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Episodes
Saturday Aug 26, 2017
Saturday Aug 26, 2017
Part 110 - 1 John 3:11
Love
The other day I was sitting watching some small birds called sparrows enjoying some seeds we had given them. British sparrows, if you do not know them, are about the most uninteresting little birds there are. They are only brown, different shades of brown, with an odd dash of black. Their idea of a song is very quaint. They just chirp endlessly, thinking they are making an interesting noise – they aren’t, well possibly interesting to other sparrows, but no one else. And we spend good money to buy seed for them in the winter - why? I suppose we feel sorry for them and that we should do something for them, just out of the goodness of our hearts.
Much of this is what God does in the way he treats us. Why should he? He is, after all, even further above us than we are above sparrows. Yet he cares for us; he feeds us; he makes sure we have enough to eat, to keep us going. Can we say he loves us? Yes! Amazingly we can. Very fortunately for us he made us in his own image so he has an interest in us and feels a responsibility for us surpassing that for any other creatures on earth.
What does he do for us that we do not do for the sparrows? The sparrows will chirp endlessly away until they get too cold and fall over or fall prey to a hawk and that is the end of them. We are given many abilities to do something more than just chirp away. We know where there is a doctor who can give us the medicines we need to keep us well and happy. We are told, and understand, that there are different ways of living. The sparrows do not understand that we are being good to them - we understand that there is a Creator God who has been wonderfully good to us. We have the power and ability to choose a different way of life. We can commit ourselves to following him who provides many good things for us. We can understand that there is a whole great created world out there into which we can fit. We can sing and express our joy in ways far beyond a sparrows chirping though we have never done anything that has made it inevitable that we should be so wonderfully granted the gifts of grace.
Is this love? Perhaps, in some ways, what I see in our back garden is an analogy of some part of what the love is like that the Bible talks about so much. Can you think of a better analogy of how God loves us and therefore of how we are to love each other?
In some ways it is easier to think about what the love of God to us is than to think of how we are to love to each other. We are to ‘love’ all those who are loved by God, our brothers and sisters, the members of the fellowship we find ourselves in, even when they can be a difficult lot sometimes! How can we define what the Bible means when it demands that we must love them? We have to do so in a way that is reasonable, that is beyond what might be expected of us in the normal attitudes of our general culture and society and that will enable us to feel satisfied that we are obeying the repeated commands such as ‘let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth’ as it says in 3: 18? And so that we may ‘have confidence before God because we keep his commands and do what pleases him’ as we read in 3: 22.
My suggestion is that we must always act before them with positive attitudes. We must never show any hint of a negative attitude to them, both the ones we find easy to be friends to and those we do not. If we act positively always and never negatively then we shall ‘set our hearts at rest in his presence’ and ‘we will have confidence before God’ as 3: 19 and 21 say we should.
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Friday Aug 25, 2017
Friday Aug 25, 2017
Partakers Friday Prayers!
25th August 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!
You, Lord, through your works have revealed the everlasting structure of the world.
You, Lord, created the earth.
You are faithful throughout all generations,
righteous in your judgments,
marvellous in strength and majesty,
wise in creating and prudent in establishing what exists,
good in all that is observed and faithful to those who trust in you,
merciful and compassionate;
forgive us our sins and our injustices, our transgressions and our shortcomings.
Do not take into account every sin of your servants,
but cleanse us with the cleansing of your truth,
and "direct our steps to walk in holiness and righteousness and purity of heart,"
and "to do what is good and pleasing in your sight"
and in the sight of our rulers.
Yes, Lord, "let your face shine upon us" in peace "for our good,"
that we may be sheltered "by your mighty hand"
and delivered from every sin "by your uplifted arm";
deliver us as well from those who hate us unjustly.
Give harmony and peace to us and to all who dwell on the earth,
just as you did to our fathers when they reverently "called upon you in faith and trust,"
that we may be saved,
while we render obedience to your almighty and most excellent name,
and give harmony and peace to our rulers and governors on earth.
Amen
(Taken from Clement of Rome in a letter to the church in Corinth around AD96)
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Monday Aug 21, 2017
Monday Aug 21, 2017
Think Spot - 27th February 2017
We have the start of a new week! Its Monday! How and in what circumstances are you trusting God? How did Jesus Christ trust in the Father? Jesus knew that the Father was going to bring Him back to life after his death on the cross. Jesus trusted the Father in this area of His life, just as he did in all aspects of his life. How are you doing? Do you have concerns and areas of your life where you need an assurance that God the Father will help you?
Here are some simple steps which may help you maintain a trust in God.
- Pray, casting all anxiety on God. He cares for you because you are His personal concern (The great apostle Peter, one of Jesus' closest friends wrote this in 1 Peter 5v7 "Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.")
- Accept and thank God that His peace has filled that area (Another great apostle, Paul, wrote this in Philippians 4v7 says "Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.")
- Learn to be content whatever your circumstances are, resting in God (Paul goes on in Philippians 4v11-12 "Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little.")
- Allow the Spirit to control your mind for life and peace (and again from the pen of the apostle Paul, this time in Romans 8v6 "So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace.")
- Trust God to fulfil your every need (Matthew records these words of Jesus in Matthew 6v32-33 "but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need." )
- Obey and follow God's commands to love God and love others (Jesus is recorded in Matthew 22v37-40 "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.' The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.")
- Finally, be prepared to be obedient to the Father, in supplying the needs of others you meet and therefore showing you love God and other people! One way to show you are trusting and loving God is to be the answer to the prayers of somebody else and showing that love to them! Ask God to show you, how you can help somebody else in need this week and showing your love.
Go in peace this Monday, into this week, knowing God is worthy of your trust! God will take care of you, but not always in the way you expect! Expect Him to allow circumstances and situations to arise where you are to trust Him fully! He will help you if you ask! After all, He knows you better than anybody! And don't be afraid to help somebody else because by doing that, you show you are loving and trusting in God!
Father, I pray that You would help us to trust in You and that You would supply our needs, calm our concerns and help us to love You and others more fully. 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 19, 2017
Saturday Aug 19, 2017
Part 110 - 1 John 3:6
Sin and sinning!
At first sight it seems as though John contradicted himself. In chapter one he said, “If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us” and now he says, “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.” (3: 6). How can that be? He seems to say, first that everybody sins and now that if we sin we cannot be his disciples.
The difference is largely hidden in the different Greek tenses in the original. We can see what the difference is most easily if we replace the phrase ‘keep on sinning’ with the concept of idolatry. We, particularly in the West don’t think of ourselves as idolaters because we do not have any sort of idol, picture or statue that we relate to. But what is idolatry? It is when we place anything, anyone or any idea above the Creator God who made everything, everyone and every idea! And here there all sorts of possibilities. Some people place a football team above everything in all creation, chasing it round, watching it play, wearing its costume etc. Or their family, which although a good thing in general should not be allowed to be the only and most important thing in anyone’s life. Or having lots of money, so that all of life becomes a search for more. And a moment’s thought will let you add a lot of possibilities to the list, probably some of them from your own experience, if you think about it!
Most of us find getting it right a difficult matter. To succeed in life, or even just to survive, we need to concentrate on the things that we need. We need a satisfactory amount of money; we need to give time and energy and love to the family. And so on. But where do these things stand in relation to the Lord? He is to be first, and more important than anything else in our lives.
Hopefully you have said to yourself something like – yes, that’s right. But if so that is very worrying, is it not? Sin was a much smaller and much safer thing so long as we thought of it in terms of moral behaviour, in terms of even the Ten Commandments after Jesus had extended them. Most of us, most of the time, manage not to have any other gods, misuse the name of the Lord, say anything rude to our parents, commit any form of sexual misbehaviour, or say any lies about anyone else. (I have picked out every second of the Ten Commandments for that list).
I said ‘most of the time’. That is hopefully right but there are the other times when we slip up, are there not? So John’s analysis is exactly right. We all make mistakes; we all have a very strong tendency to have idols – not least because the one that I have not yet mentioned is ‘ourselves’, ‘me’, and we all like to have ourselves up on a pedestal above all else.
This is the challenge that John throws out to each one of us: yes, most of us will have a tendency to break the moral and ethical rules, which amounts to sin. But what about the more significant thing - do not keep on sinning; do not have an idol to which the Lord has to take second place. That is both a more difficult to thing to avoid and the one that – with the continual help of the Holy Spirit – it is much easier to identify and therefore endeavour to do something about.
Have you, perhaps as a result of this analysis, identified the things that are idols in your life? If you have you have taken a good first step to doing something about them. Now the battle is on for you to resist it or them, to knock them down, to stamp on them until there is next to nothing left. May all strength be yours to succeed.
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Friday Aug 18, 2017
Friday Aug 18, 2017
Friday Prayers
O all-transcendent God
what other name describes You?
What words can sing Your praises?
No word at all denotes You.
What mind can probe Your secret?
No mind at all can grasp You fully.
Alone beyond the power of speech,
all people can speak of springs from You.
Alone beyond the power of thought,
all people can think of stems from You.
All things proclaim You – things that can speak, things that cannot.
All things revere You – things that have reason, things that have none.
The whole world's longing and pain mingle about You.
All things breathe You a prayer,
a silent hymn of Your own composing.
All that exists You uphold,
all things in concert move to Your orders.
You are the end of all that is,
You are one, You are all;
You are none of the things that are,
You are not a part and not the whole.
All names are at Your disposal;
how shall I name You, the only unnameable?
What mind's affinities with heaven
can pierce the veils above the clouds?
Mercy, all-transcendent God,
what other name describes You?
Amen
A prayer of Gregory Nazianzus (329 – 390)
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Monday Aug 14, 2017
Monday Aug 14, 2017
Think Spot - 14 August 2017
All of these things being done daily in your life lead to what I am convinced is the key to the reality of a successful Christian life - that key being joy. As you grow closer to Jesus, living in peace, trust and obedience, then your spiritual life will be your natural life and your natural life be your spiritual life! Your joy will abound and shine a light giving people a reason to ask "Where do you get all your joyous hope from?". You will then be able to· share Jesus as your source of joy. A joy that is anticipatory, expectant and true! Joy comes from putting Jesus first, others next and then yourself! Go practise it this week!
You can show this joy by singing, laughing, smiling, shouting praises to God, lifting hands in worship', and crying, but that is only the external part of joy. True joy also incorporates an internal joy. Real joy is when you can believe in: the mountain top when you are in your deepest valley. Abundant joy is being surrounded by darkness and still believing in 'the light'. Anticipatory joy is when amidst total confusion you still believe God has a plan of love for you. It was this type of joy that Jesus had, when in the garden praying, the night before he was betrayed, when full of mixed emotions and anguish he said "Not my will, but yours, Father!"
As sons and daughters of God, we have many reasons to be full of joy. Yet how often we forget! Here are some reasons for joy!
- Psalm 51:8 & 12 - Oh, give me back my joy again; you have broken me-now let me rejoice. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you.
- Jeremiah 15:16 - When I discovered your words, I devoured them. They are my joy and my heart's delight, for I bear your name, O Lord God of Heaven's Armies.
- Luke 15:8-10 "Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won't she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbours and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin.' In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God's angels when even one sinner repents."
- 1 Peter 1:8-9 - You love Jesus Christ even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy. The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls.
Do you desire to be' overflowing with joy today and this week? Go into this week with a joy that is anticipating and expectant! Do you need to hand over to Jesus a particular area of your life' where Jesus does not fully reign and have control?
I pray that the Father will reveal more of Himself to you, as you daily seek His face, overcoming all hindrances to living a successful and joyful-Christian life. May the Holy Spirit who lives within you, if you are a Christian, continue to transform you into the image of the Son Jesus Christ, and all to the praise and glory of God the Father. Amen.
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Saturday Aug 12, 2017
Saturday Aug 12, 2017
Part 109 - 1 John 3:1
The children of God
John said, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” That is quite something to say about us. Our thoughts probably fly immediately to the question of our relationship with the Father God but I want to go off on a slightly different tack. In modern society, particularly in the West, to be a son or daughter of a father is almost all about relationship, but it is not so in all the world, and most probably was not in those days.
When we lived in Pakistan our house was on a big hillside with many houses on it. Water came from a small reservoir on the top of the hill controlled by a guy we called the ‘water wallah’. When he died who was to become the next water wallah? There was no question who that would be – it was his son. And that was how it worked in their society. If father was a cook, the son expected to be a cook; if father was a motor mechanic, his son expected to be a motor mechanic; and so on. In more developed societies things don’t work like that. I was a maths teacher; neither of my sons, though both highly numerate, ever even considered becoming a maths teacher. It is just a different way of living.
John’s society will have been much more like that Pakistani society than my English one. So when he said we are the children of God he was saying something we can easily miss. He was saying that we are to be as much like God in Jesus as we possibly can be because our ultimate destination is going to be where he is, so he says, “what we will be has not yet been made known.” (next verse) And he says many things that strongly suggest that. We are to be born of him (preceding verse). We will suffer the same rejection as Jesus did (second half of the first verse). We have an expectation that we shall grow to be like him (next verse) through the work of the Holy Spirit within our lives. We have an expectation of seeing our elder brother at the end of the age (again next verse).
All that is to be a huge encouragement to us. Do not for a moment believe those who think that, unless you have had an experience of monumental life shaking importance, or an almost out of your skin charismatic event, you are not on the right road towards the Lord. No, you only need to have been born of him, experiencing what he has done to and for you, not what has happened in you, to be a child of God, with your feet firmly on a way that will eventually – we have no idea when or where – lead us to the appearance of the Lord Jesus to us.
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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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