Life in the Vine | Week 5 | Pastor Dave Brown
MESSAGE NOTES
Episode Notes Life in the Vine - Week 5
October 5, 2025
Teacher: Pastor Dave Brown Prayer This week, Pastor Dave Brown continues our Life in the Vine series with a message titled “Prayer,” from John 15:7–8. Jesus says: “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” (John 15:7–8 NIV)
Prayer Prayer is about love, and that means it cannot be sustained on fluttery feelings, good intentions, and spontaneous moments alone. It needs a container…a set of practices or rituals within which that love can grow, mature, and blossom. — Tyler Staton
Jesus prayed spontaneously and routinely, alone and with others, pouring out his emotions in his own words and guided by the psalms at fixed hours in the temple. Jesus prayed like a wild, unruly monk. — Tyler Staton
Prayers about presence…
One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple. —Psalms 27:1
“Begin where you are.” — C.S. Lewis
In reality, the church has led the way in the art of enjoyment and pleasure. New Testament scholar Ben Witherington points out that it was the church, not Starbucks, that created coffee culture. Coffee was first invented by Ethiopian monks—the term cappuccino refers to the shade of brown used for the habits of Capuchin monks of Italy. Coffee is born of extravagance, an extravagant God who formed extravagant people, who formed a craft out of the pleasures of roasted beans and frothed milk. — Tish Harrison Warren
Prayers about fruit…
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord— and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. —Isaiah 11:1-4
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. — Galatians 5:22-23
Most of the “fruit of the Spirit” are explicitly outward facing: love, obviously, then greatheartedness, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness. Not only do these require other people if they are to be practiced, they are specifically looking out into the wider world and community…They orient the person towards others. — N.T. Wright
Prayers for Redeemer Church
Unity, Peace, and Wisdom