Gvf // Grace Valley Fellowship

For those in search of a bit of help, here's a short guided prayer exercise to practice this week. 

In this message, we explore one of the great paradoxes from Jesus's teaching: If you seek limitless freedom, you will become enslaved to your own choices. But, if you seek God's will over your own, you will find true freedom.

For those in search of a bit of help, here's a short guided prayer exercise to practice this week.

“Your kingdom come.” It’s only three words. Simple. Deceivingly simple. But do you know what you are praying for when you pray these words?

 For those in search of a bit of help, here's a short guided prayer exercise to practice this week.

When we pray, Jesus teaches us to pray that God would align our lives with Him. Prayer itself becomes an opportunity to make course corrections in the way we are thinking, feeling, and living. This week, we'll explore how "hallowing God's name" can change the whole course of your life.

For those in search of a bit of help, here's a short guided prayer exercise to practice this week. 

The starting point of prayer is not confession or worship or requests or theological understanding. The starting point is relationship. In this message, we explore what it looks for us to come to God as "Our Father."

In the first century, everyone prayed. Being religious was good for business and good for your social standing, so one might be tempted to pray to impress or get ahead in life. In our day, things are different. Our great temptation is not to pray for the wrong reasons. Our great temptation is to not pray.

The news that would forever change the world must first change your world. In John chapter 20, we see how the Easter message is not only a global announcement that Jesus rose from the dead, it is a personal invitation. He is a good shepherd who knows us by name and calls to each of us.

What we've learned about one of Israel's judges may not be entirely accurate. We think of Samson as the super strong man who women adored, but in reality, he was one messed up and broken man. God still used him and God can still use us, even if we're broken and messy.

The story of Jephthah is a cautionary tale. It describes a world in which everything seems broken. Families are broken, leaders are openly immoral, parents are willing to sacrifice their own children to the gods of success, the nation is divided, and the People of God have forgotten who God is. Yet, perhaps, in this broken story we can find the thread of grace that we need to begin healing our own broken lives.

This is the second half of Gideon's story. It's a story that invites us to ponder what's really going on in our hearts as we ponder what's really going on in Gideon’s heart.

Gideon is the “Doubting Thomas” of the Old Testament. He’s the patron saint of people who are haunted by doubts, who know what God’s Word says but struggle to believe it. In this message, we dig into the roots of Gideon's doubt and our own.

In this message, we look at a story that challenges what we might think we know about gender roles. It’s a story of heroic women, of men who don’t seem to know what it means to be a man, and of a God who refused to be limited by our limitations.

Judges chapter 3 is a bloody, graphic, darkly humorous story about a left-handed man named, Ehud. It's a story about how sin makes you stupid. It's a story that applies as much today as it did in the early Iron Age.

This message is for those of us who’ve been caught in a self-destructive cycle. It's for those of us who feel stuck in sinful patterns. Judges chapter 2 has the potential to be life changing. 

The Book of Judges, we see an entire generation walk away from the faith. In this brief talk, Pastor Paul addresses parents racked with guilt, adult children still recovering from their "religious" parents, and the pressing need for this present generation to pass on their love for God to the next generation.

Can the People of God survive in a culture that everywhere undermines faith in God & excludes God from the conversation? A major snowstorm forced us to pause the Judges series, so we thought we'd take this opportunity to pull out an old message, circa 2017, that explores this central theme of Judges but from a more positive example: the life of Joseph. While the message may be dated, the struggle has never been more pressing.

If we read Judges the way we read might read any history of early Iron Age tribes, this study will be quite a great waste of time. One or two of you might happen to be enthralled with ancient Near Eastern tribal warfare, but the rest of us will be wondering: Why are we talking about this in church? But.. what would it look like to read it the way the Apostle Paul read these stories as examples & warnings for us?