G’day and welcome to Partakers Christian Podcasts! Join us for uplifting Bible teaching, inspiring readings, heartfelt worship, powerful prayers, and fascinating church history. Whether you’re new to faith or growing deeper in your journey, we’re here to encourage and equip you. 🎧 Tune in, interact, and be inspired—wherever you are in the world.
Episodes
Saturday Feb 11, 2017
Saturday Feb 11, 2017
Part 87 - John 20:17
The ultimate Purpose
Mary eventually recognised Jesus. Her initial failure to do so is in line with what happened when other people met the risen Jesus. Luke reports that the couple who met him on the road to Emmaus also failed to recognise him, at first. It seems that he was at one and the same time both recognisably the same Jesus and distinctly different.
This ties in with what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15: 42 - 44, “So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” (I find this very encouraging. Perhaps we will be raised not with the bodies in which we die which may be old and bent and wizened but with something a bit more like the way we were in our prime!)
Matthew says that the women, presumably Mary as here, clasped his feet as they fell to the ground in adoring worship. But Jesus, although he might be touched as happened with some others, did not want to be held. That would have suggested a too permanent relationship when he was due to ascend back to his Father. And his ascension was a vital part of the journey he was on. He had left his heavenly home, descended to earth to be a man as well as God, completed his work in his death on the Cross, announced ‘it is finished’ and was now on his way back to the right hand (the place of honour) next to his Father. There it would be as the writer to the Hebrews says in his 8: 1, 9: 24 - 25, “We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary … now to appear for us in God’s presence. … to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.”
This is the ultimate purpose for which Christ came and died - that he might make continual intercession for us in the judicial throne room of heaven and we should have total confidence in him. Nothing must hinder that, not even the heartfelt worship of Mary, the most faithful disciple of them all. Let us rejoice and be glad on what has been done and is being done for us - even now.
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Friday Feb 10, 2017
Friday Feb 10, 2017
Friday Prayers
CS Lewis...
Today on Partakers we are praying a prayer based on the poem "Love is as hard as nails" by CS Lewis. Come on in, download the mp3 and pray with us!
Love ‘s as warm as tears,
Love is tears:
Pressure within the brain,
Tension at the throat,
Deluge, weeks of rain,
Haystacks afloat,
Featureless seas between
Hedges, where once was green.
Love’s as fierce as fire,
Love is fire:
All sorts – internal heat
Clinkered with greed and pride,
Lyric desire, sharp-sweet,
Laughing, even when denied,
And that empyreal flame
Whence all loves came.
Love’s as fresh as spring,
Love is spring:
Bird-song hung in the air,
Cool smells in a wood,
Whispering ‘Dare! Dare!
To sap, to blood,
Telling ‘Ease, safety, rest,
Are good; not best.’
Love’s as hard as nails,
Love is nails:
Blunt, thick, hammered through
The medial nerves of One
Who, having made us, knew
The thing he had done,
Seeing (with all that is)
Our cross, and his.
Amen
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Monday Feb 06, 2017
Monday Feb 06, 2017
Think Spot - 6 February 2017
G'day! Welcome to Partakers Think Spot at the start of new week!
John 15:9-14 - ‘As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.
Refugees are in the news! I know a lot of folk, including some Christians, are scared that some of them may be terrorists indisguised... But maybe, its a case of if we can't take the Gospel to them in their own land, maybe God is bringing them out of those closed countries and into countries where the Church can show them the reality of the Gospel - perhaps for the very first time... So instead of going to evangelise, the people are coming to be evangelised.
In Mark 5:1-20, we read about Jesus crossing the lake nd while there healed a demon possessed man... Afterwards, this man realized how much Jesus had done for him and went about telling others. And all the people were amazed. From this, we know that the Lord has crossed the lake for all of humanity, that people may choose to follow Him. Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin. so that people could respond and be followers of Him. That is how much God loves this world. This God, is calling the name of each person individually. That includes those refugees, even those who are wanting to commit acts of terror in the name of Islam.
So let's pray they respond to His voice. Lots of people, including Christians seemingly have either forgotten that fact or are simply blinded to it because of Satan and/or their own prejudices. Just as God ransomed, healed, reconciled and redeemed us who are His children - He wants those refugees to accept that love of His as well.
Like that healed man in the story from Mark 5, we as Christians are to tell what Jesus has done for each of us. We are to be focussed on Jesus. We as the Church are not to be distracted by events around us. We are to live and speak the Gospel about Jesus Christ to all others. We are to run the race with our eyes staring at Jesus Christ, while loving all others, including our enemies. Just as Jesus commanded us. Jesus said in John 15, if you love Him, you will be obedient to His commands. How we do that is another thing and is up to individuals to see that for themselves... we go tell people God loves them! WOW!
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Sunday Feb 05, 2017
Sunday Feb 05, 2017
Exploring The Bible
3. New Testament
Book of 1 John (AD90-95)
G'day and welcome to our series, "Exploring the Bible" This is also the title of our latest book available on Amazon by clicking here or visiting PulpTheology.com
Key Verses:
- 1 John 1:3-4
- 1 John 5:13
Throughout, John uses a series of keywords: light, fellowship, love, truth, eternal life, obey, born of God, among them. He bounces ideas back and forward amongst these words to encourage and strengthen his readers. He is aiming to lead his readers from sin to eternal life, that is, God honouring life in this world and the next. He is aware that there is false teaching, known as Gnostic teaching, around and seeks to combat it.
John writes about fellowship with the Father and the Son and other believers. Fellowship comes through obedience to the Word of God and through confession of sin when sin is committed. John also writes so that they may have confidence about eternal life, by discussing foundation and conduct. In doing so, he tackles heretical Gnostic teachers who were challenging apostolic teachings.
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Saturday Feb 04, 2017
Saturday Feb 04, 2017
Part 86 - John 20:8
Strange believing
This is a strange verse. “He saw and believed”. What did he see and believe? Surely not just an empty tomb and a few clothes lying there. We must think a bit more deeply of what must have been involved - reading between the lines as we call it.
Perhaps first and most certain is that not all that was said was recorded in these few words that we have here. Mary Magdalene was not alone when she saw the stone had been rolled back. John concentrates on her because he wants to tell us about her encounter with the ‘gardener’, but the other Gospel-writers tell us there were others there as well.
(It is at first sight strange that there seems to be so much variation in the four accounts of the events at the tomb. These are eyewitness reports and each eyewitness remembered and related the things that struck them most forcibly when they were asked what happened - as eyewitnesses do. The basic stories are in agreement about all the main events. Only the details are different. There is no point in trying to make one story out of all the accounts. They wrote with a different emphasis from what ours would be. They were more interested in the theology of what happened than in exact correspondence with all that actually happened. Let us concentrate on their theology and smile at their differences.)
What was i saying? Oh, yes, about what must have happened which was not recorded. There must have been much talk between the three main characters: Mary, Peter and the other disciple. It will not have been just a quick glance and then a turn and return to base. Look, they will have said, ‘the clothes are all in a neat heap, and there is his turban lying separately. It wasn’t like that with Lazarus - he came out of the tomb all swaddled up so that he had difficulty walking and had to have help to unwind himself. This is different. Anyone taking the body away would never bother to do that. This must be part of what Jesus said so many times - he was going to rise again.’ Wow! I wonder how it actually happened.
It is recorded that it was the other disciple who believed. That is because he was writing this account so, of course, he knew exactly what happened in his thinking in a way he did not know about the other two. He knew that at that point he put together all that he had heard Jesus say, all that had happened and all that he could see in front to him and, in a flash, he knew that it had all come true. Jesus had been, and still was, the Son of God, the Messiah, the one he was going to follow the rest of his days.
We too can now put together all that we have learned from the account of John, and the others, and say YES, this is the Son of God, the Messiah, the one I am going to follow the rest of my days.
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~You can now purchase our Partakers books including Roger's latest - The Puzzle of Living - A fresh look at the story of Job!
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Friday Feb 03, 2017
Friday Feb 03, 2017
Friday Prayers
Prayers for Refugees...
Today on Partakers we are praying a prayer from the Church of England for refugees worldwide. As we know, Jesus our Lord, was a refugee when a baby, as Joseph & Mary escaped to Egypt with him. Come on in, download the mp3 and pray with us!
Heavenly Father,
you are the source of all goodness, generosity and love.
We thank you for opening the hearts of many
to those who are fleeing for their lives.
Help us now to open our arms in welcome,
and reach out our hands in support.
That the desperate may find new hope,
and lives torn apart be restored.
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ Your Son, Our Lord,
who fled persecution at His birth
and at His last triumphed over death.
Amen
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