Episodes
Monday Apr 29, 2019
Think Spot 29 April 2019
Monday Apr 29, 2019
Monday Apr 29, 2019
Think Spot 29 April 2019
Matthew 17:1-8 - After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.2 There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.
The Jesus I see is full of majesty and awe. He is not simply a king with a crown on his head. He is the King of all Kings and the Lord of Lords. This Jesus Christ did not decay in the grave - He overcame death in the grave and was raised again majestically.
As Paul said that Jesus is “the first-born from among the dead”. Paul writes later in Colossians 2:3, that “in Jesus Christ, all the majestic treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.” Jesus Christ the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who with unparalleled majesty, is the head of His body, the church. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, the church would not be in existence 2,000 years later, let alone 2 years after his death. Jesus’ majesty meaning I can depend upon Him for all matters of life.
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Saturday Apr 27, 2019
Highlights in Hebrews 35
Saturday Apr 27, 2019
Saturday Apr 27, 2019
35. Hebrews 12:1-3 Keeping spiritually fit.
If the writer to the Hebrews had known that we all have a mix of fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscles throughout our body he might have used them as an illustration of what he wanted to say. If, like me, you are short of the fast-twitch type you always come in at the back of all the sprint races. You may, however, do much better at the cross-country races. He would have been asking us to ensure that we develop as much slow-twitch spiritual muscle as possible. Experts in such things tell us our muscles are a mixture. Slow -twitch enable us to keep going for a long time: run in cross country races or marathons, or row across the Atlantic. Fast-twitch are good for sprinting, playing tennis and catching the bus. Different people have different amounts of each of these in the blend in their legs and everywhere else. Chickens have slow-twitch muscles in their legs with the brown meat so that they can walk and run a long way. The white meat of their breasts and wings gives them much better intense activity like flying, but they can’t keep it up for long. You may know some people, there are too many of them around, who become Christians with a great flourish in their early days or their teen years. They are full of enthusiasm rushing around telling us all to follow Jesus, do a lot of evangelising, go to many youth rallies and so on. But where are they a few years later? They seem to have disappeared from the church scene. Oh, dear. They were so concerned with their fast-twitch spirituality they failed to develop any of the slow-twitch sort.
The writer is talking about slow-twitch spirituality. He talks about ‘endurance’ in 12: 1; about not becoming weary and giving up in 12: 3; about getting a harvest in 12: 11; and, of course, the outstanding characteristic of the heroes of chapter 11 - Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and all the rest is that they fought their way through many difficulties to reach their barely understood destinations.
Above all there is Jesus, who endured hostility and the shame of the cross, because he knew he was going to a place of honour at the right hand of God on high. We know where we are going - not quite to such an honourable place, but into his immediate presence.
If you want to stay healthy into your old age it is no good waiting until you are old before doing anything about it! It is no good thinking you were fit and healthy at school when you played a lot of football, cricket or netball. Health is something that has to be kept up throughout life.
All that is true of physical health, but it is also true of spiritual health. Don’t think you can turn off your fast-twitch spirituality when you leave your teens, get married, move house to another area with the need to fit into a new church. It will probably slowly decline, as the years pass but it must be replaced steadily by slow-twitch spirituality. That does not mean that you just become one of the too many people who go to church, sit in their pew or their comfortable chair and think that is now their Christian life. After all you would have a job to stay even reasonably healthy physically if you only did anything remotely healthy just once a week. No! You need to join a prayer group, a study group, teach Sunday School, or do something to maintain a reasonable level of spiritual fitness. Come on - get off your backside and do something! (with apologies if you already do.)
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Saturday Apr 06, 2019
Highlights in Hebrews 34
Saturday Apr 06, 2019
Saturday Apr 06, 2019
Hebrews 11:32-40 - Ups and Downs
But others were tortured, refusing to turn from God in order to be set free. They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection. Some were jeered at, and their backs were cut open with whips. Others were chained in prisons. Some died by stoning, some were sawed in half, and others were killed with the sword. Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated. They were too good for this world, wandering over deserts and mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.
All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.
This is a long section to be described as a highlight but it is difficult to know where to cut it off. Up to this point this chapter has all been positive. We have been looking at the great heroes of the faith who accomplished much for God. Now we are looking at lesser heroes. Some of them not so small - Gideon, David and Samuel. But then we get to a list, not of names, but of troubles, pain and martyrdom. Why some of us will live largely trouble free Christian lives and some of us will have a difficult, dangerous and even fatal time in following the Lord we will never know. In simplistic terms it depends where we live. Those who live in the Muslim lands of west Asia can expect trouble! Those who live in the Western world can expect to largely avoid it - though things are deteriorating in many lands with the rise of militant secularism.
And then there are the problems that seem to strike so haphazardly in even the calmest environments. One person is healthy and well all their days; the next person struggles with ill health most of their days. One has cancer; the next does not. Once again we note that becoming a Christian is no guarantee that we shall escape the worst parts of the chaos of this life. It can be very hard to accept the premature death of a loved one, but that is what we have to do. There is no point in blaming God, as so many people do in those sorts of circumstances. We do not know what his purposes are. We do not know why he has allowed the world to be the way it is.
Paul knew all about suffering for the Lord. he said, “Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. With eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us …. the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved…. we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” (Romans 8: 18 - 28).
Isaiah did not say on behalf of the Lord: I will let you avoid deep waters, you will not have to go through rivers of difficulty, or walk through the fire of oppression.
What he did say was: When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you.
(Isaiah 43: 2)
We are to walk, hand in hand with the Lord through all the difficulties and dangers that may come our way.
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Friday Apr 05, 2019
Friday Prayers 5 April 2019
Friday Apr 05, 2019
Friday Apr 05, 2019
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 for faith and courage of John Wycliffe
That is why, for Christ’s sake,
I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.
For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:10
O loving Christ draw me, weak as I am, to your side,
for if you do not draw me, I can never follow you.
Give me a brave spirit, so that it may always stand ready and strong.
And when my flesh is weak,
let your grace go before me,
come beside me,
and follow after me,
for without you,
I can do nothing — least of all suffer pain or death.
Grant me a fearless heart,
a true faith, firm hope, and a perfect love,
so that for your sake
I may lay down my life with patience and joy.
Amen
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Thursday Apr 04, 2019
Pulp Theology 05
Thursday Apr 04, 2019
Thursday Apr 04, 2019
PulpTheology Book
Read This Little Book To Learn
More About the God of the Bible
In this PulpTheology book, where together we will explore some basic truths about the God who reveals Himself in the pages of the Bible. We will look together at:
- basic core beliefs about God
- why we believe them
- how that should affect the transformation of our lives.
This is what we will explore together:
1. Who Is God?
2. God As Trinity
3. God the Father
4. God the Son
5. God the Holy Spirit
6. What Kind of God?
7. God, Humans and Life
8. Christian Assurance
9. God Who Listens
10. God Who Speaks
Whether you have only just become a Christian, been a Christian for many years or not yet a Christian, there is something inside for you to either learn afresh or be reminded of. Come on in!
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Monday Apr 01, 2019
Think Spot 1 April 2019
Monday Apr 01, 2019
Monday Apr 01, 2019
Think Spot 4 June 2018
What we say, as well as what we don’t say, as Christians is very important. The Bible is very clear on that.
1 Peter 2:1 “Therefore rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander of every kind.”
James 4:11-12 “Brothers do not slander one another...who are you to judge your neighbour?” The definition of slander is words falsely spoken that damage the reputation of another or an abusive attack on a person's character or good name or to attack the good name and reputation of someone.So next time you go to say anything negative about someone or to criticise their actions, think again, you might be disobeying God and breaking a command.
James 3:3-8 powerfully shows how a small thing such as the tongue is able to cause much damage. He says that the tongue is a world of evil that corrupts the whole person ...and is itself set on fire by hell.
Christians are very good at gossiping but disguising it as prayerful concern. We pass on a juicy bit of information about someone and then ask the person to pray about the situation. As Christians we should not pass on any information about anyone else unless the person concerned has asked us to. It is not our place to do so even if it is for prayer.
However, sometimes it is also what we don’t say that causes problems. We stay silent when in fact we do need to give that word of love, encouragement, rebuke or kindness. Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook can be fabulous sites if used properly. How often to we stay silent when we should say something kind? We get a message from a friend and we don't reply to it. How often do we say something when we should stay silent instead of slandering, complaining, gossiping or bickering?
Prayer
Now, a prayer to help you into this new week. Father, we thank you for words. We thank you that we can communicate words of life to other people. Help us to use words wisely as we interact, communicate and deal with other people, especially our loved ones and work colleagues. May the Holy Spirit, guide, rebuke and counsel, as we use the amazing gift of words to us, as we seeks to live a life worthy of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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