Pure in Heart

So kids, you’ve all been listening to the Vinelife podcasts over summer right? Well regardless of whether you have or haven’t, I strongly recommend you at least check out part 6 of the Beatitudes from a few Sundays back. (But seriously – we’ve had some incredible messages over the past few weeks and months and it would be well within your interests to check them out!!!)

Matthew 5:8:
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.“

Listen to Chris Foster’s talk here.

Here’s a picture of a man riding a bike:

Look at him go!!!

Flush The Toilet

Bob Johnson relfects on a word given to him by the prophet, Bob Jones:

Bob said to me, ‘When you’re done with the meeting, go to your hotel room, go into your bathroom, sit down by the toilet and lift the lid. Tell the toilet everything that happened in the meeting; all the good stuff, all the healings, all the miracles. When you can’t remember any more, close the lid and flush the toilet’ (Of course, by this time my enthusiasm had left. I’m talking to a toilet. I’m the man of God of faith and power and I’m sat talking to a toilet – that’s not how I saw this thing ending!) He continued, ‘Flush the toilet, wash your hands, it’s done. Get ready for bed. Lay down and say, ‘thanks Dad, that was fun. What do you wanna do tomorrow? Take my kids fishing? Ok, see you in the morning.”

Don’t miss this – to my Father, taking my kids fishing is just as glorious as reaching the masses. Why? Because that’s what He was doing.

Listen to the whole talk, Infinite Father, here.

The Five-Fold Ministry

Ephesians 4:11-13:
“It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.“

It’s an interesting passage this one – I know lots of people have thought about what each of the ‘offices’ mean. What I haven’t really thought about until yesterday was just how much the truths of this passage affects the whole church, and how we relate to our leadership.

So, I would implore you to invest 50 minutes of your days in listening to the talk by Kris Vallotton that got me thinking. You can get it for free right here:

The Role of the Five-Fold Ministry – Kris Vallotton

Website of the Week – IHOP (again!)

Yeah I know we’ve put ihop.org up already but there’s some new stuff on there right now that’s really worth highlighting:

1. It’s all been kicking off at the IHOP University. Whatever you call it – revival, awakening, whatever – God’s doing some cool stuff. And they’ve got it all up on their website for free – live streaming, highlights, testimonies. Check it out!

2. Over New Year they had the OneThing conference. I caught bits of it on TV and it was ace. You can get your hands on video archives, teaching notes, mp3s etc. Just click here.

Perfect revision break I’d say…

Website of the Week – Desiring God

www.desiringgod.org – God centred resources from the ministry of John Piper

In its own words,

“Desiring God exists to say that…

God’s ultimate goal is to glorify himself.
And that’s good news.

Everything we do aims to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.”

It is a truly staggering resource, with more than 25 years worth of sermons available to read, listen to or watch online. All of them organised by date, scripture, series, topic, occasion and title. In addition this, many of John Piper’s books and articles are also available alongside a wealth of other resources - and all for free!

If you find yourself with a spare minute, or just really need to hear a sermon (or six) on virtually anything, I’d highly recommend checking www.desiringgod.org out!

Bill Johnson – He Tore the Heavens

Bill Johnson talks from Isaiah 64 about the significance of God ‘rending the heavens and coming down’. It’s really good stuff – you’d be well advised to give it a listen!

iBethel.TV // Bethel Church // He Tore the Heavens : Nov 16 ’08
(to watch this you’ll have to sign up to iBethel.tv – it’s free to register and just requires an email address and password)

If you’d prefer, you can directly download just the audio (via facebook) here

The whole thing is about an hour long, but there’s about 10mins of pre-amble at the start. Go listen!!!

P.S. – off to Soul Survivor this weekend so it might be a little while before the next update

Mark Driscoll – Idolatry

In keeping with some of the stuff we’ve been looking at in Hebrews, here’s a video of a talk Mark Driscoll (Mars Hill, Seattle) did on the subject of idolatry.

Here’s an excerpt:

You can watch the whole thing here (it’s about an hour long)

Website of the Week

Morning all!

Today sees the introduction of what is intended to be a regular feature of Students @ Vinelife – that of website of the week (catchy title, huh?).

As you might have deduced from the name, each week we’ll pick a website to profile that is of particular interest/use and then point you in its direction. We’ll have a mixture a media content, blogs and other online resources so hopefully there should be a least a few things that grab your attention. Please feedback on these links – good or bad – and don’t be shy about sending in any good ones of your own that we can whack up here.

And the award for week one goes to…

…iBethel.tv

iBethel.tv is the media site of Bethel Church (Redding, California). Bethel has gained a level of (positive) notoriety over the last few years for a number of reasons including the rise of prominence of the Jesus Culture conference and indiviuals such as the Senior Pastor, Bill Johnson. But the main reason loads of people love this church is simple – they love Jesus and they’re really good at pursuing his call on their lives!

The iBethel.tv features of variety of media including preaches, live worship, testimonies, and seminars from their various ministry schools. The page I’ve linked to is the free section of the site which is jam-packed with clips and videos so there’s loads of stuff there for you to access right away. Have fun!