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Episodes
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Monday Sep 18, 2017
Think Spot - 18th September, 2017
God's love in the Bible is seen as unfailing, everlasting, intimate, sacrificial, unbreakable, all-conquering, personal, great, immeasurable and all-knowing. This is seen supremely in the Cross of Jesus Christ, when He died for the sins of the world. Supreme love overcoming all that is not love. Even when great acts of evil are committed in the world, such as the slaughter of innocents this past week in parts of the world where terrorism and genocide are rife, love is all around. Love continues despite such acts. How are Christians to respond to this love of God?
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.
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Saturday Sep 16, 2017
Saturday Sep 16, 2017
Part 114 - 1 John 4:4
Comparative powers
This is a delightful part verse, “the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world”, but extraordinary difficult to see the truth of it in our world! Of course, theoretically, it must be true. It was the Triune God, Father, Son and Spirit which created this world we live in. They have not relinquished control of it so it must be greater than any created thing or being. But does it really seem to be true in the real world as one national leader after another organises things so that tens, and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people are killed in order that they can stay in power. Surely they are all driven on by the same evil power rampant in our world. It is good to assert that the power of the Lord is in all things greater than that of any other, but is it true.
We have a real problem in understanding the reality of this assertion. It is true because we have not really thought through what ‘greater’ means. Our knowledge of God must be basically founded on Jesus. The accounts we have of his ministry are by far the most information we have about God. He did nothing that his Father would not have done. He said, “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” And we can be sure that relationship was reciprocal: what we see the Son doing we know the Father could also do. If the Son mirrors the Father in what he does, then the Father mirrors the Son.
Jesus very clearly redefined many things, amongst them greatness, all the things that it is great to do. Perhaps most famously he told off James and John when they asked to have the privileged positions next to him in the kingdom they thought he was going to set up. He said; “you know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10: 41 – 45).
Also famously he took a towel and washed their feet. His explanation of his action was, “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.” (John 13: 12b – 17).
If we put these sayings of Jesus alongside what John says we realise that in the world of the kingdom of God man,y things are indeed greater than they are in the outside world. The Spirit that is in us is the chief conveyor of that greatness. Our problem and difficulty is to live up to the possible potential of what has been given to us.
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Friday Sep 15, 2017
Friday Sep 15, 2017
Friday Prayers~
15 September 2017
~
Opening Prayer:
Father, as we commence,
let our hearts and minds be right and still before you.
May your everlasting mercy, grace and love be shown
in hearing these petitions!
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Prayer of Praise:
Praise to God the Father sing,
praise to God the Son, our king,
praise to God the Spirit be
now and through eternity.
Amen!
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Time for you to give praise to God
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Time for petitions and requests to God
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Closing Prayer:
O Father!
May it be that your love takes over our lives
That we follow you faithfully,
Giving you alone praise in all circumstances we face together.
We ask all these things, O Father,
through the majestic name of Your Son, Jesus Christ
and in the power of the Holy Spirit who lives inside us!
Amen!
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~
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Monday Sep 11, 2017
Monday Sep 11, 2017
Think Spot - 11th September 2017
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.
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~
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Saturday Sep 09, 2017
Saturday Sep 09, 2017
Part 113 - 1 John 4:1
Testing the spirits.
. We do not know exactly what was happening to cause John to say, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.” (1 John 4: 1 – 3). The comment about the need to acknowledge that Jesus had come in the flesh probably means that some of the folk John was addressing had come to believe that Jesus was just and only God. We don’t have that problem – if anything the opposite, folk who think he was only human. The detail doesn’t matter – there is a clear principle behind these verses which is as relevant and important today as it was then: that is that Jesus is to have the supremacy in all circumstances. In a good church nothing is to challenge that first place and clear focus on him and, sadly, there are many ways that can be done.
Sometimes it is done deliberately. Some people reckon they are too clever to accept any thing like a resurrection from the grave of a dead person, or something as difficult to work out logically as a Trinity. Very often it happens as an unrecognized result of a good intention. One common way in which this happens is when in order to attract as many people to the church as possible the gospel that is preached becomes human centred rather than Christ centred. The church can easily become not much more than a pleasant club to be a member of. There is an age-old conflict between those who want a church to be more ‘spiritual’ and those who want it to be more ‘practical’. Another set of problems arises when some, usually the leaders, think that it would be better if there were more ceremonial, more processions, more fancy clothing worn by the clergy. This tends to move the focus of thinking of the ordinary church members away from Jesus, this time to the leadership. Some churches decide that they need to emphasize more the good work that they do with the poor and disadvantaged of their community. That is a thoroughly good thing to do; much of what Jesus said would encourage it. But if, as a result, the church loses its focus on Jesus it becomes no more than a do-gooders club. Then there are churches that correctly think there should be an emphasis on the Holy Spirit and the way he can empower every member. But it is quite possible for a church that way to lose its focus on Jesus and move into a sea of often doubtful subjectivity divorced from reliance on the importance of the scriptures for determining the directions in which everyone should go.
The labelling that John applied to things in his situation, ‘the spirit of the antichrist’ can properly and correctly be applied to what happens in many of those situations and others besides. What then can we learn from this passage? Just this: we have to be careful what we are taught and the way our church is going. And those are not easy things to do. We need to analyse what we are told – which is difficult to do without becoming unduly critical and eventually a bit cynical! And if things are going wrong it is very difficult to do anything about it in most church setups. It is not good to be labelled the critic of the church – but someone must be! May the Lord be with you particularly if you have to take on such a role.
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Friday Sep 08, 2017
Friday Sep 08, 2017
Partakers Friday Prayers
8 September 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 all 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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Monday Sep 04, 2017
Monday Sep 04, 2017
Think Spot - 4 September 2017
Last Monday we looked at serving God where ever you are with a clear conscience. How did you get on with doing it?
Today we look at a follow on from that to meekness. What is meekness? Isn’t meekness, merely weakness? That’s what we are told often enough by people outside the church! Yet meekness is not weakness! Meekness is giving up our personal rights to God alone!
A meek person is one who claims no personal rights of their own, and who is willing to yield all possessions and personal rights to God. A meek person sees these things as being loaned by God for His work and glory. Being meek in all situations takes a strong character, for example Moses (Numbers 12:1-3).
Giving up your rights and all you own to God alone, is talked about often in the Bible. Some of the results of giving up your rights to God can be found in: - Psalm 22:26; Psalm 25:9; Psalm 37:8-11; Psalm 149:4 Isaiah 29:19; Matthew 11:28-30. (1.15)
As followers of Jesus you and I need to give up our own rights and possessions to Him because:
- You and I belong to God (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)#
- We are instructed to be meek by Jesus (Luke 9:23)
- It follows the example. of the New Testament church (Acts 5:32)
When we insist on our own personal rights and those rights are violated, the main consequences are anger and anxiety. They occur when we try to control or change something God never intended us to change or control. When we react and resist, we deny God His right to do what; He wants to do. When we get angry and when we worry, these are signs that there are rights God wants us to yield to Him.
How do you yield rights and possessions over to God?
Firstly, identify them! Check where in your life anger and or anxiety exist. Then ask the Holy Spirit to work on your heart, prayerfully considering each area, yielding all to Jesus. When you do that, God becomes responsible for those areas.
Secondly, expect God to test His rights. Having handed them to God, He may allow situations to occur which will deny you these rights, to see if that right was really given to Him. It may be necessary to once again yield that right to Jesus. As you respond to each test, meekness develops.
Go into this week, knowing that God is at work in you! You are to be His servants and you are not your own! You were bought at a price by God! Through the meekness of Jesus Christ’ work on the cross.
Father I pray that as we give our personal rights to you, that you give us strength to overcome with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives within us as your children. We ask this in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ! Amen!
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Saturday Sep 02, 2017
Saturday Sep 02, 2017
Gems in the Letter of 1 John
Part 112 - 1 John 3:14
Dead or alive!
In a quite astonishing verse John says, “We know that we have passed from death to life, ...” John is actually suggesting that our lives before we started to follow Jesus were like those of someone dead! Death is horribly terminal. If you have ever had to pick up a dead cat or dog or rabbit, or seen a dead lamb, that pitiful scrap of fur and skin that when alive was so full of life, you will know what I mean. (I have carefully refrained from talking about dead humans!)We thought we were full of life. We perhaps even thought we were more full of life than those called Christians who, in the mistaken thinking of many people, being unable to do some things without being told off such as getting drunk or having pre-marital sex, are less than fully alive.
But it is not so. The real difference is who our master was then and who he is now. If you look back towards the beginning of the chapter you will find that another character has been involved in what John has been talking about. And he is the devil, also called ‘the evil one’. We like to think that we are independent, having no master, but it is not so. Such is human nature that we all, always, everywhere, are slaves to someone and in the natural order of things that person is the devil. That, unfortunately, is the way things are. John goes back to very near the beginning of the human race, the descendants of Adam and Eve. He tells us not to be like Cain who was in only the second generation of their descendants. How exactly it is that the tendency to evil which started with Cain’s father and mother has come down to us through many centuries and millennia we do not know although many people like to argue about it. No matter, it is a fact, which we cannot escape however hard we try to or to argue it does not exist.
All those many people around us who seem to be so full of of life and like to look down on us as being poor deprived people missing many of the good things of life are sadly wrong. Think back to your pre-conversion days. You may have got up to many things in those days that you would not do now. You were dead then; now you are alive in Christ, there are indeed many things you would not now do but life does not consist of the number of things you can do. It never has done and it never will do. If you make the mistake of thinking that it is the number of experiences you have that will be the best thing of life you will only spend all your days in a hopeless chase to try and catch up with as many of them as possible. No, that is a dead end! Which is why John said that the people he was writing to had passed out of death to life.
They had turned aside and escaped the dead end. So have you, as you follow the Lord. But – hold on a minute – how full of life are you now? Perhaps, like me, you are rather old so you are bound not to have a great deal of life left in you and, one way and another, it has started to seep away as though you had a small hole somewhere in your system from which life is steadily leaking away. With that exception – how full of life are you, real life, spiritual life, God centred life, Jesus type life? Spend a moment to do a stock check. “The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.”
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Friday Sep 01, 2017
Friday Sep 01, 2017
Partakers Friday Prayers!
1st September 2017
We pray together and when Christians pray together, including across the internet and from different times, different nations, different churches and different denominations - that reveals Church unity!
My Heavenly Father,
I thank You,
through Jesus Christ, Your beloved Son,
that You kept me safe from all evil and danger last night.
Save me, I pray, today
as well, from every evil and sin,
so that all I do and the way that I live will please you.
I put myself in your care, body and soul and all that I have.
Let Your holy Angels be with me,
so that the evil enemy will not gain power over me.
Amen
(A Morning Prayer of Martin Luther)
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Monday Aug 28, 2017
Monday Aug 28, 2017
Think Spot - 28th August 2017
Charlotte Bronte - “Life appears to me to be too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrong.”
What I do know is that your conscience is the faculty which is sensitive to right and wrong, and judges your actions and attitudes. Everybody has a conscience and all are sensitive to spiritual truths, whether they are immediately aware of it or not.
According to the Bible, a clear conscience is essential for inner peace and joy, confidence in prayer, good health, effective service, .right relation-ships, effective witnessing, making right decisions, and victory in spiritual battle. A clear conscience is the inner joy and peace of spirit which results from having all personal wrongs made right with those whom a person had offended - either God or someone else.
However- many Christians carry around guilty consciences due mainly to unconfessed sins, affecting relationships with God, other people and themselves. If left unchecked, a conscience which is guilty, slowly grows 'dead', cold and silent. That is until such time that the guilt has been assuaged and put right.
If at the moment you are burdened by a guilty conscience, ask the Holy Spirit to show you clearly what is affecting your conscience. Then decide, at any cost, to clear it up in the power of the same Spirit. He will help you! Pray to the Father and ask forgiveness, (1 John 1:9), and fully accept His love and forgiveness. If there is anyone else involved, then you will also need to ask for their forgiveness (Matthew 5:23-24).
Ask the Father to help you go, and the Spirit will help you, because one of the hardest things in the world to say is: “I was wrong! Please forgive me." Your conscience can be cleansed because of what Jesus did on the cross!
Hebrews 9:14 “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!”
Go into this week, ready to serve the living God, being confident that the Holy Spirit living within you, empowers you, is transforming you and desires that your conscience be clear. He will help you overcome if you ask!
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