The Vine Church Podcast

Our elders Tim, Taz & Susanna opened up and shared what God has been stirring in their hearts for this season.  Real, honest, and full of hope. From going deeper with the Holy Spirit to stepping out in church planting — we’re sailing into uncharted waters together. What is the Holy Spirit speaking to you right now?

Ps. Andrew then closed our Romans 8 series off with “More Than Conquerors,” we landed right where Paul wanted us all along: the heartbeat of the entire chapter. Nothing — not death, not life, not angels or demons, not the present or the future, not any power, not anything else in all creation — will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38-39). No conde...

In all things — even your deepest pain — God is working for your good. Romans 8:28-30 unpacked: suffering isn’t wasted when it’s shaping you to look more like Jesus

Pastor Andrew talks about the honest reality that suffering touches every one of our lives in Part 1 of “A Re-Orientation of Suffering” from our Romans 8 series. None of us are strangers to pain or seasons that weigh heavy on our hearts. Yet right in the midst of it, Jesus is not distant — He entered our suffering fully. And because He did, our present struggles do not have the final word. A far g...

What is the difference between living according to the flesh versus the Spirit? What shapes your identity the most? And how does your identity impact how you live?

What is the difference between rooted in self and rooted in Jesus – how is this reflected in our lives? How do you struggle with the tension of the two roots?

When we consider the state of our world right now, when we see the increase just in the past year of unjust wars, violence against the innocent, economic inequality, systemic racism, violence against women, the abuse of global power, we can’t help but find a unified cry amongst us -  who will roll away the stone for us?  

If you were to describe the Holy Spirit in one sentence, what would you say? How is your relationship with the Holy Spirit like?

What is your understanding of the kingdom of heaven? How does your understanding of the kingdom of heaven impact how you live?

If Jesus was to show up in your temple today, would there be any tables He would need to overturn?”

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...

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, resp...

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...

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.