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Daily Transcripts
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11/04/2015
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Ezekiel 10:1-11:25 ~ Hebrews 6:1-20 ~ Psalm 105:16-36 ~ Proverbs 27:1-2
Today is November 4th. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is my pleasure, like every day, to be here with you; and I trust that your season, whether that be spring or autumn, is going well. In the rolling hills of Tennessee, it’s full blown autumn with lots of rain. I don’t like that as much. It kind of gets long, but, man, when the sun comes out on those changing leaves across these rolling hills, it is certainly a glorious site to see. So, we’re experiencing that. I hope it’s lovely wherever you are.
So, we’re reading from the New Life Version this week. We are working our way through the books of Ezekiel and Hebrews.
Commentary
Okay, we read two sentences in the book of Proverbs today; two verses that happen to be two sentences that both fly kind of in the face of culture, the culture that we live in. The first one says,
“Do not talk much about tomorrow, for you don’t know what a day will bring.”
Well, we’re constantly talking about tomorrow. We’re talking in the future all of the time, all of the plans, all of the things, all of the events that we want to accomplish and so there’s always this list out in front of us that is undone. So, we never ever feel like we’re done and we never feel that sense of serenity that comes from completion because there’s always more to do, which isn’t to say you shouldn’t have a well-ordered life. You kind of have the sense of what’s going to happen. We kind of lock those things in place and then when our day gets blown apart, it makes us feel more and more behind. This stuff happens all the time. But the Proverbs is saying you don’t know what the day will bring. That can be read like an ominous thing, like we’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop or it can be read like it is: You don’t know what a day will bring.
That’s a fact for all of our attempts to arrange for a day and to arrange for our lives in that day. We wake up in the morning and its going to be a drama. It’s going to be a page turner because all of the little things and sometimes the big things that happen in the day we couldn’t have arranged for, couldn’t have known are upon us -- those chance conversations, that little twist in the story of whatever it is that we were working on. All of the little things that come in a day, there’s just no way to know them. And so we can live our lives as problem-solvers; like okay I don’t know how this is going to play out. This is my plan and I’m just going to solve problems in pursuit of that plan. Or we could do something intuitive that feels counter-intuitive: We can walk with God. We can actually invite him into the day and that be more than a token, that be more than a prayer in the morning. Right? Just invite you into my day. But, actually be present to him in all things during the day as if we are literally side-by-side in the day. I mean we’ll often pray, “God will lead the way to light my path. Lead me into all truth.” We’ll invite God into the day but then forget him completely, forget him until something goes wrong.
Wonder what it would be like if we didn’t forget him? We stay present to him in it all and so he was there helping us navigate the day. And maybe when the day is over, we put the day away and not worry about what we didn’t get done and what is the mountain in front of us to climb because it’s never going to go away. There’s always going to be stuff to do. But maybe we’re being encouraged to stay present to what’s happening now instead of living with a cloud over our heads about what is yet to come.
And then switching gears, this other sentence: “Let another man praise you and not your own mouth. Let a stranger, and not your own lips.”
And that flies in the face of this individualistic, self-promoting culture that we live in. We got to get above the noise. We got to draw attention to ourselves. We get our identity from the affirmation of other people and constant self-promotion. This becomes kind of this sickening stew we live in when the ancient wisdom of Proverbs, going back thousands of years, is saying yeah it has so much more validity if another person is the one affirming, praising you, and not your own mouth. That one affirmation from somebody who recognizes that you’re doing good, that you’re doing something worthwhile, that you’ve accomplished something you’ve set out to do, that one affirmation is worth 100 of your own statements to draw attention to yourself. And when we’re constantly in self-promotion mode, man, our identity is totally attached on whether or not someone will respond. It only leads us to live varying degrees of angst, basically.
These two Proverbs are different in fundamental ways. They’re completely different subject matters, but they speak to us very, very much in the place that we live and so may we not talk too much about tomorrow for we don’t even know what a day may bring. May we let others affirm and praise what we’re doing and not our own mouths, but a stranger and not our own lips.
Prayer
Father, the affirmation that we seek, the identity that we’re looking for can’t be found in anything but you; and that can’t happen without a true, intimate, personal, conversational relationship with you. And we certainly know that you can’t arrange for tomorrow. We can put it on our day planner. We can know the meetings that we have to have. We don’t know the conversations and all the twists and turns and we so often try to navigate it without you until we’ve gotten into a jam, then we ask for your help rather than walking with you in the same intimate, conversational relationship. And so these encouragements from the book of Proverbs all pull us to the same place – if we don’t have an intimate relationship with you, one where we are present to you, that we haven’t certainly acknowledged you but then put you in the closet until we get home – one that actually let’s you out of the box and into our lives, then we’ll always be approaching these things from a backwards perspective. So, we invite you into this day and we stay present to you and invite your Holy Spirit into every conversation and every interaction and every decision and choice that we make today. We stay present to that. We don’t want to do anything. We don’t want to walk into a meeting without you in the meeting; otherwise, we’re there by ourselves and we don’t have to be. And so come Holy Spirit into this day in every way, we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Announcements
Www.DailyAudioBible.com is home. It’s home base. It’s where you find out what’s going on around here. And Reframe is pretty much what’s going on around here. So the two things, because we’re on tour, the two things that I would mentioned is that November 1st, just a few days ago, the Reframe audio edition released and you can get that wherever you get books. Www.Reframebook.com is the website. It’s got a bunch of links to different retailers so you can check that out. Definitely check out the audio edition. It’s me reading the message and it’s (well, I guess for me anyway) the way I intended it. So check that out. This Sunday, so half a week from now, Reframe tour lands itself in Chattanooga, TN. So we’re looking forward to that. We’ll be at Mission Chattanooga. Www.MissionChattanooga.org is their website. You can get their service times. They have three different services there. So, looking forward to being in Chattanooga this weekend. And then the following weekend, we’ll wrap up touring for this year in the San Diego area. It will be at La Jolla Christian Fellowship and their website is www.ChurchAtLaJolla.org. So, looking forward to that as well.
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And 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
Hi Daily Audio Bible family, this is Christine from Washington State. And I’m just calling in. It’s like it’s my last hope. I’m just begging for prayer for my marriage and for my husband to be safe from evil. I just feel like he’s full of evil and any attempt to love him or be good to him it just backfires and he turns it into something that is being done to him. And I have no malice for him. I love him. He’s just full of rage and anger and he’s got a drug abuse problem, but really he’s just full of anger and he’s got greed in him and control. And the children and I just we want him so bad. We’ve had a separation. He’s come back and nearly walked out the door again because he didn’t like the tone of voice I used when I asked him for a hug. He didn’t give me one purposely so that I would ask so that he could do what he did. Anyway, I was just begging for prayer. I want my marriage to work. I’ve listen to Pastor Gene and what she said you know sometimes you have to let go. She let go of her mother seems like for some of the same reasons. Anyway, I would appreciate your prayers. Been so thankful for this community.
Hi family, this is Pastor Gene from Bradenton, FL. Let’s pray. Father, I thank you for my sister Paula, the child advocate. I thank you for the encouragement and joy that she brings to this community. I, although late, would like to extend a word of prayer for the supernatural healing of her niece. I’m hoping that her twin niece had a blessed wedding, God, and that you are comforting to her and the rest of the family and filling them with hope for a supernatural manifestation of your power in one of these girl’s life, Father, that is so sick. Father I thank you for my brother, Chris, from Colorado. I send a word that says God loves him and restores him fully. I thank you for my sister , Cheryl, from Arkansas. Father, thank you for her five year anniversary with the DAB and I thank you for her daughter, who is recovering from breast cancer. Thank you for your healing touch upon her. Father, thank you for Hunter and his college acceptance. Yes! And I know that the same God that opened doors for his acceptance will also provide because those that you call you also equip. Father, I thank you for my brother, Tracey B., and I join him and the rest of this family in celebrating his victory over sin. I’m praying that you will continue to not only give him personal victory but that you will continue using him and allowing his testimony to be a tool for you to bring and draw others to you and to your freedom. Father, I thank you for my sweet sister, Bonnie. Thank you for her intercession towards my family, Father, and we continue to believe you for her finances and for her children, Divik and Helen. Father, thank you for my sister Sally from Massachusetts. Father, I give you her 13 year old boy’s rebelliousness. Father, I pray that you will draw that child to you and I pray that you will continue to bless all my brothers and sisters as we continue…
Hello family, this is Shante from Detroit and it’s been a little while since I called in so I thought I’d take a quick second and call and say hi to everybody and thank you all for your prayers and for your love and for your support. Please pray for me and my husband to, again, Cub Scouts is here this Friday and we’re sort of in the same predicament as before; but God has always come through. All of our meetings have been a success. So just please pray for us to stop procrastinating, because that seems to be the issue, to stop procrastinating and really prepare a good meeting for the Cub Scouts this Friday. Also, I am lifting up Brenda’s daughter and her husband and her kids and I pray for them to have love, peace, joy, reconciliation in her daughter’s marriage. I’m also praying for her son Christophe that he will know the Lord as well as his entire household. And I’m also praying that he will know his purpose and that he will be motivated to pursue it and to use his time wisely. And there was also a guy who called in and I don’t think he left his name; but I am praying for him and his family. They’re unsure as to how they’re going to meet their bills in the upcoming weeks and they’ve been having setbacks and they’re dealing with frustration. So, I’m praying for them for food and for provision, for wisdom on starting their business, make it profitable, and I’m just praying that they will depend on you, Lord, and that you will provide a financial miracle for them. And also I’m praying for Carissa. She is having surgery. So I’m praying that the surgeon’s hands will be guided by the Lord.
Good day, Daily Audio Bible. This is Nathan, Gift of God, from Bloomington, IL. Hey Pastor Gene, I know that must have been a struggle to cut ties with your own mother. But sometimes we find ourselves needing to draw healthy boundaries and I know many of us have heard about this and it’s not easy. It’s not easy to separate ourselves from someone whom we love, who we just don’t like right now, and we’ve given it to God. We’ve given all that we can. We’ve been prayerful about it. We’ve sought the advice of others. We’ve gone to counseling. We’ve done many things. We’ve kept an open mind. But sometimes it is better to draw that healthy boundary and say, “At this moment, I cannot have a relationship with you because it is sucking me in. It is sucking me dry. It is emotionally vacating myself.” That’s not where God would want us to be. He would want us to have a sound mind and spirit. And I just ask that you find peace with this. You probably already have, but it’s never easy. So I just lift you up in prayer that you find that peace and that somehow your mother finds a way through to whatever needs to be resolved here. Everyone have a great day. Make it a great day.
Good morning Daily Audio Bible, this is Tracey B. out of Arlington, TX. What a wonderful and great year I’m having this year. Year 2015 was definitely a year of growing and maturing in God and in life in general. I’m calling to give support to Pastor Gene concerning the tumultuous relationship she is having with her mother. I, too, had suffered from a relationship of the same with my father. It made me bitter for a significant part of my life. I was always angry at life in general, basically blaming him for a lot of things that were going on in my life and that was the wrong thing to do. I wasted such a long time in my life. I have reconciled with my father and it was the best thing that I ever did. My father passed a year and a half ago and there is still an ache in my heart with him not being here. I am praying for you and the best advice I can give you is to seek God, your Father, into what to do. Cutting her off is, well, let God help you with that. All I can say is I wish I could call my father up one more time. Not just one more time, I just wish I could call him up. I’m at peace but you know he’s in a better place and I’m happy for that but I just wish I could call him.
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Tamarie 11/04/2015 19:02 |
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