Partakers Christian Podcasts

Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 38 - John 9:32
Consequences

The first few verses of this chapter are very interesting as they are one of the two places where Jesus comments on the relationship between sin and suffering, or rather the lack of relationship between them. The disciples of Jesus thought, like most other people in those days, that if someone was suffering as this man was this had to be the effect of sin. Since he had been blind from birth it could not be his sin so whose was it? His parents seemed to be the obvious answer.

No, said Jesus. It doesn’t work like that. In what he went on to say I don’t think he meant that the man was blind just so that the works of God could be displayed in him. Rather he was saying that since he is blind it is possible for those works to be displayed in him.
The other place where Jesus says something which has much the same implication is Luke chapter 13: 1 – 5 where he says that neither the Galileans who had their blood mixed with their sacrifices nor the people of Jerusalem on whom a wall fell suffered because they had sinned.

In all these cases people were assuming that they were being punished for something they had done. In other words that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Or, to put it another way, that cause and effect operate in the moral and social sphere much the same way as they do in the physical. Their misunderstanding is excusable because a great deal of the Old Testament is written on that assumption. But not all of it! Israel, as a nation had to go into exile in Assyria because of the wickedness of the people.

But Job did not suffer because he was a sinner. In fact most of the book of Job is taken up with an argument between Job and his friends. They say look at all these bad things that have happened to you – you must be bad. Job is occupied with saying ‘no, I am not’. We know, but they didn’t, that what had happened to Job was not a punishment, if anything it was a test. In the end the word from the Lord to Job is roughly speaking ‘I know what I am doing, you don’t. How dare you argue with me?’ Cause and effect do not operate in the moral world.

Not much has changed since. The disciples of Jesus thought the same way. So they asked the question, ‘we can see the effect, so who was the cause of this man’s blindness.’ ‘No’, said Jesus, 'it does not work like that.’

Not much has changed since then. Every time someone confronted with someone’s suffering says ‘ they didn’t deserve that!’ or ‘why has God allowed that to happen to them (or me)?’ or something like that they are implicitly assuming that good things happen to good people and bad things only happen to bad people. And what Jesus said and what the whole book of Job is saying is ‘no, it doesn’t work like that!’

Unfortunately the prevalence of that line of thinking, often perpetrated by well meaning folk trying to encourage other people, causes untold damage to the faith of those who believe them and swallow their teaching. We were at a school for the children of missionaries where many of the staff encouraged the children to think their parents were safe on the roads because the Lord would look after them since they were good people. Those staff had a real problem when the mother of some children in the school was killed by a falling stone as they walked one of the nearby paths.

We have to accept, as the book of Job teaches, that the world that the Lord created is a basically chaotic place, or more accurately, as we look at it it is a basically chaotic place. The Lord knows it is not a chaotic place because he controls it, but we do not have any knowledge of what his plans are so, for us, it is a chaotic place. That is a great mystery, but it is far better to recognize that so that, when we get caught on the wrong side of some chaos, we do not despair and lose our faith.

Why the world should be a chaotic world we do not know. The only comment I can offer is, that if we stop and think about it, a completely ordered, controlled world would be a very boring place to live. No sooner do people in the most favored countries and societies find themselves living in a pleasant ordered world than they start going off looking for excitement, a hint of danger, and even some risk on holiday! I suppose some people like a completely ordered boring existence, but certainly not everyone does.

Of course, it is tough if we are on the wrong side of the difficult things of this world but that is the price we must pay for an interesting, sometimes dangerous, sometimes painful world. Jesus makes it very clear that this is our world. We must learn to enjoy it – even when what happens isn’t exactly to our liking. It is quite clear from the rest of this wonderful story of the blind man that he had not lost his strength of character, his wisdom, his spiritual sense just because he was blind.

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Partakers Friday Prayers

A prayer of Augustine

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 Augustine

Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit,
that my thoughts may all be holy.

Act in me, O Holy Spirit,
that my work, too, may be holy.

Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit,
that I love but what is holy.

Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit,
to defend all that is holy.

Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit,
that I always may be holy.

Amen.

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Think Spot - 11th July 2016

Charlotte Bronte - “Life appears to me to be too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrong.”

Many people nurse a guilty conscience owing to holding onto animosity or wrongs done to them or having done wrong things to others. As a consequence, their life is filled with turmoil and bitterness. You may well be like that – I don’t know!
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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Partakers Friday Prayers

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 Cardinal Newman

O Jesus, Mighty God, I cry to You;
O Jesus, Bright Light, I turn to You;
O Jesus, Holy Love, I run to You;
With all the strength I have I worship You;
With all the love I have I cling to You;
With all my soul I long to be with You,
And fear no more to fail, or fall from You.

O Jesus, deathless love, Who seeks me,
You Who did die for longing love of me,
You King in all Your beauty come to me,
White-robed, blood-sprinkled Jesus, come to me,
And go no more, dear Lord, away from me.
Amen

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Think Spot - 4th July 2016

G'day and welcome to Partakers! We have the start of a new week! Its Monday!

Happy 4th of July to our USA readers, listeners and downloaders! God bless you this day and ever more! But I have a question for you - everyone of us... How and in what circumstances are you trusting God?

Let's look briefly at how Jesus Christ trusted in God the Father.  Jesus knew that God the Father was going to bring Him back to life after Jesus' own death on the cross. Jesus trusted the Father, His 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.

1. 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 5:7 "Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.")
   

2. Accept and thank God that His peace has filled that area (Another great apostle, Paul, wrote this in Philippians 4:7 "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.")
   

3. Learn to be content whatever your circumstances are, resting in God (Paul goes on in Philippians 4:11-12 "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.")
   

4. Allow the Spirit to control your mind for life and peace (and again from the pen of the apostle Paul, this time in Romans 8:6 "So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace.")
   

5. Trust God to fulfil your every need (Matthew records these words of Jesus in Matthew 6:32-33 "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." )
   

6. Obey and follow God's commands to love God and love others (Jesus is recorded in Matthew 22:37-40 "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.")
   

7. 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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Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 37 - John 8:32
Freedom in Christ

As we move on through this chapter things get very difficult. In verse 31 John refers to “the Jews who had believed Jesus”. That simple statement is very difficult because these same Jews seem to have been his discussion partners through the rest of the chapter and they are very antagonistic to Jesus to the point where they tried to stone him! Perhaps John means something like ‘Jews who had expressed some interest in what he was saying and doing’. After all there were probably people then, as there are now, who are keen to get alongside the latest celebrity, which Jesus will have been.

Then Jesus said, ““If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” That is alright but their response wasn’t. They said “we have never been enslaved to anyone” which must be high in the list of the most untrue things in the Bible. They had been slaves, at one time or another, of the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans. We might well wonder what they can possibly have meant by claiming they had never been slaves – which takes us straight into thinking about what is meant by freedom. Nelson Mandela, the famous South African politician, is the clue. He spent 27 years in two of South Africa’s most notorious prisons, which would seem to be a very definite for of slavery, but when he was finally released it was clear that his mind and spirit were unaffected. He became the countries president but he took no steps to hold anyone to account for his lone imprisonment. His mind and spirit had clearly remained free even when his body was held in dire slavery. He was an outstanding example of how some can rise above their immediate surroundings and remain free.

The other problem we all have is that of sin. Sin, which can so easily become a habit or even an addiction haunts all of us. Paul recognized that when he said. “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God”. He went on to compare sin to slavery and the life of the Christian living in acceptance by God to freedom just as Jesus does here.

Jesus tells us what the solution to this otherwise unsolvable human dilemma is. He says, “The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” The first bit is easy to understand: it is the age old difference between being a slave lacking all security in where you live and control over what you do and a son who is the heir to the house, the estate and the family riches. The second bit is much more difficult. We may well ask, ‘why should being set free by the son, even if the son is Jesus, set us free.’ The answer to that puzzle is in Romans chapter 6 where we read, “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

How difficult that is to understand depends on what culture you come from. If, like me, you come from a Western culture with its extreme individuality you will find it very difficult to understand how you can truly be involved in the life and death of another person even if that person is the Son of God. If, however, you come from a culture where individuality takes second place to a corporate group, be that family, work group, church, or anything else you will find it much easier to accept that because good things happen to the Lord, you are united with the Lord, and therefore the same good things happen to you.

Think that one over very carefully. If you have set out to follow Jesus, he is the Son, he has set you free, therefore – and what an enormous therefore that is – you are free indeed because you are in Him

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Partakers Friday Prayers

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 from the Sarum Primer 1558

God be in my head, and in my understanding;
God be in my eyes, and in my looking;
God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;
God be in my heart, and in my thinking;
God be at my beginning, and at my departing.
Amen

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Think Spot - 27th June 2016
Be Authentic

"Such as we are in word by letters when we are absent, such will we be also in deed when we are present." (2 Corinthians 10:11)

For those of us who engage in social media, writing letters or emails to people or as we talk to people on phones are we the same person then as when we are with people face to face? Is your behaviour with people when not physically with them the same as your behaviour when you are physically with them?

That is how the great Apostle Paul was with people - the same in their presence or away from them. That is what he urged his readers, the Corinth church, to be like... God wants the same from us - authenticity and relying on Him to help us be authentic Christians living in what is often an unauthentic world...

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Gems in the Gospel of John

Part 36 - John 8:23, 28 & 58
I AM… I AM… I AM…

No fewer than three times in this chapter John records that Jesus used the personal name of God, ‘ego eimi’ in Greek. John has them carefully lined up, two in rapid succession, then the third one later at the end of his discussion with the group of leading Jews he has been with for some time. In fact that third one brings the discussion to a rapid end.

Let me imagine something of what the reaction to what he said must have been of one of his hearers? It must have gone something like this: first he said to them, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.”

Our typical hearer will scarcely have noticed that his reply included the words I AM. As we noticed before the words he used could equally mean ‘It’s me’ or as they are translated in the NIV ‘I am he’. So all that happened was that they said to him, “Who are you?” Good question. It has been asked over and over again ever since. The answer is much the same as it has always been, I am who I have always told you I am but you are listening but not hearing.

So the conversation continues and Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.”

Again there is the phrase ‘I am he’ in the middle of that statement, a little more obviously this time. Whether our typical listener will have thought that an odd thing to say is hard to say. We might imagine him turning to his neighbour and saying something like: “did you hear what he said there? ‘lifted up’ sounds very like what Isaiah said about the servant ‘my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted’. I find that a bit much to take. He is getting well above himself. He thinks he is going to be high – does that mean sitting on a throne? - and being exalted! And then he sneaked in the phrase I AM. I don’t like it – I don’t like him. Things are getting a bit much.”

The conversation goes on for some time, another 30 verses in our Bibles, with the crowd and Jesus getting more and more at cross purposes with each other. The crowd is clearly understanding less and less of what Jesus is telling them or, perhaps, accepting less and less of what he is saying. They say he is demon possessed; he says they belong to their father the devil. They probably argued more forcefully in those days than we are prepared to do these days, but that is strong stuff. Then we are told that Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

That does it. He has quite clearly said that he was around before Abraham and then uses the critical words ‘ego eimi’, I AM, of himself so he is saying both ‘It’s me’ and I have the name of God.

Our imaginary guy is likely to have said at this point something like ‘hand me that stone!’ with the distinct intention of throwing it at Jesus to knock him down and kill him. But such is the power of the personality of Jesus that he is able to disappear in the crowd and slip away.

John has been hammering away at just one point. I used to have a colleague who liked to say good lecturing was ‘tell ‘em what you are going to tell ‘em; tell ‘em; then tell them what you have told ‘em’. John clearly had the same philosophy.

Have you got it very firmly into your head JESUS was GOD. If not read it all again, and again …

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Think Spot - 20th June 2016

Yesterday in the UK & USA it was Fathers Day - a day to honour our fathers... My father has been dead now for 23 years. I still remember the phone call I got from my mother saying he had passed on. What is the best way that I can remember my earthly father? The best way I can keep the memory of my dad alive, is to show love to others. After all, he loved me at my worst (and that was pretty bad, albeit a long time ago)! Sure it can be risky, but it pays off more than it doesn't...

A similar picture to the love that God has for me - sacrificial and practical...

‘A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ John 13:34-35

Christians are commanded to love others - all others and without exception... We are to love others as God loves - sacrifically and practically... As we love other people practically, God's love is shown and revealed...

Go into this new week, to love others. If you don't know how to love a particular person, ask God to show you and tell you - He will do so if you ask!

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