The Vine Church OC

Pastor Michael and others in the church have been sensing the moving of God's Spirit, inviting us to prepare for him to show up in new ways with us. He explored the parable of the ten virgins; and Maddie Hansen, Marsha Grim, and Carey Cruz all shared pieces of their experience with what God has been doing in their hearts as well.

This week, we looked at the life of Jacob and the ways God pursued him with his love throughout his life. For many years, Jacob couldn't receive it, and spent all his time manipulating the people in his life to get what he thought he needed. Jacob is a "scoundrel", completely undeserving of this love - and not even looking for it! - but God comes to him with his completely unconditional love anyway. Jacob awakens to the reality of God with him in a dream, and the invitation for us, too, is to awaken to the reality of God's love for us.

Jesus says, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink." This week, we pivoted in our series about God's love, to look now at our response to this love. It's not enough to read about God's love, or even to affirm it is true; we need to actually receive his love - to drink it in. If we're thirsty, all we need to do is ask. Jesus meets us right where we are.

Ed Piorek, author and longtime Vineyard pastor, joined us this week to talk about the Father's love that finds us in our weakness. He looked at the movements in the text about Jesus' baptism - seeing Jesus standing in a place of weakness, and the Father meeting him in that with his love. He sees this as a template for our lives, too - and the final stage is moving out into the world with compassion. The Love that finds you becomes the Love that sends you out.

What we need more than anything else is God's love - it is the foundation, and without it, everything else falls apart. But we have to begin with an awareness of where we are in this journey, so Pastor Michael Swanson asked two questions: "When you think about God, what comes to mind?" and "When you think about God thinking about YOU, what do you assume he feels?". Continuing to spend time attending to God's love for us, we looked this week at the revolutionary nature of God's love - that it is never based on our performance. God loves you, and you can't earn (or un-earn) it.

Continuing our Fall Series: All You Need Is Love, Pastor Michael talked about the assurance we have that NOTHING can separate us from God's love. Are you ever tempted to doubt God's love for you? In this passage in Romans (and elsewhere), Paul is wanting us to have assurance that no matter what happens in life, God's love will always be with us and for us. But if this truth is really going to anchor and transform us, we can't leave this at the level of abstract truth - we have to find a way for this truth to be deeply rooted in our hearts.

Pastor Michael continued our fall series, All You Need Is Love, by looking at Ephesians 3:14-21, where Paul reveals his passionate prayer for the believers at Ephesus: That they would know how long and high and wide and deep God's love is. God wants us not to just know about this love, but to truly experience it - it's what we need more than anything else.

We looked at the story of Hagar this week, and how she came to name God as the One Who Sees her. We talked about how people long to be seen, and Pastor Michael shared vulnerably about his own experience with feeling unseen by God, and how God met him in that moment.

In this third week of our Vision Series, our friends Denis and Carey Cruz shared with us God's heart for belonging. Without any guilting, they invited us to consider how we were made to live in community and what that may look like for each of us in this season. Recognizing that this is not always easy, and involves very real risk, they still pressed in to invite us to offer ourselves and our gifts in the context of real-life community.

Last week in our Vision Series, Pastor Michael spoke about how we are Called to Intimacy with Christ. This week, he talked about how we are also Called to Follow him as apprentices. We aren't meant to simply know ABOUT God, or know the Scriptures well, but we are supposed to JOIN him in his work of bringing the life of the kingdom of heaven, now, on earth.