Spiritcode

  FIRST COMMANDMENT – Putting God First.  Paul O’Sullivan – Go to http://uncreated.podbean.com/  to view complete series Is it logical to say that if people would have obeyed the First Commandment there would be no need for any other Commandments?   This commandment is actually the be-all and end-all of the commandments. It tells us that we should look to no other person or thing than God Himself...

THE KINGDOM WITHIN   Paul OSullivan    spiritcode.podbean.com When Jesus was betrayed by Judas and arrested by the temple guards, he was then tried by the Jewish High Priest and the council of elders and then handed over to Pontius Pilate the Roman Governor of Judea. When Pilate questioned Jesus about being King of the Jews he asked him why he had been tried by his own people and why they had brou...

YIELDED PRAYER Our acceptance and patience and trust in God as our Father in times of adversity is the measure of our growth in faith. We do not grow in faith if we think faith is getting what we want simply because we pray for it and think it should happen.  God allows contrary and painful circumstances to confront us. These things challenge our trust and faith in him as a good and loving Father...

CITIZENS OF HEAVEN When Paul wrote to the church in Philippi they had been living under Roman rule for a couple of generations. They had a proud cultural and philosophical heritage and a fierce sense of citizenship going back to the first Greek culture in Athens five centuries before which was the first ever democracy, and all the citizens of Athens had the opportunity to vote. They had a proud cu...

After their meeting with Herod the Wise Men followed the star which remained bright in the sky and were guided to the house where Joseph and Mary and the child Jesus were still staying. When the men were invited to see the child they went down on their knees and worshipped him. They then presented him with gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These peculiar gifts have a spiritual message for us t...

Relationship is the key value in the whole theme of the commandments, because God wants us to be fulfilled in life through relationships, both with Himself, and with one another. We find then that the first four commandments deal with our relationship with God, and that the next six deal with our relationships with one another. That is why the New Covenant had a promise that the law would be writt...

AN ERA OF PEACE  A prophet called Micah made an amazing prophecy that foretold the birthplace of Jesus over seven hundred years before Jesus was born. This verse also tells us that he would be our peace. Micah 5:2. "O Bethlehem, you are but a small Judean village, yet you will be the birthplace of my King who is alive from everlasting ages past!" God will allow the conflict and disorder to remain...

GOD WITH US The appointed time finally came to heal the earth. It was twisted and torn and it could not heal itself. There were many religions apart from Judaism, and all the rituals, the pomp and ceremony, had only allowed that gap between God and man to remain. God was about to give humanity the perfect answer, not a religion, but Himself. The Divine Being, Jesus God, was to make his transition...

PROPHETIC PAUSE  We are looking at the message of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament. It is a prophecy about preparing the way for Messiah to come to his Temple people, and turning their hearts back to God as their loving Father. It is a message for us in these days, as his people, his Temple. Malachi was the last prophet to speak in the Old Testament. He was speaking to the people who ha...

GETTING YOUR BEARINGS.  To be able to go in a direction that will make us sure that we reach the goal or destination we are meant to arrive at in life we need to know the answer to three questions; Who am I? What is happening to me? And What am I meant to do? We need to know who we are so that we can understand what is happening to us, and we need to know what is happening to us so that we can kno...

CHRIST OF THE COSMOS I’ve been sharing what is happening on the ground in society these troubled times and also what is happening regarding the spiritual darkness in the heavens. Now I want to talk about the God of the heavens and the earth, the God of the Bible, Christ of the Cosmos. Colossians 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16. For through him all thing...

IMAGE MAKERS  How do we become who we are - how do we see ourselves as that person that we think we are. That is an image – that is an idea in our head – where did it come from? A person does not make up an image all by themselves. The image we have of who we are is an already formed idea of what gets reflected back to us through our life that we accept and act out from.  The image of who we are c...

UNSEEN ARMY 2Kings 7:1 There is a story in the Old Testament about the prophet Elisha and how the unseen world of spiritual light and spiritual darkness operates. It is the story of Elisha and the four lepers of Samaria. This is a story of the limited power of darkness when it faces up to the unlimited power and purpose of God and his goodness. The spiritual world is an unseen world, the real worl...

WAR IN HEAVEN The distress and confusion and uncertainty that people are experiencing everywhere in the earth at this time is not just because of our own limited and vulnerable humanity. And it’s not totally because we are in the midst of a global calamity – a pandemic that is getting worse by the day. We are also in the midst of a global spiritual battle. There are spiritual forces that are activ...

AGE OF INNOCENCE  We were chosen by God to live our lives in a state of innocence before him. Ephesians 1:4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be set apart for him (holy) and blameless before him, In love. Our English word ‘innocence’ comes from the Latin word IN-NOCERE – not to harm, blameless, and also means not harmed or violated – a sort of spotlessne...

JERICHO  Today we are looking at the story of Joshua leading Israel in the defeat of the city of Jericho, where a miracle of God caused the walls of the city to fall down so that Israel could begin their actual entrance into the Promised Land after crossing the river Jordan. This city was the first of many that Israel was to occupy in their conquest and possession of the Promised Land.   We saw ho...

MINDFULNESS AND COLLECTIVE SUFFERING God’s mindfulness towards us is a two way thing -  God starts the process of mindfulness towards us and invites us to respond. And right there begins a divine process of inner wholeness and transformation. (Romans 12:2 -  being transformed by the renewing of the mind). So What becomes transformed? – it is more than just behaviour - it is the consciousness of wh...

MINDFULNESS – THE ETERNAL NOW I would like to talk about the practice of mindfulness today which is something practised by people of many belief systems. However I am starting with a Scripture that speaks about God’s mindfulness towards us, because that is where mindfulness originally came from .  Hebrews 2:6 What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? (This...

WHAT CAN SEPARATE US God’s love created us and God’s love has joined us to Himself (John 3:16). But what is our experience of God’s love? Our experience will be one of being joined to God and his love or one of being separated from his love and even from God himself. We are going to look at why so many people feel separated from the love of God, and what the Bible says about the experience of bein...

THE NARROW GATE We are offered a choice in life to go down one of two pathways, the pathway to life or the pathway to destruction or ruin. There are many metaphors of this choice in the Bible, starting in Deuteronomy when God offers Israel a pathway to life or a pathway to death, one of blessing and one of cursing. Paul talks in the epistles about walking in the Spirit or walking in the flesh, and...

FINDING MEANING A life without meaning is a life without hope because it means not moving forward to higher things but just going around in futile or unnecessary things. It is important to know that we are being led forward by God on a journey into a higher purpose in God at this time of spiritual challenge. When Israel was taken out of Egypt and led by Moses through the wilderness to get to the P...

PRISONERS OF HOPE  I want to speak today about the hope that can be found during times of uncertainty when many have lost hope and are grieving that loss. I am framing this within the time frame of Israel trying to find their way forward and still floundering after being in captivity in Babylon for seventy years. The prophets at that time knew that God was preparing them for a new hope and were en...

PREPARE THE WAY OF THE LORD Twelve years after the rebuilding of the walls and gates of the city at Jerusalem had been accomplished the prophet Malachi wrote the last prophetic book of the Old Testament. God’s people now had all they needed to present themselves to the world as a people of God who would be a testimony to the fact that an all loving, all powerful, just and good God was alive in the...

WALLS AND GATES OF SAFETY The story continues of God’s people returning from the seventy years captivity in Babylon and the rebuilding the temple and now, the walls and the city gates of Jerusalem. This entire story is like a second Exodus of Israel coming out of captivity and entering into the Land, with this re-entering taking many long years like the first Exodus. This re-entry spanned the reig...

THE TEMPLE AND THE WORD  This is the continuing story of God’s people under Zerubbabel returning home to rebuild the temple that was broken down. This story also includes the later arrival of Ezra upon the scene, returning with up to two thousand more exiles, to be part of the rebuilding, but not of the temple his time, but of the rebuilding of God’s Word into the peoples’ hearts. There are parall...