Candace who are suffering with mental illness, Father God, you have given them the mind of Christ, so I just pray that they could walk in your strength, that you would correct any disorder in their mind, Lord, and you would give them the help that they need, that this new baby would…
Hi family. Pastor Gene from Bradenton, FL, working my way through Reframe. What a wonderful book. Thank you, Brian, for being a radical and not being afraid to publish it. We’re standing with you. Thank you. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for my brother, David, from Kansas and __________ those health issues that linger and that affect his job, his marriage. Father, you know that he is feeling very overwhelmed and scared about surgery but you are with him. I believe it. I declare it and I send a word of comfort to my brother. I pray for my sister Kitty from Ohio and I pray for the salvation of her husband. I know that weighs heavily in her heart. You are able to put the will and the want in the hearts of people. We pray that Kitty's husband's heart will be turned towards you, O God. Father, I pray for my brother Richard from Mississippi or Strong as is his name. I am praying for his mom's deliverance and for God to raise his son. Yes, your Word, Father, says let the weak say I am strong and I think that is a great choice of names. I pray that my brother Richard will flow in the anointing of the name he has chosen for himself. I thank you for my sister, either Carla or Karen from Tennessee. She is broken in a relationship due to her postpartum depression. She has struggled in her marriage and a job, but is there anything impossible, is there anything too hard for you? No, there is not. So I am believing for my sister. Please, Lord, lift her up and give her a fresh start. I thank you for my sister, the police officer who called being very, very broken. I couldn’t understand her request but I could hear her pain. Father, I know that you see her. I know that you are close to the broken-hearted. Be close to my sister and let her know how much you care and love her. O Father, I pray for young Emma, as she pursues wisdom to pursue her education. Bless my sister and keep her motivated in you. I pray all these things in Jesus’ mighty name. I love you guys. Bye-bye.
Hello Daily Audio Bible family. Blessed Like Me here. When I was 15 I had a run-in with alcohol and I had a regular supplier at my high school that would bring me pints of white liquor. And I got addicted to white liquor. That was one of the first things being addicted to, white liquor. I think it is called __________ alcoholism. And this was at a young age. After that I got weed, marijuana supply and I started smoking my marijuana and selling my marijuana. Later on I got to an age where I could get other people to buy me beer and alcohol and I would get that and as I got older, I graduate to more intense drugs. By the time I knew it, I was just in a whirlwind of things and I would just ask God to please help me out. He would deliver me. I got over 50 cases in the court where it was not guilty. God would bring me out of stuff. I would get into stuff. God would get me out of. Get into stuff God would get me out, so I'm willing to tell people that God can do it but it is always a process. So if you have a family member that is going through a drug situation, know that it is a process and God is with them the whole way. God was with me the whole time that I was going through my situation and my abuses. God was with me. Until one day I was reading. My aunt was having a Bible study and she called and told my grandmother to come and she told her to come. I asked her what she was reading in the Bible and she told me the scripture. I looked it up and God said ‘who am I to you?’ ‘Who am I to you?’ It broke my heart and I haven’t drunk any alcohol or smoked any cigarettes since. My word is give God the time to do the process and he will do it. Love you, Brian and Jill, for this ministry. God is good and he will do it. Amen.
Hi, this is Katie from Annapolis. I am in urgent need of prayer. I'm really __________ with my husband and he is verbally abusive and is not respectful of my personal space. He grabs things from my hand in anger. He argues in front of our children. I’ve tried to run away. He unlocks the door. I'm scared. I need guidance from God. I need peace. I need the Holy Spirit to work inside of me so I know what to do, the right decisions to make for my children and I. I'm afraid. Tonight I tried to bring up our situation again and how I would like to pray and try to get help and he said he thought about committing suicide. I need guidance. I don’t know what to do. I want to be safe. I don’t know what the right path is. Lord, please help me. Thank you. Have a blessed day.
Good morning family. It's Sheila from Massachusetts calling. Wanted to call today and let Morgan know that several times throughout the day I pause and I pray for you, Morgan. I pray for the healing of your mind, body and spirit and that you be free from the bipolar disorder that you suffer from. Haven’t heard from you in a long time. Would like to hear how you're doing and hope it is going well. I'm going to pray for Candace. Her sister called in a couple days ago and said Candace is in the middle of her pregnancy, suffers from bipolar disorder and is really struggling to find the energy and the conviction that she can make it through this. I'm lifting Candace up repeatedly in prayer. I pray for the Lord just to heal her, heal her as the great counselor that he is, provide her with the energy and the strength and the courage that comes with the Holy Spirit and the belief in the Holy Spirit that she can make it through this pregnancy, that she is going to deliver a healthy, beautiful child at the end of this. Pray for all of those who suffer from mental illnesses, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder. I also suffer from generalized anxiety disorder and my daughter Annie suffers from bipolar disorder. God, I pray. I pray that the great healer that you are, that you would provide us with healing and comfort and the peace that only you can provide, Lord. And for those of us that are afflicted by these illnesses, Lord, I pray that you show us how to use ourselves in your body to help others find your peace and your healing. Lord, just lift up everybody out there. Brothers and sisters, I'm so grateful to have you. I love you all. Have a good day.
Hi Daily Audio Bible family. It's James, the teacher in L.A. Actually, it is the morning of October 8th, Thursday, and I'm calling to respond to John. Brother, I am so encouraged right now. I still remember I think it was a year or two ago, I think a year ago listening to your prayer for your son and just how hearing the love in your voice and hearing how broken you were at that time over him and over things going on in your own life and hearing that now he is really doing well and that you’ve seen the fruit of your prayers and our prayers for you. It's really encouraging. Thank you for sharing that. John, I just got the impression then that you are a strong man, but this line from Ephesians 6 – be strong in the strength of the Lord. I know I'm __________, but how can you be strong in the strength of the Lord? Humility. It is not your strength. It is his. I just kind of see this. I don’t know why, I might be wrong, but all of us, we can be strong when we submit ourselves completely to God and turn ourselves over to him. I know you’ve done that and I think you're seeing it, we all see it. Praise God for it. Anyway, yeah, turn yourself over the God and you will end up stronger than you can ever imagine. Love you guys. Praying for you and hope to see you guys. Bye-bye.
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Tamarie 10/11/2015 14:16 |
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