The Vine is a dynamic community of faith called to build the family of God, transforming lives, cities and societies by the intimate presence of Jesus Christ.
In giving us this season of ‘uncharted' God gave us an important picture, one that remains even more relevant for us today. It was a picture of a sailing ship or a sailing vessel, one that has set off from safe harbour and headed out into the vast ocean in search of new lands and new discoveries. We are like this ship, sailing out into places where we no longer have a map or chart to help us, one where we must trust our captain to guide us but excited for what we are about to discover.
The first ‘so-what' about this passage is that it tells us something quite beautiful about Jesus. We see this beautiful, gentle compassion in Jesus that he leads the man by the hand outside the village – not to make a spectacle of him or for him to get him caught up in the accusations against Jesus; this is not a healing show. The man needs to see, and Jesus is going to do it gently, quietly, respectfully; and Jesus treats us with that same respect.
I want to speak today about the idea of ‘re-orientation' and in particular a re-orientated view of God's power in our lives. In these verses in Daniel notice the power of control King Nebuchadnezzar is deploying not just on the new Jewish remnant in his midst but on all the people in his empire. He creates this massive statue, an idol of the Babylonian God, and calls people to bow down to it – to worship it – with the punishment for not doing so being death.
What's happening in this verse is in his cry out God has told him to seek my face. Catch that, a conversation, God hears and God responds. I wonder how many times we don't get a response to God because we bring him polished church jargon and not cry out? And is vulnerability the pathway to drawing close to God? To seek his face is to seek his countenance
We wait for and pursue the things we value. Does the value we carry in our hearts for God's presence match David's from this verse? What are you willing to wait for? God calls on us to wait on him. Do we value God enough to wait? In Week one Andrew said waiting is not passive it is active.
How do we address and anxiety and fear that so often accompanies times of waiting in our lives? David offers us two ways that have worked for him. The first is found in verse 2. He says: “When evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh, my adversaries and my enemies, they stumbled and fell.”
When we wait for an extended period of time in our Christian faith we usually experience a progression of emotion, and my journey in waiting in adoption drew all of these out for me. At the first stage we experience confusion and we wonder why we are in the situation we are in, why God doesn't seem to act
The Jesus of our own making, the Messiah who looks and feels like the one we need him to look and feel like. And when Jesus comes along and reveals to us something about his character or his nature or his purposes or his desires that we had not previously encountered or accepted or made room for in our hearts,
What lies beneath this famous Christmas story is one of the most common and universal human struggles all of us potentially wrestle with on a daily basis. Beyond the shame and stigma Mary's pregnancy brought, what other reasons do you think caused the entire town of Bethlehem to shun them completely?
If we give in to doubt, it can drive a wedge between us and God. When doubt God's love for us, we no longer want to draw near to him. When we doubt God's plans and purposes for us, we no longer trust him.
A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenceless against either the experience of tragedy or the questions of sceptice.
One of the most public ways you will reveal the gospel to the world around you will be in how you steward the resources you have in your life. Whether it might be your time, your finances, your gifts, your energy – what you do with what you have been given will always reveal the values and the commitments you hold most dear.
“Over these years, as the internet has developed and our social media platforms have gotten increasingly sophisticated, the power and ability we have to be a totally different person behind a screen and keyboard has only increased, this has had a terrible impact on our humanity and our relationships.
Personal gain and death to self are terrible mixers. And it is a tension – because on the one side surely there is nothing inherently wrong with a desire to achieve in life, to do something good in the world, to work hard and be successful and make something of your life.
The first thing that stands out that we must see is that before Paul tells us what to do, he tells us what NOT to do. You know there is a deep wisdom in omission. So many of us, in so many areas of our lives, want to make it better and we think the best way to do this is to add this and add that. I'd say what we add is just as important as what we leave omit.
The church there was deeply imbedded in the very capital and center of the power structure of the whole of the Greco-Roman Empire. The whole city was a demonstration and declaration of Roman authority, power and dominance.
Today we will look at our work and faith from a different perspective, on how our faith shape us to approach and do our actual work.
We are clearly living in a time that for many of us is unprecedented when it comes to turmoil, change, pressure and impact. And I think for all of us as Christians, this kind of time we are living in asks of us a central and significant question – what should we do as Christians when the world has gone crazy?
Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.
The tongue can create a reality in which the worst of our human choices become true.
Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
God has designed it that in order for humans totruly flourish we must operate out of a place of rest and not into a place of rest.
For the last few weeks we have been unpacking what Justice is. We previously mentioned four key relationships: Us with God, Us with Ourselves, Us with Others, and Us with Creation. Today we will focus primarily on Us with Others and in particular with Branches of Hope.
You cannot call yourself a Christian and remain distant to the injustice in society around you. We must join Jesus in the work of restoring shalom and flourishing to the society in which we are planted in.
If you want to be more like Jesus, you are invited to be more just.
"If we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." (Galatians 5:25)
The gifts and fruit are given to us so that the entire body of Christ can come together and say, "Praise the Lord!"
Both the external manifestations of the Spirit and the internal transformation by the Spirit are essential for each one of us here at the Vine.
Our panel members explored key themes they feel are important for us as a church, especially the idea of worshipping in Spirit and in Truth, based on John 4:19-24
Our discipleship journey with Christ is enriched and matured as we accept and invest our lives into both realities: God constantly and faithfully transforms us in our private lives as much as He guides and forms us into His Church.
Every single human being has a native heart language that is hardwired into their soul through being made in the image of God. It is the heart language of the Spirit of God. The Spirit changes us by communicating with us.
The Holy Spirit in a sense does from the inside what Christ would do from the outside- teach, convict, remind, comfort and guide.
I remember the very first time I ever encountered the spirit. On one Sunday my father responded to the altar call at the end of the service and as a four year, old I distinctly remember the pastor laying his hands on my Dad and then seeing my Dad fall over on, to the floor and then lie there really still as if he were dead
God's liberation is not a half liberation, reserved for only the special few. It is a liberation for all people and all nations, for anyone who trusts in Him.
The sprinkled blood of Jesus speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
For those of us who believe in Jesus, we have been told, instructed, mandated, commanded to tell and teach people about Jesus.
Success in God's kingdom is not defined by the abundance of achievement but the faithfulness of obedience.
When things appear one way, know that God isn't calling us to follow appearance. Uncharted is an invitation to lean not on our own understanding but to lean on Him.
Persecution is simply the clash between two irreconcilable value-systems, that of the word of God and his Spirit of love, and world of the flesh and its spirit of greed.
It's not hard to see that our thinking patterns have a significant effect on our beliefs and behaviors. This is why with this vision the Lord has set before us, to embrace the uncharted, to go forth into territory that we have never been before, we're going to have to be open minded to change the way we think and let the Holy Spirit challenge us in our beliefs and behaviours
If there was ever an uncharted season for a church, surely it was at that moment when Jesus in his resurrection gathers the 11 of them and gives them a call to action with the Great Commission.
God is calling us into a season where we will be in uncharted territory, uncharted waters.
God knows you need support to keep your faith in Him strong when things get hard. He knows you need to be emboldened to withstand obstacles before you. We can often find ourselves out here looking for the right miracle, trying to read the right passage and get the right information, and pray the prayers while all along God is saying you need the right people.
In a time of battle, someone else's clothes will become a burden you have to carry rather than a weapon you can use.
As a people, we very much make choices on things by their outward appearance. But if we are to truly follow God with our lives, then we must learn to see things from His perspective.
Our God is a God of movement, and so his church must also be a church of movement. And so as we step into a new year, into 2025 with all the deep and entrenched challenges we see around us in the world today, and with whatever real and overwhelming challenges we might be facing personally, we cannot step into this new year in a posture of retreat.
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