Spiritcode

SIN AND FAITH AND MISSING THE MARK Luke 7:36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to come to his home for lunch and Jesus accepted the invitation. As they sat down to eat, a woman of the streets heard he was there and brought an exquisite flask filled with expensive perfume. Going in, she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping, with her tears falling down upon his feet; and she wiped them off with her...

ASCENSION After Jesus descended into Hades and paradise with the keys of hell and death the Bible says he set the captives free and led them into the Heavens (Ephesians 4:8). On his upward journey he visited the earth and took upon himself his entombed body and met Mary Magdalene in the garden near the tomb and told her he had to present himself to his Father in Heaven. The angels at the tomb had...

When Jesus gave up his Spirit to his Father he then descended in his Spirit on a mission of great purpose. Below him was a place called Paradise, and next to Paradise was a place called Hades. Jesus had spoken about these places when he told the story of the rich man and Lazarus, the beggar. The rich man who lived sumptuously in arrogant self-indulgence all of his life ended up in Hades and Lazaru...

CALVARY Jesus had been sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate and then tortured and flogged by the cruel guards of King Herod, and finally commanded by Pilate to carry his cross to Calvary, or Golgotha, which means ‘the place of the Skull’. Pilate told the Centurion to arrange for an escort of guards around Jesus to escort him to the windswept hill. One of the Centurion's men put the heavy beam on J...

THE PASSOVER SUPPER Passover was the busiest time of the year in Jerusalem when crowds of Jews from all over the Empire were gathering for the feast. Jesus had arrived triumphally seated on a donkey into Jerusalem earlier in the week and the crowds had welcomed him as their prophet, miracle worker and King to be, shouting Hosannah and casting palm leaves on the ground before him. People were amaze...

THE JONAH SYNDROME God wanted to save the great city of Nineveh in Assyria (about 755 years BC), so he sent Jonah, a prophet of Israel with a warning about the harm and destruction they were causing one another that would end up destroying them as a people unless they went through a spiritual conversion of their minds and hearts. Jonah 1:1 GOD's Word came to Jonah, son of Amittai: "Up on your feet...

A NEW ORDER notes When God created the Universe he began with an order of material being or existence, and then created human life with a much higher order of life with moral responsibility for relationships and loving responses. We are going to look a the ongoing work of God in the reordering of that relational order of our lives to bring us closer and closer to him. We start with God as Uncreate...

TIMES OF REFRESHING OF GOD’S PRESENCE Acts 3:19 Now change your mind and heart towards God and turn to him so he can cleanse away your sins and send you the appointed times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord. The appointed times (Kairos) of refreshing (anapsyxis; a recovery of breath, revival) from the presence of the Lord speak to us firstly about the sovereign outpourings of the Holy Sp...

NEVER TOO OLD - The wisdom of God for a balanced life  Proverbs 30:7-9 Two things I ask of you; do not deny them to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the LORD?” or lest I be poor and steal and profane (tapas – manipulate) the name of my God. This pow...

THE BURNING BUSH One day God intervened supernaturally in the life of Moses, speaking to him from a burning bush that stayed alight until Moses received and understood God’s message to him. Exodus 3:1 One day as Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, out at the edge of the desert near Horeb, the mountain of God, suddenly the angel of the LORD appeared to hi...

OUTSIDE THE GATES There is a story in the Old Testament (2Kings 7) about how the unseen world of spiritual light and spiritual darkness operates. It is the story of Elisha and the four lepers of Samaria. This story demonstrates how limited the power of darkness is when it faces up to the power and purpose of God and his goodness. The spiritual world is an unseen world – the real world of God’s act...

THE HUNGER OF THE SOUL In John Chapter four when Jesus sat by the well and asked a woman for a drink of water and then offered her the wellspring of everlasting life he gave her healing for the emotional thirst of her soul and an understanding of the Father’s love for her. She had entered a new life of hope and faith that was to last forever. Then his disciples arrived with food for them all to sh...

THE THIRST OF THE SOUL John 4:1 When Jesus left Judea and returned to Cana in Galilee he had to go through Samaria on the way, and around noon as he approached the village of Sychar, he came to Jacob's Well, located on the parcel of ground Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jesus was tired from the long walk in the hot sun and sat wearily beside the well. Jesus was travelling purposefully through Samar...

YOUR KINGDOM COME Romans 14: 16. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. The Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven is the realm of God’s authority and power and order which expresses the love and unity and agreement that exists between the Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  In this Scripture the word righteousn...

ENTERING THE KINGDOM Luke 4:42 Early the next morning Jesus departed from the people so he could be in a solitary place, but the crowds searched everywhere for him, and when they finally found him, they begged him not to leave them but to stay at Capernaum. But he replied, "I must preach the Good News of the Kingdom of God in other places too, for that is why I was sent." Jesus kept talking about...

SEEING AND NOT SEEING This story shows us how differently we can live our lives if we see things as they truly are in the realm of the spirit and not shrouded by darkness, the darkness of the world. The story, from 2 Kings ch.6, starts off with the king of Syria trying to plot his misguided strategies of war against Israel. Every time he plans to ambush Israel’s army in a certain place, Elisha is...

AN ERA OF HOPE AND PEACE  Forty days after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph had to bring Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem at that prescribed time for dedication and purification according to Jewish Law.  A man named Simeon was also in the Temple, The Holy Spirit having prompted him to go to the Temple that day. The Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen...

THE CHRISTMAS STORY 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...

PEACE ON EARTH Luke 2:8 For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly angels praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest, Peace on earth, goodwill toward men!”  THE SIGN – life an...

The father of John the Baptist, the priest Zechariah gave this prophecy regarding the ministry of his newborn son, John. Luke 1:76 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall shine from...

"You shall not covet your neighbour's house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s."  Exodus 20:17 In this final commandment episode, we discuss the following questions... What is the link between this Commandment and with Commandment Nine, which says ‘do not bear false witness against you...

WAITING AND HOPING The Book of Isaiah is a story of how God’s people live in hope, waiting for God. There are times that they start to trust in their own strength and turn away from him, and there are times when they are reminded to turn back to God, and when they do, they are mightily surprised by him, and it all comes into focus in this message in Chapter 30. God had been calling upon Israel for...

NOURISHING FAITH  The Apostle Peter died shortly after he wrote his second epistle and in the first verse of that letter he tells us that we have received ‘faith of equal standing with his (isotimos; of equal value or honour). He goes on to write about how that faith grows and brings forth the fruit of the true person that we were created to become. I see that being like a tree of life growing wit...

WE THE TEMPLE    During the closing few months leading up to the final week of the life and ministry of Jesus the momentum of his public appearances began to build up, and supernatural works of miracles and healing among the blind and the lame and the infirm were taking place everywhere he went. These sensational public appearances of Jesus and his engagement in open conflict and debate with the S...

MOUNTAINTOP MANIFESTO Matthew 4:24 So the fame of Jesus also spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan. On one such occasion Jesus sat...