Spiritcode

THE SOWER AND THE SEED  Today I would like to share the parable of the Sower and the seed. Matthew 13:3 Jesus told the people many things in parables, saying, ‘A Sower went out to sow. While he sowed, some seeds fell beside the roadway, and the birds came and devoured them. But other seeds fell on rocky ground where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up because they did not h...

GO AND SIN NO MORE - (The power of Grace over sin) Today we will be talking about sin, and how Jesus told a person to ‘go and sin no more’. How and why can you say that to someone?   The answer goes back to how and when humanity lost its innocence when sin first began and how humanity can regain its innocence through the forgiveness and mercy of God through Jesus. I will discuss the fuller meaning...

GRACE AND THE ZADOK PRIESTS  Ezekiel was a unique prophet in that he was not only a major prophet, but he was a priest after the line of Zadok who descended from the high priest Aaron. Zadok also served as a high priest during the time of King David.  The ministry of the prophet/priest Ezekiel spanned two eras of God’s dealings with Israel. The first was the era of Israel’s falling away from God w...

GOD’S GRACE IN A DARK WORLD 1Corinthians 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am  When Paul made that statement, he knew that what he had become through God’s grace was God’s doing, and not his doing. He also said it was not him doing the work of God, but it was the grace of Jesus working with him. That grace was God’s activity upon his soul that empowered him to respond to God in love and th...

FINDING GRACE TO HELP Hebrews 4:16 Let us then draw near with confidence (parresia) to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help (boētheia) in time of need (eukairos). I believe that Scripture summarises the experience of the previous account of the Mountain of Transfiguration where I outlined the three stages of personal transformation (transfiguration). These stages...

DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAINTOP  Mark 9:2 Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him up onto a mountaintop to pray. And as he was praying, he was transfigured before them, his face began to shine, and his clothes became dazzling white and blazed with light. Then two men appeared and began talking with him—Moses and Elijah! They were splendid in appearance, glorious to see; and they were speaking of his...

IN GODS WILL IN HIS TIME Ephesians 5:15 ‘See then that you walk not irresponsibly but diligently and wisely, redeeming the time, because we live in times of much corruption. Therefore, do not be thoughtless, but seek to understand what the will of the Lord is. (NKJ) The word used for ‘will of The Lord’ is thelema - God’s heart to bless us by bringing us into his will for our life.  The word for re...

BEING IN GODS WILL  Romans 12:2 do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove (dokimaz?? - test, discern, examine) what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Today I will be discussing what it means to discern and test what is the good will of God, the acceptable will of God and the perfect will of God in our lives.  These are...

THE EARLY CHURCH The members of the early church still saw themselves as belonging to the Jewish religion even though they now had a revelation of the life of Jesus within them through the work of the Holy Spirit. They went to the synagogue every Saturday like good churchgoers, but they could not celebrate their newness of life in the Spirit together in the formal structure and liturgy of the syna...

WAS BLIND BUT NOW I SEE When Jesus was ministering in Galilee, he healed three blind men.  One man was blind Bartimaeus  Mark 10:46 And so they reached Jericho. Later, as they left town, a great crowd was following. Now it happened that a blind beggar named Bartimaeus was sitting beside the road as Jesus was going by. When Bartimaeus heard that Jesus from Nazareth was near, he began to shout out,...

WISDOM FROM THE FATHER notes God would walk with Adam and Eve in a beautiful garden every day and he would tell them about the wonderful creation that he had created for them. In this way he filled their hearts with knowledge about who he was and about who they were, in a perfect relationship with himself and with one another. And he told them how much they were loved. He didn’t have to teach them...

SECRET PRAYER    Much of what Jesus taught his disciples had to do with being sincere and real. They had grown up under the influence of an external Jewish religion where there was an outward show of pretence in the prancing around of their religious observances, from giving to fasting and praying. Jesus wanted to teach them to become real in the inner faithfulness of their heart towards God, and...

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...