37 Hours And 15 Minutes

37 Hours and 15 Minutes Until the First Meeting Of Vineyard Recovery Fellowship.

Why do we need another meeting/gathering/group?
Don't we have enough.
I wish I could answer that question, but the only thing I can tell you is that this is on God's heart.
I will have been gone from Gadsden Vineyard seven years come this April 28.
On that day, seven years ago, I gave my last message at the Vineyard and my first message at the Church@Rapha.
I never saw myself bringing it back to the Vineyard. God had other ideas.

So many of you have asked what the meeting was going to be like and I wish I could give you more information, but truth is....I don't know.
I just know that God wanted me to start it. He is going to build on it each week and we'll see what happens.

I do know that Vineyard Recovery Fellowship will be a place of encouragement and empowerment. A place where we learn how to live under the kingdom of God (that would be God's rule and reign in our lives). It will be a place of celebration for what took place in our lives on Sunday through Friday.
There is a passage in Ephesians 4 that lays the groundwork for God is going to do on Saturdays.
And He (Jesus) Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.

To boil it all down.....
God is desiring us, as believers, to grow up.
Grow up.
Develop some wisdom and see the world for what it truly is.
To not be suckered by every charlatan and shaman that comes along using the name of JESUS as a talisman to deceive.
To realize that God has placed His incredible Holy Spirit inside of us for a reason that goes far beyond sobriety and recovery.
Saturday night will be an ongoing work that answers the question, "WHAT NEXT?"

My goal for the meeting is not to collect a bunch of people so I can build a church.
My goal is to introduce people to the real Jesus.
To provide a place where they can experience first hand the presence of God.
I am not offering membership into any group or church.
Hopefully people will realize that the Body of Christ (the real church) is larger than they could ever imagine, and that they will truly understand the call that God has placed on the heart of every believer.

The call that Jesus gave to His disciples is still as relevant today, as it was on the day He spoke it. "Come.....Follow Me and I will send you out to fish for people."
He didn't tell them....."Come.....follow me and I will make your life problem free."

Saturday night is a kind of door to real life as God sees it and gives it.
The one thing that I am more sure of today than when I started working in recovery 15 years ago is that I am not content to accept addiction as being something that is beyond God's healing touch.

So Saturday night at 7 p.m., we will gather at Gadsden Vineyard Church and we will worship and wait on God. He will do the rest.
If your free that night, come and join us.

God on you....
mb