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
Sunday Jun 11, 2017
Sunday Jun 11, 2017
Exploring The Bible
19. New Testament
Galatians - A.D. 49-50
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:
- Galatians 2:20 / Galatians 5:25
Paul is furious at the way Peter has allowed a division to appear amongst the Christians in Galatia. Is salvation purely a grace gift, as Paul taught, or does it partly depend on belonging to the correct people group, the Jews? Galatians centres on the conflict between those two teachings.
Paul emphasises that the Christian must have faith in Jesus’ work on the cross as the only means of salvation, rather than thinking he must also be a slave to the Jewish Law. He defends the gospel of grace, explains it and then applies it to the Christian walk by saying it is the believer’s responsibility to serve others.
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Saturday Jun 10, 2017
Saturday Jun 10, 2017
Part 100 - 1 John 1:9
Confession
When I was converted at University the first verse that we were exhorted to take to heart was this one: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
Confession – apologizing to God and telling other people the wrong things we have done – is an important part of repentance. Repentance is changing direction – from a wrong way of living to the one and only right way. So part of it is moving forward in a very different and much better direction and the other part of it is stopping doing the wrong things in your life. In most ways the best and most important part is the positive bit – moving forward in a much better direction and we always have the Holy Spirit to help us to do that. The negative bit is turning away from the wrong things in our lives and a very important part of that is confession – telling ourselves, God and other people that we have a strong intention to do so. That is confession.
In practice, one’s attitude to confession tends to depend on which sort of church you belong to! If you belong to a High Anglican or Catholic Church you may be expected to confess very regularly, weekly perhaps. If however you belong to a, Baptist, Charismatic or non-conformist church you will be expected to confess your sins when you become a Christian but scarcely ever thereafter. Why the difference and what does scripture say to incline us one way or the other?
It is easy to see that the difference is between concentration on the negative or on the positive aspects of what has happened to us as we set out on and continue along the Christian Way. Both bits are important and we need to cater for both bits in our thinking. It does seem to me that it is the positive outlook that is by far the more important – but then I would, wouldn’t I, because I come from a strongly Baptist and non-conformist background. As I read the Gospels it seems to me that Jesus was always more concerned with people’s future than their past. “go, and sin no more” is the sort of statement he addressed to people who had turned to follow him.
John knew two lots of people. One was all those who had stayed in the fellowship that he had set up and of which he was still the centre. He was in fellowship with them. He reckoned they were walking in the light. Because he had known and touched Jesus they had, in a sense, known and touched him.
The other group, against which much of this epistle is directed, had broken the fellowship, moved into the darkness, and lost all physical contact with Jesus, to say nothing of the moral and spiritual contact they had lost. What they now believed was not the truth. There was no doubt in John’s mind: they were sinners. It wasn’t just an alternative point of view – they were wrong. They were no longer in any sort of relationship with God through Jesus.
Yet, even so, God would not continue to reject them if they acknowledged their ‘mistake’ by confession. He would accept them back into his family, consider them to be still pure and righteous, that is not those who made some bad ‘mistakes’ thus sinning. They are once again in closest fellowship with him.
Perhaps you too have been enticed away from the straight and narrow way of walking with Jesus. if so, confess what you have thought and done and he will take your hand and lead you once more along the only true way.
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Friday Jun 09, 2017
Friday Jun 09, 2017
Partakers Friday Prayers!
9 June 2017
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!
May God the Father,
And the eternal High Priest Jesus Christ,
And the indwelling Holy Spirit
Build us up in faith and truth and love,
And grant us our portion among the saints
With all those who believe on our Lord Jesus Christ.
We pray for all saints,
for kings and rulers,
for the enemies of the cross of Christ,
And for ourselves
we pray that our fruit may abound
and we may be made perfect
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen
Based on a prayer of Polycarp, a disciple of the Apostle John (AD 80 – 167)
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Monday Jun 05, 2017
Monday Jun 05, 2017
Think Spot
6 June 2017
As part of our living as followers of Jesus, here is something which has the capability of affecting every person on the planet.
Jesus took words and thoughts extremely seriously. Jesus’ words encouraged others gently towards paths of right living. He spoke words of love, kindness, rebuke, forgiveness, encouragement and blessing upon and to others. Jesus is to be our guide and Master in the use of thoughts and words.
In Matthew 5:21-22, Jesus equates calling somebody a fool with the physical act of murder. Murder has its beginning in anger developing into uncontrollable rage. Improper attitudes, words and thoughts can lead you and I to sin if we don’t stop their destructive use quickly. May the words we communicate and think about, be like those of Jesus – “full of grace”. How is your WOW factor of Jesus now?
When Jesus Christ called you to follow Him, He called you to follow Him wholeheartedly and be committed to only Him. Jesus calls you and I, to love God and be totally committed to Him.
Here is a brief prayer to help us into the new week.
Father, help us this week to be totally committed to you in all aspects of our lives.
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Sunday Jun 04, 2017
Sunday Jun 04, 2017
Exploring The Bible
18. New Testament
Ephesus-A.D. 60-62
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:
- Ephesians 2:8-9 / Ephesians 4:1-3
What we call Ephesians is not so much a letter as a short thesis, on the subject about being a Christian. We happen to have the copy that went to Ephesus. Paul discusses the life of Christians, comparing it with how they were before they came to faith when they were separated from God.
He speaks of their new position in Christ now that they believe, and how it occurred. He talks about themes such as adoption, redemption, inheritance and citizenship. He then moves to the Christian, being equipped for service, to live a righteous life and the engagement in spiritual warfare.
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Saturday Jun 03, 2017
Saturday Jun 03, 2017
Part 99 - 1 John 1:8
The problem of sin
With brutal honesty John says “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” or in other words we all sin.
That is not a popular idea. We like to think that we do not sin - we just make mistakes. Mistakes they may be but they are also sin. That is because there is always a ‘God element’ in what we do. David said in Psalm 51: 4 “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge.” which was actually a bit of a liberty since he had very clearly and definitely sinned against Uriah, stealing his wife and organising his death. But there is a truth there - all that we do will reflect in the view the Lord God has of us and therefore it is sin. Most people are not aware of that anti-God element in what they do and so they are not happy with the word ‘sin’ when it is applied to them. All of us are guilty of that anti-God activity which amounts in many ways to idolatry – putting something or somebody before God in our thinking.
As to why we sin, that has been a source of argument for many centuries. Do we sin because we inherit sinfulness or do we sin simply because we sin? But all that is just a theoretical argument. The cruel and crucial reality is that we do sin - inevitably. It is an inescapable part of human nature.
This gives rise to a major problem for John as well as for us. We shall see, particularly in his chapter 3, that he also wants to say that those who have set out to follow Jesus, who have received the gift of the Holy Spirit as an essential part of their lives should not sin at all - but they do. We will eventually come to where he says that and see how John wrestles with the dilemma.
There is one strange, wonderful and amazing fact about sin as we are told about it in the Bible. We can see this very clearly in the 10 commandments. Only 4 of them are about anything to do directly with our attitude to God. The other 6 are all to do with how we live as people and the way we treat other people. And that is the consistent pattern through all the rest of scripture. It is how we live as a person that matters, not the way we carry out any particular religious rite. What your church does may be quite different from what my church does. No matter – if we have set out to follow the Lord we are his. If what we do departs a great deal from what is recommended clearly in scripture we shall find it more difficult – but not impossible.
It is, in a way, encouraging to discover that even in the very early church they had a problem with sin. Much of this epistle is taken up with the problem John faced in his local church, the church he had founded and of which he was the main stay. A movement known as Gnosticism (pronounced nosticism) was active in those early years. Gnostic means wisdom and those who taught these things claimed that they had special knowledge, not given to everyone, and that they knew special things hidden from most of mankind and, indeed, most Christian believers. So they had broken off from the main church John had founded and formed their own group which they thought to be very special. That is why John says ‘they went out from us’ in 2: 19. We shall see that John is trying hard to persuade all his fellow believers to stay centred in all their thinking on Jesus. As we look at various verses in this epistle that will be the constant call to us. Stay focused on Jesus; do not imagine for a moment that there are other more exciting possibilities out there. There aren’t.
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Friday Jun 02, 2017
Friday Jun 02, 2017
Partakers Friday Prayers
2 June 2017
for the Persecuted Church Worldwide
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!
God of all comfort, for those who are tortured both in body and mind, give them the grace to endure and to see their suffering as part of following in Christ’s footsteps. Merciful God, for those asked to pay the ultimate price; who are martyred because of their love for you, may they truly know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.
Father God, for those who are widowed and orphaned may they know the comfort that comes from your promised presence even when they walk through the valley. May they be strengthened by your Spirit, enabling them to rejoice with the psalmist as they proclaim that the LORD will not abandon them in death.
Heavenly Father, we ask that you would make us ever mindful of our brothers and sisters around the world who need us to stand with them as they suffer in your name. Teach us what it means to overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony; we pray that we would not love our lives so much as to shrink from death.
We ask these things O Father, through the name of Your Son, Jesus and in the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us.
Amen
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