Grapevine Ministries
Messages from the bible to uplift and encourage those that need a word from the Lord, to strengthen their faith. Ps Phillip Barker is an itinerant pastor in Perth, Western Australia.
Grapevine Ministries
New Beginnings In Christ
Ready to trade resolutions for a real reset? We walk through a candid, hope-filled guide to starting again with God—grounded in Scripture, personal story, and seven clear gifts that come with saying yes to Jesus: a new relationship, new citizenship, new family, new purpose, new power, new destiny, and a new journey that lasts beyond the holiday glow.
We begin with the heart of identity: if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. From there, we unpack what actually changes—how reconciliation with the Father ends spiritual isolation, why the Holy Spirit’s presence is essential for everyday strength, and how a spiritual family keeps you from walking alone. Dual citizenship in the kingdom of God reframes loyalty and courage, helping you live faithfully in a world that often pulls the other way. Purpose becomes more than self-improvement; it becomes a life centred on Christ, sustained by power you do not have to manufacture.
You’ll hear practical encouragement on building a real relationship with God—through prayer, worship, Scripture, and consistent community—and an honest reminder that growth takes work. We explore destiny with both feet on the ground, asking what you are meant to do with Christ’s strength while keeping eternity in view. If you’re ready to draw a line in the sand and make today your fresh start, we offer a simple salvation prayer and an invitation to connect with a local church so you don’t walk this road alone.
If this helped you see your next step, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review so others can find it. Your new beginning can start today—what will you do first?
Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are in the world - Welcome to Grapevine Ministries.
Please feel free to check out my first publication, it is also available on Google and Amazon Books.
https://www.xlibris.com/en-au/search?query=Phillip+Barker
If you're listening to this, you've survived another Christmas. But I hope and I pray that you had the opportunity to share with somebody the true meaning of Christmas, because we know without a shadow of a doubt that he is the reason for the season. But in saying that, I want to move on to our next phase of our holiday sermons, and this is a step of a new beginning. As we approach 2026, a new year, but what does it really mean to many of us? We need to really focus on the opportunity for fresh starts, acknowledging that God offers this through faith after recognizing a need for change. Key themes include letting go of the past, embracing God's promise and plans, and finding purpose in a new chapter, supported by faith and supported by a new spiritual family. It can also draw parallels to biblical stories like Noah or the Israelites entering the Promised Land to illustrate transition for their journey. But in saying that, basically, if we don't know who we are, we'll never know how we ought to live or the true purpose of our existence. God's promise is true. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are gone and new things have come. 2 Corinthians 5 17. If you have given your life to Christ, you are a new creation. Whether you feel like it or not. So what does it mean? What really happens to us when we believe in Christ? Well, let me list just a few. I've got seven gifts God gives you when you commit your life to Christ. You have a new relationship. You have a relationship with your Heavenly Father, you have a relationship with the Holy Spirit, and you have a relationship that you can experience with other people. The first thing that happens when you give your lives to Christ is that God gives you this new relationship. Once we are separated from God because of our sin, and not just separated but alienated from Him, the Bible says that we are excluded without hope and without God in the world. That's Ephesians 2, 12. But if I put it another way, all right, we we live in this world, but we're not of this world. We are born into sin because of what Adam and Eve did in the garden. So whether we like it or not, um that's the reality of things, and that is why Jesus, as we spoke about over the last couple of weeks, he was born of a virgin, and he was born not of the seed of man, but of the seed of God, and that was the big difference. We also uh have a new citizenship. The second thing that God gives us when you commit your life to Christ is a new citizenship. Are you still a citizen of a particular country, but now you are also a citizen of the kingdom of God? As long as we are on earth, we possess dual citizenship. And some of us have three citizenships. Um if you are born and raised in another country, you come to Australia or you go to America or you go to England if you're not from those countries, you have the opportunity to take up citizenship with them, and that's when you recognize that as your home. The same thing is done with Christ. You know, once you're a citizen of the kingdom of God, as long as we live on the earth, we possess this dual citizenship status. On one hand, our own alliance is to our nation, and we are called to be good citizens, but we also good citizens of the kingdom of God. That invisible kingdom of which Christ is the head, our supreme loyalty is to him, and if someone demands we do wrong, we must obey God rather than men. Acts 5 29, and someday the Bible tells us this world's kingdom will become the kingdom of the Lord and of the Christ, and he will reign forever and ever. And in Revelation 11 15. See, you have the opportunity both in the natural and the spiritual to make choices, so having a new citizenship is one of those things. Um, being a you know, having a new relationship with him. But what about a new family? A new family is not only does God give us a new relationship with him and he makes us citizens of the kingdom, but he also gives us a family, the family of God. You aren't just related to God, you are now related to other believers. Everyone who truly believes in Jesus Christ is now your spiritual brother and your sister. This is one reason why you are never alone. If you are in Christ, you are part of God's family. I think at this time of the year, a lot of people do feel alone, and I think it's you know vitally important to other Christians, you know, that you find somebody within your congregation or your community that in the natural they are alone, and hopefully, you invited somebody to your Christmas Day events, someone who you don't normally invite, um, and you make them part of your family, your Christian family. Because you need to, the other thing you need to do, point number three, I'm talking about, is a new purpose. Some people are very focused, using all their energies to reach their goals. Others drift through life with little purpose or direction, living for the moment and never thinking about where they are and who they are headed towards. Most people probably live somewhere in between, but they all have this in common: they are living only for themselves and for their own happiness. But when it comes to Christ, God gives us a new purpose. Now we want to live for Christ and not just ourselves, because with this, living with purpose and living with other people that are Christ-like, you get a new power. One of the Bible's most comforting truths is that when we come to Christ, God Himself gives life and he makes the Holy Spirit come upon us and live within us. When you come to Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to live with you. God has given us a new purpose, but without a new power, we'll never be able to achieve it. Jesus promised in Acts 1.8, you will receive the power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. We weren't meant to live the Christian life in our own strength. God has provided His Spirit to help us. For me to get out of the wheelchair, I couldn't do it on my own strength alone. Because in the natural, my body had decayed and weakened to the extent where I wasn't able to stand up because of the time frame that I'd spent in the wheelchair. But through his strength and a vision of him working through me, I was able to stand because of the strength that he gave me. And you get a new destiny as well. A lot of people don't understand the true meaning of destiny, but yeah, another way of putting it is like it's a conversion, it means to change. The most radical change of all is when we come to Christ and God gives us a new destiny. What is your destiny? What are you what do you believe you are meant to do or what you are meant to achieve through Christ's strength? You can do all things through Christ who strengthened you. Now, I mean, a classic example, Ronald Reagan. A lot of you may have heard of him, younger people probably haven't. Ronald Reagan was what I call a spaghetti western actor on T on, you know, in the movies, in the picture theaters. He was a B-grade actor doing cowboy movies, right? But he had a desire to become the president of the United States, and you would think that as an actor, a guy who just pretends for a living would not be able to achieve the highest and most powerful um ruling position on the earth, which is president of the United States, but he achieved that because he knew what his destiny was. See, before you're born again, you're heading for hell. Now, as a born-again Christian, you're heading for heaven. Once we were bound for eternal separation from God, and now we live with him forever. Once we had no hope of eternal life, now we do. The Bible says in Romans 6 23, the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. See, this is another reason why you need to celebrate Christmas because being the birth of our Lord and Savior, and then having access to Him, you have created yourself as a new creation, a new Christian, a new person in Christ, and you have a new destiny, and then you need to realize that your destiny is going to bring you on a journey. So the next aspect of this is a new journey. When you come to Christ, God gives us a whole new life, a new relationship, a new relationship, a new citizenship, a new family, a new purpose, and a new power and a new destiny. But don't ever take lightly what Christ did for you on the cross, and don't ever take lightly what God has given you if you turned to Him in repentance and faith. But there isn't the end of your bounty, for God also gives us one final gift, a new journey, a whole new path to follow until the day He takes us to heaven. In other words, your decision for Christ isn't an end but a beginning, the beginning of a whole new life. We aren't only called to become Christians, we are also called to become a new Christian. The Christian's life is a journey, and this is the one that will take you the rest of your life. Now in saying that, let me put things into a different perspective when you look at this. And nobody comes to the Father except through him. You may be listening to this podcast, and you haven't yet made Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior. Or perhaps you've fallen off the rails and you've drifted away from him. And so now there's the opportunity to come back. Very shortly, I'll be putting a link onto my uh podcast bio and also onto my website, and I've just completed um my first book, which is uh just big been published this last week, and it will be available online very shortly. But in saying that, it talks about me as in even as a Christian, I was lost. I didn't have in relation to what I've been talking about, I didn't have that relationship with him, you know, it's like um being a boyfriend or a girlfriend or being a husband or being a wife. You don't just uh come together for the good bits of a relationship, and um, you know, like they say, everything that happens in the bedroom is realistically only 15% of your relationship. Now I know you know I'm I'm not an idiot or I'm not a you know hiding under a rock or anything. I know that a lot of people are in a you know a relationship which is not Christ-like, so they're not actually married, they'll be in a de facto relationship of some kind, you know, but that's for another time. But what I'm saying is that if you think what happens in your relationship is all circling around the bedroom, uh that relationship will die off because it's not enough to have one part of the whole picture. It's like you know, having a purpose, having a relationship, having a destiny, having a new family, a new citizenship, all of these things take work. Now, I don't know what the process is because me personally I've never done it, but if you want to become a citizen of another country, you don't just apply for it. You have to actually do something like, you know, what is your knowledge of that country and and and do you know their national anthem and things like that? I'm assuming I've never actually done it, but it's not just a matter of oh, I want to be a citizen and you sign on the dotted line. I think there's a little bit more to it than that. I should have done my research, but it's holiday time and time's limited and all that sort of stuff. But let me put it this way: anything that you want in your life, you need to work on. It doesn't just automatically happen. If you want a job, you need to have qualifications to get that job, you need to go to an interview, you need to sell yourself, and then you need to fulfill your work requirements as you presented yourself. In the same token, if you want to be in a relationship, whether it be with God, our Heavenly Father, or whether it be your partner, you have to work on it. I could tell you my wife's favorite colour, I can tell you my wife's favorite uh movies that she likes to watch, I can tell you the types of books she likes to read, I can actually tell you um what her favorite food is or her dessert. All of these things are important. Is she a person who likes flowers? Is she a person who likes gifts? You know, there's the five love languages, you know, gifts, uh general animation, touching, um I don't know the other two, okay? There's five of them, okay. But the thing is what basically what makes your partner tick. Okay, the same thing is said for good. God, what actually is it that God wants out of your relationship with you? It's not one way, it's not always, Lord, I want this, this, this, this, and this, and this, and you give nothing back. Praising and worshiping our Heavenly Father is something that you know is paramount in your relationship. Spending time with him in prayer, you don't say hypothetically become a born-again Christian, you go around telling everybody that you're a son or a daughter of the most high, and then do nothing else in that relationship. Then eventually you'll cry out to God because you need something, and he's gonna go, Who are you? Do I know you? Well, I know he won't do that because it says in his word that he'll never leave you nor forsake you. But the thing is, it's like everything else. You build a relationship. When I was in the wheelchair, the one thing I found that was missing in my life as a born-again believer was that I didn't have a very good relationship with my heavenly father, and I found out almost too late that I didn't have a good relationship with my earthly father, but praise God, I was given the opportunity to rectify that, and I had a very good relationship with my father, and I went on to have a very good relationship with my father-in-law, and I had a very good relationship with my heavenly father, and look, I don't know what type of father you've got from an earthly perspective. It could be a really good relationship or it could be a really bad one, or maybe your father has never been in your life for a variety of reasons. There are many, many circumstances, but the one thing that stands true, I'll tell you right now, without a shadow of a doubt, your heavenly father, if you create a relationship with him, he will never leave you and he will never forsake you. Because what you want to do from this very day, if this is the first of my podcasts you've been listening to, or you've been listening to them and haven't really taken that step, create a relationship with your Heavenly Father, make this your new beginning. You don't need to wait to um New Year's Eve and make a New Year's resolution. You can make a decision to have a relationship with God anytime you choose to, He is there waiting, and the angels will rejoice and be glad if you give your heart to the Lord. Just the last year to start with, right? If you look at it from a cast perspective, the rear vision mirror is a very small mirror, but it allows you to see what's behind you. Your windscreen is a very large window and it allows you to see what is in front of you. So what is behind you you cannot change, but what's to come, you can have an impact on what is the future of you and where you're going. You need to focus on the fact that today can be that new beginning for you, and if you haven't had the year that you have wanted to have, then now you can draw a line in the sand and you can change it. Is it to spend more time in prayer? Is it to spend more time in praise and worship? Is it to make it to not just a Sunday service but a men's ministry meeting or a women's ministry meeting? Is it time that you decided to uh volunteer your services at your local church, give back to the community, give back to the church, you know, and make a purposeful statement. But if you haven't got a relationship with God, there is a simple prayer that you can do that will make all the difference. And the reason I've included this is because I know that there are many people that listen to um podcasts because they're lost and they're searching for something, you know, and sometimes you know it is right in front of you and you yet haven't seen it. So if you go to Romans 9, if you haven't got a Bible, I will read it to you. Romans 9, 9 and 10. Uh, here we go. No, I'm sorry, my mistake. It's Romans 10. Sorry.
SPEAKER_01:Um let me try that again.
SPEAKER_00:Um my Bible's not playing the game with me at the moment. I've started doing something new uh in my life as well, and uh that is not using um that is not using a computer or a um you know my phone. I'm actually going to, yeah, here we go. Romans 10, 9 and 10. So now I'm using a Bible with physical pages. It it makes you better, and I think it challenges people. So um that's what I'm doing. So I'm not an expert on where things are, but that's what happens when you re read the word and stay in it. Now, Romans 10, 9 and 10 says this if you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved, for it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. I think it's um it's always important to read the scriptures, but there is a simple way of doing this, all right. All you have to do is say, you know, this is a prayer to lead you in the prayer of salvation. If you don't need it, that's fine, that's great. Listen to the podcast again and see if there's something in your Christian walk that you need to change. But if not, this is for you, listeners out there that have, you know, and you may be at a different church, a different type of fellowship, um, that is not really what we call a word of faith church. Okay. Um, not saying that that church is wrong in any way, shape, or form. If they're teaching from the Bible, anywhere from Genesis to Revelation, that is what you need. But in saying that, being in a Christian environment and going to church every Sunday does not necessarily mean that you are a born-again Christian. You read that scripture there, and it makes it very, very clear what the purpose is for you. So you need to declare with your mouth that Jesus Christ is the Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved. For with your heart that you believe you are justified, and with your mouth that you profess your faith, you are saved. And putting it simply, it's just like this if you just say this prayer and go to your local church and let them know that you've said this prayer and you want to find out more about you know having a relationship with your Heavenly Father. Say, dear, dear Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name, I confess that I am a sinner. I believe that uh Jesus Christ, you know, was born, lived on this earth, and died on the cross, and I believe in my heart that Jesus died for me, and I confess this day that I will follow him all the days of my life, and I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. So if you've said that prayer for the very first time, or like I said, if you've said it before and you've um backslidden a little bit, then that's fine. There's no judgment in anything. I believe that all people on this face of this earth, if they have a belief and a faith in our Heavenly Father, it doesn't matter where they go, where they fellowship, or what they do. And some you may be in a situation where I was before and I couldn't get to church, but I can listen to podcasts, I can watch it online, and I can read the Bible and ask someone else to explain it to me, which is what I did, and that's how I got born again for the very first time. Maybe later in uh 2026 I'll explain about how I come to have a relationship with my Heavenly Father, you know, back um 25, 29 years ago. All right, that's it for today. Uh, and uh I'll speak to you in the new year. Be blessed, stay safe, and make good decisions. God bless you, and bye for now.
