G‘day! Partakers Christian podcasts of Bible Teaching, Bible Readings, Worship, Prayer and Church History on Podbean to help enable and encourage you! Come listen and interact.
Episodes
Monday Feb 25, 2019
Monday Feb 25, 2019
Think Spot - 25th February 2019
As a Christian, you are to be a little Jesus! In your local communities, wherever you happen to live, work, study or be! You are to live a life of obedience, of and to, Jesus Christ! For you are being transformed by the Holy Spirit who lives inside you! You are to be totally and willingly obedient to Him! Obedience, not out of some kind of slavish duty or ritual, but obedience borne from willingly loving God and loving others.
Imagine
People will know you are a follower of Jesus, if you are obedient to Him, practically showing love to all! Imagine the community where you are transformed for Jesus Christ! Imagine your community filled with people seeking to know about our Jesus, because you and other Christians were sacrificing their time and possessions! Imagine the communities you are involved with wanting to give Jesus the glory and honour in every aspect of life!
Transformation
Transformed communities of people devoted to Jesus and experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit in bringing people back to God the Father! Loving God and loving each other as He commanded would help do this in your local community!
Be Obedient! Be bold! Be strong! Be courageous! But you need to be lovingly obedient to Jesus Christ in both small and large things. Jesus said in John 14:21 “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them."
You will face pressure to disobey Him, even sometimes from those within your church. But if He has commanded you to do something for Him, you are to obey Him. It is far better to obey God and disappoint people than to obey people and disobey God.
Go into this week, lovingly willing to be obedient to God! Trust in Him and ask Him for the strength to be lovingly obedient to Him. He will help as you ask! It can sometimes be very difficult to be obedient to God, particularly as some people, even other Christians, will try to get you to disobey. Be strong in the Lord! Be bold! Be courageous! Need help? Then ask somebody to pray with you! Then be prepared for opportunities to be lovingly obedient to Jesus – in small and big things!
A prayer to help you this week.
Father, help us to live obediently to you. May the Holy Spirit encourage us as we seek to live worthily of Jesus Christ, in loving obedience to Him. Father, it is in His name we pray and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Tap or Right mouse click here to download as a MP3 audio file
You can now purchase our books! Please do click here to visit our Amazon site!
Click on the appropriate link below to subscribe, share or download our iPhone App!
Saturday Feb 23, 2019
Saturday Feb 23, 2019
Part 28 - Hebrews 10:32-39 Not everything goes well!
We are holy!
… recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For, “Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.” But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. (Hebrews 10:32-39)
There seems to be a strong tendency, at least in this country, to think that becoming a Christian and setting out to follow Jesus is a cure for all the problems we may otherwise have. That is not the way it works! Life for us is not likely to be as difficult as it was for the people this book is written to. We do not know exactly where they lived or what their background was ,but it is clear from this passage that not everything had been easy for them. They were probably Jews, since the book is called ‘to the Hebrews’ so they may well have had a lot of trouble from other Jews who did not believe in Jesus. Very soon after the foundation of the Christian church there was a lot of conflict between Jews and Christians, Paul being one of the chief culprits. Before long the Christians were thrown out of the synagogues all together. Then the ordinary citizens of the Roman empire will not have liked being shown up for the self centred and unpleasant people many of them were. It sounds as though the early Christians had a ministry to prisoners, which was not well received by other people. They had things stolen from their houses and could get no support from any judicial powers to recover what was stolen. Since this is going out all over the world some things like those may be your experience but that is not all that likely.
Our problems may be much more ordinary and personal. Perhaps they are physical, we simply are not well, or are suffering the products of old age and their tendency to drag us down. They may be social as we struggle with family, friends and enemies. They may be psychological and mental – there is no guarantee we will avoid such things by following Jesus. We should be better off as Christians as we turn away from bad habits of drinking or drugs and seek to follow a generally better life style. But following Jesus is not a general cure for all ills.
Why then should we follow Jesus? If not for our personal improvement, why? The answer is simple and devastating: because he is who he is. He is the Lord. He is the King of the Kingdom. He is the Lord of creation and of this world’s continuing existence. We should set out to follow Jesus because of who he is and not because of who we are. If, indeed, we did start to follow him from purely selfish motives he is a good and loving Saviour who will allow you to learn what your motives should have been and slowly, as you come to understand more, change your motives to those that they should have been in the first place. We can still ‘have faith and preserve our souls’ (10: 39) and receive a ‘better possession and an abiding one’ (10: 34) and receive the ‘great reward’ that ‘is promised’ (10: 35, 36). The necessary ‘endurance’ (10: 36) can be ours even if we did not really start for the best and right motives.
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 Feb 22, 2019
Friday Feb 22, 2019
Friday Prayers
22 February 2019
Order of Service
Opening prayer
Praise time
Prayers for those grieving and lonely
Prayers for justice and peace
Prayers for those facing challenging situations
Prayers for churches and Christians worldwide
Prayers for healing
Time of silence for your own prayers
Benediction
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!
Monday Feb 18, 2019
Monday Feb 18, 2019
Think Spot - 18th February, 2019
The apostle John writes in 1 John 4:15-16
"If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them."
Our motivation as Christians is to love and to be love. This is a love, which is sacrificial and self-less. It is tough love which is of service to other people. Loving and serving others, are the primary ways of showing you love God! It is easiest to love your friends. But Jesus commanded that his followers also love their enemies (Matthew 5:43-45)! Now that is very radical and can be difficult! We see constantly in the media and elsewhere, that regards our enemies, we are to be confrontational or at best to just ignore them!
How is it possible to love our enemies? It is only with the help of God and His abundant grace towards us! We depend on the Holy Spirit who lives inside all Christians to empower and guide! To only love those who love you is what is expected by people everywhere as normal behaviour. But as a Christian, you are to do more! You are to be seen to love more than other people. You don’t have to like others as friends, but you do have to love them as fellow human beings!
Go into this week, being prepared to show your love of Jesus Christ, remaining close to Him and serving other people generously with abundant grace-filled love! By loving and serving others, you become God’s arms and legs in a physical world. One of the greatest limitations you face in loving and serving other people is a severe lack of imagination!
So as you go into this week, ask God to expand your imagination to love and serve; as well as asking for the opportunities to do them. Loving and serving are hallmarks of an authentic Christian life. Love continues even amidst chaos and turmoil all around. Go and be part of the continuing of love.
Right mouse click or tap your screen here to listen as a MP3 audio file
You can now purchase our books! Please do click here to visit our Amazon site!
Click on the appropriate link below to subscribe, share or download our iPhone App!
Saturday Feb 16, 2019
Saturday Feb 16, 2019
Part 27 - Hebrews 10:26–31
If we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.(Hebrews 10:26-31)
Many countries require a person to have a visa before they are allowed into the country. The visa will often say how long they can stay in the country. If, after entering the country, they sneak back out of the country before the visa is up where there is no entry/exit point and then present themselves to re-enter the country at a proper entry point they would be likely to be in serious trouble.
That is something like what the writer is thinking about here. We received a visa to let us into the Kingdom of God when we first started to follow Jesus. Our writer says we simply cannot leave the kingdom for a while; live in the kingdom of the world; and then return to the kingdom. There is a very important and strong reason why this is so. We may belong to all sorts of clubs: golf, football, book reading or cookery etc., leave the club, cancelling our subscription, and return to it later. But unlike all these clubs the other factor in the kingdom is God himself. On entry to the kingdom we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. He cannot be accepted one minute and returned months or years later just because we want to do something else.
We effectively do that if we continue in deliberate sin. The Old Testament is very definite about this. There are two sorts of sin: unintended and ‘with a high hand’, that is defiantly, quite deliberately and intentionally (Numbers 15: 27 - 31).. The former can be remedied by offering repentance and sacrifice, but for the second there is no such remedy.
Unfortunately there seems to be a great deal of teaching around in this Western world in which God is a kind of benevolent grandfather figure who will accept almost anything from his grand-children merely patting them on the head and saying ‘don’t do that again - it is not nice’ or some such comment. We must not forget that we are dealing with the Creator and Sustainer of this world of ours and all the universe. He is a holy God who does not like - will not accept - impurity.
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 Feb 15, 2019
Friday Feb 15, 2019
Friday Prayers
Prayer from the Vanuatu Churches
Today on Partakers we are praying a prayer from the Vanuatu group of islands. The origins are unknown.
O Jesus,
Be the canoe that holds me up
in the sea of life;
Be the rudder that keeps me
in the straight road;
Be the outrigger that supports me
in times of temptation.
Let your Spirit be my sail
that carries me through each day.
Keep my body strong
so I can paddle steadfastly
on in the longvoyage of life.
Amen
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!
Monday Feb 11, 2019
Monday Feb 11, 2019
Think Spot - 11th February 2019
Matthew 11:28-30 records these words of Jesus Christ. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
Are not those amazing words? Not just anybody could say them. If the person who said them couldn't actually fulfil that promise, that would be one of the biggest hoaxes in all of history. But Jesus Christ is no hoax and he is able to fulfil those words and live up to the promises he makes. He is totally trustworthy.
We don't like to ask for help. We are trained as children to be independent and not to rely on anybody else for anything ever. But this is contrary to what Jesus is about. To rely fully on ourselves for all things is to walk by sight and commit the sin of pride. To rely on Jesus and ask Him for help in all things is to walk by faith and with humility. True independence and freedom comes from being dependent on Jesus Christ and not being held back by anything or anyone else, such as family and our own wealth and possessions.
How are you doing at the start of this new week? Maybe you are feeling desolation and regret caused by decisions made sometime in your past. Give them up willingly to Jesus and don't keep trying to take it back like a security blanket!
Are you feeling abandoned and lonely? Let Jesus encompass you in an embrace of compassion and let the Holy Spirit comfort and counsel you.. Or perhaps are you feeling tired, burnt out and burdened?. Let Jesus give you the strength to endure! Give the burden to Jesus and let Him take the weight for you. Maybe you need to make a major decision and don't know what to do. Seek the wisdom of Jesus in making that decision. He will help if you ask. That's all part of Jesus being Jesus.
It may well be that you are being overwhelmingly tempted to sin against God, another person or even yourself? You cant resist for too long if you do it in your own strength, because you will eventually succumb to it. But if you ask God to help you overcome the temptation, He will do it - if you allow Him control and use your own self-control! After all, self-control is one of the evidences of the Holy Spirit working in you!
We all get those feelings of regret, desolation, abandonment, loneliness, despair, burdened and temptation. Feelings are important, because they are part of the human experience and if we didn't have them, we would be merely mindless androids. But feelings can also be very misleading. As Christians, we have to take it by faith that Jesus is there for us through those times. Because you are lonely, doesn't mean you are alone. Because you are tempted, doesn't meant that you have already committed the sin. Take it by faith that Jesus is answering desperate cries for help and is helping you. Take a few seconds now in this short silence to hand over these things to Jesus and ask him to help you.
Or it may just be that you are starting the week and you are feeling great and enjoying your dynamic relationship with God! Then keep going and letting Jesus be your strength, your wisdom and your help. But don't keep it to yourself - that would be selfish! Go to others you know who are in need, helping them where you can with an encouraging word or helping to supply their need. Be the practical and imaginative answer to their prayers. Go into this new week, confident that Jesus is able to help you in every situation you face. Ask him to come to you, and He will - just as He has done for countless millions.
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!
Saturday Feb 09, 2019
Saturday Feb 09, 2019
Part 26 - Hebrews 10:19–25
Therefore, brothers and sisters,] since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
The old pun on the word ‘therefore’ was that we should always ask what it is there for. That was never more true than the ‘therefore’ we have here in 10:19. In our last study we noted two things: that Jesus sat down at the right hand of Father God thus indicating his superiority over all; and that this is based on the new covenant, the newly declared purpose and will of God towards his people.
For our writer this was all brilliantly pictured in the way that, as Jesus died on the cross, the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom (Matthew 27: 51). This was the work of God; if a man had been responsible it would have been done from bottom to top. The purpose of the veil had been to keep everyone out of the Most Holy Place, where God was. Only the High Priest went into this presence of God once a year on the day of atonement. That was now redundant. Everyone, or at least all the Lord’s people, now had clear unlimited access to the most holy place, which was Jesus. It is hard to see how the flesh of Jesus can be a way through the curtain. It was his blood shed which was effective. The Jerusalem temple was where God was, more than anywhere else on earth. No longer. Now it was in Jesus that God was to be found and, in the person of the Holy Spirit of Jesus, in every believing person. We have, so to speak, not to travel to Jerusalem to find God, but to reach down into ourselves. That must be counted both a huge privilege and a huge responsibility.
However we need to be careful. The next few verses say, “ let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” Of those four things keeping our bodies washed would be by far the easiest if it didn’t really mean keeping our souls and spirits clean - nothing to do with soap, I’m afraid!
More significantly, note how the quotation starts with our faith and ends with the faithfulness of the Lord. This is our confidence. It does not have to rest solely on us but draws continuous strength from one who is a great deal more reliable than we tend to be.
When we get to 10:24, 25 we have “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” To give a picture of this: you can have a good going fire with many pieces of coal on it. But if you take one red-hot piece out of the fire and place it on the hearth all by itself it will very soon darken, cool, and lose all its heat. So it is with us if we remove ourselves from the company of other followers of Jesus.
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 Feb 08, 2019
Friday Feb 08, 2019
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
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!
Thursday Feb 07, 2019
Thursday Feb 07, 2019
Thursday Story
People meeting Jesus
The story of Greg from Scotland...
We continue apace into the twentieth century and hear the story of a friend of mine. His name is Greg and he is from Scotland. Let's look together at how and why he started his Christian journey and the relevancy of Jesus Christ to his life! Come and listen to his story of faith...
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!