Hello, good people, and welcome to Daily

Bible Refresh. My name is doctor Brad

Miller, and Daily Bible Refresh is brought to you by voice

of god daily.com. And what daily

bible refresh is is a daily reading of the scriptures

done in a refreshing way. So we read from

the new testament only. We read from the message

version of the Bible. We read from the

revised common lectionary, which is the

selected verse of scripture for this very day. We're in

year c of the revised common lectionary, and we are in the

epiphany season. And we do so by reading the scripture in

an understandable manner from the message version of the new testament only. We

make it relatable by having a couple of points to ponder, and we make it

applicable by having an action point for you to follow,

based on the scripture. And we do all that and have

a prayer in under 10 minutes. Our reading for the day is from

Ephesians 4 17 through

52, reading from the message. The old way has to

go. And so I insist, and god backs me

up on this, that there be

no going along with the crowd, the empty

headed, mindless crowd. They've

refused for so long to deal with God that they've lost

touch not only with God, but with reality

itself. They can't think straight anymore.

Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual

obsession, addicted to every sort of perversion.

But that's no life for you. You learned Christ.

My assumption is that you have paid careful attention

to him, been well instructed in the truth

precisely as we have it in Jesus. Since then,

we do not have the excuse of ignorance.

Everything, and I do mean everything, connected with

that old way of life has to go. It's

rotten through and through. Get rid of it and

then take on an entirely new way of

life, a god fashioned life,

a life renewed from the inside and working itself

into your conduct as god accurately

reproduces his character in you.

What this adds up to then is this, no more lies,

no more pretense. Tell your neighbor the truth. In

Christ's body, we're all connected to each other. After

all, when you lie to others, you end up lying to yourself.

Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry, but don't use your

anger as fuel for revenge, and don't stay

angry. Don't go to bed angry. Don't give the devil

that kind of foothold in your life. Did you

used to make ends meet by stealing? Well, no more. Get an honest

job so that you could help others who can't work. And

watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your

mouth. Say only what helps, each word

a gift. Don't grieve God. Don't break his

heart. His holy spirit moving and breathing in you

is the most intimate part of your life, making you

fit for himself. So don't take such a gift for

granted. Make a clean break from all cutting,

backbiting, profane talk. Be gentle with one another,

sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly

as God in Christ forgave you. So wake up

from your sleep. Watch what God does and then you do

it like children who learn proper behavior from their

parents. Mostly what God does is love

you. Keep company with him and learn a life

of love. Observe how God loved us.

He loved us not cautious, but

extravagant. He didn't love in order to get something from

us, but to give everything of himself to

us. Love like that.

Wow. What an extraordinary passage of scripture. It's about living

an authentic life of love, and you transform yourself.

When you do that, you transform community. So let's talk about it a little bit,

a couple of points to ponder. This is indeed about authentic

transformation over religious performance. Paul isn't

talking here about some superficial behavioral

modification or a frugal following. He describes

a deep authentic transformation that starts

from within. See, in progressive Christianity, we understand this is

moving beyond a performative religious,

nature to a genuine spiritual growth that affects how

we treat ourselves and how we treat others. So it's not about

shame or guilt, but about growing in our truest, most

authentic selves. And there's the political

nature. Another point is the political nature of personal change. Paul talks

about not going along with the crowd. He's talking about really making

a radical statement about resisting resisting

systematic patterns of harm and injustice. In

our modern context, this means we might wanna question some

of the societal norms that perpetuate things like

inequality and exploitation and environmental

destruction. It starts with personal transformation, but

it also has societal and political implications.

How we spend our money, how we treat others, how we treat our workers if

we're employer, how we plead our employer if we're a worker,

and engage in systems where, engage

systems where we can speak truth to power.

It also talks here another point is about love as a revolutionary

practice. It calls upon extravagant

love. Did you get that part of things? Christ like love. This

isn't just kind of sentimental woo woo love that's

kind of portrayed in popular culture. It's not surface level. It's a

revolutionary force that changes and

transacts that changes a transactional society into

transformational society. Paul says, love like

that, and he's calling us to love like Jesus love. And

that disrupts a world where oppression is an arm and

creates genuine community. So here's your action

step. Identify one area where you've been operating kind

of on autopilot in your relationships, maybe in the

workplace or some other group of people that you

are connected with. Perhaps it's an unconscious

bias or some consumer habit you have

of buying too much or consuming too much of something that's not healthy

or good or maybe it's how you talk to others. Choose a

practice and have some intentional awareness about that

practice and make a concrete change for the better that more

aligns with the value of extravagant

love. So for instance, you might

wanna support a local business that may not be part of some

giant corporation or maybe you want to actively listen to

someone who, others might dismiss a child

perhaps. Maybe you need just to examine your own language

or your own unconscious prejudices. Something to

think about, something to apply to your life. Before we

pray, I want to remind you that we do have a resource to help you

apply the Bible to your life. It's, called the ABC 123

Bible study guide. I came up with it a couple years ago. I just want

to give it to you as a gift. It helps you to read the Bible

and to study the Bible as easy as a, b, c

123. You just go to our website voice of god

daily.com, and you can pick up

that resource right there. Let's pray. Loving God, we live

in a world that often pushes us toward mindless consumption

and superficial relationships. Help us pause and

examine our patterns not with shame, but with hope and transformation.

Give us courage to love extravagantly even when it costs us

something. Show us how to build authentic community that challenges

the status quo and reflects your revolutionary love.

Guide us in speaking truth, manage our anger for justice,

and creating spaces for genuine healing. May our

own personal transformation ripple outward to touch

our community and our world. Amen.

Well, my name is doctor Brad Miller here on the on the daily bible

refresh. I'll be with you again tomorrow. Until that

time, please just remember that god's love

doesn't run out. His merciful love never

dries up. It's created new

every morning.