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September 18 Daily Reading- Read the Bible in 1 Year
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If you would like to download my FREE calendar for keeping track of your commitment to read the Bible every day, you can find that on my site, here: https://www.inthefamilywaycoaching.com/pages/read-the-bible-in-1-year
Monthly memberships to support this event can be purchased on my site, here: https://www.inthefamilywaycoaching.com/offering_packages
Today's reading will cover the Books of Luke Chaptes 18:1-14, Matthew Chapter 10:1-6, and John Chapter 11:1-7.
Today we will read about what it means to be first and last in God's kingdom. God's value system is not the same as ours, as we have been learning. So what is important to US may not be considered important to God. Those who make themselves to be important will be brought down and those who know that God is more important will be exalted.
In today's reading Jesus will encourage us to always pray and never give up. God never turns us away! And when we experience difficult times we need to be encouraged to look to God, because it may be that we are experiencing things in order to bring glory to God and Jesus, the way that Lazarus was allowed to die so that the disciples and others who were present would see Jesus bring him back to life and show God's great power. Let us be encouraged to always ask God to show us what good He is going to work into difficult or seemingly "bad" situations so that we might be able to tell others what God did for us. Doing so will both bring glory and honor to God and encourage others to also have faith in God and Jesus to bring seemingly impossible situations to God's feet in prayer and continue the cycle of glorifying God and being a witness to what God shows us in order to encourage others.
If you enjoyed today's reading and feel like God has lit YOUR light please click the LIGHT button (it looks like a thumbs up or a heart) and consider subscribing to or following my channel, if you have not done so already.
If you know someone who might be interested in reading the Bible with me this year please SHARE today's reading with them! It's never too late to join in! Let's help this event grow and together we can spread the word about reading God's Word!
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Transcript
Introduction and Purpose
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello, hello, hello! Today is September 18th. My name is Robin, and you are with In the Family Way Coaching, and together we are here for our daily Bible reading through the Day-by-Day Kids Bible, written by Karen Henley.
Shoutouts and Spiritual Connections
00:00:19
Speaker
I am so excited to be here with you and I want to give a special shout out to some people who are watching or listening. A special hello to Maurice. Maurice, it was so awesome to see you yesterday.
00:00:33
Speaker
i love that God gave us that connection yesterday. Jessica, oh my gosh, my I was so blessed to spend time working next to you yesterday. God has your eyes wide open and your ears can hear.
00:00:48
Speaker
And the Holy Spirit is revealing things to you that people have not told you. God is teaching you. So I am so blessed to have worked next to you yesterday.
00:00:59
Speaker
And thank you for being here and listening or watching. and i want to say an extra also special hello to joe joe i have worked with you for three years how could the subject of god and his kingdom never have come up in all of our discussions we have great discussions and you know what i should have known because you always have the holy spirit smile on your face you are always so joyful Thank you so much for having that conversation with me yesterday.
00:01:31
Speaker
And that now we know that we are part of God's family together. And we had an awesome hug. Oh, I love hugging you guys. Maurice, we had an awesome hug. Joe, awesome hug.
00:01:43
Speaker
Jessica, we will get there. Oh, and Cece, if you are listening or watching, thank you so much for being here. You are a delight. You are so open.
00:01:54
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You are just... ah a sponge for God's Holy Spirit. You're just soaking it up. So thank you everybody for being here.
00:02:05
Speaker
As always, I love seeing you guys too. Diamond and Jedi and Forrest and Pearl and Julie, thank you so much for being my most faithful walkers with me as we go through this amazing journey together this
Revelation about God's Kingdom
00:02:21
Speaker
year. I don't know what God is preparing us for next year and beyond, but I am i just cannot wait to see it.
00:02:29
Speaker
So thank you everybody for being here. If you have been following along and you know about our commitment calendar, go ahead and take that out and your sticker or whatever you are using to mark off your days, because we are about to hear the Bible today.
00:02:46
Speaker
Yesterday we had some amazing revelation. I don't know why this is not shouted from the rooftops. Yesterday Jesus told us when the Jewish leaders came to Jesus, and they asked him when the kingdom of God would come.
00:03:02
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And Jesus replied that watching for God's kingdom won't make it come. People won't say, here it is, or there it is. And that's because God's kingdom is inside God's people.
00:03:18
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Wow. We have the kingdom of God with us. It's more than the Holy Spirit. We have God's kingdom. And Jesus told us yesterday that up until John the Baptist time, we had the law and the prophets.
00:03:33
Speaker
But now since John's time, Jesus started teaching us that the kingdom of God is near. And I always just thought maybe he was referring to himself as being the fact that he was ah bringing salvation.
00:03:46
Speaker
And that is part of it. But he tells us here that God's kingdom is inside of us. I don't know why that's not on any track. Let's rewrite tracks, everybody.
00:03:57
Speaker
The tracks need to say the good news of God's kingdom is that God's kingdom is inside of us.
Values: Human vs. Divine
00:04:05
Speaker
So let's go ahead and move forward with today's reading. We are also going to be building on our previous reading where we have heard that the first will be last and the last will be first.
00:04:17
Speaker
We're going to talk about that today and what Jesus means by that. In fact, i'm going to go ahead and give us that little bit of insight now. We read previously in our reading too yesterday that Jesus told us that Jesus People may think that we are special, but what is special to God is, what is special to people is not what is special to God.
00:04:46
Speaker
God has a different set of standards for what is special to him. So while we may value things and think that we are important or that what we are doing is very valuable,
00:04:59
Speaker
ah It might be that when we get to heaven, we are in for a surprise because God's value system is not the same as ours. His ways are higher than our ways.
00:05:10
Speaker
So the way God looks at things, such as he looks at our hearts, he knows what we are like inside. And so what is valuable to people is not necessarily what is special and valuable to God.
00:05:23
Speaker
So with that in mind, we are going to be reading some examples here.
Parables on Prayer and Justice
00:05:29
Speaker
Our first example, however, is is not that exact example.
00:05:34
Speaker
Our first reading starts us off in Luke chapter 18, and we are going to be reading about the judge. Now, Jesus told his followers another story.
00:05:47
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He wanted them to see that they should always pray. He wanted them to know that they should never give up. This sounds like an important lesson for us.
00:05:59
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We should know that we should always pray and we should never give up. Once there was a judge, said Jesus, and he did not worship God and he didn't even care about people.
00:06:12
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Now there was a lady who lived in his town and her husband had died. The lady kept coming to see the judge. My enemies are not treating me right, she would say.
00:06:24
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Help me, please. And time after time she came, but the judge would not listen to her. Finally, the judge thought to himself, I don't worship God and I don't even care about other people, but this lady keeps bothering me.
00:06:39
Speaker
So I'm going to make sure she is treated fairly and then she won't wear me out by coming here so much.
00:06:47
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Listen, said Jesus. Won't God help his people? They call on him day and night. Will he send them away?
00:07:00
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No. God will make sure that they are treated right. He will be fast about it. But I wonder, said Jesus, will I find people who believe in me when I come back? And
00:07:18
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The proud prayer. This has to do with what we discussed before we started our reading.
00:07:26
Speaker
There were some people who were sure that they did what was right and they were proud of doing right and they thought they were more important than anyone else. So Jesus told them a story.
00:07:40
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Once there were two men, said Jesus, and they went to the worship house to pray. One man was a leader of God's people. The other man was tax man.
00:07:54
Speaker
and and The leader stood up tall and he prayed about himself. God, thank you that I am not like other men.
00:08:07
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I am not a robber. i don't sin. I'm not like this tax man over here. i go without food to worship you, God, two times a week.
00:08:19
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And I give you, God, one out of every ten pieces of money that I earn.
00:08:27
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Now the tax man, he stood a little way off. And he wouldn't even look up. He pounded on his chest. And he prayed.
00:08:38
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He said, God, be kind to me. i am a sinful person.
00:08:46
Speaker
God forgave the tax man, said Jesus. It was just as if he had never sinned. But God did not forgive the leader.
00:08:59
Speaker
Some people think that they are great. God will make those people feel like they are not important. Some people don't act like they are important. And God will make those people feel great.
00:09:17
Speaker
Here's what the kingdom of heaven is like, said Jesus. It's like a farmer who had a grape field. And he went to town early in the morning and he got men to come and work in his field.
00:09:31
Speaker
He told them that he would pay them for the day and then he sent them out to work in his field. At nine o'clock that morning, the farmer went back into town and he saw that there were more people standing there.
00:09:43
Speaker
So he asked them to come and work in his fields as well. He went back again and there were more people standing in the marketplace and they also weren't doing anything.
00:09:56
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So he brought them into his field to work. So the farmer took them with him. You can work in my field too and I will pay you whatever is right. And they went to work.
00:10:07
Speaker
The farmer got more workers at noon. He got more workers at three o'clock in the afternoon. And at five o'clock, the farmer still found people standing around. And he asked them, why are you standing around all day doing nothing?
00:10:21
Speaker
And they said, well, nobody asked us to work. The farmer said, well, you can come and work in my field. So they did. Now it wasn't long by this time until evening came and the farmer said to the head servant, call in the workers and pay them.
00:10:38
Speaker
Start with the last men who came to work and then go on to the first men. So the workers who went to work at five o'clock came in and each one got paid for a whole day's work.
00:10:52
Speaker
Then the early morning workers came and they thought that they would get paid more money because they had been there longer. but the farmer paid each worker for one day's worth of work.
00:11:05
Speaker
The workers who had worked all day started fussing at the farmer. You gave the same pay to those workers and they only worked one hour. You treated us just like us. You treated them just like us.
00:11:18
Speaker
We worked all day in the long hot sun. and The farmer said, I am being fair to you. I asked you to work for me and I told you exactly how much I would pay you and you agreed to work for that much money.
00:11:33
Speaker
The farmer went on to say, take your money and go. I want to give the others what I gave you. It's my money. Can't I do with it what I want?
00:11:44
Speaker
Or are you just mad at me because I am being kind to them?
00:11:50
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The last will be first, said Jesus, and the first will be last.
00:11:57
Speaker
We will talk about that.
Lazarus: Divine Timing
00:12:00
Speaker
A trip to Bethany. Mary and Martha were from a town named Bethany, and they had a brother named Lazarus. Now, one day, Lazarus got sick. Mary and Martha sent a message to Jesus and said, Lord, Lazarus is sick.
00:12:18
Speaker
Now Jesus got the message. This sickness will not end in death. It is to show God's great power, he said, so that God and God's son may be glorified through it.
00:12:35
Speaker
Now Jesus loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus, but he did not go to see them right away. He stayed where he was for two more days.
00:12:46
Speaker
And then he said to his friends, let's go to Judea. But the Jewish leaders tried to throw rocks at you there. Are you going back?
00:12:56
Speaker
His friends asked him. The light shines for 12 hours each day, right? Asked Jesus. People will not fall down if they walk in the daytime.
00:13:08
Speaker
They can see the world's light. They fall when they walk at night, and they have no light then. Our friend Lazarus is sleeping, said Jesus, and I am going to wake him up.
00:13:24
Speaker
Well, if he is sleeping, then he will get better, said Jesus' friends. Now, Jesus meant that Lazarus had died, but Jesus' friends thought he meant that Lazarus really was just sleeping.
00:13:37
Speaker
So then Jesus made it clear to them, Lazarus is dead, he said.
00:13:45
Speaker
For your sake, I am glad that I wasn't there because now you will believe in me. But we need to go to Bethany. ah Sometime later, Jesus got to Bethany and Lazarus was dead.
00:14:02
Speaker
His body had been in the grave now for four days.
00:14:09
Speaker
Cliffhanger alert, that is the end of our reading today. We will find out the rest of that story tomorrow. Let's look at what we were reading today.
00:14:20
Speaker
Our overarching theme is that what is important to people is not necessarily what is important to God. Tomorrow, here's a spoiler alert, we will see that Mary was very upset because Jesus did not hurry over to save Lazarus before he died.
00:14:40
Speaker
So she she was upset because she didn't understand. She will say, well, Lord, if you had come earlier, wouldn't have died. So she didn't feel that Jesus was valuing.
00:14:55
Speaker
his life, why wouldn't she why wouldn't he come and save Lazarus? Because what was important to her was not necessarily the same thing as what was important for God and for Jesus.
God's Purposes vs. Human Expectations
00:15:09
Speaker
This had happened. He had become sick, Jesus tells us, because this would be to show God's great power and to glorify God and to glorify Jesus.
00:15:21
Speaker
And so for the sake of the disciples and for those other people who would witness this, it would be for their benefit. God allows things to happen sometimes so that we may see his great power.
00:15:36
Speaker
We talked about this when we saw the man who was born blind and yet he was made to see again. And we will see that that will even be referenced tomorrow. This was a great thing.
00:15:48
Speaker
And yet this man's parents had to deal with him being blind from birth. He had to deal with being blind from birth. And the disciples, as they walked by, one of them said, Lord, why is this man blind?
00:16:01
Speaker
Who sinned that would cause him to deserve this? Was it his parents who sinned? Was it him who sinned? And Jesus told us very clearly, This happened so that you could see God's glory.
00:16:15
Speaker
We could see God's great power. And we wanted to be encouraged that sometimes we are allowed to go through difficult times because it allows us to see God's great power when we come to him and we see him do amazing things so that we can then be his witnesses.
00:16:35
Speaker
It's not just for a circus show. It's not just so we can see it and go, wow, that was cool. It's so that we can glorify God. When God shows us amazing things, we are meant to tell others about those things so that other people will also be encouraged to have faith in God and bring these seemingly impossible things to Him so that their faith might also grow and God's glory will be revealed.
00:17:05
Speaker
I know that my husband, I've explained, had ah had a stroke and it was and was very devastating. It wasn't affecting him physically. It affected him mentally.
00:17:16
Speaker
And God told me that he would heal him. And whenever I tell people about that, they are amazed. I want everybody to know that it was not me or anybody else who healed my husband's brain.
00:17:29
Speaker
It was God. God healed him.
Personal Stories of Faith
00:17:33
Speaker
And one of the things that really gave me the encouragement to have that kind of faith in our God was Julie.
00:17:43
Speaker
And I have thanked Julie about this situation that she shared with me many years ago, where they had a fire. We had a great fire here a number of years ago in our area where we live here in Southern California.
00:17:58
Speaker
and they were on their property, which is not small, and they prayed over each area of their property. And the areas where they remembered to pray over were spared, and it was not burned.
00:18:13
Speaker
But the areas that they had forgotten to pray about, those areas got burned. God placed his protection. Just like Jesus said today, will God turn us away?
00:18:25
Speaker
no He showed his faithfulness and Jesus shows his faithfulness for us every day when we come to him with things and encourages us to pray for things in his name.
00:18:40
Speaker
And Julie shared this amazing account of their faith with me so that it encouraged me to bring to God the times when we have flooding at our property to save us from the flooding, not because it would wash my property or away or come all the way into the house, but I have a the bedroom that tends to flood because it is set lower, because it is a conversion from a garage into a bedroom.
00:19:04
Speaker
And it was like that before we bought the house. So we didn't know that that was going to be the case until we experienced it. And then it used to just drive me to incredible stress.
00:19:16
Speaker
And I was so upset because, I mean, I had to tear out the carpet and it took me a while to learn about this situation that was going on and how to deal with it.
00:19:28
Speaker
And then I started to deal with it in the worldly way by just trying to buy more pumps and more pumps and do it myself. And then i remember Julie's testimony. of her witness, of her witness of what God gave her to see.
00:19:40
Speaker
And so it encouraged me to bring it to God. And I prayed, and God has saved us. when I pray and ask God to send just the right amount of rain.
00:19:51
Speaker
He has caused amazing circumstances to occur, like on Christmas Eve, where we would have flooded, but it turned out that there was damage to a cistern that led to the city's water district that ended up causing the water to flow in and cause overwhelming intake of water so that it relieved the flooding on Christmas Eve as I prayed and then left the house to attend the Christmas Eve service.
00:20:18
Speaker
And I came back not knowing what was going to be happening, but that there were people working in the area where it floods in the creek. And I asked them what was going on. And they said someone had damaged the cistern type thing where it allowed water intake.
00:20:35
Speaker
And so they had to come and repair it. But in that amount of time, it had taken the water so that it did not cause flooding at my house. And so I want to share these things so that you too may be encouraged.
00:20:50
Speaker
So God allows these difficult things to happen in order to give us opportunities to bring things to him and strengthen our faith in him. Everything that looks even bad, God works good into it.
00:21:04
Speaker
So I want us to be encouraged again to always look to God and ask him, What good are you going to work through this situation? Open my eyes, God, and show me so that I may give the glory to you and share this testimony with other people so that they too may be encouraged to bring situations to you so that you may have, people may have greater faith in you and you will be glorified.
00:21:32
Speaker
So that is our great daily oblig application today is that we should always remember to pray and to not give up and to remember that God's value system is not the same as ours. His ways are higher than our ways.
00:21:51
Speaker
And that when we have difficult situations, we need to not look at them from a human perspective and say, well, this is terrible. What is going on? Why am I being punished for this? Who sinned for this? Why is this being allowed to occur? Why me? Why me?
00:22:05
Speaker
Because sometimes it's for God's glory. We want to be sure that we glorify God through everything that happens.
Encouragement to Share God's Word
00:22:13
Speaker
Well, I hope that you feel that God has lit your light today.
00:22:17
Speaker
and if you have, I'd like to encourage you, Maurice, to click that light button. It looks like a heart. It looks like a thumbs up. But it is our light button.
00:22:27
Speaker
Because when we click that light button, it encourages other people to see what is going on with this event. And it's not for me. It's to bring glory to God. Because our goal through this is to spread the word about reading God's word.
00:22:42
Speaker
Because God's word is useful for teaching and encouragement, for training us up to be enabled for every good work that God brings to us to do. I wonder, what is he enabling you to do?
00:22:55
Speaker
What is he teaching you so that you will be ready to to do? we I'm so curious. So thank you for joining me today on our September 18th daily reading through the Day by Day Kids Bible written by Karen Henley.
00:23:09
Speaker
And I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, whatever day you get around to hearing or or watching this event today. And until tomorrow, I hope you have a fantastic day.
00:23:20
Speaker
Thank you again.