Partakers Christian Podcasts

Wednesday WOW Worship - 24 June 2015

Worship Wednesday

Order of Service

G'day and welcome to Partakers Wednesday Worship on the 24th of June, 2015.

Opening Prayer

Song

Steve Gooden singing "Amazing Grace" (In the public domain at http://ffmp3.firefighters.org/gooden.asp).

Bible Readings

Old Testament - Psalm 117 New Testament - Colossians 3:1-4

Prayers

Be exalted, Lord, above the heavens, let your glory cover the earth. Keep our nation under your care, and guide us in justice and truth. Let your way be known by all people, your saving power among all nations.

Send out your light and your truth, that we may tell of your saving works. Lord, hear our prayers, for we put our trust in you.

Amen

Message (Outline)

We are marked as Christians, but not outwardly visible marks, but internal one! Paul tells us what marks us out as Christians is:

1. We died with Christ
2. We are raised with Christ
3. We live with Christ
4. We are hidden with Christ
5. We will be glorified with Christ

These marks cover our past, our present and our future! So what? How do we apply this to our life?

Benediction

May the love of God the Father, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all, evermore. Amen

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Wednesday WOW Worship -17 June 2015

Worship Wednesday

Order of Service

1. Opening Prayer

2. Song - When I Survey

3. Message Part 1

4. Prayers

5. Bible Reading - Revelation 19v11-16

I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. "He will rule them with an iron scepter." He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

6. Message Part 2

7. Closing Prayer

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Sermon - God, the Church and the Internet

 

God, the Church and the Internet

• Can God interact on the internet?
  
• Who?
  
• What?
  
• Why?
  
• How!
  
• John 17:13-19
  
• Romans 12:3-8

Symptomatic of human history has been the development of different technologies. Each generation seems to have had a great leap forward in some way! Think of the wheel, the printing press, the wireless, the combustion engine and the silicon chip! One of the developments that I am sure that you have noticed is the internet. Everything is on the internet now it seems – increasingly so at a government & banking level! Everybody here has used it – either directly or indirectly. The internet is here. It isn’t going to go away and it will continue to develop and expand.

Likewise, the church is here too. It also isn’t going to go away (at least at a universal level) and it also will develop and expand. So let’s tonight look at what this internet is, why the Church should be using it and lastly how the church can use it for the glory of God. By using it, I do mean more than just a website with the latest information, events and sermons on it!

 

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God said No

The day God said "No!!"

Testimony of what happened shortly before graduating college in 2007, which was a milestone to developing Partakers...  What happened may be my own presupposition, a sensational figment of my imagination or even a false memory! But it is none of these things, but a testimony of an 'encounter' with the Living God...  This event set us off on the path we are on and our God is at the centre of it...

Glimpses 52

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Today in the Church Calender we celebrate one of the greatest Saints of the 20th Century Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His books and writings have never been more influential than they are today. His fight to stand for the cause of Christ cost him his life. We do well to honour and remember him as an example to us all. http://www.dbonhoeffer.org/

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Beginnings

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born on February 4, 1906 in Germany. He was a a Lutheran pastor and theologian and had spent time studying in the USA and pastored two churches in London, England in the early 1930s.  He returned to Germany to lead an illegal training centre for pastors during which time, he also called for more vocal and active opposition from the churches towards Hitler's treatment of Jews. Because of this, he was forbidden from preaching, teaching, and all speaking in public to gathered audiences. Dietrich was ultimately arrested and imprisoned for his part in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. What we will concentrate on in this study is how he viewed and lived Christian discipleship.  In doing so we will look at some excerpts from two of his published writings "The Cost of Discipleship" and "Letters and Papers from Prison"

Discipleship

Jesus Christ, when He talked about the cost of following Him and being His disciple said this: "If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine. Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me." (Matthew 10:38; 16v24-25)

Echoing these words, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote "When Jesus Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.  ...  Discipleship is not an offer that man makes to Jesus Christ, nor is it hero worship, but intimacy with Christ."   (The Cost of Discipleship). He knew that as a Christian, a person has to take up their own cross in following Jesus and count the cost of being a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Dietrich also wrote "Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected. ... The Christian disciple must receive his portion from God every day. If he stores it up as a permanent possession, he spoils not only the gift, but himself as well, for he sets his heart on accumulated wealth, and makes it a barrier between himself and God. Where our treasure is, there is our trust, our security, our consolation and our God. Hoarding is idolatry." (The Cost of Discipleship)

In a Sermon on 2 Corinthians 12v9, he said that "Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its plea for the weak. Christians adjusts themselves far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense and shock the world far more  than they are doing now. Christians should take a stronger stand in favour of the weak rather than considering first the possible right of the strong."

A Cost of Following Jesus

These are strong and powerful words I am sure you would agree! So did Bonhoeffer's life match his words? In one extreme example, we look at his first days in prison "For my first night in prison I was locked up in an admission cell.  The blankets in the camp had such a foul smell that in spite of the cold it was impossible to use them. Next morning a piece of bread was thrown into my cell; I had to pick it up from the floor. The sound of the prison's staff vile abuse of the prisoners who were held for investigation penetrated into my cell for the first time; since then, I have heard it every day from morning to night. The first night in my cell I could sleep very little because in the next cell a prisoner wept loudly for several hours. Nobody took any notice. After twelve days the authorities got to know of my family connections. While this was of course, a great relief for me personally, from an objective point of view it was most embarrassing to see how everything changed from that moment,. I was put in a more spacious cell which was cleaned for me daily by one of the men. When the food came round I was offered larger rations, which I always refused, since they would have been at the expense of other prisoners." (Malcolm Muggeridge, The Third Testament)

So, after just twelve nights in atrocious conditions, because he had good connections on the outside of prison, he was moved to a more spacious, cleaner and quieter cell.  He probably had no choice about the cell he was given. He could have just eaten the extra food given to him there.  But he decided not to, because to eat that extra food, he would have robbed somebody else.  For him, material possessions and food were part of his Christian discipleship - part of the cost of following Jesus Christ faithfully.  Just as they are of your Christian discipleship - whether you are aware of it or not.

Speak Out!

But another facet of the cost of Dietrich Bonhoeffer following Jesus was speaking out for those who had no voice. In the case of Bonhoeffer, the Jewish race undergoing systematic persecution and extinction under Hitler and the German Nazis.

He wrote those: "We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; ... Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?" Letters and Papers from Prison

He ultimately paid the price for his speaking out for those who had no voice.  His life motto could be summed up in these 2 sentences from his writings: "One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons ... Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility,"

He was eventually hanged on April 9, 1945 following the failure of an assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944.  His life actions echoed his words. 

How are you counting the cost of being a disciple of Jesus Christ?  What do your material possessions and consumption of necessities of food say about your being a Christian? Are you willing to speak up for those who have no voice in your local community, national community and global community?

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Sunday Worship

I Have Decided To Follow Jesus

as sung by K

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I have decided to follow Jesus;

I have decided to follow Jesus;

I have decided to follow Jesus;

No turning back, no turning back.

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Tho' none go with me, I still will follow,

Tho' none go with me I still will follow,

Tho' none go with me, I still will follow;

No turning back, no turning back.

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My cross I'll carry, till I see Jesus;

My cross I'll carry till I see Jesus,

My cross I'll carry till I see Jesus;

No turning back, No turning back.

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The world behind me, the cross before me,

The world behind me, the cross before me;

The world behind me, the cross before me;

No turning back, no turning back.

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Sunday Worship

Apostles Creed

I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.
 
And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary:
Suffered under Pontius Pilate;
was crucified, dead and buried.

He descended into hell:
The third day he rose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty:
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost:
I believe in the holy catholic church:
the communion of saints:
the forgiveness of sins:
the resurrection of the body:
and the life everlasting.

Amen.

Play and/or download the video - Come and worship the King of all Kings!

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Sunday Worship

I Cannot Tell

William Y. Fullerton

I cannot tell why He whom angels worship,
Should set His love upon the sons of men,
Or why, as Shepherd, He should seek the wanderers,
To bring them back, they know not how or when.

But this I know, that He was born of Mary
When Bethlehem’s manger was His only home,
And that He lived at Nazareth and labored,
And so the Saviour, Saviour of the world is come.
~~~~~
I cannot tell how silently He suffered,
As with His peace He graced this place of tears,
Or how His heart upon the cross was broken,
The crown of pain to three and thirty years.

But this I know, He heals the brokenhearted,
And stays our sin, and calms our lurking fear,
And lifts the burden from the heavy laden,
For yet the Saviour, Saviour of the world is here.
~~~~~
I cannot tell how He will win the nations,
How He will claim His earthly heritage,
How satisfy the needs and aspirations
Of East and West, of sinner and of sage.

But this I know, all flesh shall see His glory,
And He shall reap the harvest He has sown,
And some glad day His sun shall shine in splendor
When He the Savior, Savior of the world is known.
~~~~~
I cannot tell how all the lands shall worship,
When, at His bidding, every storm is stilled,
Or who can say how great the jubilation
When all the hearts of men with love are filled.

But this I know, the skies will thrill with rapture,
And myriad, myriad human voices sing,
And earth to Heaven, and Heaven to earth, will answer:
At last the Saviour, Saviour of the world is King!

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Sunday Worship

Joyful Joyful

performed by Dan Meredith

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"Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee" is a poem written by Henry van Dyke in 1907 with the intention of musically setting it to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy".

Van Dyke wrote of this hymn: These verses are simple expressions of common Christian feelings and desires in this present time—hymns of today that may be sung together by people who know the thought of the age, and are not afraid that any truth of science will destroy religion, or any revolution on earth overthrow the kingdom of heaven. Therefore this is a hymn of trust and joy and hope.

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee,God of glory, Lord of love;
Hearts unfold like flowers before Thee, opening to the sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; drive the dark of doubt away;
Giver of immortal gladness, fill us with the light of day!

Thou art giving and forgiving, ever blessing, ever blessed,
Wellspring of the joy of living, ocean depth of happy rest!
Thou our Father, Christ our Brother, all who live in love are Thine;
Teach us how to love each other, lift us to the joy divine.
(more...)

This version is by Dan Meredith and can be freely downloaded from his website

or at Godly Christian Music


Play and/or download the video - Come and worship the King of all Kings!

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Sunday Worship

Be Thou My Vision

performed by Julie McMinn

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This song, "Be Thou My Vision" is a traditional hymn from Ireland, which is commonly attributed to Dallán Forgaill.

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night!
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Play and/or download the video - Come and worship the King of all Kings!

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