Grace Valley Church

In Acts 1:9-11, we read about Christ being taken up into the clouds just after speaking words of comfort to His followers. Although He is not here in bodily form, we can rest assured that we have not been left as orphans but we have received the Holy Spirit. Jesus continues to take care of His people even as He ascends to His Father in Heaven. What does this mean for us as believers? Join us this week as we unpack this miraculous event in the history of the world.

Bad things happen in this life. Awful, heartwrenching, unbelievably painful things. Who do we turn to when we're caught up in a dark season? Where does our help come from? We turn to the One who calls us to Himself. Our help comes from the Maker of heaven and earth. Our Sovereign God bends His ear to us and calls us to take refuge in Him. We only need to be still and wait and watch in confidence that God will work it out. It is natural to wrestle with the problem of evil during times of trouble, but we can rest in God's goodness and trust Him in His sovereignty and love for us.

Charles Spurgeon called Psalm 131 a "short ladder that neertheless rises to a great height, moving from deep humility to fixed confidence." It's a psalm that's easy to remember but harder to put into practice which makes it all the more important to do so. When we settle into our positions as God's created beings, we begin to relax and trust our Creator. Our confidence in Him grows over time and our faith deepens as we wait in confidence for Him to unwind the tangled messes we so often find ourselves in.

Psalm 126 teaches us that in times of trouble, it is good to remind ourselves of God's faithfulness to us in the past. In 126:1-2, we see the Israelites practicing faithful rememberance. This life giving spiritual practice is what sustains them through their dangerous journey of ascent. God is steadfast and His loving care never changes. The same faithful God that walked alongside the Israelites thousands of years ago still walks with us on our own journeys. His love for His children has not faded. We too can have faith that God will take our tears and turn them into joy, not only as He did for the ancient Israelites but also for His own Son, Jesus. Jesus wept tears of anguish on a dark night in the Garden of Gesthamane before He was to be hung on a cross. But God took those tears and turned them to joy as He was raised to life and the atonement for our sins was complete. When we weep, we can be assured that in His timing, God will take our tears and turn them into everlasting joy. He always has and He always will.

As we begin our new series "Songs For The Road", we take a look at Psalm 24. This short psalm reminds us that as we journey through life's difficulties, we can find comfort and confidence in God's Word. The fundamental truth that God created all things and that everything belongs to Him is the answer to our deepest need. We belong to our Creator. We are accepted and loved. He cares for us and we are in the hands of the One who created order out of chaos. We can trust that our steadfast God knows what He is doing. He has made a way for us to be fully in His presence, fully loved and fully accepted, forever. Despite the weakness and the sin that separates us from Him, He calls us to Himself. He is Holy. And we are made Holy in Him. Our souls can rest in that eternal truth. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it. Amen.

Has God intruded in your life? In this part of Jacobs life, we see God intrude on Jacob's life in a very physical way. It's a bit of a strange story, as many stories in the Bible often are, but it is a story where God literally grabs hold of Jacob and forces him to pay attention. If you're wondering whether or not God is grabbing a hold of you, pay attention to your own thought patterns. Check yourself and see if you're suddenly not as interested in others opinions of you. See if you have become more generous with your money and less fearful. See if you've begun to lose even a tiny bit of interest in an addiction that was once so consuming. Those are signs you've met God. Those are signs that He is "messing you up" in the best possible way and is calling you to Himself. You don't have to clean yourself up to meet with God, you just have to be willing.

After the disasterous consequences of Jacob's disobedience to God, we read on to find that Jacob does not hear God's voice of judgement or condemnation. Instead, he hears an invitation to come home to Bethel. We see yet another example of how God's grace and His commitment to His promises will be the deciding factor in the next chapters of Jacob's life. Not Jacob's acts of repentence, not his attempts to "clean himself up". But simply and unbelievably, God's grace. Most of us will not commit sins so grievous that it causes the murder of an entire village. But all of us commit sins that, without God's grace, will block us from ever being to stand before a Holy God and be called righteous. Despite Jacob's sins, despite ours, we are forgiven in Christ by our ever loving and trustworthy Father in Heaven.

Despite Jacob's profound encounters with the Living God, he continued to fall into deep and destructive patterns of sin. His inability to face his problems head on, combined with his compulsion to manipulate and lie, left it's mark on a whole new generation of children. Because of Jacob's inability to act on behalf of his violated and abused daughter, his enemy was forced to make a hasty peace treaty which did not stand up to the fury of his deceptive and violent sons. The warning in this story is clear. When we do not honestly and earnestly deal with our own sin patterns - be it those of deception, those of apathy, those of gossip or those of jealousy - it will always affect the ones we love. We must always be taking our weaknesses to God and laying them at His feet, asking for the help of the Holy Spirit to equip us to do better. As He did with Jacob, God uses our lives as an example to others. The question is whether our lives point people toward faithful obedience or serve as a warning of the damage that unchecked sin can do.

What's actually happening when we go to church? Are we all just following tradition? Being compelled to do it by guilt or obligation? Or is there something more at work? God brings us into corporate worship for a reason. It's to give us a taste of home - not our earthly home, but the one He's created for us to be in. This week we explore Psalm 84 and what it means to worship as a church family and why God calls us to gather together.

It's tempting to believe that if God appeared physically in front of us right now, our belief and faith in Him would be forever solidified. In Genesis 32, we see angels literally appear in front of Jacob's very eyes (32:1) and yet just a few verses later we see him hedging his bets. He attempts to re-arrange a stressful situation "just in case" God doesn't show up. God's angels appeared physically in front of him and he still didn't believe, at least not for very long. Even though Jacob could see countless ways that God had showed up for him in the past and he'd heard Gods promise to him (Gen 32:9), Jacobs fear overtook his faith and he tried to take control. This is an all too familiar scene for most of us no matter how long we have been believers for. It is a relief to know that our neither our fearful ways or wavering faith will deter God from fulfilling His promise that He would be with us to the very end (Mat 28:20). It is in His grace that we rest and it is in His grace that we can face any troubles that may arise, no matter what.

Even though Jacob had all the material possessions he needed, his time with Rebecca, Leah and their father Laban was frought with tension, emotional abuse and constant strife. God called Jacob and his family out of Paddan Aram, but it wasn't an easy call to follow, especially for Rebecca and Leah. Sometimes the "devil you know" is better than whatever the unknown future may be. But God was with Jacob, despite Jacobs own moral failures. It is comforting to know that He is with us too, despite ourselves, because God is the same today as He was back when Jacob lived (Heb. 13:8). In this story, we also get a peek into what life was like for Rebecca and Leah as they did not grow up with the faith that Jacob was raised with. Biblical accounts like these point us to a faithful God who orchestrates every human action and intention - from animal husbandry to stolen idols - for the good of His people and the glory of His name.

Jacob spent years believing that blessing came through his own schemes. Yet again and again, God showed him that it was never his plans that secured the future, it was God’s providence. Maybe today you feel small, unseen, or insignificant. Maybe you wonder if your life really matters. But the God who governs every detail of history is the same God who knit you together in your mother’s womb. You are not an accident. You are not forgotten. You are not outside His care. The story of Jacob reminds us that God’s purposes are never dependent on our strength, success, or ability to figure life out.

Over the last number of weeks we've been diving into God's Dysfuntional Family through the book of Genesis. And we can see one thing for sure. God's grace does not depend on our good behaviour in any way. We've seen countless examples of bad, even despicable behaviour, but God is still weaving His goodness throughout it all. In this section of Genesis, we come across another wild story of people doing crazy things to get what they want. It's not that the things they want are wrong. It's natural and good to want to be loved, to have children and to have security. But it's what they do to get it that is the problem. It is important to remember that in our suffering, there is never a license to sin. And yet as we see, Rachel and Leah have a long, ugly battle that poisons their lives and leaves everyone miserable in the end, despite all of their scheming. But God's plan is still unfolding. He's still working through these flawed women and their flawed husband Jacob. Unbenknownst to them, one of their sons will be a forefather of Jesus Christ. We are fortunate to be able to look back at this story and see how God's grace to His fallen people has a reason and a purpose. Let that give us hope for how He is working in our own lives today so that we never forget that no matter what we do, it all depends on God's grace in the end.

Jacob was the boy that nobody wanted. But if Rachel wanted him, he'd do anything to get her. Many of us can identify with thinking that if we can just get this one thing, this one person, this one promotion, we'll be accepted. We think that the holes inside ourselves will be filled with affection, admiration and praise from others. And that may be true, but only for a moment. God sees our aching hearts, just as He saw Jacob's and just as He so tenderly saw Leah's. He sees and knows our deepest desires. And He gives us Himself, which is exactly what we need. When we lay down our wants and our desires and we ask humbly ask God to help us submit to His will, we will get what we need. God is a God who sees, as we learned weeks ago with Hagar. He lifts up the humble, the un-wanted, the rejected and He blesses them with His love and His acceptance. Tuck into the Lord and His love for you. It is not there for a moment but it is there for eternity.

After weeks of walking through perilous terrain, Jacob arrives at his destination in Harran. In order to woo himself a wife, he sidles up to her father Laban, a professional schemer and a man who turns out to out-scheme Jacob himself. If the way this story unfolds seems familiar to those of you who have been following along in our series thusfar, its because God intended us to see the effects of generational sin and deception and how they have a ripple effect throughout our lives. But while the pattern of sin is more than apparant in the similiarities between Jacob and his father Isaac's stories, a few key differences show us that God is at work through it all, despite the folly of Jacob himself. God works through all things. All sin patterns, all tendencies, all deceptions and all bad intentions. He is our Sovereign Lord. He weaves His mercy and goodness through all the self-imposed pain in our lives so that His plan for our ultimate redemption will be fulfilled despite our selfish ambitions and mixed up motivations.

This week, Pastor Paul takes us through Genesis 28:10-22 where we continue following along with Jacob.

Imagine winning an award for something you didn't do. Or finally hearing the words of affirmation and love you have been longing to hear, but knowing the person speaking those words intended them for someone else. That's what Jacob was experiencing in Gen. 27:1-29. And if he didn't already feel like a less-than son, he sure did after this encounter with his father Isaac. Although Jacob willingly participated in his mothers plan to force a blessing on him, it couldn't have felt very victorious after it actually happened. It's kind of like how some modern day people will pretend they are someone completely different to get the affirmation and love they crave. Think of the social media influencers, the politicians, the person who desperately wants a spouse or the highschooler who will do anything to fit in. God's love for you has nothing to do with your performance or the way you look. It has nothing to do with your birth order, your clothing or your social status. It's freely given and it's given to you - the you that He created, the you that exists outside of any temporary facade you've created. You don't have to pretend with God, you've already got His blessing. You've already got His unwavering, undying love and promise of an eternity spent with Him, with nothing to prove and only the pure joy of being who you were created to be in the first place.

Esau is one of those guys that's easy to like. That's one of the reasons it feels so jarring to read that he was considered godless (Heb 12:16). There are people who are easy to love through the worlds eyes but if we look at them through God's eyes it shows a different perspective. Esau was a "seize the day" kind of guy, but God calls us to live our lives with eternity in mind. So while Esau rejected and brushed off the blessing that was his through Isaac, when he fell away from his family who (imperfectly) worshipped the Lord, he committed himself to a life without God in it. He was, in fact, godless. We see evidence of Esau's heart posture as he begs his father Isaac to change his mind when he gave the blessing to Jacob (Gen 27:1-40). He's crying worldy tears of all that he will lose, focused on the temporary things of wealth and property and not focused on the things of God. As relatable as Esau is, he's also a warning to all of us to stay in step with God's ways because no matter how likeable we are, if our hearts are not aligned with His, we will end up in a temporary life instead of life everlasting with Him.