the Vine with Chris Green

Does God still speak today? The testimony of Scripture is an overwhelming, "yes". But how can we hear Him speak? Today we look at Acts 13 and how we can cultivate a heart of listening by waiting on the Lord.

Every command of God is an invitation to trust and obey. You can resist. But if you trust Him, why would you? The gap between your faith and the life for which you were created is closed by your obedience to the Lord's command.

How can we tell when a new thing that replaces our good thing is actually a God thing? This morning we take a look at Acts 11 (as well as a story from John Wimber) to discover the answer to that question.

What about the “spiritual but not religious” among us? How does God view those who focus on being good, doing good, and believing in a higher power but who don’t make their home in Christianity? In the account of Cornelius we find that God sees them, hears them, and calls them to one thing…

When Saul set our for Damascus he was arguably the most violent opposer of the Way of Jesus. But on that road he encounters the risen Lord himself in a powerful way. This is for us yet another picture that God can and does break through in powerful ways in people's lives, in order that they might come to know Him.

Every person that comes to faith comes by way of a few crossroads. The second of three crossroads that we're looking at is the Crossroads of Truth. These crossroads seem to be especially marked by a combination of thoughts that just will not let us go and "coincidences" that aare truly divine appointments hiding in plain sight.

Every person that comes to faith comes by way of a few crossroads. The first of three crossroads that we're looking at is the Crossroads of Identity. At the this crossroads, we are confronted with the reality that we can't just add Jesus to our lives. He must become the very center of it.

In the first martyr of the church we see a shining example of what it means to endure in our faith. And in our journey of faith, we find that we aren't alone. We're surrounded by a great "cloud of witnesses".

In a fallen world where humanity has broken ties with our Maker, things will always moved toward disorder. Is there anything we can do about it? Today, our scripture shows us that there is, in fact, a way to undo the disorder that we encounter. It isn't through passivity, but action. It isn't through control, but service. Disorder is undone by servant leadership.

How are we to live for the sake of the Name when, even in a tolerant society, such a life can be deemed intolerable? Peter and the apostles paved the way for us and we can learn from their example.

In the aftermath of the healing of the lame man, Peter and John were imprisoned and brought before the religious council. They were fearful of the Name they spoke of and healed in. But one thing they could not deny the power they had seen. That powerful Name has not lost its power. Our prayer is that this world would see in us what that council saw in Peter and John.

Peter and John had walked with Jesus for years. This day the walked into the temple. The same temple that had been there all their lives. Same temple. Same time of day. Same Peter. Same John. Same gate. Same lame man. It was an everyday, ordinary kind of day. Except there was a new Spirit at work within them. That Spirit was leading them on an adventure into the life of the Kingdom of God.

The 3,000 people who responded to the gospel call in Acts 2 did not keep this gospel call at arms length. That would have been easier. It would have been easier to not have to be cut to the heart, to not get carried away, to not respond. But instead, these 3,000 internalized this gospel call and responded with their whole lives. It wasn't that they found a new set of religious activities. It wasn'...

Maybe if Peter hadn't walked with Jesus and instead grew up in 21st century, New England Protestantism, his call at the end of the gospel message would have been different. But he did walk with Jesus. He knew this was more than a new, pious perspective on how to achieve inner peace. This is reality. Jesus is the Son of God, crucified because of us, raised to again from the dead, seated at the righ...

In a day when churches have fallen into a type of "chronological snobbery" where the relevancy of such ancient practices as preaching are called into question, Peter's sermon, the first sermon of the church, reminds us what the soul of preaching ought always to be.

Now that we have a basic understanding of the identity and history of the Holy Spirit, what happened on the day of Pentecost there in the upper room? The key to understanding this lies in Genesis 11 and the story of the Tower of Babel. Pentecost was the reversal of Babel.  As we read we begin to understand: we still need Pentecost because we still have Babel.

"If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree." - Michael Crichton When we read the disciples' first encounter of the Holy Spirit in Act 2 we might be tempted to think that this is the first time the Spirit shows up. We would be mistaken.  Today on the podcast, Chris takes us through a brief history of the Holy Spirit to show His ac...

When they gathered together because of Jesus and devoted themselves to prayer, their eyes were no longer fixed on their differences. They didn’t feel they had the luxury of time in which to debate theological points. They knew Jesus had spoken, had told them that they would be witnesses to him, had commanded them to wait for the promise from the Father. So they did.  Uncommon, radical unity was no...

Renewal doesn't mean stepping back in time or trying to recreate the "good ol' days." Renewal is the discovery and radical recovery of first things. The book of Acts is the story of the "first things" of the church. Today we begin a journey of discovering those first things. Oddly enough, this journey doesn't begin by taking steps. It begins by waiting.