Spirited Word

Send us Fan Mail From Martin Luther... “….it comes to pass when you hear that Jesus Christ, God’s Son, has by his most holy touch consecrated and hallowed all sufferings, even death itself, has blessed the curse, and has glorified shame and enriched poverty so that death is now a door to life, the curse a fount of blessing, and shame the mother of glory. Suffering has been touched and bathed by Ch...

Send us Fan Mail O that so many Lutherans in the Barossa (including me) could hear the sound of that cracking whip-chord and the coins tipping off those tables and the flight of spooked doves! And then be with Jesus sipping wine transformed from water at a wedding, eating fish and bread on the grassy slope be the sea, smelling the strong scent of perfume around that room as she anointed him for hi...

Send us Fan Mail Ten young women: five with 'oil', five out of 'oil': five accepted five dismissed. What is the oil!? Is Jesus is saying that the oil is not our love or faith or patience or anything we can do or manufacture or achieve ourselves? What if instead, the ‘oil’ is a gift; gift to be received that makes us ready, not work to be done that hopefully makes us ready? Then...

Send us Fan Mail There is a song for every occasion. There is s spiritual song for every step of this spiritual journey with Jesus. The Psalms are those songs and this one is a 'banger'!

Send us Fan Mail We come to the end of this little journey in this little letter of First John.   We have heard of the broad sweep of what God has done for the word he loves in the Son he gave for the life he calls us to live. It is very grand in scale and yet practical in the living of it. Faith, love and obedience to what the Apostles reveal of God from what they saw and heard and touched in Jes...

Send us Fan Mail John has said some world-changing and people-changing things about God future now at work in our present drawing us on to that great day when we shall finally see Jesus as he fully is and find ourselves more like him than we currently know.  To really try and grab your full attention and bring home all of the truth about who Jesus is and what he is doing in this anti-messiah world...

Send us Fan Mail We are still working our way through the words of the Apostle john in his little letter of love to his people under pressure.  Today we get o what many might see as the core message John is wanting to encourage his people with as they live their lives in this new beginning for God’s creation which began the day that death died under the resurrection life of Jesus the Messiah. Our...

Send us Fan Mail We keep on nudging forward in this little letter of the Apostle John to his local church communities. As we do, we also welcome 14 people into membership in our church. Praise the Lord for new people! John is doing all he can to give us confidence to trust that in all circumstances the Spirit is at work transforming us into the likeness of the Son whom we will one day finally see...

Send us Fan Mail We are travelling at a slow pace ‘smelling the roses’ of this little letter of the Apostle John (1 John). We have heard him announce the breaking on of God’s whole new covenant world of grace in the Resurrection of Jesus that created a whole new community in the world, of which John is an Apostle.  We have heard that this truth of God’s grace creates the coin of faith and love.  J...

Send us Fan Mail We have embarked upon a slower journey through a little letter in the New Testament of the Bible. It is the letter the Apostle John wrote to his local communities of disciples of the risen Jesus (1John).  Today we hear John speaking of ‘the world’. He actually urges us to ‘not love ‘the world’ or anything in it’.  This may seem a little confusing coming from the Apostle who gave u...

Send us Fan Mail We have begun a longer, slower journey or diving deeper into a little letter in the New Testament. We are journeying through 1 John.  John has begun his letter by announcing that he has seen God’s future for us and his world in Jesus, and it works! God’s future works because God himself has worked it and he invited is into this future that already begun; this life of close fellows...

Send us Fan Mail We have embarked upon a little journey in one book of the bible. We are engaged in taking some time to hear what the Apostle John says in his first letter (1 John).  Our home text for 2023 comes from this little letter.   Let us love one another because love comes from God.   (1 John 4:7)  We all know that love is something every person longs for and needs to flourish in living th...

Send us Fan Mail We are beginning a little journey these next several weeks. We are openning up that little letter of 1 John from which our home text for 2023 comes.  Let us love each for love comes from God.      1 John 4:7 We have shortened this home text to ‘Let Love Live’. We are doing a week-by-week deep dive into this letter to hear what the Spirit says to each of us and us as a whole Body a...

Send us Fan Mail So many of us seem convinced that we will never amount to much and that whatever we do in life has to come from within ourselves because there is no one else calling, inviting, welcoming, offering a new thing and bigger thing to which we can move and flourish.  Enter Matthew’s little telling of the day he found mercy..... 

Send us Fan Mail it is easy to glory in the beauty of mother nature, in a great win, a beautiful person, a strong love, but is there really any significance, and 'glory' in our suffering? According to God, there is. 

Send us Fan Mail We all experience strong feelings, particularly when life is full of suffering. I guess it all depends on what God kind of God you have as to whether you could tell him everything, and even in the strongest words and highest emotions you have. The prophet Jeremiah does this and invites us to do the same to God of the Bible. There is joy in the prayer of sorrow.

Send us Fan Mail The Shepherd who is also the Lamb who never stops seeking the lost sheep, the black sheep or any other kind of sheep seeks you still. 

Send us Fan Mail If you have been unwanted or abandoned by anyone, this one is for you. there are no orphans in God's grace. 

Send us Fan Mail Often it is very hard to find a true centre to remain poised and balanced as life comes at us. Easter Day re-centres us again on the central event and person who gives us all the poise and balance we need.

Send us Fan Mail It can seem that God is not at work for our good when tragedy and injustice come at us. In the execution of the first ever martyr for the faith whose name was Stephen, we see that even there the Spirit is working to draw all people into the orbit of Jesus' grace and truth. Maybe God is atr work in your challenges as much as your wins.....

Send us Fan Mail Is absolutely everything forgivable or are there some things that are not? Has even God got limits on what he can forgive. A lot of people seems to believe that there are limits on their forgiveness... and God's. 

Send us Fan Mail There a few things that you feel compelled to do - pay that fine, pay your taxes, lose some weight, stop smoking, get organised...... But in God's grand plan to bring all people into his beautiful new creation, we are also compelled to speak and do his bidding. 

Send us Fan Mail It is so easy to have a very small and only human view of what a local church actually is and is meant to do. God helps us lift our eyes to see ourselves and our mission from his grand reality.

Send us Fan Mail Maybe it is good to not figure out what Christmas is meant to mean but to receive what Christmas does for you?

Send us Fan Mail The gifts he gives are the gifts we all really need. Enjoy the gifts and us them well!