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
Friday Aug 11, 2017
Friday Aug 11, 2017
Partakers Friday Prayers!
11th August 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!
A prayer of Clement of Rome (First Century)
to be our helper and protector.
Save the afflicted among us;
have mercy on the lowly;
raise up the fallen;
appear to the needy;
heal the ungodly;
restore the wanderers of your people;
feed the hungry;
ransom our prisoners;
raise up the sick;
comfort the faint-hearted.
Amen
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Monday Aug 07, 2017
Monday Aug 07, 2017
Think Spot 7 August 2017
That doesn't give us as Christians a mandate to sit around not doing what we can for peace, because we are commanded to be peacemakers (Matthew 5:9), our God is a God of peace (1 Thessalonians 5:23), and the Kingdom of God is about peace in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17). Peace is to be our business!
In a world full of conflicts, such as conflicts between nations, conflicts between neighbours, conflicts even within families and conflicts within and between churches, Christians are to be peacemakers!With that in mind, here are some thoughts on what the Bible has to say on peace, to help you this week be a peacemaker:
1. Peace with God
- Justified by faith (Romans 5:1-2)
- Christ is our peace between God and man and between men (Ephesians 2:13-18)
2. Peace with others
- Live at peace with everyone (Romans 12:17-20)
- Do everything possible which leads to peace and mutual encouragement (Romans 14:13-19)
- Be a peacemaker - a sign of real wisdom producing a harvest of righteousness (Matthew 5:9, James 3:17-18)
3. Peace within/circumstances
- Peace is a gift of God (John 14:27, 2 Thessalonians3:16)
- Worldly peace requires manipulation of circumstances, God's peace comes regardless of circumstances
- We have peace in troubled times - an untroubled, unfearful heart and mind (John 16:33)
Father, I pray that this week we will do all we can to be peacemakers and make a difference in world in conflict. I ask this through the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit who lives inside all those who have peace with you. Amen
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Saturday Aug 05, 2017
Saturday Aug 05, 2017
Part 108 - 1 John 2:20
The Truth
John said, “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.” Oh, dear – that sounds difficult!
He then goes on to say, “I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.”
That is all rather bluntly put. John kind of ‘shoots from the hip’ as they say. Depending on the culture we are in we may not be used to people saying what they mean quite as bluntly as that. There are two factors here. One is that John lived in a society where people spoke out very bluntly. In those days it was normal to call your antagonist in an argument by all sorts of not very nice names. The other is that John saw very clearly that you are either a Christian, a follower of Jesus, a believer in him, or not. We have a tendency in many cultures today to think it is very important thing not to hurt anyone’s feelings. So we wrap our opinion of someone’s status in faith up by saying things like ‘not yet a follower of Jesus’, ‘ a fringe member of the church’, or ‘she is a real believer underneath’. John did not do things like that.
The give away word for how important all this is is ‘antichrist’. That means that the problem in John’s church was not simple – it was of deeply spiritual significance. When we join a church or fellowship we become part of it and it is deeply significant if we leave it; it is not a case of changing membership of one local organisation for another.
We do not know for sure what happened in John’s fellowship. John describes it by saying that those who left “denied that Jesus is the Christ, or Messiah”, presumably by thinking that someone else was. Our modern equivalent of that is getting into problems with the concept of the Trinity. Time and again in the history of the church somebody has thought they are the first to realise it is difficult to understand the Trinity. They have rejected the accepted idea of the nature of Christ, and led other people after them. There is no space here to go into detail about this but, perhaps rather simplistically: if Jesus was not human he would not have been able to die on the cross in our place; if he had not been something more than human – God himself walking this earth - he could only have died for himself, not for you and me. So if he had not been fully human and also fully divine his death would not have been an effective atonement for our sins and we would still be un-reconciled to God the Father and without hope for this world and the next.
Then there is the further problem of how the Spirit fits into the Godhead and what his presence means in terms of how we know what we know about things spiritual. There are hints of that here: “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth”. … ” As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.” We all have a problem of being sure when it is the Spirit talking to us and when it is us talking to ourselves. John resolves that problem by refering to “what you have heard from the beginning”. That phrase is exactly the same as the one in the very first verse of the epistle, in other words he goes right back to the things that actually happened and the things that had been written down about them.
And we should do the same. Our understanding of what the Spirit is saying to us is subject to the vagaries of our self-understanding. The events of the faith and the things written about them, the Bible, are not subject to the same problems. Cling to Scripture. Test all other ideas, thoughts, even what we think are visions and words from the Lord by Scripture, particularly the New Testament, the words of Jesus and his closest apostles. They alone are sure, certain and to be completely relied on.
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Friday Aug 04, 2017
Friday Aug 04, 2017
Friday Prayers
4 August 2017
A prayer of John Wycliffe
A prayer for faith and courage
2 Corinthians 12:10 - 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.
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,
a 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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Monday Jul 31, 2017
Monday Jul 31, 2017
Think Spot - 31July 2017
G'day! Welcome to Partakers and the start of new week!.
Jesus is Unique
Did you know there are a group of forgotten people within the Church? A group of people, who are Christian, yet in the vast majority of cases, are generally forgotten about, marginalised and often patronised. These people want to be involved in Church, attend a Church worship service and use their gifts and talents within the Church, to the glory of God - and yet often, as I said, at best forgotten about and at worst, patronised.
I am talking about those people who are Christians, but are stuck in their home for most of the time due to debilitating illness for example. You may be one of these yourself or you will know somebody who is.
They are people, yet often are pretty much dehumanised and depersonalised. I wonder how the Church you lead or attend, helps them to play a part in the life of the Church? How does the Church give them an interactive worship service, if indeed, they do at all?
This is a growing issue for the Church as a whole. God accepts them as His children, wants them to worship Him with others, has given them gifts and talents to be used for His glory and the building up of His Kingdom. Yet, as I have said, these Christians, these people, are at best forgotten about.
If you are one of these Christians, or you know of somebody who is, then please do all you can to help them use their talents and to also take an interactive worship service to them in their own home! It can be done, because I have done it myself. Pray to God to expand your imagination and see how you can help others this way on this issue! Contact me here and I will help if I can or please do visit ICanTGoToChurch.com
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Saturday Jul 29, 2017
Saturday Jul 29, 2017
Part 107 - 1 John 2:15-17
The World
John said, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.” (2:15-17). He was addressing the society of his day. When he spoke of ‘the world’ he was referring to the human world in which he lived, as did the people over whom he had pastoral care. We would usually call that ‘our society’. Our problem in understanding what he said is, of course, that we do not live in the same society as he did. The facets of our society that people say that we may fall in love with, and should not, are: sex, money and power. Quite how those relate to John’s three facets I do not know but that does not matter because what matters to us is our society and not theirs. John has pointed us very strongly to a principle – of loving something in our world more than we do the Lord our God.
A further problem for me writing this is that you, my listeners and readers, live all round the world in many different societies. That means your situation will differ according to where you are although human nature is such that there will be many common factors wherever you are. Western society all round the world is changing rapidly and that is a further source of problem for us. Most other societies are being dragged along behind the Western developments, not least because of the Internet.
We need to be careful. It is not the case that what our parents thought and did was Christian and the oncoming culture pervading our society is not, or less so, though it often looks that way to us. We have been said to be living in a post-Christian society. That certainly looks to be true but it will still be far from as anti-Christian as the society John’s people were living in. Whatever I say here the most important thing is that we, all of us, have to work out what is God honouring in our day and generation. If we then manage, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to take that as the commands of the Lord and to follow them we shall be doing all that it is possible to do and we shall be displaying our love for the Lord. If we do not think these things out or if, having done so, we fail to follow the lines our conscience has mapped out for us we will have fallen short of the standards the Lord expects of us.
John talks about ‘the lust of the flesh’. That is referring to our sexual drive. That we all have to a greater or lesser extent. There is nothing wrong with the drive. The errors, the sins, may arise from the ways we use it. Attempts have been made to suppress it in some societies but the usual outcome is a great deal of hypocrisy with society leaders making claims about how good their society is when a great deal of the sexual behaviour has just been driven underground. The practice in some societies of delaying marriage until the man is well established is not at all helpful.
Even more than with sexuality there is difficulty over money. We all need to earn a living for our family and ourselves. That must be done. Only a very small percentage of any population can depend on the charitable giving of others for its sustenance. The critical thing is the question of ‘love’. We need sufficient money to keep us going. We do not need a vast surplus even if that will let us do many exciting and desirable things. We need a house. We do not need an enormous mansion or a second house for our holidays. We need to be good stewards of what we have and that need not include the gathering a superabundance of possessions.
Power is not so obviously sort by everybody, though it is curious how those who have no real power outside their household may act in ways that ensure they are the ones with power within the household.
There are so many ways we can demonstrate our love for some aspect of the world. And the real trouble is that, as John says, if we do so we are showing traits that do not come from the Father.
Many Christians used to think the solution was to withdraw from the world into a monastery, or a nunnery or some small Christian group. That is not the teaching of the New Testament. Living in the world may be tough, but it is what we are to do. Jesus, in John 17, says ‘we are still in the world’, ‘we are not of the world’, ‘we have been sent into the world’ and he prays that ‘we may be protected from the evil one’.
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Friday Jul 28, 2017
Friday Jul 28, 2017
Friday Prayers
28 July 2017
A prayer of John Wycliffe
A prayer for the presence of Jesus
Luke 24:29 - But they urged him strongly, ‘Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.’ So he went in to stay with them.
My Lord, from here on never leave me,
but stay and dwell with me;
for your presence is my only comfort and consolation,
just as your absence is my only sorrow.
O Holy Spirit, come into my heart,
and draw me so near to God,
that the things of the world may be as nothing to me.
Inflame my heart with your love,
and there let it burn without ceasing.
Come, I pray, for you are my true joy,
my only desire,
and my sweetest love.
Amen.
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Monday Jul 24, 2017
Monday Jul 24, 2017
Think Spot - 24 July 2017
G'day! Welcome to Partakers and the start of new week!.
Romans 1:1-5
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God- the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name's sake.
Jesus is Unique
The man of history who we know as Jesus Christ is unique - totally and completely unique! Never before and never to be repeated again - ever! Jesus Christ is the standout person from all of history! He is embedded resolutely in human history. In all of human history, Jesus Christ is incomparable!
Yet in human form, we read that during his earthly ministry he had no physical beauty that would draw people naturally to himself. We read that Jesus' body on the cross was disfigured and tortured beyond that of human likeness. His perfect life, His salvation work on the cross and His subsequent rising from the dead, is what makes Jesus Christ unique - a once and for all lifetime Messiah or Saviour for the entire world!
This great God of creation, stepping into His creation as a human, with the purpose of reconciling the world back to Himself! WOW!! Jesus' uniqueness meaning I can have an active and dynamic relationship with God. As you go into this week may your relationship with God be active and dynamic! Go and thank Jesus Christ for his uniqueness which allows this to occur.
Prayer
Father, we thank you for Jesus Christ your Son! We thank you that because of Him, we can enter into a dynamic and active relationship with you! We ask this prayer and give you praise, through your Son and in the power of the Holy Spirit who lives inside all those who are following! Amen!
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Saturday Jul 22, 2017
Saturday Jul 22, 2017
Part 106 - 1 John 2:12-14
Who was left out?
Now for something completely different! John was writing for his age and generation so his 6 reasons for writing are all directed to males. I am sure that had he been writing in the 21st century instead of the 1st he would have directed some of his comments to females as well. Otherwise more than half his listeners and readers would have switched off! All we can do is try to help him out. I have done so by writing 6 paragraphs that he might have written in our day and generation – so different in many ways from his and even the one that the older ones amongst us grew up in.
This time, therefore, you have more to do than just read what I have written. Your tasks are these:
1. Do you agree?
2. Which would you accept into a modern scripture?
3. Can you think of any better ones that you think should be included?
Here are my efforts:
I am writing to you, mothers and grandmothers, because you are the basic foundations of your families and play such a huge role in its success or failure.
I am writing to you older women, because you tend to be the prayer warriors who support your local churches most.
I am writing to you single women, because on you falls the greatest pressure of our rapidly changing cultures, particularly in relation to sexual behaviour, the development of relationships and the new family structures that are emerging.
I am writing to you single women, because you have such an important role in society in relating to children and the ill as teachers and nurses and in your personal skills in the workplace.
I am writing to you school girls, because you have such a difficult time resisting the onward and downward march of modern cultures
I am writing to you school girls, because you have to decide what of the wisdom of the ages you should keep in the face of so many developments in sexual behaviour, celebrity based culture and communication technology.
Well? What do you make of it? Where else is there a great need to write to women and girls? Where else are the main difficulties they face in life, perhaps different ones from those us guys have to cope with?
Think, pray and learn.
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Friday Jul 21, 2017
Friday Jul 21, 2017
Friday Prayers
21 July 2017
A prayer of John Wycliffe
A prayer for grace
James 3:17 - But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.
Lord, give me grace to hold righteousness in all things,
that I may lead a clean and blessed life, and wisely flee evil.
Help me to understand the treacherous deceit of the devil,
so that I may not be fooled by any of his lies.
Make me mild, peaceable, considerate, and self-controlled,
so that I may act sincerely for the good of others.
And make me steadfast and strong.
Finally, Lord, let me be quiet in words,
so that I may not speak foolishly, but only what is appropriate.
Amen
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