Spirited Word

Send a text 08/03/2026 There are four songs about this ‘Servant’ in Isaiah. We are in one of them in Chapter 53. Today's verses are pure gold for the Christian. They are like a golden neon sign beaming out a message of hope when we are at our very worst and when we are trying to be at our very best. Luther named these verses as describing something central, something foundational to the whole bible and to our whole life. He called this ‘the wonderful exchange’ where the ‘Servant’ takes our sin and gives us his peace; where the Servant takes our disease and gives us his healing. Trouble is, we find it very hard to allow him to do this! To allow the Servant Jesus to take your sin you need to know you are dead in it. To allow him to take your disease, you need to know you are sick unto death and need him to give you his gifts. I am praying that you hear the truth about your disease and the gift of his healing; the truth of your idol making heart and the gift of his heart of love for you. Pastor Adrian

Send a text 01/03/2026 We are hearing the Prophet Isaiah as we hear Jesus go to that cross this Lent. Issiah is often called the ‘Fifth Gospel’ since the gospel writers draw so deeply from his poetic, colourful words about the Servant, whom they knew to be Jesus of Nazareth. We are seeking some depth and colour and new insight into the Jesus we already know by hearing the Prophet who foresaw his world-changing work seven hundred years before Jesus appeared. Isaiah’s ‘Servant’ is God’s solution to the age-old problem of God loving his people and his people not able to love him back. God wants to keep his life-long covenant of love with his people alive, but his people have a long history of being incapable of responding with love and trust in his covenant promises of new life for all of life and beyond. God will send his Servant as his new king of a whole new kingdom, a whole new creation. But he will be different. The character of his kingship will be suffering. He will be named the Suffering Servant. His suffering and rejection will be a sacrifice for all those who have rejected him. This ‘Servant will be the king most people don’t want. He will look as weak as a gum sapling growing in the hot summer sun. But that little shoot is tough. It pops up in unexpected places and outlast the toughest conditions. Ponder the Servant in all his seeming weakness. His weakness is our life and hope. Pastor Adrian Kitson

Send a text  22/02/2026 We welcome Pastor Mark Schultz from LCANZ International Mission today. Pastor Mark and I worked together in the fair city of Auckland, New Zealand, some 25 years ago and have been friends ever since. He spent two decades forging a different way for Lutherans to be church in mission in the vast city of Sydney, serving at Lifeway Lutheran Church in Epping and other sites. Pastor Mark will be preaching God’s Word for us and sharing where we are headed.  Diagnostic tools are found on computers and used by mechanics, health professionals, teachers, coaches, and employers. Their purpose is to determine a fault, exclude an illness, gain insight, highlight vulnerabilities, identify causes, aid in self-understanding, monitor situations, restore to original condition, promote well-being, and improve life. They are gifts for our journey.  In our discipleship walk, there is a diagnostic tool we all have at hand that identifies emptiness, exposes vulnerabilities, highlights faults, and gives insight into those deep places of the soul that need restoration so we can experience the new thing God is doing.  More than simply providing diagnostics, it also shows us the solution that propels us forward to fulfil God’s plan, purpose, and mission in the world.  We hope you can join us in God’s workshop and discover the blessing of this diagnostic discipleship tool. We look forward to sharing with you and the people of St Petri.  Pastor Mark Schultz 

Send a text It is Transfiguration Day again. It marks the beginning of the Lenten season now close. There is much in Matthew’s telling of the extraordinary events experienced by some rather overwhelmed disciples. One thing I notice this time around that it is a day of vision. Peter, James and John are privy to a moment of expanded magnificent vision of how things really are when God pull back the curtain on our very limited view of our lives – even just for one stunning moment. The vison given is about who we are and what we are here for. The vision is for Christians of all time as it was for just those three and even for Jesus himself. He and they would need this vision of past, present and future love and life in God. They are about to go down that hill to a dark Jerusalem. They will need every memory of this fear and wonder and joy they got to experience before all the intense, hard experienced coming their way. Vision does that for you. It tells you are God’s loved man or woman. It shows you that you are never alone. But in fact, part of a large global timeless family and it points you to task. And the only way to receive this vision of light and new light for any darkness is via listening – listening to the Son; the crucified, risen and ruling Son. I pray you can listen to him today and regain that vision for who you are and what you are here for as you live this journey of light no matter how dark things get. Pastor Adrian

Send a text 08/02/2026 Big questions come along in life. Things happen, things change, transitions come and with them, questions. Questions like: • What kind of person do you want me to be, God? • What kind of things do you want me to do, God? • What does God want my heart and life and directions to be centred on or shaped by the most? • How do I know that what I am living is God-pleasing, and right and true? God’s people were asking these kind of questions after they finally begun to recover their nation, their city, their temple and the whole way of life after the return from Exile. They seemed to want to factor the Lord into their new life and thought they were doing all the right things he required as they attended to all the expectations of temple worship. Problem was, they were only scratching the surface of things. They were outwardly observing religious things while daily doing damage by doing unjust things. They wanted a bigger life and yet, they did not seem to be able to see what the Lord means by a big life and how he provides that life. We pray you receive God’s word today as both a challenge but also for the purpose of enabling you to live his big life where he has placed you. Pastor Adrian

Send us a text 2026-02-01 As Epiphany season draws to a close, we hear of the first happening post-birth even in Jesus’ young life – the day he was presented to the priests at the Jerusalem temple, in accordance with the requirements of God’s Law in the Old Testament. The day is often named ‘The presentation of Jesus’, for obvious reasons. But there is more than a simple ‘presentation’ going on. It is actually quite a big moment that says a lot about who Jesus is and what he will bring to the world. The old man Simeon’s words are key. We know these words in song – ‘The Song of Simeon’ which has been sung by millions in liturgy and prayer for millennia. Simeon takes this baby in his arms and speaks with prophetic voice and a deep peace. 29 ‘… Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. 30 For my eyes have seen your salvation, 31 which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.’ (Luke 2: 29-32) Praying that Simeon’s song is your song today – a song of deep peace in this boy for your living, your struggle, your challenges, and even your dying. Take the baby today! Pastor Adrian

Send us a text

Send us a text

Send us a text

Send us a text

Send us a text God is in the Manger – light is here in our darkness, hope is here in any despair, joy is here in all circumstances.  Pastor Adrian Kitson

Send us a text Sunday 28th Dec This Advent and Christmas we have been hearing two voices shedding different light on the stunning reality that Christians hold in their hearts – God is in the Manger. Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflects on this good news of which Isaiah speaks hundreds of years before it came to be. They are the voices. Isaiah is the speaker of God’s truth long before it comes to be and Bonhoeffer is a Christian in extreme circumstances in which he would eventually lose his life for his faith in WWII. He writes from Tegel prison in Berlin in 1943-44. In a Nazi military prison cell with no presents to give, no Christmas turkey to eat, and no gathering of faith in which to participate, Bonhoeffer likens the whole Christian life to the season of Advent – a life of waiting with alertness and trust in the coming promises of God. That gift of Jesus – Saviour – God in that manger is the only thing that counts. Isaiah’s words speak of all those promises in grand style – water in the desert, justice for the poor, celebration in the land, no more crying anymore… The promises are more real than ever now that God has delivered himself into our human hands and cleanses our dirty hands of sin and guilt and shame once and for all. We pray that this God in the manger gives you what Isaiah foretold and Bonhoeffer clung to – hope – hope in our troubled families, relationships, loneliness, grief, marriages, workplaces and wide world. God is in the Manger – light is here in our darkness, hope is here in any despair, joy is here in all circumstances. Merry Christmas and happy New Year! Pastor Adrian Kitson

Send us a text God is in the Manger – light is here in our darkness, hope is here in any despair, joy is here in all circumstances. Pastor Adrian Kitson

Send us a text God is in the Manger – light is here in our darkness, hope is here in any despair, joy is here in all circumstances.  Pastor Adrian Kitson

Send us a text This Advent and Christmas we have been hearing two voices shedding different light on the stunning reality that Christians hold in their hearts – God is in the Manger. Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflects on this good news of which Isaiah speaks hundreds of years before it came to be. They are the voices. Isaiah is the speaker of God’s truth long before it comes to be and Bonhoeffer is a Christian in extreme circumstances in which he would eventually lose his life for his faith in WWII. He writes from Tegel prison in Berlin in 1943-44. In a Nazi military prison cell with no presents to give, no Christmas turkey to eat, and no gathering of faith in which to participate, Bonhoeffer likens the whole Christian life to the season of Advent – a life of waiting with alertness and trust in the coming promises of God. That gift of Jesus – Saviour – God in that manger is the only thing that counts. Isaiah’s words speak of all those promises in grand style – water in the desert, justice for the poor, celebration in the land, no more crying anymore… The promises are more real than ever now that God has delivered himself into our human hands and cleanses our dirty hands of sin and guilt and shame once and for all. We pray that this God in the manger gives you what Isaiah foretold and Bonhoeffer clung to – hope – hope in our troubled families, relationships, loneliness, grief, marriages, work-places and wide world. God is in the Manger – light is here in our darkness, hope is here in any despair, joy is here in all circumstances. Merry Christmas and happy New Year! - Pastor Adrian

Send us a text We are hearing two voices to hopefully see and hear God speaking in a way that helps us receive the glory and splendour of what he did in being in that manger. Isaiah breaks into a glorious and splendid, good news word this morning. In his words that paint many pictures, he will try and break through our normal Christmas expectations to show us the glory and splendour of Jesus. Like the sun rising for another day, we shall know that in Jesus, we are OK and will be OK, no matter what happens around us. God’s people really needed to hear these words when they were first spoken seven hundred years before John the Baptist and Jesus appeared. Their good life was completely destroyed. Home lost, community de-constrcuted, nation taken away and under the thumb of a neighbouring super-power. Why? Human deafness, blindness, lack of speech concerning the loyalty, power and love of the Lord. Isaiah regularly hits the people with this hard truth. And then a shaft of light that outshines fear and hopelessness and pride. That is what we shall know today – hope in our despair and for our pride. May you watch and wait for this hope in where you are facing. Pastor Adrian Kitson

Send us a text We are hearing two voices to help us see something new in this God in the manger this Christmas. We are hearing the prophet Isaiah speak of this world-shifting event of “The Servant” arriving to serve the world in love some seven hundred years prior to it happening. We are hearing a Lutheran pastor and eventual martyr under national Socialist regime in WWII speak from his two Advents and Christmases in Tegel prison, Berlin, in 1943 and 44. Today we hear that God is mysterious. Isaiah speaks of wonderful and mysterious images that try and describe just how world-changing and heart-changing this Christmas event really is. Bonhoeffer speaks of the resistance we have to how God operates. He refuses to be boiled down to just what we can get out of him or how we can figure things out. He works in places that defy our logic and are beyond our ability to understand everything. And yet, he has appeared in that manger, and we have been changed by this God in the manger. The Advent call goes out. John the Baptist calls from his wilderness. Get serious. Take the time. Stop simply getting from God or having to figure it all out. God in the manger is here. Pastor Adrian

Send us a text How do we cope with waiting? This week we hear that there is great value in our waiting. It is in waiting that we hear the invitation to let this Jesus in the manger into our lives. Will we let him into our various questions and troubles and needs? If we can and when we do, we can find the joy in believing in Jesus again. Pastor Adrian

Send us a text As the year’s end comes up you might find yourself beginning to think over your year. How has the year gone? How did I do when it comes to our plans, retirement, goals we set, things we did and if we are doing paid work - how is my work going? Paul speaks into this area of our life in Christ. He speaks of work today. There seems to have been a bit of a ‘work’ problem in the Christian community in Thessalonica. It does not seem to be an unemployment problem, but a heart problem when it comes to work that was available. For various reasons, a significant number of people in the church were refusing to engage in honest work. As a result, there was trouble in the church. They were doing ‘work’ but very unruly and unhelpful work – ‘the work of busybodies”. Paul raises up God’s gift of work in an attempt to help people see its high value and its good so that they neither under-work or over-work, but simply enjoy work because it is God’s design and gift for us who benefit from all the work God has done and is still doing for his world, of which we are part. Praying you find purpose and joy in what you are doing at the moment as you get a ‘bigger picture’ of your plans, your goals, your hopes and your work. Pastor Adrian

Send us a text We come to the Last Sunday of the church year before we switch to that season of waiting and watching for the celebration of the coming of the Saviour. We hear one of those parables Jesus tells to address a particular issue. In this case, it is the issue of how we Christians deal with the end of the world as we know it – the day that all the world and all the church will finally be fulfilled; or completed. In other words, ‘the end of the world’. Some around Jesus are thinking that this is it. They are on the way to the city. Things are getting hot in the kitchen. People are challenging Jesus. Jesus is speaking about suffering and dying and rising. Jesus is challenging some. Some don’t like that. Some love it. Could this be it? I have forgotten how many times I have heard so many people say ‘the world must be coming to an end’ and ‘Jesus must be coming back soon’. We do observe the world in all its trouble, suffering and lack of love and truth and we wonder... What does the ending do to our living? How do Christians live knowing there is an ending? Praying you find great comfort in Jesus’ word today and a reason to keep going until the day he completes everything. Pastor Adrian