Monday Think Spot17 March 2014I Will Not Cease To Pray For You

Good Morning! Welcome to Partaker’s Think Spot! I am Regina. I will be your host for today and I am from South Carolina in the United States. I would like to bring you a warm, humble welcome and thank you for being with us.

This morning let’s look at 1 Samuel 12:23 "Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you; but I will instruct you in the good and right way"erse 11.

Psalm 34:11 "Come you children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the LORD."

So what we see here in Samuel is that Israel has asked God to provide them with a king, the king of their choosing, not the king of God’s. And this hasn’t worked out so well for them. So Samuel tells them, “Look, OK, this is what we are going to do. I’m going to call upon the Lord and He is going to send thunder and rain. He is going to let you know about your wickedness; the things that you’re doing that’s not right.” And so, that’s what Samuel did. Samuel called to the LORD and the LORD sent thunder and rain and all of the people greatly feared the LORD and they feared Samuel because Samuel called to the LORD and the LORD answered him by bringing these things.

So all of the people come to Samuel and say, “Please pray for you servants, pray to the LORD your God so that we may not die for we have added to all of our sins this evil by asking for ourselves a king.”

You know, and Samuel could have said, “You’re right! That’s right! You did! You brought this all on yourself!” But instead what Samuel tells them is this:

“Do not fear. Yes, you have committed all this evil, but you do not turn aside from following the LORD. You serve the LORD with all of your heart, even though you’ve done this evil; you’re still serving the LORD. And you must not turn aside from serving the LORD because if you did, you would then go after futile things which cannot profit or deliver because they are futile. For the LORD will not abandon His people on account of His great name, because the LORD has been pleased to make you a people for HIMSELF.”

You know, up until this point God has really been happy. “You know, I’ve got My people, I’ve got Israel. They’re wonderful. They make mistakes but you know, no matter what mistakes they make, they serve Me whole-heartedly.”

And Samuel continues, “Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you. But I will instruct you in the good and right way. “ In other words, Samuel says, “I’m going to continue to pray for you. I am going to continue to lift you before God and I am going to listen to what God tells me to tell you. And as I listen to what He tells me I’m going to instruct you. I’m going to tell you what God says. And this is going to be leading you in the good and right way so that you don’t go off and do these foolish things.”

You see, we have to pray. We have to pray for one another, we have to pray for ourselves. And if we ask God to reveal to us the things that we do that are not pleasing to Him, and if we will be quiet a moment and listen to Him...He will reveal those things to us. And then the choice is ours, what we will do. Will we obey God and stop doing those things or start doing different things that He instructs us to do or will we just cross our arms say, “It’s going to be my way. I’m in control of my life.”

My prayer, as I pray for you all, is that we choose to follow God’s instinct. We choose to follow His leading, because He will lead us. He will reveal things to us. He’ll not only reveal our sin, but He will reveal the things that we are doing right. Because God loves us and so His final word to us doesn’t have to be a negative thing, but is always something wrapped in love. Because he does love us and He will continue to love us and instruct us. The important things are that we CHOOSE to listen to Him.

16th March 2014Paul and Potholes

They say that when something is going on in your life then you see it EVERYWHERE. The car you bought because you had rarely seen one in that colour is suddenly parked everywhere you go. Everyone else is having a baby it would seem to the couple struggling to conceive. You hear nothing but the bright future of the school you have just decided to take your child from early as you thought there was a better chance for them elsewhere! The list is pretty endless. Personally for me, it’s a word or phrase at the moment and that is…calling. During Intercessional Prayers on Sunday the person was asking for prayers of those exploring vocation to the priesthood – ‘woah that’s me!’ I thought. In a home group yesterday, Brian Wilson from HIllsong said, ‘You must walk worthy of the calling for what YOU are called.’ Again, I wondered if he was talking directly to me. Of course he wasn’t, but my mind is tuned to that word and turn of phrase at the moment due to my circumstances.

Now, something that effects every single one of us at the moment is potholes! Whether you drive and need to avoid them, or you don’t and walk around praying that the cars avoid the ones still filled with water.

I have to admit, and this won’t be the last time you hear this from me, but I have an immense respect for St Paul. Not only because of the way he continuously admitted what he had done wrong – not to get forgiveness after forgiveness, because I hope you know that when you ask God with all sincerity for His forgiveness and Grace you get it, and you don’t then need to feel any guilt about what you have been forgiven for. You must not, however, go and do it again. As I wrote last week when Jesus dismissed the adulterous woman he said, ‘Go, and sin no more’.

Paul’s main writings in the Bible are his letters to various Churches in Christendom. Paul set up the church of Ephesus as described in Acts 19 and its urgency in his detailed explanations of that congregation’s relationship with Jesus Christ could be due to it having been written not long before his death around AD62. Let’s have a look.

Paul writes in Ephesus 4 ‘In light of all this, here’s what I want you to do. While I’m locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don’t want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don’t want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.’

So in his typical style he starts with a firm instruction. Get going you lot! Stop messing around, you know what to do, what are you waiting for? If I get out of here, I’m going to come over there and give you a good shake!! But I can’t so you’ll have to read my words and do as you’re told – through me – by Christ Jesus. Paul never took any credit for his work, he always said it was the work of our saviour Jesus he did. Paul also talked in verse 3 about being quick to mend fences. This is hugely important, and as Christians we must take the initiative. I speak from very recent experience when I say you WILL be nervous, you will want to back out, and yes, you may have the door slammed in your face, you might even be verbally abused, but God knows you did it for the right reasons and He loves you all the more for it. Also, as was in my case this week, you might not get the door slammed in your face, in which case you have a win-win scenario.

Paul continues with ‘You were all called’ oh here we go again ‘to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with O

Partakers Friday Prayers!

14th March 2014

 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!

Order of Prayer Service

Opening Prayer

1 John 1:8-10

ConfessionLord's Prayer~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Prayers for those facing challenging situation

Prayers for those grieving & in despair

Prayers for those imprisoned

Prayers for Churches Worldwide

Prayers for the world~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Time for your own prayers

The Creed

Benediction

Closing Prayer~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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Monday Think Spot10 March 2014Pray and Prevail

Welcome to Partakers Think Spot. I pray this Monday morning finds you doing well. I am Regina and I am from SC in the United States. I want to talk with you this morning about Praying and Prevailing!

Let's turn for a moment to James 5:16. The earnest prayer of righteous person has great power and wonderful results. When Israel had made the golden calf Moses returned to the LORD and said, "Alas, these people have committed a terrible sin, but now please forgive them, forgive their sin, and if not, then blot me out of the record You are keeping. That can be found in Exodus 32 verses 31-32. That was persistence.

Moses would rather have died than not have his people forgiven. When God had heard him and said he would send an angel with the people, Moses came again. He would not be content, until, in answer to his prayer, God himself should go with them. God had said, "I will indeed do what you have asked." Exodus 33:17 After that, in answer to Moses' prayer, "Let me see your glorious presence,"Exodus 33:18, God made his goodness pass before him. Then Moses at once began pleading,"O, Lord, then please go with us." Exodus 34:9. Moses was up on that mountain with the Lord for 40 days and 40 nights. That's found in Exodus 34:28. Moses was persistent with God and he prevailed. He proves that the person who truly lives near God shares in the same power of intercession which there is in Jesus.

James teaches us to pray for each other. "The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and wonderful results. Praise God! He still waits for us to seek him! Faith in a prayer-hearing God will make a prayer-loving Christian. And you know, you may be lacking in confidence right now and you may be saying to yourself, "Why would God want to help me? Why would he want to do what I am asking?"

Well, you know what? That dream or that vision, that persistence that you feel gnawing at you saying, "I have to do this! I have to do this, but I don't know how." Don't let the "but I don't know how" stop you! Because God gave you that vision, that came from him! And he tells us in Jeremiah 29:11-14, "For I know the plans that I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me, when you search for me with all of your heart. I will be found by you," declares the Lord, "and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I driven you," declares the Lord, "and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile."

Life may have been hard for you up until this point. You know, you may just be in survival mode, just barely making it from day to day. That's NOT God's plan for you and do not accept the conditioning of the world that tells you there's no better. Because God has a better plan for you. He tells us that in Jeremiah. He has a plan which offers you a future and a hope. So persistently pray to him. Moses spent 40 days and 40 nights on that mountain before God. And God heard him and God answered his prayer. He'll do the same for you!

Let's close now in prayer this morning:

Father, I thank you for each listener that come out to be with us this morning. I pray that this word pushed into them a light, a light where darkness has been prevailing for a while. I hope it just lit up their whole world. I pray that it encouraged them, that it allowed them to grasp hold to that promise you made in Jeremiah 29 that said you have a plan for us, and that plan is a good plan which brings us a future and a hope. Father I thank you for the blessings that you have already given us. I thank you that we are surviving, that we have food, that we have clothing, that we are not cold in these frigid temperatures. And I thank you for the blessings which are yet to come. In Jesus

9th March 2014What say you?

John 8:2-11At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered round him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’

‘No one, sir,’ she said.

‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared. ‘Go now and leave your life of sin.’ The Ash Wednesday reading for this year is from John 8:7… What is interesting about this passage is that it didn’t actually make it into the Bible until the 3rd century. It is unlike the usual way that the rest of this gospel is written – ignoring the pro and epilogues, we will cover those another time, but if you get the chance do have a look at the ending of John’s Gospel…all three of them! It is thought that the copyist who inserted it here was possibly trying to illustrate Jesus saying that he will pass judgement on no-one later in the chapter, in verse 15.

Anyway, Jesus had returned from the Mount of Olives, and is being harassed yet again by the Pharisees. They have bought a woman to him who they claimed had been caught committing adultery (nothing is ever said about the man with whom the alleged crime took place you’ll notice!) This married woman knows there is very high chance of being killed by the then common practice of stoning under the guise of the Law of Moses, as written in Deuteronomy 22. The Pharisees tell Jesus this has to be the outcome, and are trying to test him, again. They want him to either go against the word of Moses, and as a teacher of the Jewish faith of course he could not, or they want him to go against the authority of Rome, as Roman law had deprived the Jews of their rights to stone people to death – they thought they had him!

The gospel says, When they persisted in questioning him, he straightened up and told them, "Let the person among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." In the same situation now, knowing what we do, as the woman, you would be petrified! It is a wonderful thing to say, and it should be said more nowadays if you ask me – ok then, the one of you who is without sin and has NEVER done anything wrong can judge… that would make people stop and think before acting in certain ways! Of course, there WAS someone there who was without sin – Jesus – and he and only he had every right to cast that first stone…and we can only imagine the carnage that would have occurred after that.

What would have happened if one of the Pharisees had cottoned on to this, picked up a stone, handed it to Jesus and said ,’here you go then…’ But they didn’t. Thankfully. Because they understood not a jot of whose company there were truly in. There is a wonderful part when Jesus seems to simply ignore them, and starts to write on the ground with his finger. We’re not told what or really why., and there are many, many schools of thought about this, but in Jeremiah 17:13 in some translations it is written, ‘Those who turn away from you shall be written in the earth for they have forsaken the Lord’ …but in the Pharisees’ trying to get Jesus on the back foot and make a mistake, his calm demeanour must have had them all hopping from foot to foot in madness – how fu

Partakers Friday Prayers!

7th March 2014

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!

Order of Prayer Service

Opening Prayer

1 John 1:8-10

ConfessionLord's Prayer~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Prayers for those facing challenging situation

Prayers for those grieving & in despair

Prayers for those imprisoned

Prayers for Churches Worldwide

Prayers for the world~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Time for your own prayers

The Creed

Benediction

Closing Prayer~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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Testimony from Sorrow to Salvation

See how this family all came to faith, in knowing Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour - following one member of their family who took a stand! You will be astonished!!

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WOW Word 57 - Sin

1 John 1:9 - “Jesus is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” Today, Alphy the WOWChurch cat shares with us about sin - what it is, what it is not, who, why, where? Come see and hear Alphy the WOWChurch Cat explain more!!Play the video below and/or download it by right mouse clicking here and saving it as mp4 video file!

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Monday Think Spot3 March  2014Stone Walls Give Way

Good morning! Welcome to Partakers Think Spot. Thank you for joining us. I am Regina from South Carolina in the United States. Let's talk this morning about stone walls giving way. We are going to read Acts 12:5 "But while Peter was in prison, the church prayed very earnestly for him."

When we pray consistently we will receive an entrance into God's will of which we would otherwise know nothing. We will receive blessing above all we ask or think. The teaching and power of the Holy Spirit are unalterably linked to prayer. The power that the Church's prayer has is shown not only as the apostles pray but also as the Christian community does.

In Acts 12 Peter is in prison awaiting execution. The death of James had aroused the Church to a sense of great danger; the thought of losing Peter, too, wakened all their energies. They went to prayer. Prayer was effective; Peter was delivered. When he came to the house of Mary he found "many were gathered for prayer" (Acts 12:12). Double chains, soldiers, and the iron gate - all gave way before the power from heaven that prayer brought to his rescue. The power of the Roman Empire was nothing in the presence of the power that the Church wielded in prayer. Those Christians stood in close and living relationship with their Lord. They knew well that the words, "I have been given complete authority" and "And be sure of this, I am with you always" were absolutely true. They had faith in His promise to hear them whatever they asked. They prayed in the assurance that the powers of heaven bot only could work on earth but that would work at the Church's request on its behalf.

The same is true today. Just as the church, the community, prayed for Peter that day, and he was released from prison miraculously by God, we, too, can see those miracles. God's word says that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He doesn't change. So, we can come together for communal prayer, or we can pray alone at home, either way as long as we're in prayer we're communicating with God. When we're seeking His will, He will let us know what that will is. He will lead us in that will. And we can see Him at work. We can see Him at work in many lives.

My father in law's life is one of those that we have recently seen. He recently had open heart surgery, had an aortic valve replacement done, a triple by-pass, and had a stroke while he was having surgery. So he can no longer live alone. He had someone staying with him that we just weren't sure about and we wanted to talk to my father in law about it but we did not want to offend him or make him feel that he couldn't make decisions when, obviously, he can. So, I went to prayer. I prayed. I have a prayer group that I am with that I asked to pray, and we all sought God's will. I never had to open my mouth to my father in law concerning this because God took care of it. God had someone else that was helping my father in law speak to him about getting a power of attorney, which brought him protections. My father in law heeded their advice. He did set up a power of attorney which protects him from some dangers that we were concerned about. God answered that prayer, those prayers, my prayer, the prayer of the group that I had praying. And he'll do the same for you if we just seek His will and come to Him with a pure heart, a heart for His will to be done. He will answer those prayers.

I just want to close now. I thank you for being with us here on Partakers and I hope that you will come back every day for a word of encouragement. I pray that you have a blessed week. Let's close in prayer: Father, I thank you for each listener this morning. I ask you to pour down a double blessing upon each of them, Father. Allow them to see your will at work. Encourage them through their prayer and communication with you, Lord. Thank you. Thank you for each one because I truly believe

Partakers Friday Prayers!

28th February 2014

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!

Order of Prayer Service

Opening Prayer

1 John 1:8-10

ConfessionLord's Prayer~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Prayers for those facing challenging situation

Prayers for those grieving & in despair

Prayers for those imprisoned

Prayers for Churches Worldwide

Prayers for the world~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Time for your own prayers

The Creed

Benediction

Closing Prayer~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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