Daily Bible Reading Podcast: 2023

Saturday, December 30, 2023

000: 2024 DDeeper Trailer and How-to's

Hi there!

I’m so glad you have clicked to listen to this trailer to the Digging Deeper Daily Bible reading plan for 2024. If you want to read the Bible in a great reading plan that will hold your attention and enable you to stay with the program, you are in the right place.

My name is Phil Fields. I’m almost 74 years old and happily married to Gale. We have three children, and five grandkids. In 1983, when our kids were still small, our family went as Bible translators to Papua, Indonesia. We finished a New Testament translation for the Orya people in 2005. Since that time I have been leading an organization which is translating the Bible into the national language of Indonesia. We’re hoping that the entire Bible in the Plain Indonesian Translation will be finished at the end of 2025. Our sponsoring organization is Pioneer Bible Translators.

When I started the Daily Bible Reading Podcast in 2014 the audience I had in mind was my grandkids. I wanted to make a set of Bible recordings for them, to leave behind what I would tell each one of them if and when they fall into difficult times.

Here’s a list of what I will cover:

Remember this new Web address: DDeeper.today.
Please Sign up for email
Why it’s a good idea to use a good Bible reading plan.
Choose a Bible translation that makes sense for you for daily reading.
Different ways to follow the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan
Pointers about podcast listening
How to contact me.

Remember this new Web address: DDeeper.today. I realized recently how hard it is to find my websites when they are named DailyBibleReading.info. When I started podcasting in 2014, there were not many podcasts or blogs with that name. So I am hoping that the oddity of the new web address will help everyone looking for information on the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan and podcasts. The site is DDeeper.today with two D’s. I figure most other podcasters won’t misspell Deeper like I have. Even though it starts with two D’s, I’m pronouncing it like it started with just one.

Please Sign up for email: There are times when I want to announce a special episode or a new feature in the YV Bible app. And listeners often like to hear about our Bible translation ministry. That is why I suggest that you sign up for my email updates. You will join a special list that is only for 2024. You will receive no more than 5 emails. I won’t ask for donations or try to sell you something. Please sign up by going to DDeeper.today, click the How-to’s link, and choose the menu item entitled 2024 Email Sign-up.

Why it’s a good idea to use a good Bible reading plan: If you start at the beginning of the Bible and attempt to read straight through, you will likely get bogged down somewhere in the Old Testament. The Bible is not organized like a novel. The Digging Deeper Daily reading plan will help you be successful. If you are looking for a reading plan that covers the whole Bible, I highly recommend you choose a reading plan that contains something from the New Testament every day.

For more information about the 3D reading plan, please click the How-To link at DDeeper.today and scroll down. I suggest that you view the short video on that page entitled How to Study the Bible.

READ in a real-book Bible: You’ll want to download the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan. The link for that is found right on the front of DDeeper.today. It is labeled Plan.PDF.

READ the 3D reading plan using Bible apps on your smartphone or tablet: Subscribe to the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan in the YouVersion Bible app. This app is available for Android and Apple devices.

LISTEN to the DDeeper.today podcasts. The podcasts have an introduction to each of the three daily readings. The introductions remind you of what you heard yesterday, and the podcast ends with a prayer that I normally don’t close with an Amen, hoping that you will continue to pray.

How about READing and LISTENing?! Open your podcast player and start the introduction to your next episode. While listening to my greeting, you’ll have time to open the YV app to your next day in the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan. You’ll get way more out of each day’s readings if you have time to do it this way, reading and listening.

When you sign up for a YV reading plan, you are given an option to do the plan privately or share it with your friends. If you share the plan with friends, at the end of each day’s readings, you will be given the opportunity to share something you gleaned from the readings. This is fabulous and a great way to connect with your friends through the Bible app. But since the Digging Deeper Daily plan is for the whole Bible in 365 days, I suggest you share with a select group of close friends, or maybe 1-2 other people, or just do the plan privately.

Choose a Bible translation that makes sense for you and for a year-long reading program. Many of you will be using a translation like the ESV for taking to church. My own church uses that translation. But it is not very well suited to a year-long reading program, especially if this is your first time reading the whole Bible. I strongly recommend the NLT or the GNT for following the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan. Please take my advice as a Bible translator: Using a translation like the NLT or GNT is even more important if you will be Listening to the Bible readings while doing something like driving to work. See more information about Bible translations under the READ heading in the How-To’s.

How to listen to podcasts: Please see the Listening How-To’s by clicking the How-To’s link at DDeeper.today. I recommend you use a podcast aggregator app that

makes it easy to see the episode notes,
that remembers your place and will automatically queue up your next episode,
and that lets you speed up my reading to 1.20% speed.

If you use smart speakers to play the DDeeper.today podcasts, please help me improve the instructions found in the How-To’s.

My favorite way for you to contact me is via the contact button at the top of all my websites. If you are using an Alexa device, I recommend controlling the playback with the Amazon Music app.

The three older domain names for my two Bible-reading websites will still take you to the same pages. The main old website is dailybiblereading.info.
Also: dailyNLTbiblereading.info
dailyGNTbiblereading.info

For any long-time listeners, I believe that the change of the name of the podcast to DDeeper Daily and the new domain name will not change the way your podcast player is interacting with the podcasts. If you find otherwise, please let me know.

When I chose the odd extension for the DDeeper site, not dot Com, or dot info, but ‘today’, I thought of two places where the word ‘today’ is highlighted in the New Testament. One is

‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭6:2‬ ‭NLT‬‬

[2] For God says, “At just the right time, I heard you. On the day of salvation, I helped you.” Indeed, the “right time” is now. Today is the day of salvation.

‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭4:6‭-‬7‬ ‭NLT‬‬

[6] So God’s rest is there for people to enter, but those who first heard this good news failed to enter because they disobeyed God. [7] So God set another time for entering his rest, and that time is today. God announced this through David much later in the words already quoted: “Today when you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts.”

That last quote is one you will need to read in context to really understand. My point in sharing those two verses is to encourage you. Each day that you read the Bible with the goal of reading all of it, the Holy Spirit will be helping you experience the amazing spiritual transformation that God wants for you. Find salvation, and enter the place of rest and safety God has for you.

Please Sign up for email by going to the How-to’s at DDeeper.today.

Check out this episode!

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

2024 DDeeper Trailer and How-to's

Hi there!

Here’s a list of what I will cover:

Remember this new Web address: DDeeper.today.
Please Sign up for email
Why it’s a good idea to use a good Bible reading plan.
Choose a Bible translation that makes sense for you for daily reading.
Why I started podcasting in 2014.
Different ways to follow the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan
Pointers about podcast listening
How to contact me.

READ in a real-book Bible: You’ll want to download the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan. The link for that is found right on the front of DDeeper.today. It is labeled Plan.PDF.

When I started the Daily Bible Reading Podcast in 2014 the audience I had in mind was my grandkids. I wanted to make a set of Bible recordings for them, to leave behind what I would tell each one of them if and when they fall into difficult times.

How to listen to podcasts: Please see the Listening How-To’s by clicking the How-To’s link at DDeeper.today. I recommend you use a podcast aggregator app that

makes it easy to see the episode notes,
that remembers your place and will automatically queue up your next episode,
and that lets you speed up my reading to 1.20% speed.

If you use smart speakers to play the DDeeper.today podcasts, please help me improve the instructions found in the How-To’s.

My favorite way for you to contact me is via the contact button at the top of all my websites.

When I chose the odd extension for the DDeeper site, not dot Com, or dot info, but ‘today’, I thought of two places where the word ‘today’ is highlighted in the New Testament. One is

‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭6:2‬ ‭NLT‬‬

[2] For God says, “At just the right time, I heard you. On the day of salvation, I helped you.” Indeed, the “right time” is now. Today is the day of salvation.

‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭4:6‭-‬7‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Please Sign up for email by going to the How-to’s at DDeeper.today.

Check out this episode!

Wednesday, September 20, 2023

292: Reader Take Note: How to understand prophetic books

This seems to me to be a good time to talk with you about how to understand the prophetic books of the Bible. At day number 292 in our reading calendar, we are well into reading the Babylonian exile prophet Ezekiel, and our poetry readings to the end of the year will be from the prophet Isaiah, who lived 200 years before Ezekiel. Near the end of the year we’ll read the minor prophets in quick succession. All the books in the prophetic genre are hands-down the most difficult books to understand in the Bible. So I hope I can give basic pointers in this episode that will be helpful to you from now on to the end of the year.

I will start with quoting a paragraph from How to Read the Bible for all it’s worth (by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart) that gives one reason people have difficulty with the 16 prophetic books of the OT: We come to these books with false expectations. Speaking about the word ‘prophecy’ they state:

For most people this word means what appears as the first definition in most dictionaries: “foretelling or prediction of what is to come.” It often happens, therefore, that many Christians refer to the prophetic books only for predictions about the coming of Jesus and/or certain features of the new-covenant age—as though prediction of events far distant from their own day was the main concern of the prophets. In fact, using the prophets in this way is highly selective. Consider in this connection the following statistics: Less than 2 percent of Old Testament prophecy is messianic. Less than 5 percent specifically describes the new-covenant age [we are currently living in]. Less than 1 percent concerns events yet to come in our time. (p. 166)

The prophets did indeed announce the future. But it was usually the immediate future of Israel, Judah, and other nations surrounding them that they announced rather than our future.

Rather than thinking of prophets as prediction makers, Fee and Stuart give this very accurate job description of them:

The prophets were covenant enforcement mediators.

This definition explains a lot!

There were hundreds of prophets in the Old Testament, starting with Moses. Many were unnamed. Only 16 were selected to write books for us. Several named prophets wrote historical books that we wish we had. In all cases, the prophets were speaking to the people of their age. So understanding what was happening at the time of the writer is key to understanding the prophetic books. You won’t understand the historical setting without help. This is why I will make several book recommendations at the end of this episode.

I was in a village in Papua adjacent to the Orya area and where many Orya people come to shop for things they need. This was at the very beginning of the Covid Pandemic. I stayed overnight with a hospitable pastor there who said, “I’ve heard that this epidemic has something to do with bats. I found this verse. Is God saying this to us?

Isaiah 2:20 (NET) At that time men will throw their silver and gold idols, which they made for themselves to worship, into the caves where rodents and bats live,

I replied, “Probably that isn’t for us. We should first figure out what was happening in Isaiah’s time, and then see if that message is appropriate for our time also.” The pastor kind of rolled his eyes and held up the palms of his hands, as if to say, “How in the world can I do that?!”

I must admit, he would have few resources to call on to find answers. But you have many ways to gain the needed background information:

His translation doesn’t have good section headings. Yours probably does. Good section headings really help the reader, and the listeners. That’s why I read the section headings in prophetic books in my podcasts.
He wasn’t using a meaning-based translation for reading the prophets. I hope you will! The GNT and NLT convey the meaning as we would say it in normal modern language. Trying to force English to say things like the Hebrew does results in verses that leave the readers scratching their heads.
Use some of the extra resources I will recommend at the end to help you to understand the historical context. This will help the prophetic books to come alive for you.

I was rather surprised when one of the elders in our church here in Arkansas complained bitterly about the major prophetic books. He said something like, “I’ve been working to penetrate Jeremiah the last couple of months. I hate reading these chapters that say, ‘Woe to you, king of somewhere…’ What am I supposed to find in these books?” I was shocked that an elder— who is an intelligent and well-educated professional— would speak so negatively about any part of God’s Word.

I was unprepared to answer him. Let me tell you what I wish I had said to him:

First, he was doing none of the three things I just mentioned. He was clearly not coming with the right expectations for what God has for us in the prophetic books.
“The prophets were covenant enforcement mediators.” (Fee and Stuart) This means that they often rebuke God’s people for breaking the covenant, or call Israel to come back to obeying the covenant. We can summarize the covenant as being embodied in the Ten Commandments. This is why the prophets continually come back to the same points: Don’t worship idols; don’t commit adultery; don’t lie, cheat, or steal, etc. Therefore, from now on in the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan, please be on the lookout for places where the different prophets say the same thing. After all, the ultimate Author is the same, as Peter says,

2 Peter 1:20-21 (NET) Above all, you do well if you recognize this: No prophecy of scripture ever comes about by the prophet’s own imagination,

for no prophecy was ever borne of human impulse; rather, men carried along by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

Consider this oracle of woe to the king of Egypt from Ezekiel 32:1-2 (NLT):

On March 3, during the twelfth year of King Jehoiachin’s captivity, this message came to me from the Lord: “Son of man, mourn for Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and give him this message: “You think of yourself as a strong young lion among the nations, but you are really just a sea monster, heaving around in your own rivers, stirring up mud with your feet.

First, I think it highly unlikely that Ezekiel would be able to give Pharaoh this message! Ezekiel was a refugee living in Babylon. Rather, I think that the message is actually to encourage the exiles living with Ezekiel, and he may have sent this message to his people still living in Jerusalem. So this can be understood as the figure of speech called ‘apostrophe’, which is basically lambasting an enemy who is not in your audience to encourage your actual readers.

Second, be aware that the kings of Egypt, Tyre, or Babylon may actually symbolize Satan, who is the ruler behind the evil world system that opposes God.

My favorite places in prophecy are those times when God so wonderfully repeats promises to his people which we count as fulfilled in this age. An example will come soon in day 305, where Ezekiel says,

Ezekiel 36:25‭-‬28 GNT
I will sprinkle clean water on you and make you clean from all your idols and everything else that has defiled you. I will give you a new heart and a new mind. I will take away your stubborn heart of stone and give you an obedient heart. I will put my spirit in you and will see to it that you follow my laws and keep all the commands I have given you.

Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors. You will be my people, and I will be your God.

That is strikingly similar to the favorite verses found in Jeremiah 31 which are quoted in Hebrews 8, especially verse 10:

Hebrews 8:10 GNT
Now, this is the covenant that I will make with the people of Israel in the days to come, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

Again in Hebrews 10, some of that same Jeremiah 31 passage is referred to, and the writer goes on to explain:

Hebrews 10:21-22 (NET) since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in the assurance that faith brings, because we have had our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.

Wait a minute. That’s what we just read in Ezekiel! This gives me goosebumps. These wonderful spiritual realities are true of us today, for all of us who are understanding our unity with Christ, our great high priest. We can appreciate how people in Jeremiah and Ezekiel’s day would have longed for the things that now have been given to us.

Beginning with the writings of the prophet Moses, God keeps repeating, “You will be my people, and I will be your God.” I just love it when so many correspondences line up. To me this proves that God has so wonderfully constructed his Word, and He will keep on fulfilling his plans and promises.

It’s worth it to read God’s prophets in order to more fully appreciate the treasures we have been given.

I am not able to include a discussion of Revelation in this discussion of prophecy. In the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan, we start that book on December 8. Revelation is in a different genre than most OT prophetic books, called the apocalyptic genre. Zechariah, and parts of Ezekiel and Daniel are early examples of apocalyptic writings. Such writings include symbolic numbers, surreal and highly symbolic visions, and cyclical organization. This is NOT what we expect: chronological organization. High examples of the apocalyptic genre are found in Jewish literature.

10. non-canonical (taken from D. S. Russell, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic, pp. 37-38) (Taken from Utley http://www.freebiblecommentary.org/new_testament_studies/VOL12/VOL12_introduction.html

a. I Enoch, II Enoch (the Secrets of Enoch)
b. The Book of Jubilees
c. The Sibylline Oracles III, IV, V
d. The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs
e. The Psalms of Solomon
f. The Assumption of Moses
g. The Martyrdom of Isaiah
h. The Apocalypse of Moses (Life of Adam and Eve)
i. The Apocalypse of Abraham
j. The Testament of Abraham
k. II Esdras (IV Esdras)
l. II & III Baruch

But the book of Revelation surpasses such books, because it truly is inspired.

An Indonesian Bible reader asked me about Revelation 6:5-6:

Revelation 6:5-6 (NET) Then when the Lamb opened the third seal I heard the third living creature saying, “Come!” So I looked, and here came a black horse! The one who rode it had a balance scale in his hand.
Then I heard something like a voice from among the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat will cost a day’s pay and three quarts of barley will cost a day’s pay. But do not damage the olive oil and the wine!”

He asked something like, “Has this horse and rider appeared yet, and what effect has it had on our economy?”

No book of the Bible has spawned more wrong interpretations than Revelation. Don’t try to look for highly specific interpretations like my Indonesian friend. Try to understand the major symbolic elements. The two main points of the book are very easy to grasp:

In the end, in spite of how things will appear in the world, Jesus will triumph.
Your perseverance in suffering and persecution will be rewarded.

So I hope one major take-away point from what I have shared is That I urge you to supplement your Bible reading of all the prophetic books of the Bible with other books. Here are a few recommendations.

Recommended resources:

How to Read the Bible for all it’s worth, Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart

How to Read the Bible Book by Book, Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart

What the Bible is All About, Dr. Henrietta C. Mears (Get the revised NIV edition.)

Free Bible Commentary, Dr. Bob Utley

http://www.freebiblecommentary.org/special_topics/old_testament_prophecy.html

Any study Bible will have helpful notes about how the prophetic writers fit into Israel’s history.

Check out this episode!

Thursday, September 14, 2023

258: Buckling the Belt of Truth Lesson 5: Don't look back

THEME: Buckle up the belt of truth by FOCUSING YOUR GAZE ON CHRIST.

OK, in my last episode I told you about my nightmare. There was a visitor on my porch that night. That visitor was a picture of the demon who had gained a foothold in my life. He had been tempting me for years and knew just how to do it. He got on the exercise bicycle on my front porch— which, as I told you, did not exist— rather it was a symbol. I believe that the Lord helped me figure out the meaning of that symbol.

The night-time visitor got on the bike and kind of lazily gave a few turns of the wheel. But he was watching me. This time the wheel didn’t do the trick. Normally if he said the tempting two words and generated that flickering light by turning the wheel, I would go back into my past to re-live one of several temptations. Now I will say the awful truth: His temptation was sexual fantasy. If I went with him on the journey into my past, I would fantasize about taking advantage of situations where in the past I had wisely avoided completely falling into sin. I would, in other words, take advantage of the situation and plunge into sin. Oddly, I never seemed to fantasize about all the times when I had actually acted sinfully with some woman, but rather it was all the times where I had actually escaped from a very sinful situation. Normally, if I would let the demon take me back into the past, he would pedal the bike longer and harder.

But this time when I didn’t go with him, he got off the bike and came up to the window. He shone his flashlight in. That’s when, with great effort, I was able to force my body to move, grabbing my pillow and covering up my face. The demon was shining his light in to look for some other weakness where he could find an additional foothold.

I was not safe. He would succeed. The strategy of Satan was all too clear. The constant lure of sexual fantasy would slowly weaken me. Then Satan would arrange a perfect opportunity for me to fall into sin. He would provide the perfect time to live out my fantasy. Then the world would hear of another missionary who committed a shameful moral failure. He would make certain that my fall didn’t go unnoticed. For one thing, I knew that I myself would not have the heart to conceal such a sin forever. I would confess the devastating truth to my wife, my family, plus our mission’s leadership, and we would leave the mission field in disgrace.

I could see a pattern: Satan had already tried that trick on me. But I escaped. Those experiences joined older ones for me to fantasize about. But one day the temptation of a perfect opportunity would be too great to escape. I was not getting wiser and stronger, but weaker.

To go back to the last lesson, when I was with Jim, rebuking and forbidding that demon’s influence on me, I called that tempter, “Demon of sexual fantasy.” I verbally forbid the demon to bother me. This included naming the women, one-by-one, who had become the objects of my lust. I broke any bond or hook that Satan had in me based on my experience with them.

At the risk of sounding really dumb, I admit that it took me way too long before it dawned on me that my worst sinful desires have to do with revisiting my past. There must be people who are more tempted by imagining sins in the future, but not me. It just so happened that when God showed me the backward-looking nature of my problem, my translation team was working with me to translate Philippians and we were in the 3rd chapter. Philippians 3:13b-14 GW says, “I don’t look back, I lengthen my stride and I run straight toward the goal to win the prize…” Other translations are just as helpful— such as NLT: “Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.”

Before the realization above dawned on me, if I managed to realize that I was entering into sinful territories of my mind, I would despair, “How can I stop thinking about these things?!” Each time I told myself to stop thinking of some past event, the stronger the desire would be to follow those thoughts again. And it was at night when I was the weakest and couldn’t resist. But now I am no longer powerless. I have found the way to banish those evil thoughts! The answer is in the verses just quoted. It is to ask the question, “What are the most beautiful things I might be able to do to please the Lord in the near future?” I find that if I consciously direct my mind to the future where— praise the Lord— I have goals and aspirations I am enthusiastic about, then those tempting thoughts vanish. And not surprisingly, it helps even more if I pray, “Lord, help me to forget that terrible and worthless memory and lean forward and gaze at what is ahead.”

Some of my listeners will probably be thinking, “Well Phil should have realized he could just think of something else.” There’s more to it than that. As long as there was that demon tempter maintaining his stronghold over me, just trying to turn my thoughts to something else never worked. When I was finally free from him, suddenly things that other Christians recommended worked for me too.

Philippians 3:10-14 NLT 10 I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, 11 so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!

Philippians 3:12‭-‬14 GW It’s not that I’ve already reached the goal or have already completed the course. But I run to win that which Jesus Christ has already won for me. Brothers and sisters, I can’t consider myself a winner yet. This is what I do: I don’t look back, I lengthen my stride, and I run straight toward the goal to win the prize that God’s heavenly call offers in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:12‭-‬14 NLT I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

It is not just the future we are to gaze at! Hebrews 12:1-2 tells us to “fix our eyes” on Jesus. While in that passage, in addition to gazing at Jesus, it is no small encouragement to realize that we have an awesome crowd of witnesses cheering us on and waiting for us at the finish line. If we focus on that, we are using the same strategy for victory that Jesus used when He was suffering on earth.

Hebrews 12:1-2 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. 2 We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.[a] Because of the joy[b] awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.

We’re not just vaguely looking in Jesus’ direction. In our passages in 2 Corinthians we are encouraged to gaze right into his face. This is beyond my ability to imagine! But we are helped in this life-transforming vision by the Buckling Belt Lesson 2 (being resurrected and seated now with Christ in heaven) and Lesson 3 (being aided by the Holy Spirit).

My favorite thought in this is: This is what I do: I don’t look back, I lengthen my stride, and I run straight toward the goal.

A few years ago when a board member was helping me with organizational planning, because he is so talented in helping people plan, I asked him to help me with my personal planning. I thought, “I only have a few years left in my life, and I want to end well.” We went through a process where I figured out three things:

What I wanted to achieve
Activities that I thought would bring about the achievements
Why I wanted to do those things

He told me that the #3 Why list (which expresses my motivation) would be the engine that would keep me going.

The reason I mention this is that it seems to me that it will help you to overcome Satan's temptations if you have goals and motivations that you are excited about. For Harry Potter fans, this is your Patronas charm to expel your Dementor. It makes sense to me to take the time to thoroughly understand and powerfully express your core motivations.

I have heard many people complain that they cannot get rid of certain evil thoughts. I have just given you the answer and will say it one more time: “This is what I do: I don’t look back, I lengthen my stride, and I run straight toward the goal to win the prize that God’s heavenly call offers in Christ Jesus.”

If turning your thoughts to the things you know Jesus wants you to meditate and the goals you want to achieve doesn’t work, then please go back and check out Lesson 4 of the Buckling the Belt series.

Pray like this: Lord help me to lengthen my stride and strain forward— forgetting what lies behind. Help me to keep my eyes fixed on the glorious face of Jesus.

PHP.3.10-14

1CO.9.24-27

MAT.14.28-31

HEB.12.1-2

2CO.3.18
So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.

2CO.4.6
For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.

2CO.4.18
So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

Check out this episode!

Tuesday, August 29, 2023

242: JoySightings 11: The man from Jonesville; Lying Offshore

This is a bonus episode republished from my JoySightings.info podcast.

Check out this episode!

Thursday, August 3, 2023

219: Buckle the Belt of Truth Lesson 4: Resist Satan

Day 4: THEME: Buckle up the belt of truth about RESISTING SATAN.

All of the Buckling the belt episodes are scattered throughout the Bible reading calendar. This episode will be folded in at episode 219. You can find this and all the other Buckling the belt episodes by searching for the word ‘buckling’ at dailybiblereading.info. Searching for that word might also work in your podcast app.

After searching for answers in the Bible and reading a few books that talked about the topics we read about in days 1-3, I found myself still bothered and worried because I couldn’t seem to experience the level of victory that others talked about. I will tell the story today about how the Lord gave me the answer to my problem by showing me how to resist Satan.

Satan is alive and well. Yes, there are demons. No, Satan himself probably doesn’t have time to bother you or me directly. But he leads an army of evil spirits. They will not want you to listen to this podcast. Please try to push through their opposition. The more you feel interference and oppression, the greater your need is for the information I will share.

Because I am concerned that we get a good start on this topic, and with the hope that you will be able to listen to this podcast to the end, I would like to pray this prayer based on Ephesians 6:

How to pray to make sure you are wearing your spiritual armor:

Lord God, give me strength to stand firm. Help me to wear all of the spiritual armor You have given to me, so that I can stand against Satan and his forces:

Please remind me that I am always wearing the breastplate of righteousness, because Jesus died and was raised to life, and He has given me right standing in your sight.
Help me to keep on the boots of the Gospel, being ready to share the good news about Christ whether people are eager to hear it or not.
May I always wear the belt of truth, realizing who I am in unity with You,
and therefore never letting go of my shield, which is fully believing in You.
May I always have the helmet of salvation, because I know You have saved me.
Help me to know the Word of God and use it as my sword, not to hurt people, but to tell the truth in a spirit of love.
And help me to never forget that my instant connection to You is prayer.
Make my love grow for my fellow believers, and may Jesus find me among those who are blameless and holy when He comes.

The existence of Satan and his dark forces is something that those same forces normally seek to suppress. That’s why many in today’s Western culture can read the whole Bible and never notice that we have a living and dangerously powerful enemy. Satan first appears in Genesis 3, then his work is visible in the OT in the kingdoms of man opposed to God and his people, and in the persistent, seeming unconquerable desire of humans to worship idols, which actually represent demons. Take a close look at the things demon worshippers did in the OT, and you will see the same evil things in our culture today, including such things as male and female prostitution, and the killing of babies. Then in the NT, Satan is more personally revealed, starting with Jesus being tempted by him and with Jesus directly teaching about him. If you were to cross out every page in the NT that mentions Satan, evil spirits, or believers somehow struggling against the dark forces, you wouldn’t have very many pages left. The book of Revelation would be totally missing.

So, we have an enemy, and he’s not nice. As I have said in my podcast, demon possession in the Bible is not what we now refer to as mental disease. I do not discount that there is real mental disease. But I believe that we are unwise to think that there is no spiritual component in such things as depression, suicidal ideation, gender disphoria, schitsophrenia, and all the rest. I suggest that if we don’t deal with the root causes of such things, we will only be able to medicate ourselves in an attempt to deal with the symptoms.

My topic today comes with a big caution label, which I will read to you now: Many followers of Christ will be able to use the Scriptures and books I will suggest without outside help and see increasing victory over evil desires and sinful habits of thinking. I suggest you start with my recommended resources, especially the seven Steps for Freedom in Christ by Neil T. Anderson. But if you encounter stiff spiritual opposition, please seek the help of a professional Christian counselor or a loving group of believers who will encourage you, pray with you, and help you stay accountable.

One basic problem for me was that I thought Christians should not verbally rebuke the Devil, because the archangel Michael did not do so in the story Jude relates (Jude 1:9). (He told Satan, “May the Lord rebuke you.”) But there are several key ways my hesitancy was wrong.

1) We are commanded at least three times in the NT to resist Satan. (1Peter 5:8-9; James 4:7; Eph. 6)

1 Peter 5:8‭-‬9 NLT

Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are.

James 4:7 NLT

So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

2) Resisting the Devil and forbidding his minions speaking to you is not the same as the prideful ‘insulting’ of spiritual powers that Jude was speaking against.

3) As we have seen in previous readings, we are now adopted as children of God. We are now unified with Jesus. This means that we have quite a different and better position than angels.

Footnote: There is some kind of legal permission that has been granted when a demon has established a stronghold in someone. Because of that, (unless the person being harrassed is your own young child) it will not be appropriate for you to command a demon to leave another person. (Yes, I know that the apostle Paul did that in Acts 16:16-18, and Jesus certainly had that authority in Luke 8:29.) Please don’t try to cast out someone else’s demons. (The response could get ugly.) However YOU do have the legal authority to resist and forbid demonic influences harassing you. Because of your unity with Christ, you can rescind permission that was somehow previously given (by a reaction to some event or word, perhaps long ago and forgotten by you).

Our authority over Satanic forces operating in our lives comes directly from who we are in Christ. It’s so important to know who you are! If you see yourself as a weak and sinful person who is continually not able to control sinful thoughts, then that is who you will be. But if you have done your previous homework to buckle the belt of truth— believing that you are forgiven, loved by Christ, and joined as one with him— then you are on the road to finding victory. Who we believe ourselves to be will be shown in our lives. Don’t believe Satan’s lies!

Let me tell you how that worked out for me.

We had been working among the Orya people for 9 years, and I was in the village of Gwae leading the men working with me in translating Philippians. Two Orya boys were staying with me at night, since Gale was not with me. It was at Pentecost time and there were several extra church meetings. In one of them the pastor (Yakub) led a hymn in the national language, too high, too slow, and sounding like a dirge. I said to him, “There’s no joy in these hymns.” And in rare candor he replied, “Yeah, you’re right. There is no joy in these hymns.” So I suggested, “How about if I write several songs in the Orya language to sing at the Sunday service?” And he agreed.

Starting that night, the boys and I put together three catchy little songs with melodies you could clap hands with. On Sunday, I cajoled the congregation to clap their hands while singing them. (It wasn’t easy to get them to do it, because clapping was never done in that church.) But they finally got into it, and I have pictures of the smiles that resulted. Being a musician, I had tried introducing Orya worship songs before, but this was my first success. The boys and I created 8 more songs over the next 10 days.

Then one Monday morning, when the translation team came to work, they told me, “Lëberina had a dream and you were in it. She’s gonna come this afternoon at five to tell you about it.”

That day I could hardly wait for 5 o’clock to finally come! But I want to admit (and I want you to remember) that there was a tinge of worry in my waiting. I was thinking, “Oh no. What if her dream reveals something sinful in me.”

Lëberina was the oldest widow in the village. She was also respected for her knowledge of traditional Orya songs. She came right on time and told me,

“It was evening in my dream. It was dark and people were cooking in their kitchens. Then all of a sudden there was a bright light in the direction of the sunrise. The light was so bright that it put out all the cooking fires and lanterns. We all went outside to see what was happening. You were there too, so we asked you, ‘What’s that?’ And you said, ‘That’s got to be Jesus coming again.’ And then you taught us a song, and here it is:

Bian, enho enkam kië gwë’an.
Bian, enho enkam kië gwë’an.
Kwasang, kwasang enkam.”

I didn’t waste any time in writing down the melody and words of the song that I had sung in her dream. Later, the boys and I added two more verses, and it became one of our worship songs.

Then I did a stupid and prideful thing: I said to the Lord, “Hey, I’m the missionary here. How about giving me a dream?”

Bad idea! I don’t recommend being flippant with the Lord, especially if your prayer is laced with pride. I think it was that same night that the Lord gave me the dream I will never forget.

I was in bed at night. Laying on my side, I could see out of the window with a lacy curtain that was directly across from me, and the moon was full. I could see an Orya man with an Afro haircut walking across the yard coming toward my house. He turned his flashlight on sparingly. His batteries were almost spent and it gave a very orange glow. I wondered if any of the ladies in the village were due to give birth. Maybe he was going to call me to some medical emergency. He stepped up on my porch, and because the house was built on stilts, the floor shook. There was an exercise bike on the porch in front of the window, and he got on and peddled a few turns. Turning the wheel activated a light on the front of the bike that shone in my window. As he lazily turned the wheel a few times more, I was beginning to not like this guy.

He dismounted and came right up to the window, pointed his flashlight inside and turned it on. At that distance I knew that he could see me through the curtain. I was overcome with irrational fear and with great effort yanked my pillow from under my head and covered my face.

I was drenched in sweat. And only then did I realize, “Hey, I don’t have a glass window in my bedroom! There is no lace curtain, and there definitely is no exercise bike with a generator light on the front anywhere in the province!”

Now, I often have unmemorable nightmares. If I am about to be eaten by a large cat or crocodile, the interpretation is that I need to get up and go to the bathroom. Recently I was even threatened by three turkeys.

The nightmare I just related held two important lessons for me. I will tell only the first one in this lesson, and save the second one for the next Buckling the Belt episode.

I somehow knew that the man with the flashlight was evil. Could he represent an evil spirit? That same night, before going back to sleep, I humbly asked the Lord if He would show me if my dream indicated that there was an evil spirit somehow involved with me.

The Lord did not keep me waiting very long for his answer. Right away He allowed me to hear my tempter’s voice. The demon only needed to whisper two words, and my mind went off on an evil trip, one that I had traveled thousands of times before. It is too shameful for me to tell you what that trip led to. Just imagine that it is like your own worst sinful lusts.

Only a couple of weeks later, while that experience was still fresh in my mind, I was back with our family in the provincial capital of Jayapura. At the English-speaking worship service (attended by most missionaries with children in the school there), the sermon was given by a retired missionary who had come back for a visit (Jim Sunda). Jim told how the Lord had unexpectedly given a ministry of deliverance to him and his wife in their home church in the States. He told stories of people being freed from demonic oppression, and ended by saying that on Monday he would have time for anyone who wanted to talk with him. I was the first one to approach him at the end of the service.

On Monday morning when I met with Jim, we sat across a small dining room table, and he asked several questions. I told him exactly why I thought I was being tempted by a demon. We gave the demon a title, ‘Demon of X’. (I’ll probably tell you the actual title we gave that demon in the next lesson. Footnote: Never ask a demon to speak or to tell you his name.) Jim explained the legal situation I explained above. He would not rebuke the demon directly, but he would suggest the words for me to pray to God, and then to speak directly to ‘Demon of X’, to forbid the evil spirit from doing anything with me. The prayer of confession and repentance that Jim led me through was relatively easy, but when we got to the step of forbidding the demon, he told me to look him directly in the eyes. With some effort, I focussed my eyes on his, but then quickly looked away. I objected that the archangel Michael didn’t rebuke the devil. He answered me like what I said above: Scripture explicitly commands us to resist Satan. OK, I had to admit that he was right, so we proceeded through that next step. Looking in Jim’s eyes I followed his suggestions, forbidding Demon X to come to me to harass, tempt, whisper, or bother me in any way. We also forbid him from bothering other members of our families. And we commanded him, “You go where Jesus sends you.”

Immediately afterward, I didn’t feel like anything had happened to me. But when I got into my jeep to go home, a voice whispered, “That was a real good thing you just did.” Here’s the tricky thing: It was a good thing for me to do, but I recognized this message as a temptation to pride. “Oh no,” I thought, “now another voice is tempting me.” Jim already had a couple with him. So, using the rearview mirror, I looked myself in the eyes and resisted that demon of pride.

For the next three days, I made repeated trips to the bathroom, in order to use the mirror there to look myself in the eyes. It seemed that the old demon was gone, but that he left his folder on me in the hands of others. Once or twice I had to smile, because the new ones knew the right words to tempt me, but their timing was terrible. (By the way, rebuke and resist demons verbally. They can’t hear silent rebukes, as far as anyone knows.)

I was rejoicing because at last I felt free. Of course I immediately confessed everything to Gale. On the third day, she came to me. My total honesty moved her to confess things that she had held back from ever telling me before. We at last were truly unified in our marriage and in forgiveness toward each other.

For years I had been praying that our work among the Orya people would not just be a wasted effort. There were lots of ways the Orya people were clearly enslaved to demons, including miracle-working shamans and a perverted cult that did shameful things. Now that I was free, the Lord allowed me to help set others free among the Orya people, doing the same steps I will recommend to you.

One of the things Jim encouraged me to do daily was to pray through putting on the armor of God in Ephesians 6. I followed his advice for a few weeks. It may have helped. But I began to realize that putting the armor on had just become one of my morning rituals. Christians are not given magic words to repeat. Somewhere after that I saw that the pieces of armor are actually pillars of our belief in God. These pieces of armor reveal who we are in Christ, and therefore a Christian can never take off his/her armor.

I also began searching for how we actually put on our spiritual armor. I like the way our Indonesian translation helps readers to understand how the various parts of the armor are actually applied or ‘picked up’ and ‘worn’. An English translation that shows how our Plain Indonesian Translation conveys those concepts is found at the bottom of the episode notes. And, it is basically the same way I led us in prayer at the start of this episode.

Resources:

Now I want to give resources to help you in resisting Satan and his dark forces. I recommend two books by Neil T. Anderson. The foundational best-sellers are

Victory Over the Darkness

and

The Bondage Breaker.

Get your hands on the newest revised versions. They are also available as ebooks.

The subtitle for Victory Over the Darkness is Realizing the power of your identity in Christ. I would characterize this book as way better and more complete than the things I have shared in my first three lessons for buckling the belt of truth.

The Bondage Breaker has the subtitle of Overcoming negative thoughts, irrational feelings, and habitual sins. If you are new to the whole topic I am sharing today, and if you agree that you are struggling against sinful thoughts or irrational feelings, if you are ashamed of habitual sins (as I was), or if you know that some sudden impulses seem to come from someone other than you, in the pages of this book you will find that you are not alone, and you are not crazy. Somewhere in the twelve chapters of The Bondage Breaker you’ll find someone like you that was set free from spiritual bondage.

The seven Steps to Freedom in Christ I have mentioned are found in the appendix of The Bondage Breaker. They are also easily found on the Internet, and I am placing a link to them here in the episode notes. Each step will ask targeted questions and will lead you through some written prayers. It took me a little over an hour the other day to pray through all seven steps. If you don’t have time to read either of the two books suggested above, I urge you to work through the Steps to Freedom in Christ.

As I prepared for this podcast (in the summer of 2023), I read a followup book: The Bondage Breaker, the Next Step, copyright 1991/2011. This book shares research findings about the success of Anderson’s counseling method, plus each chapter shares the testimony of someone who has been released from spiritual bondage. The end of the book gives information about the international scope of Freedom in Christ Ministries. There is a wealth of teaching materials available, training seminars, and many other books available at their website, www.ficm.org.

If you want to contact me, please use the contact button in the top menu bar of dailybiblereading.info or dailygntbiblereading.info.

I will be praying for you, dear listener!

May the Lord bless you ‘real good’.

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Hey! What happened to the 4-semester Read To Me Daily YouVersion reading plan?

Here is the link to the Digging Deeper Daily Youversion reading plan: https://www.bible.com/reading-plans/1314-digging-deeper-daily-by-daily-bible

Here is a link to a fuller explanation about how to duplicate the experience of the Read To Me Daily reading plan:
https://sites.google.com/clarinetpages.net/read-the-bible-in-a-year/listen/using-the-youversion-app?authuser=0

Check out this episode!

Friday, July 7, 2023

Buckling the Belt: Lesson 3 following the Spirit's lead Day 189

Recorded July 7, 2023 Buckling the Belt of Truth, lesson 3

THEME: following the SPIRIT’s lead

I will not read all the verse numbers, nor will I always cite which translation I am quoting from. If I don’t say which translation, it is either NLT or GNT. The complete information is found in the episode notes.

One of the mistakes I made in trying to find victory over my evil desires was thinking that the spiritual reality of my death and resurrection with Christ was going to be the key that would give me total victory over sin. It doesn’t work that way. But the reality I find is that the Holy Spirit empowers all the truth about our unity with Christ. The Spirit is actually the Answer to the prayers we made based on the first two lessons for bucking the belt of truth.

He is

our rescuer from evil desires (our ‘flesh’) which is bent on taking us to spiritual death.
He is the power for transformation,
the creator of a new creation,
the motivator of our hearts.

But realizing the role of the Holy Spirit is not like finding a key to anything. He is a person. It would be insulting to His personhood for me to give you steps for using or controlling God’s Spirit. You must get to know Him.

The personhood of the Holy Spirit actually made it difficult for me to write this lesson. Let me give an example: In my first draft I wrote the next heading as “How to get the Spirit.” How insulting that must be to Him! And I beg his pardon. He is not a thing we obtain. People do slip sometimes and talk about marriage that way, like, “Where did he get that wife?” or like insensitive advice to a woman, “You need to get a husband.”

Gale and I have built our relationship over 51 years, over many tough times, and through the crucible of taking our family to live in a different culture. Yet I still need to keep a close eye on maintaining my relationship with Gale. Now, the tricky thing is, if I were able to go back in time to 1972 to give myself advice, I would not be able to articulate a set of steps for how to keep Gale happy. Living with the Spirit is like that. I can’t tell you very much about how to know Him, while paradoxically, I know He has been my friend. So that next heading is:

How do we start a relationship with the Spirit? The answer is incredibly simple.

John 7:37-39 GNT

On the last and most important day of the festival Jesus stood up and said in a loud voice, “Whoever is thirsty should come to me, and whoever believes in me should drink. As the scripture says, ‘Streams of life-giving water will pour out from his side.’” Jesus said this about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were going to receive. At that time the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not been raised to glory.

This agrees with Rev. 22:17 GNT

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come!” Everyone who hears this must also say, “Come!” Come, whoever is thirsty; accept the water of life as a gift, whoever wants it.

So the simple answer to how we start a relationship with Him is to come to Him in prayer and ask Him to start his work in your heart. I’ll give pointers about how to pray at the end of this lesson.

Cooperate with the Spirit:

We must understand that God’s Spirit is the Author of Scripture. Therefore, we can know that He wants to do his work in us in a way that matches what we find in Scripture. The memorizable verses to support this are 2 Peter 1:20‭-‬21 (NLT):

Above all, you must realize that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophet’s own understanding, or from human initiative. No, those prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit, and they spoke from God.

Your results may vary:

In Eph 4 and Col 3 (by using verbs related to clothing) Paul gives us two metaphors, telling us to take off the clothes of our old life and put on the clean clothes of our new life. This process is directed by the Holy Spirit. My experience leads me to conclude this: There is more to our part in the equation than simply surrendering to the Spirit. The Spirit wants to motivate and help us, but He doesn’t want to do everything for us. We don’t get to be lazy.

This is why some believers have stories of amazing overnight changes that happened in their lives when they believed in Jesus, but then afterwards, it seems that all of us find left-over problems in living according to God’s will that only can be conquered with personal effort and spiritual understanding. For me the Spirit immediately changed the way I talked. For others the Spirit gives immediate freedom from anger or various kinds of addictions. But after that, there always seem to be plenty of things left over for us to work on under the patient help of God’s Spirit.

Ephesians 4:21‭-‬24 NLT

Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.

What kind of things can be thrown off? Immediately after those verses Paul rapidly lists such life changes as stopping

lying,
anger,
stealing,
bitterness,
outbursts of rage,
and slander.

Please know: There is no fakey-ness in ‘putting on’ the new clothes that the Spirit gives. When such changes come welling up from inside you, be brave and allow them to show, like wearing a pair of obviously new jeans. Read the Bible daily and the Spirit will direct you in applying your new wardrobe. Sometimes following the advice of well-meaning friends will lead to frustration. They will want you to change everything all at once.

The Holy Spirit is the engine empowering our spiritual transformation.

I take that idea from the book of Romans. In chapters 5-7, Paul talks of the victory we have over the power of sin and death, but I find no hint of how that victory can actually be obtained. Then suddenly in chapter 8 Paul starts talking about the Holy Spirit.

Here is how Paul comes back to his topic after a long parenthesis in chapter 7:

Romans 8:1‭-‬3 NLT

So now there is no condemnation for those who [*are one with//belong to] Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins.

Romans 8:4‭-‬8 (NLT)

He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit. Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God.

Paul’s intention is absolutely clear here! Believers can “follow the Spirit’s leading.” Both NLT and GNT use the word ‘controlled’ in verse 5, but I think that word can give the wrong impression. The translators were struggling to express what is mysterious and difficult to grasp. Let me try to express it! The Holy Spirit doesn’t take over complete control of our minds, but when we are clinging to Jesus, the Spirit enables us to know how to think and act. In verse 4, Paul literally says ‘walk according to the Spirit’. This Greek idiom of ‘walking’ means our manner of life. NLT’s translation of ‘following the Spirit’s leading’ is perfect in saying what the Greek means. We aren’t controlled but more subtly directed, being enabled to ‘follow the Spirit’s leading’.

My team in Indonesia worked hard to translate those verses in a way that makes sense to our Indonesian readers. Please listen to how our Indonesian translation sounds when translated into English.

Romans 8:4-6 (PET)

God did that [declared an end to sin’s control over us] so that the right way of life required by God’s Law would be fulfilled in us because of being united with Christ. Now, we are enabled to live obeying the leading of God’s Spirit rather than going back to following our sinful natural desires.

Allah melakukan hal itu supaya cara hidup benar yang dituntut oleh Hukum Taurat terpenuhi dalam diri kita karena kita bersatu dengan Kristus. Sekarang, kita dimampukan untuk hidup menaati pimpinan Roh Allah dan tidak lagi mengikuti naluri yang berdosa.

Anyone who still follows their sinful natural desires lives to satisfy themself alone. Whereas every person who lives clinging to God’s Spirit is helped by Him to think according to his will. If the direction of our lives is only to satisfy our sinful natural desires, we will end up in destruction. But if [the direction of] our lives is directed by God’s Spirit, we will receive eternal life and feel calm/peace under the protection of God.

Setiap orang yang masih mengikuti naluri berdosanya, berarti dia hidup untuk memuaskan diri sendiri saja. Namun, setiap orang yang hidup bergantung pada Roh Allah ditolong-Nya untuk berpikir sesuai dengan kehendak-Nya. Bila tujuan hidup kita hanya untuk memuaskan naluri kita yang berdosa, kita akan berakhir dalam kebinasaan. Tetapi bila [tujuan] hidup kita [dipimpin oleh//dikuasai] Roh Allah, kita akan mendapatkan hidup yang kekal dan merasa tenang dalam perlindungan TUHAN.

So, these verses claim that the Spirit can enable us to know how to think and act according to God’s will. Following the outlook/direction of God’s Spirit is what ‘ends sin’s control over us’! (I want that!) But wait! Is what Paul is saying available to only a few super-Christians— like Paul himself— or is it available to all believers?

Truth: Yes, this is for you! You (a sincere believer listening to this) have been enabled to live following the Holy Spirit's leading. A basic principle that makes this possible is realizing that we have been united to Christ. (Rom. 8:1 We are truly ‘unified with/in Christ’.)

Your part in this is to decide clearly the direction you want for your life (v.6). There must be an intentional change of your mind empowered by the Holy Spirit and prayer. The Greek word for ‘mind’ here is phronema in v6 means ‘thought, purpose, aspirations’. Ask for the Spirit to renew your mind. We must cooperate with the Spirit!

Our part #2: In verse 5 translators struggle to express the meaning found in the Greek of ‘living according to the Spirit’ (ESV), or as NET translates it, having our ‘outlook shaped by the Spirit’. I think our part in that is to cling to, or lean on the Holy Spirit (v.5).

I dislike the way NLT translates this as ‘letting the Spirit control your mind’. Stating it like that seems to make me more powerful than God’s Spirit.

Instead we are the weak party in our collaboration with the Spirit, and that’s why I prefer to use the word ‘cling’. This is supported by Romans 8:26‭-‬27 (GNT) which says:

In the same way the Spirit also comes to help us, weak as we are. For we do not know how we ought to pray; the Spirit himself pleads with God for us in groans that words cannot express. And God, who sees into our hearts, knows what the thought of the Spirit is; because the Spirit pleads with God on behalf of his people and in accordance with his will.

With what Paul just said about the Holy Spirit praying for us, let’s look at

John 14:16‭-‬20 (NLT), where Jesus says,

I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you. No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you. Soon the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Since I live, you also will live. When I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.

The Spirit is our Helper and Advocate. The Greek word translated like that literally means that He comes alongside.

The Spirit has 3 functions in this passage in John 14:

He leads us into all truth.
In his advocate role and just like Paul said, the Spirit intercedes for us. He prays to the Father for us.
He gives us confidence in our unity with Jesus. We are not left like orphans.

Let’s put that alongside

John 16:13‭-‬14 (NLT): Jesus told his disciples,

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the future. He will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me.

Part of knowing God’s Spirit is to realize that his motive is to bring glory to Jesus. He never seeks glory for himself. It follows then that if we are following his lead, we also will not seek to glorify ourselves.

When Jesus mentioned to his disciples how the Holy Spirit would ‘speak’ and ‘tell you about the future’, that has primarily been fulfilled for us in His giving us the Bible. I can’t remember any times Jesus or the Holy Spirit have spoken to me in an audible voice. He nudges me in other ways, often when reading the Bible. When verses jump off the page, pay attention! He uses our consciences to tell us when we have sinned or to warn us not to sin. But, I still believe that the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit still do occasionally speak to people in what they perceive as an audible voice. From a few testimonies I have considered believable, God’s voice or an angel’s voice only come once in a lifetime. It is obviously not the Holy Spirit’s prefered method of communication with us. The Bible is the prefered method! Those who claim that they daily hear the Lord speaking to them are sadly deceived. Mascurading demons are happy to give daily messages. Similarly, my advice is to never seek to be given direction through dreams.

How should we pray involving the Holy Spirit?

I have mentioned the importance of prayer several times. This makes me think that some listeners might like a few pointers about how to pray.

The Holy Spirit does not seek to glorify himself, so the normal direction about praying should work well for us, namely,

We pray to God the Father in the name Jesus the Son and through the mediation of the Holy Spirit.

Most of the time I address my prayers like that to our Father in heaven. But it is perfectly fine to address prayers to any member of the Trinity.
If I happen to be praying about something that reminds me of Jesus, then I will often address my prayer to Him. An example would be realizing that I have a special need today for Jesus to be with me in something facing me. So I find it natural to pray, “Lord Jesus, You promised You would be with us always in Matthew 28, and I need You to be with me today.”
Similarly, I pray directly to the Holy Spirit when I am praying something that has to do with the ministries of the Holy Spirit as described in the Bible.

As I said above, He leads us into all truth. He is also the author of Scripture. So it is fine to invite the Holy Spirit to help you when you need direction in understand or putting into practice something you've found in the Bible.
The Holy Spirit pleads for us directly to the Father. So if I am praying to the Father about some urgent issue, I sometimes ask the Holy Spirit to help me bring my plea powerfully to the Father.
Since Paul says we are enabled to be directed by the Holy Spirit (as in Romans 8), then asking Him to remove any communication barriers is a good idea.
Ephesians 4:30 says: “Do not bring sorrow (grieve) the Holy Spirit.” He won’t want to direct your thinking/outlook if you have done that. It is certain that He will be pleased if you come to Him and ask for forgiveness.
Ephesians 6:18 (GNT) “… Pray on every occasion, as the Spirit leads. For this reason keep alert and never give up; pray always for all God's people.” Therefore it is certainly a good thing to pray to the Holy Spirit asking for Him to lead you in praying, giving you alertness to things He wants you to pray about.
Ephesians 6:17 (GNT) Directs us to “accept … the word of God as the sword which the Spirit gives you.” It is therefore a great idea to ask the Holy Spirit for wisdom in how to bring God’s Word into your conversations.
Then we can’t forget to ask Him for this one too: Ephesians 5:18 (GNT) “Do not get drunk with wine, which will only ruin you; instead, be filled with the Spirit.”

We have run out of time to discuss the gifts that are given by the Spirit. Paul urges us to pray, asking to be given the most useful spiritual gifts. When someone thanks you for the way God is using your gift in your local church, don’t get proud about that. But use that feedback as an encouragement to cling even tighter to the Holy Spirit.

Let’s pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, Paul says that as a believer in Christ, the power of sin should no longer control our lives. So my listener and I have already been enabled through the truth of your Word to live obeying the leading of the Holy Spirit. Dear Father, please give our minds a new sensitivity to the nudges of your Spirit. O Holy Spirit, help us to realize any ways we have grieved You. Please lead us in asking for your forgiveness. And teach us how to cling to You. Dear Jesus, we pray that we will remember that we are so unified to you that it is as if we died with You on the cross and now have been raised to live a life under new management. Therefore Lord, help us to realize when our minds go back to well-worn pathways that lead to the desires that used to dominate our thoughts. Help us to put our eyes back on You, Lord Jesus. Heavenly Father, I pray for my brother or sister listening to me now, if he/she struggles to believe that the Holy Spirit is in any way active in his/her life. Dear Jesus, please convince my listener that you haven’t left them alone and orphaned. O Holy Spirit, come to my listener and to me. Renew our minds and make us a new creation.

Amen. And Gale and I say, “May the Lord bless you ‘real good’.”

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Saturday, June 3, 2023

Phil's Treasure Map, Belt Buckling, 158

Greetings everyone!

As I explained previously, I started on a quest because of frustration with 2Peter 1:3-4:

By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.

Let’s find those promises Peter was talking about!

In the second Buckling the Belt of Truth podcast— which is found in our calendar at day 141— I recommended claiming your present resurrection life. I dealt with the biblical teaching that, as a sincere believer in Christ, you have been united with Christ in his death (being crucified with Him), you died and were buried, and now have been raised with Him to new life. Our living a resurrected life is a spiritual reality, meaning it is true of you spiritually but can’t be seen by human eyes. However the Holy Spirit has given us multiple metaphors that help us grasp this reality. As you settle into living according to spiritual realities, the transformation that human eyes cannot see will be felt by you and perhaps even be noticed by others.

The foundational steps of Buckling the Belt of Truth that I gave in the last lesson were:

Realize: Be alert when reading the Bible for truths that are presented as true for believers in Christ, but which seem too good to be true. Note them down, and check out translations like the NLT, GNT, and NET to make sure you are understanding what the Scripture says.
Ask God to help you overcome your difficulty in believing the truth you have discovered. It may be appropriate to ask God to help you discover if strong opposing ideas are coming from demonic influence or previous sins that you should confess.
Meditate on the scriptural truth you are working to internalize. Imagine how your life would be different if you started to live according to that truth.
Take any steps the Holy Spirit gives you to put your new identity into practice.

With that introduction, let’s read Romans 6:1-11 in the GNT:

Romans 6:1-11

What shall we say, then? Should we continue to live in sin so that God's grace will increase? 2 Certainly not! We have died to sin—how then can we go on living in it? 3 For surely you know that when we were baptized into union with Christ Jesus, we were baptized into union with his death. 4 By our baptism, then, we were buried with him and shared his death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from death by the glorious power of the Father, so also we might live a new life.

5 For since we have become one with him in dying as he did, in the same way we shall be one with him by being raised to life as he was.

I hope you noticed the words ‘union’ and ‘become one with him’. When we are baptized, we physically act out this oneness with Christ, both the death and burial and the resurrection. This idea of union is so important that our eating and drinking the elements of communion portray the same thing.

6 And we know that our old being has been put to death with Christ on his cross, in order that the power of the sinful self might be destroyed, so that we should no longer be the slaves of sin. 7 For when we die, we are set free from the power of sin. 8 Since we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that Christ has been raised from death and will never die again—death will no longer rule over him. 10 And so, because he died, sin has no power over him; and now he lives his life in fellowship with God. 11 In the same way you are to think of yourselves as dead, so far as sin is concerned, but living in fellowship with God through Christ Jesus.

Two points about that paragraph:

This paragraph is giving us the keys to unlock the treasure I mentioned before, namely how we do what Peter claimed was possible in 2Peter 1, ‘living a godly life’ and ‘escaping the world’s corruption caused by human desires’. Our sinful self is destroyed and sin has lost its power when we are one with Christ in his death.
Note in verse 11, Paul tells us how we are to think, and also what ‘we know’ and ‘believe’. Take the step of asking God to help you believe what Paul says we ought to know. Then intentionally take the meditation step. The spiritual victory that God gives doesn’t happen by passive osmosis. For me, a major step in the spiritual battle is to take hold of myself and say: “This is what I will do. I will take control of my mind and actually think deeply about what these verses are saying.”

Not read, but so important:

12 Sin must no longer rule in your mortal bodies, so that you obey the desires of your natural self. 13 Nor must you surrender any part of yourselves to sin to be used for wicked purposes. Instead, give yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life, and surrender your whole being to him to be used for righteous purposes. 14 Sin must not be your master; for you do not live under law but under God's grace.

Let’s blend this Romans-6 way of thinking of ourselves as united to Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection with the oneness that Jesus promises to us in John 15.

“I am the true grapevine, and my father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.

Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.”

The statement, “I am the vine; you are the branches,” is actually a promise. It is a right-now promise. It is true of both Jesus and you now. But like many promises, there are conditions to fulfill. Some of the conditions are also promises:

Remain in me (condition), and I will remain in you (promise).
Those who remain in me, and I in them (condition), will produce much fruit (promise).

Note that John 15 enriches our understanding of our unity with Christ by promise-filled gems. Take them to the bank!

These are precious promises that we should keep in mind. We have become (spiritually speaking) organically one with our Vine, Jesus.

There is a constellation of ‘treasures’ found in staying joined to Jesus which He explains in John 15:

verse 9 “I have loved you as the Father has loved me.” Then later he commands us to love one another.
verses 13-15 This is the passage where Jesus calls us his ‘friends’.
16 Then Jesus tells us, “I chose you.” All of the above are on my list of the things that most Christians find hard to believe.
11 “I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my Joy.” What a wonderful promise!
For verses 7-8, let me paraphrase what Jesus is telling us,

“If you continue clinging to Me in oneness, and if you internalize my teachings, then I invite you to pray asking for anything you want, and it will be given to you.

8 When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father.”

This is another amazing promise: Answered prayers! Wow, how come we aren’t spending more time in prayer!

Let’s keep on clinging to Christ. Meditate on being Jesus’ branch. The metaphor of our being raised to new life in unity with Christ helps us to see how we became Jesus’ branch. The metaphor of our being branches of Jesus unlocks joy-producing treasures and motivation to persevere.

There is one more crowning jem of oneness with Christ in Ephesians that I didn’t mention in the second lesson. Since we are joined as one with Christ Jesus, we ‘are seated with Him in the heavenly realms’ (Eph. 2:6). That verse doesn’t say that we ‘have a future position with Christ’, although promises to that effect are found elsewhere in the Bible. Instead Eph. 2:6 says we ‘are seated’ with Him right now. Where is Christ seated? At God’s right hand. (If you were standing directly in front of God, Jesus would be to your left.) The verse is a bit unclear as to how we could be seated with Christ. We might be seated circling God’s throne. Just think of that incredible privilege. I like to say, “There are no folding chairs in heaven.” None of heaven’s chairs are made of plastic. Your name is engraved at your place. There is a place reserved for you alone, and it is certain and permanent.

But capitalizing on the picture of vine-and-branch oneness with Christ, let’s imagine sitting on Jesus’ lap, while He is sitting on his throne next to God. You are right there with the King of the Universe. Lean back and whisper in his ear! He says,

“Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask.

Keep on seeking, and you will find.

Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.” Mat. 7:7

John 15:7 “If you remain joined to me and my words remain in you,

you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted.”

Think of it: Jesus actually is inviting you to take advantage of your close position!

From this place of acceptance and privilege, you are invited to tell the King what You need Him to do for you. But when you sit there, filled with reverence and awe, you will suddenly realize that some things you thought about asking Him are not really what is needed or important. However when the Holy Spirit helps you find your voice to ask, the things you wind up asking will be ‘for His glory’ (that is to say, ‘in his name’). Such prayers are powerful!

Then John 15:11 promised, “you will be filled with my joy.” Why will we receive such joy? Because we will ask big things of God, and He will grant our requests, and God will be glorified. First of all, He will be glorified because we will sing his praises more thankfully.

This is what I am trying to get my mind to grasp right now. I am working to understand and internalize sitting right now in heavenly realms with Christ’, because I am asking God to do some amazingly big things.

Here is an amazing statement. It is one of Jesus’ last words before his suffering:

John 12:24 I am telling you the truth: a grain of wheat remains no more than a single grain unless it is dropped into the ground and dies. If it does die, then it produces many grains.

Gale and I send you our love and together say

May the Lord bless you ‘real good’.

Phil & Gale

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