Partakers Christian Podcasts

Friday Prayers 8 July 2016

Partakers Friday Prayers

We pray together and when Christians pray together, from different nations, different churches and different denominations - that reveals Church unity! Come! Let us pray together!

A prayer of Cardinal Newman

O Jesus, Mighty God, I cry to You;
O Jesus, Bright Light, I turn to You;
O Jesus, Holy Love, I run to You;
With all the strength I have I worship You;
With all the love I have I cling to You;
With all my soul I long to be with You,
And fear no more to fail, or fall from You.

O Jesus, deathless love, Who seeks me,
You Who did die for longing love of me,
You King in all Your beauty come to me,
White-robed, blood-sprinkled Jesus, come to me,
And go no more, dear Lord, away from me.
Amen

Click or Tap here to listen to or save this as an audio mp3 file

~

You can now purchase our Partakers books! Please do click or tap here to visit our Amazon site!

Click or tap on the appropriate link below to subscribe, share or download our iPhone App!

Think Spot 4 July 2016

Think Spot - 4th July 2016

G'day and welcome to Partakers! We have the start of a new week! Its Monday!

Happy 4th of July to our USA readers, listeners and downloaders! God bless you this day and ever more! But I have a question for you - everyone of us... How and in what circumstances are you trusting God?

Let's look briefly at how Jesus Christ trusted in God the Father.  Jesus knew that God the Father was going to bring Him back to life after Jesus' own death on the cross. Jesus trusted the Father, His Father, in this area of His life, just as he did in all aspects of his life. How are you doing? Do you have concerns and areas of your life where you need an assurance that God the Father will help you?

Here are some simple steps which may help you maintain a trust in God.

1. Pray, casting all anxiety on God. He cares for you because you are His personal concern (The great apostle Peter, one of Jesus' closest friends wrote this in 1 Peter 5:7 "Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.")
   

2. Accept and thank God that His peace has filled that area (Another great apostle, Paul, wrote this in Philippians 4:7 "Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.")
   

3. Learn to be content whatever your circumstances are, resting in God (Paul goes on in Philippians 4:11-12 "Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little.")
   

4. Allow the Spirit to control your mind for life and peace (and again from the pen of the apostle Paul, this time in Romans 8:6 "So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace.")
   

5. Trust God to fulfil your every need (Matthew records these words of Jesus in Matthew 6:32-33 "but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need." )
   

6. Obey and follow God's commands to love God and love others (Jesus is recorded in Matthew 22:37-40 "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.' The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.")
   

7. Finally, be prepared to be obedient to the Father, in supplying the needs of others you meet and therefore showing you love God and other people!
   

One way to show you are trusting and loving God is to be the answer to the prayers of somebody else and showing that love to them! Ask God to show you, how you can help somebody else in need this week and showing your love.Go in peace this Monday, into this week, knowing God is worthy of your trust! God will take care of you, but not always in the way you expect! Expect Him to allow circumstances and situations to arise where you are to trust Him fully! He will help you if you ask! After all, He knows you better than anybody! And don't be afraid to help somebody else because by doing that, you show you are loving and trusting in God!

Father, I pray that You would help us to trust in You and that You would supply our needs, calm our concerns and help us to love You and others more fully. I ask this through the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit who lives inside all those who have peace with you. Amen

Click or Tap here to listen to or save this as an audio mp3 file

~

You can now purchase our Partakers books! Please do click or tap here to visit our Amazon site!

Click or tap on the appropriate link below to subscribe, share or download our iPhone App!

Gems in the Gospel of John - Part 37

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 37 - John 8:32
Freedom in Christ

As we move on through this chapter things get very difficult. In verse 31 John refers to “the Jews who had believed Jesus”. That simple statement is very difficult because these same Jews seem to have been his discussion partners through the rest of the chapter and they are very antagonistic to Jesus to the point where they tried to stone him! Perhaps John means something like ‘Jews who had expressed some interest in what he was saying and doing’. After all there were probably people then, as there are now, who are keen to get alongside the latest celebrity, which Jesus will have been.

Then Jesus said, ““If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” That is alright but their response wasn’t. They said “we have never been enslaved to anyone” which must be high in the list of the most untrue things in the Bible. They had been slaves, at one time or another, of the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans. We might well wonder what they can possibly have meant by claiming they had never been slaves – which takes us straight into thinking about what is meant by freedom. Nelson Mandela, the famous South African politician, is the clue. He spent 27 years in two of South Africa’s most notorious prisons, which would seem to be a very definite for of slavery, but when he was finally released it was clear that his mind and spirit were unaffected. He became the countries president but he took no steps to hold anyone to account for his lone imprisonment. His mind and spirit had clearly remained free even when his body was held in dire slavery. He was an outstanding example of how some can rise above their immediate surroundings and remain free.

The other problem we all have is that of sin. Sin, which can so easily become a habit or even an addiction haunts all of us. Paul recognized that when he said. “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God”. He went on to compare sin to slavery and the life of the Christian living in acceptance by God to freedom just as Jesus does here.

Jesus tells us what the solution to this otherwise unsolvable human dilemma is. He says, “The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” The first bit is easy to understand: it is the age old difference between being a slave lacking all security in where you live and control over what you do and a son who is the heir to the house, the estate and the family riches. The second bit is much more difficult. We may well ask, ‘why should being set free by the son, even if the son is Jesus, set us free.’ The answer to that puzzle is in Romans chapter 6 where we read, “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

How difficult that is to understand depends on what culture you come from. If, like me, you come from a Western culture with its extreme individuality you will find it very difficult to understand how you can truly be involved in the life and death of another person even if that person is the Son of God. If, however, you come from a culture where individuality takes second place to a corporate group, be that family, work group, church, or anything else you will find it much easier to accept that because good things happen to the Lord, you are united with the Lord, and therefore the same good things happen to you.

Think that one over very carefully. If you have set out to follow Jesus, he is the Son, he has set you free, therefore – and what an enormous therefore that is – you are free indeed because you are in Him

Click or Tap here to listen to or save this as an audio mp3 file

~

You can now purchase our Partakers books including Roger's latest - The Puzzle of Living - A fresh look at the story of Job!

Please do click or tap here to visit our Amazon site!

Click or tap on the appropriate link below to subscribe, share or download our iPhone App!

Friday Prayers 1 July 2016

Partakers Friday Prayers

We pray together and when Christians pray together, from different nations, different churches and different denominations - that reveals Church unity! Come! Let us pray together!

A Prayer from the Sarum Primer 1558

God be in my head, and in my understanding;
God be in my eyes, and in my looking;
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;
God be in my heart, and in my thinking;
God be at my beginning, and at my departing.
Amen

Click or Tap here to listen to or save this as an audio mp3 file

~

You can now purchase our Partakers books! Please do click or tap here to visit our Amazon site!

Click or tap on the appropriate link below to subscribe, share or download our iPhone App!