saturday

I wanted to let people know about a resource that I have a link to on my blog. The resource is dailyaudiobible.com. I have to admit that I have not looked at the site for some time but decided to do so today. Brian who runs the site was commenting on the fundamentals of Christian belief and that is prayer and meditating daily on scripture. I am attaching what he had to say as follows. This is a great resource for those who would like to continue to build their discipleship.

Twenty million times since January 1, 2006 the Daily Audio Bible has been downloaded. I'm sitting in the Prayer Room in Kansas City at the moment. I've been here a lot more than I'd planned but I hadn't planned much of any of what's happened over the last couple of years. "Open up their eyes to see You. Open up their ears to hear You," the band is playing on the stage. They are praying against the Spirit of the Age. Specifically that the sleep the world has been lulled into spiritually would be broken and reality would come crashing in. I agree with all of that and it's a prayer I would have wanted to pray no matter what but I sit here in full realization that this is precisely what the Daily Audio Bible is about and exactly what it is doing in the most profoundly simple of ways. We're just offering the spoken Word of God in it's most potent configuration to the world for whoever will listen and focusing our efforts on prayer and worship.

When I was in High School playing baseball our coach made us field grounders and catch pop-ups until we were sick. He said it was the fundamentals that would eventually make us win games and he was right. In fact it ended up being the difference in just about every single game. What is there in the Christian life that is more fundamental than daily interaction with the Bible, worship and prayer? Isn' it ironic that we so often find ourselves justifying why we don't have time to make room for these things in our lives and then wonder why we're not living the life we'd hoped for in Christ? Without the fundamentals down we're not going to win games but this is much more than a friendly competition between schools. Without the fundamentals down we're not going to win lives. We can sing and pray about Jesus opening the eyes and ears of those who need Him all we want and this is a very, very good thing but He's smiling back at us you know? He singing it right back over us. "You open their eyes and ears. You be My hands and feet. You reveal me." This is a partnership. To bring the Kingdom that we talk about so often we're simply going to have to do just that....bring it. Jesus came. He saved us. He modeled how life is supposed to look and He's empowered us to be everything He was.

I could wrap up a little blog like this with a sentence of two about how this is what we're actually doing here at the DAB with twenty million downloads to prove it and yet the only image I have in my mind is a bunch of kids on the ball diamond fielding grounders and catching pop-ups. There is so much to do but there is so much that has been done. We have reason to rejoice certainly. But we have reason to be ever so sober. Jesus is watching, waiting, coming. It's in our intimate partnership with Him that things get done.

The Daily Audio Bible is a worldwide community of believers getting the fundamentals down cold. This is a very good thing but we won't win games if we don't step into the arena and contend. We'll just be people who can play. That's not enough. I pray that by the time we reach another twenty million downloads we have stadiums full of rescued souls who have joined the family of God because we WON them to CHRIST.

The reason I wanted to include this is because we also are going to be offering an opportunity to deepen our growth as a disciple through Disciple Bible study becoming disciples through bible study. The major concern seems to be our willingess to commit our time to studying God's Word. There are so many pressures out there to distract us from God. This is an opportunity to give back to God not even a tithe of our time and the benefits are outstanding. I would welcome those who are interested to come attend these classes and strengthen your faith as a disciple.