Foreign hello good people.

Welcome to Daily Bible Refresh brought to you by voiceofgoddaily.com My name is Dr.

Brad Miller and here to offer you a fresh expression of a daily reading of the Holy Scriptures of the Bible.

We read from the Revised Common Lectionary the particular verse selected for this very day.

We're in the year C of the Common of the Revised Common Lectionary in the epiphany season and today's reading we're going to look to make it understandable, relatable and applicable.

We do that by making it understandable by reading the New Testament lesson only for this day from the Message translation of the Bible.

Relatable by offering you a couple of points to ponder and applicable by having given you an action point.

We have a prayer and we do everything in under 10 minutes.

Our reading today is from Romans 12, verses 1 through 8.

Reading from the Message Place your life before God.

So here's what I want you to do.

God helping you take your everyday ordinary life.

You're sleeping, eating, going to work and walking around life and place it before God as an offering.

Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him.

Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.

Instead, fix your attention on God.

You'll be changed from the inside out, readily recognize what he wants from you and quickly respond to it.

Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings out the best out of you.

Develops well formed maturity out of you.

I'm speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, especially as I have responsibilities in relationship to you.

Living then as every one of you does, in pure grace.

It's important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God.

No, God brings it all to you.

The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what God does for us, not by what we and what we do for Him.

In this way we are like the various parts of the human body.

Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not as the other way around.

The body we're talking about is Christ's body, the body of chosen people.

Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body, but as a chopped off finger or a cut off toe, we wouldn't amount to much, would we?

So since we find ourselves fashioned into these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ's body.

Let's just go ahead and be what we were made to be without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other or trying to be something we aren't.

If you preach, just preach God's message, nothing else.

If you help, just help.

Don't take over.

If you teach, stick to your teaching.

If you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don't get bossy.

If you're put in charge, don't manipulate.

If you're called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond.

If you work with a disadvantage, don't let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them.

Keep a smile on your face One of my favorite passages of scriptures is this.

It's really about an alternative community, the way people often understand community.

It's about some I call sacred resistance to the norm and where Paul reimagines what it means to live faithfully in a world that is often oppressive.

Here's some points to ponder.

One of them is everyday resistance.

Don't become so well adjusted to your culture and that speaks directly to modern things like capitalism, consumerism, individualism.

Progressive Christianity calls us to resist narratives through our daily choices.

How we spend our money, how we spend our time, how we share our work, how we relate to others.

Every ordinary moment as it talks about the scripture becomes an opportunity for sacred resistance.

Another point is collective liberation.

Paul uses the human body as a metaphor to challenge individualistic spirituality.

We find our meaning in relationship to others, particularly those marginalized by dominant systems.

This invites us to see our liberation is bound together with others.

We cannot be truly free if others are oppressed.

One more point has to do with a gift economy versus a merit system.

There's an emphasis here on grace and I love that and on the gifts and grace challenges, a meritocracy and a scarcity mindset.

Each person gifts are valued not by market worth but but by their contribution to the collective greater good.

And this model's a system that is often at odds to one that is based on abundance.

We need to or want to based on scarcity.

We need to want a model that is based on abundance, sharing and mutual care.

Here's your action step.

This has to do with creating a community gift inventory.

List whatever gifts and skills and resources that you have in your life and that you can use alongside and apply them to the needs and vulnerabilities of others and share this with others in your community.

Focus on how these gifts that you have could serve the needs of others.

Then you might want to organize a gift circle, which is where you kind of take your gifts and combine them with the gifts of others and those shared resources and skills can combine together to do a greater good.

That's, I believe, what Paul is envisioning here.

Maybe we can make it happen in our own communities.

I'm going to have a prayer in just a second, but I did want you to know that we have a Bible study resource that I just want to give to you.

It's called the ABC 123 Bible Study Guidelines.

You can find it at our website, voiceofgoddaily.com that's also where we have all the back episodes of Bible Refresh of Daily Bible Refresh.

Over 700 episodes and all the transcripts are there as well.

It's all a gift to you.

It's the ABC 123 Bible Study Guide.

You find it@voiceofgod daily.com let's pray.

Oh God, you are the divine source of all gifts.

Help us resist a culture of consumption that reduces everything to market value.

Give us courage to live differently, even when it makes others uncomfortable.

Remind us that our ordinary lives can be extraordinary.

Acts of resistance free us from comparing and competing, from measuring worth by productivity.

Show us how to build communities where everyone's gifts are honored, where no one is disposable and where grace flows freely.

May our lives be living presence and systems against any systems that diminish and divide.

Amen.

Well, good friends, it's been good to be with you here on Daily Bible Refresh.

My name is Dr.

Brad Miller.

I look forward to being with you tomorrow on Daily Bible Refresh.

We usually drop our episodes before 6am Eastern Time.

I.

I invite you to be with me and to invite others in your life, in your circle to be with us as well.

Until next time, remember that God's loyal love doesn't run out.

His merciful love hasn't dried up.

It's created new every morning.

Sa.