Vineyard Groningen Sermons

The Lord is shaping us into a Gospel community, breathing in and breathing out the Good News of the Kingdom. Paul wrote a letter to the Colossians, a group of Christians he never met, but heard good reports about, with some solid advice on how to move forward to grow and bear fruit. This is the opening message of a five-part series discovering from Colossians 1-3 how Vineyard Groningen can grow in being a Gospel Community.

Ephesians tells us to make the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Matthijs den Dekker, today's speaker, has a hard time opening his eyes for the evil in this world. It means allowing anger and allow feeling powerless. This sermon explores these emotions and tries to find ways to not close off for the evil in our times.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can do all kinds of 'cool' stuff. But as we are wrapping up this series, it is important to also talk about a less 'cool' but very real other quality that we receive through the Spirit; the power to endure. Enduring is not something that we look forward to in our faith. In this sermon Jan Achterberg will discuss why this is necessary and what we can due to grow our spiritual endurance.

Our understanding of the Gospel is far too individualistic and far too narrow. Through various developments in theology, sociology and culture, we have primarily come to understand the Gospel as a message about personal salvation; grace + faith = going to heaven when you die. But the Gospel is much more than that. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news about the Kingdom is about transformation. The transformation of lives, of families, cities and generations. In this message, we are going to talk about 1) where transformation starts, 2) what it requires and 3) how it continues. And these principles will apply to bigger and smaller settings; as small as a family or a group of friends, and as big as a country. It could apply to your small group, your neighbourhood, your work place or your school. However big or small the setting is that you have in mind while listening, we believe that the Holy Spirit wants to partner with you to bring Kingdom transformation. And my prayer is that today’s m

At Vineyard, we believe that Jesus transferred His Kingdom ministry to His disciples and to the church. This means that we are called to do everything that Jesus did through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit wants to partner with us to bring God’s Kingdom to people, and this includes miraculous healing of physical, emotional and spiritual illnesses. In this message, we explore the four motivations Jesus had for His healing ministry and the five-step prayer model.

Why do we keep the best news in the world hidden like a dirty little secret? In this message, we are going to take a master-class in personal evangelism from Philip the Evangelist. The story about how he led the Ethiopian official to a decision for Jesus will help us to become more confident in sharing the gospel, and open to the voice of the Spirit leading us to people that He has prepared to receive this good news.

The first church was an international church consisting of Jews and proselytes from every nation under heaven that temporarily resided in Jerusalem. Yet, they experienced an incredible sense of unity. Meeting together around the table – where all are equal and united, where food was shared and stories were told, everyone had a place and a unique contribution. This is a result of the power and presence of the Holy Spirit among them. What could unity look like? Why is it so important? And what is required from us to support and protect this unity?

In this series, we have talked about some very beautiful and important things. But there is an essential piece of the puzzle that's been missing; the Holy Spirit. In this series, there is also one essential puzzle piece that is still missing, but will be uncovered today; the Holy Spirit. Without the work of the Holy Spirit, nothing of what is theologically true about you, will actually find its way into your heart, mind and practice. But through the work of the Holy Spirit, what is true about you will also become our experienced reality. In this message Koen will explain how the disciples became the apostles after receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, and how we need to be filled with the Spirit as well in order to walk in the new life Jesus has made available to us.

What we believe about our destiny greatly impacts our discipleship. To understand well how we should live today, we have to have a good understanding of where God is moving our world. In theology, this is called eschatology. And eschatology is hotly debated within the Christian world. In this message, we explore the four different systems of interpretation based in Revelation 20:1-10 and understand this all in the light of what the rest of the Bible says about God's coming Kingdom. Finally, we will explore how our eschatology should shape our daily lives as disciples of Jesus.

In this message, we will trace back what it means to be the people of God with two terms: covenant and kingdom. We are going to discover how God purposed His people, Israel to be His covenant and kingdom people, how the covenant was broken and the kingdom lost, how it is restored and repurposed in Jesus and what that all means for us today.

In this message, we look at our relationship with God, relationship with others and relationship with the earth in four different realities described in the Bible; the original reality, the distorted reality, the new reality and the future. Follow the storyline of Scripture and discover what the restoration of these relationships means for our mission today.

The modern understanding of self has become highly psychologized. No one else can tell you who you truly are and what you should do. As long as you don’t limit anyone else’s freedom, you ought to have complete freedom to do, say, feel, and be what you want. What we see happening though in a world that holds these views on discovering your authentic self, is that many seem to be struggling to find a sense of identity. Part of the problem is that a sense of identity is often constructed by the self, instead of given by the Creator, and therefore fragile and incomplete. In this message, we'll discover together how our sense of identity should be based in the fact that we are created in the image of God. We'll also consider how that identity was lost through sin and is restored through Jesus.

In this message we take a birds-eye view of how the topic of image-bearing runs through the whole of Scripture. Secondly, we will zoom in on the aspect of image-bearing as male and female, the male and female nature of the church and how this is translated to how we do ministry in the Vineyard.

On Easter Sunday we launched a new sermon series that will continue until Pentecost Sunday. In this series we will study the Kingdom of God in light of the Resurrection. We will discover how Easter changed everything forever. The Resurrection is the kick-start of His big renovation project. Through His Resurrection power He is renewing our lives, sending us out as agents of renewal and changing the course of human history towards a complete restoration when He says; see, I am making ALL THINGS NEW.

When Mary, sister of Lazarus, a week before Easter anointed the feet of Jesus, this was the most extravagant expression of love and honour she could think of. Could it be that the most valuable thing that we have to offer to our Lord today is actually our time and attention? And could it be that, giving that time and attention to our loving Father, is actually fulfilling the deepest craving of the soul? In this message you will be inspired to consider what it would look like in your life to live in a constant sense of communion with God.

How can we hear God's voice? In this message, Frank takes us through the story of Jesus and the disciples on the road to Emmaus and discusses three ways we can hear God's voice: through Scripture, through His whisper and His community.

If everything you prayed for this last week would happen in this coming week, would anyone notice? You and I, we are invited by the Living God to partner with Him in prayer, to see His Kingdom come to earth, and to let His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. A word that is often used for this type of prayer is “intercession” which gives this picture of standing in the gap between heaven and earth. Our feet planted firmly in the reality of a broken world, but our hands lifted high reaching to heaven and our spirits boldly appearing before God’s Throne of grace saying; Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Why is intercession so important in the Christian life, and how can we learn to make this part of our daily rhythm?

Any move of God in history, great or small, famous or not, was prepared through prayer, ignited by prayer, sustained by prayer and led to more prayer. Prayer is the fuel for anything that God is doing in this world – on a personal, local, national or global level. Therefore it is impossible to overstate the importance of developing a strong prayer life. In this message, we are learning from the prayer life of Jesus to find a time, a place and a plan to get started.