Vintage Grace's Podcast

New Year, Same Vision: Faithfully follow y(our) Rabbi (our Father). Invite others into the journey, start with prayer for His Glory & our Unity, & be ready for action!  The Spirit is moving & lives are eternally being changed!

Why behind the what of PrayerIf you lose your WHY then you lose your WAYThe depth of your WHY determines the length of your WHATWHO > How

Worldly Hope: desire for something- wishing on a star, crossing fingers, sending up empty prayersBiblical Hope: trusting & waiting expectantly and with certaintyWe experience hope by looking for God in our gaps, giving God the entirety of our gaps, and trusting Jesus as the solution to our gaps.

The message of hope in Zechariah is not just for the people of God in antiquity, it means hope for us today. We have hope in the Messiah, God helps us make sense of our past and see him in it, and God gives us a picture of the future that helps us hold onto hope, even in the darkest times.

When we lose our why, we will faithfully lose our way; this is true of Israel and true of me and you. God's grace does not give up on Israel then, or us now and it is His mercy that gives us HOPE.  We are all in the middle of the greatest redemption story of ALL time, and we get the privilege of being used by Him to bring the Kingdom to Sacramento as it is in Heaven.

Israelites regathered and rebuilt after a season of exile. Though we weren’t exiled, we have regathered the past couple years and can learn from the lessons of the Israelites. May we, like them, remember God’s past faithfulness, and may it motivate us to press on in overwhelming seasons. Hold fast to the the truth that He is going to rebuild. The final product is not only worth it, but the process of journeying with Him is for His glory, our good, and a watching world!

God’s justice and His love collide in the cross. God’s righteous demand that sin be punished runs straight into His love for us. The inevitable result of this collision is the death of Jesus, and unity with God for us! Paul gives us 3 implications of what this great love does for us: humility, unification and righteous living.

The righteousness of God, that we heard about in the Old Testament, is now on full display in the person and work of Jesus. None of us are better than any of us and all of us fail to measure up to God's perfect standard. The good news is that God has made us right with Him through Jesus, so that everyone would know that our standing with God depends on faith alone.

No one is able to earn God’s love on their own. No one is able to find salvation and joy in the Kingdom of God through their own effort.  Rather, our sin and mistakes are a mirror that reveal the depth of our desperate dependence, our brokenness, & our never-ending need for Christ every single moment of every single day.

Paul is telling the Jewish listeners that though they have been “chosen”, they are still in need of Christ. Even when the chosen people of God are faithless, God remains faithful. God’s righteousness and holiness are based upon who God is, not based upon anything His creation does. We will only find joy when we recognize our desperate and dependent need for Christ.

Being chosen seems to inevitably breed a sense of entitlement, of being better than. This sense of being “good” or “better than” versus others is extremely spiritually dangerous, because the standard is Christ. Paul continues to build his case that ALL of us are guilty of sinning against God, no matter our background and no matter what we think the external signs show. In today’s text, Paul goes on to argue that though many of us have symbols unmistakably connected to faith in God, the symbols in and of themselves are actually worthless to save us.

In Romans 2 Paul has laid a trap for anyone who thinks that the list of sins in chapter 1 isn't about them–reality is we are ALL on the hook for our choices & sin against God. Paul is attempting to deepen our understanding & experience of God’s Gospel which is what unites all of us out of our sin and into Him! In 2:12-16 he continues to develop the essential truth that God is not lenient, but He is undeniably fair & unmistakably firm in His judgment of everyone. 

God’s Rubric for Life1) God cares about what we actually do2) God cares about our motives3) God will evaluate everyone by the same standard4) The Gospel

Our society has trained us to think that being a “good person” is pleasing to God. That our “good” actions like attending church or serving the poor gain us favor and forgiveness. However, the hypocrisy that leaks from our life is actually causing a righteous anger in our patient God. We are storing up the WRONG treasure (God’s wrath), and this has massive implications. 

Paul is writing to a multi-faceted Church to prove that at the foot of the cross they’re all equal: sinners who have rejected Christ, exchanged absolute truths for a lie, and settled for lesser joys. Sin is the “fruit” of His truth being exchanged for what we feel is right. It starts in the head, penetrates the heart and flows through the hands in a myriad of actions (hands) that show who really sits on the throne of our hearts. If it’s anyone other than Jesus, we are ALL in big trouble.

3 TRUTHS ABOUT THE GOSPEL1) We don’t need to be ashamed of the Gospel.2) The Gospel is the only viable solution to life’s greatest problems.3) We need to know the Gospel to live the Gospel.

Paul calls the Church of Rome to be united by the Gospel. The benefit of this will literally change their neighborhoods, Rome, Spain & the Ends of the Earth. It is no wonder Paul desired to GO to Rome and one day be SENT by them too. May we faithfully and collectively be united by the Gospel to do and be the same—here and to the ends of the earth.

1. We are SENT (UnitedToGod +ToGether)2. Paul got the Gospel, but really it’s the GOSPEL that GOT a hold of HIM.#RighteousnessRevealed #UnitedBYtheGospel #Communitas #SendingStation #Sent

The Church operates like a battleship where every believer is called to recognize their role and live on mission for Christ. We carry out this mission by being disciples who make disciples as we devote ourselves to 3 key relationships in our lives (R3). When each of these relationships is lived out, we grow as disciples who make disciples (E1H1). Weekly we gather, in order to be scattered and live SENT. As we scatter, we are united through Christ, living on mission in our pray-watch communities so that the Gospel may flow through us to reach the yet-to-believe with the Gospel.

"We believe in the personal, bodily and glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ. The coming of Christ, at a time known only to God, demands constant expectancy and, as our blessed hope, motivates the believer to godly living, sacrificial service and energetic mission"