Vineyard Church | Weekly Update September 18th, 2024

Imagine if a series that journeyed through the Ten Commandments caused a whole church family to look more at what God has done and promises to do than what we do… This was the driver of the decision to spend our Fall together in Exodus 20. The undercurrent we are trying to catch is more than just an idea but a way of living in this present age that testifies to the reality that our salvation says more about Jesus than it does about us. The Ten Commandments serve as yet another example of how God the Father loves his creation.

This undercurrent allows us to flow into an even stronger current that represents the unfolding plan of the creator God, one that made and kept covenants with His creation, but also, stood in the place of sacrifice in each of those covenants. This current shapes and forms the vessels in its flow, stripped from the hulls of the vessels that surrender to the flow begin to look more and more like the Creator of the flow as they love more and more like Him. This surrender is facilitated by understanding the “why” of the Ten Commandments, which leads directly to the “how,” which is simply Jesus.

A part of the shaping and forming of this flow will be visible in how we are seen in our community as a collective Vineyard Church Body of Christ. Ideally, this visibility would be focused on our collective service and prayer.

Staying rooted in the unfolding plan of the Father mandates a relationship of communication. Last week, we talked about asking God for a revelation of his audacious plan for our church family, Billings and Lockwood, Yellowstone County, and beyond. This past Sunday, we met to pray with some other church congregations and had the Mayor of Billings and the Superintendent of School District 2 join us to give prayer requests. This was one of the most encouraging nights of the year; I left the meeting excited about how what they asked for dovetailed with what God has been doing in us for a while.

The fact that these men joined us was encouraging, but then they stood up to speak and both of them blew the dam clear and unleashed a wave of encouragement that can only come from the Gospel because they both shared the Gospel. They shared it because they know it and live it. Learning how these two leaders serve from a place of faith in Jesus was exciting to learn, and hearing their prayer requests from this place of faith was phenomenal. They both spoke briefly of the challenges faced by the city and the school district, and both spoke about the only true remedy to all of these challenges, the presentation of the Gospel of Jesus and the intervention of the Risen Lord.

Prayer gives rise to service, and this is the second place we can continue to demonstrate the Living God to our community. The Body of Christ is how God has chosen to be active in this present age, which must be motivation to call us out of a relationship of consumption and into a relationship of service that reflects the example we have in Jesus. These two work together… Pray and serve; serve and pray. Our task for the moment is this: What will God have us do next? Where is the need, and what do we have to meet that need? Join me in this prayer, and please let me know what you see revealed by the Father.


Adam Greenwell
Pastor
Billings Vineyard Church | www.billingsvineyard.org