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Daily Transcripts
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11/14/2015
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Ezekiel 29:1-30:26 ~ Hebrews 11:32-12:13 ~ Psalm 112:1-10 ~ Proverbs 27:17
Today is the 14th of November. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It’s great to be here with you. It's a travel day today. We’ll talk about that in a minute. Make sure you get your toothbrush. Don’t forget that. And you're going to need an overnight bag and a couple of days’ worth of clothes. Don’t forget that. When we travel, we travel together. Anyway, we’ll talk about that in a minute. We’re reading from the New Living Translation this week. Of course, today is the last day of the week.
Commentary
So we walk down this pathway in the book of Hebrews kind of known as the Hall of Fame of Faith and we see all these characters and we remember their stories because we read them in depth. We get these little synopses of what faith did in the life of a hero of the faith. But then the writer of Hebrews does this really remarkable turn. Everything is really super encouraging and then he does this abrupt turn: “But others were tortured, refusing to turn from God in order to be set free. They placed their hope in a better life after their resurrection. Some were jeered at and their backs were cut open with whips. Others were chained in prisons. Some died by stoning. Some were sawed in half. Others were killed with a sword. Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated. They were too good for this world, wandering over deserts and mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.”
That is like a totally different look at the Hall of Fame of Faith. We like all the stories of ‘against all odds everything worked out awesome’ and then that looks like our definition of faith, but Hebrews is broadening what that actually looks like. There were other people of faith that went through great suffering and held onto their hope through faith in something more, in something greater, in something beyond, and in something eternal.
So we like the first part because it is like we want to be one of those people where everything works out great in the end. But then what about these other people of faith that made it into this Hall of Fame who suffered a lot and didn’t see their faith fulfilled in their lifetime? What about them? This is an important reframe on our look at what faith is.
Faith fleshes out something that we hope for. It is evidence of something we can’t actually see. It is something that is out in front of us that we know that we know is there, but we haven’t experienced or achieved it yet. We know this. And we also know that if we don’t have this, it is impossible to please God. But faith isn’t the evidence that everything is going to work out perfectly in your life if you just have it, or is it?
Here's the deal. If we are unable to zoom out and take an eternal view and an eternal perspective, then none of this will ever make sense every time we run into some hardship while believing that we had full faith. Most of the time we are literally tethered in our skin. It is like all our reality is based upon what we can experience with our senses, even though there are tons of things going on that we can’t experience with our senses even scientifically, but especially spiritually. There is always more going on than we’re aware of. Faith forces us to tap into that.
Faith doesn’t make a ton of sense if we don’t have the view that our existence goes on forever; that this little wisp of time, this beautiful gift of our humanity is really but a vapor. It is a momentary thing in comparison to all of eternity. So while faith is certainly lived out in our humanity, it transcends and goes far beyond our humanity. We try to shove it into a box along with God and try to make it all make sense simply inside of the space of the decades that we have to be human.
So we walk down this hallway of faith and we revisit Abraham and Isaac. We revisit Jacob and Esau. We revisit Joseph and Moses and the children of Israel marching directly through the Red Sea on dry ground. And even Rahab the prostitute. Then there is Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah and David and Samuel and all the prophets. We see these stories and we’ve been in these stories, but then we also see that there are people who had faith who suffered great hardship and death. It is nothing but tragic if there is no eternal view, if there is no more, if everything has to be sewed up and planted and wrapped up in a tiny little bow inside of the decades that we have.
Faith pulls us into eternity. Faith forces us to have an eternal view. Faith is always pulling us out beyond what we think we know. It always pulls us beyond our own experience, causing us to reach toward that thing that we know is there but we can’t quite touch it just yet. Every time we do touch it and we see faith in action be revealed in our lives, then there is always the next thing because God is constantly pulling us out beyond what we think we know, away from all of the tidy boxes we’ve made for him and the order we’ve tried to arrange for our own lives. He is constantly pulling us beyond ourselves, revealing to us that there is so much more.
And this goes on forever and forever. Faith is the bridge that we cross that pulls us toward eternity. So when you're facing down something and you're like ‘but I believe, I have faith, I am 100% in, I'm all in. Where is God in all of this?’ you have to zoom out and understand this goes on forever.
Nothing is purposeless. So often we’ll stand in faith for something and then when it doesn’t work the way we’ve actually written it out and prescribed that it should work, then we’ll lose our faith. That is short-sighted. Literally, that is short-sighted. That is us saying ‘okay, I’ve got to have faith to please God so I am going to craft what faith is supposed to look like on my own terms and in my own understanding.’ Faith is far beyond your own terms and your own understanding just like God is far beyond your own terms and your own understanding. Faith is the bridge that pulls us toward the eternal, that pulls us toward God. Faith is the thing that declares to us that anything is possible forever and ever and ever and nothing is impossible. But faith forces us to utterly and completely depend upon God. It forces us to believe that his heart is good toward us. It forces us to trust in him. And it only goes haywire when we try to manage it and arrange for it and define it and put it in a box with rules wrapped around it to say this is how this works. Faith isn’t about that.
Faith is pulling us to God. Faith is reminding us of the relationship we have with him. Faith is forcing us to look face-to-face at his profound and eternal love for us. Faith is forcing us to look beyond ourselves and even the lifespan we have as human beings and realize what is before us is beautiful. What is before us is eternal. What is before us is as it is now, with God and he is good and his mercy endures forever. He is trustworthy. He is faithful.
Faith forces us to be faithful as well. How can you be in an intimate relationship with somebody you're not faithful to?
May we reconsider and reframe faith as we continue to reframe and reconsider what relationship with God is like and may we understand that faith declares that everything we’ve conceived that this could be, oh, it is so much better than that. There is so much more than that. May we realize that when we walk in faith in relationship with God there is no ceiling. This goes on forever and ever and it is good because God is good.
Prayer
Father, we love you. We see what you're doing in forcing us into maturity by inviting us to live by faith, by forcing us into our spirit, by forcing us to look beyond ourselves and what we think we know and drawing us nearer and nearer to you. So all we can do is believe and trust, have faith that you are good and that you are present and that you want to be with us. We do believe these things. So we invite your Holy Spirit to come, as we do most every day, because we need it every day. Without the guidance and the presence of your Holy Spirit in this world and in our lives, we are just floundering like a fish out of water. Come Holy Spirit, lead us on the pathways of faith. Lead us deeper into Jesus, we pray in your mighty name, amen.
Announcements
Www.DailyAudioBible.com is the website, home base. It’s where you find out what’s going on around here. It's a travel day. We’ll be heading out to the West Coast which, as it happens, is a long ways from the rolling hills of Tennessee. So we’ll be heading a long ways from the rolling hills of Tennessee all the way to the edge of the United States, to the southwest border of each, one, because there is Mexico and, two, because there is a Pacific Ocean, and spend some time reframing in San Diego. We’re looking forward to that tomorrow. That will take place at La Jolla Christian Fellowship. Their website once again is www.ChurchAtLaJolla.org and you can get directions and service times there. We’re very much looking forward to being out there. I'm going to have my wife Jill. I'm going to have baby Ezekiel along, so looking forward to meeting some of you in person and sharing the message of Reframe.
So thank you for your prayers over the travel over the next couple of days. This will conclude our Reframe Tour for 2015 and then we’ll come back and settle in for the holidays. There is always just tons and tons and tons of stuff to do to prepare for the New Year, so thank you for your prayers over all of that.
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And, of course, you can use any of those numbers no matter where you are, but for convenience sake we have these numbers, so don’t go it alone. Don’t shoulder life alone when you have a community here willing to pray for you and you have that in spades. We have a praying community here who loves each other and has centered itself in the scriptures every day. We have something that very few people do. We have each other so don’t go it alone.
Alright, that's it for today. I’m Brian. I love you. I’ll be waiting for you tomorrow from California.
Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports
Good day everybody. It is Mark, the teacher here. I haven’t called for a little bit. I'm still hanging in there. Richard, you rang the other day about your family situation. I'm just really concerned about that and know that we are all praying for you. I’ve been in a similar situation where things happen, accidents happen. We do things, you know? It's so easy. Look, you can reach out to us. You can email me. I’d love to chat with you and comfort you and support you. You can email me, if you would like. It's JesusLives.7@yahoo.com. That would be __________. Bye.
Hi. My name is Sarah C. I'm in West Virginia. I just wanted to call in because I heard a lady. I can’t remember your name. I'm sorry, but you called in about someone who has been raised a Christian and they turned Wiccan. I just wanted to say I will be praying for them and their family. My sister was raised a Christian and through circumstances turned to Wiccan and witchcraft and is lost. If you could pray for her, too, that would be great. Thanks. Bye.
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Hello DAB family. My name is Linda from New Jersey. I'm calling because I'm going on a 40-day fast. I'm 31 years old and for years I’ve felt I'm stuck at a certain stage of my life and can’t seem to move forward or see my heart's desires come to fruition. For years I felt that all my prayers and petitions have gone unanswered and that maybe God has forgotten about me. A special purpose of my fast is to surrender to God's will for my life and also to develop a closer relationship with him. It is also a personal plea for Jesus to intervene on my behalf to release all spiritual bondages and strongholds that may be getting in the way of what God has in store for me. I ask that you please pray for me as I’ve never done anything like this before, especially at this time of the year with the holidays coming up. However, I'm fully convinced God is calling me to make this sacrifice at this time and as such I'm asking you to please keep me in your prayers. Thank you very much.
Hello DAB family. This is Stephanie from Mongolia. I'm not in Mongolia right now because I'm home to raise __________ heart for Mongolia, spend time investing in family and friends and __________ God totally surprised me with. I’ve been meaning to call in for months and I'm finally doing it because Joe the Protector from Georgia called in and said he was behind and was really bummed out because of it. So dear Joe, I listened today, November 11th, to your call on August 22nd saying you hated to say that you were listening to August 8th that day. Brother, Joe, do the math. You're not the only one who's behind. So my family, many of you called in or wrote on Facebook that you were praying for my dad who collapsed his lung on Christmas Eve last year. His lung is almost completely healed, thank God. There was a sweet, sweet lady from Massachusetts who called in to pray specifically for him and I just wanted to say thank you so much. I have your name written down and have been praying for you, too. I pray that you're blessed today and if you're still listening to the DAB, please call in again. I know many of you were praying for him. There is really no reason for his surgery to have been so successful, so thank you all so much. I'm really grateful for that. Tony the poet, thank you for your prayers and your emails and your shout-outs and for continuing joy poetry. That pierces my heart. I got your CDs in the mail when I returned from Mongolia. Thank you so, so, so much. Family, please pray for Mongolia. I love that place so much and God is doing so many things there. I just love it. I want to go back. And that's it. I love you all. Bye.
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Tamarie 11/14/2015 08:40 |
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