Vineyard Boise

Malice sounds like an old word, the kind that surely doesn't apply to you. Then you hear it defined as ill will, an actual desire to see someone suffer, and it rings a bell. Peter doesn't let us off easy on this one. In 1 Peter 2, he calls us to trade that appetite for something else: the plain goodness of God. From there, the message turns to Jesus as the cornerstone, the foundation a whole new structure gets built on. He's not a puzzle piece you add to your life. Once you weren't a people. Now you are.

The Thai cave rescue is the kind of story you can't stop thinking about. Thirteen people trapped two and a half miles underground, water rising, and then — on day ten — two divers surface in chamber nine and find them alive. They're found. But they're not home yet. Promise, presence, provision — and still a treacherous way out ahead. That space between being found and being brought all the way home is where Peter writes from in 1 Peter 1, and it's where most of us are living. Salvation has broken into our lives. The rescue isn't finished yet. So what do we actually do in the in-between? This message draws on four things Peter wants his readers to hold in conscious awareness — not just truths we've heard before, but things that, when we keep them in front of us, actually shape how we love, live, and wait.

A nine-year-old's prayer opened Family Sunday—and what she asked for shaped the direction of everything that followed. She prayed for open hearts. For the Holy Spirit to have the place He deserves. For chains to break. Then Pastor Brent opened 1 Peter 1 and built the case for something Peter calls a living hope—the kind that holds even when the world around you looks uncertain or wrong. This first teaching in our series on 1 Peter traces an ancient rescue plan from its earliest whisper in Genesis, through centuries of prophecy, to what Peter calls the most miraculous thing even the angels wonder at. He was writing to people who felt like exiles. Turns out, so are we.

Peter wrote this letter from Rome — which he called Babylon — to scattered believers living under real pressure. But before we get into the letter, we need to understand the man who wrote it. This week we looked at four defining moments in Peter's life: his calling, his crash, his restoration, and his empowering by the Holy Spirit. And on Pentecost Sunday, of all days, it felt like the right place to begin — because the same Spirit that turned a fisherman hiding by a fire into someone who preached boldly to thousands is still at work in us.

Most people come to 1 Thessalonians for the end times content — the trumpet, the clouds, the return of Jesus. Paul gets there. But before he does, he gives the church a plain, unglamorous list of how to actually live while they wait: avoid sexual immorality, love each other, lead a quiet life, mind your own business, work hard. The goal isn't to look more religious. It's so your daily life wins the respect of the people around you. That question pulled us into Joel 2 — a call to return to God before the outpouring, to rend your heart and not just your garments. The new wine is coming. The question is whether you have fresh wineskins to carry it.

Most of us know we need community. We've felt the pull toward it, maybe even tried it before. But something happened — a hurt, a disappointment, a season of life that just got in the way — and somewhere along the line, we stopped. This final week of our series on community doesn't try to argue you back in. It just asks an honest question: what's keeping you from going one step deeper? Hebrews 10 was written to people under real pressure to walk away from one another, and the author's answer was a string of "let us" — because whoever wrote it knew that what Jesus was forming in them couldn't happen alone. That's still true. We get hurt in community. But we also get healed there.

What's actually keeping you from real community? It might be shame — and it might be quieter than you think.

In this message from our Community series, Pastor Brent unpacks the difference between guilt and shame, why confession belongs in community (not just in private), and what it looks like to actually step into the light together. James 5, 1 John 1, and Romans 7–8 all point to the same thing: freedom happens when we stop hiding.

Most of us have a default answer ready before the question even finishes — fine, good, busy — and it keeps everyone at a comfortable distance. Romans 12 has something different in mind. This message digs into the historical situation behind Paul's letter and lands on one of the most practical things he ever wrote: Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Simple words with real weight — and a real challenge to the way most of us do community.

Romans 16 ends with something most people skip — a long list of names. Twenty-nine of them. But what if that list is one of the most important things Paul ever wrote? In this week's message from our Community series, we slow down there and discover that the early church wasn't organized around programs. It was organized around people. Family. And according to both Scripture and researcher Robin Dunbar's model of human relationships, our deepest growth and healing don't happen in the crowd — they happen in the smaller circles, around a table, with people who actually know us.

⚠️ Note: We experienced some technical difficulties during this recording. A short section was cut, and you may notice a few glitches in the audio and video following that point. Thanks for your patience.

Something shifts when people stop just gathering and start actually belonging to each other.

Acts 2 gives us a picture of a community held together not by programs or shared preferences—but by shared life. Meals, prayer, generosity that cost something real. And underneath all of it, a kind of joy that kept showing up anyway.

This message traces where that comes from. And what it actually asks of us.