Riverwood Church Community

Do you ever wonder what God’s plan and purpose is for your life? This week we’ll break down Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and how despite the agonizing anticipation of carrying the cross, he still asked for God’s will to be done in his life. Jesus warned us that faithfully following God’s will isn’t easy... But when our prayer lives become dependent on the Holy Spirit to strengthen us, we begin to more accurately and passionately follow His will.

Prayer is essential in the life of every believer, however, so often we find prayer to be a struggle! Today we will discover two tools we can use to fuel our prayer life found in the unconventional prayer of Agur!

Have you ever been called by God and wondered if you had what it took to do what He was asking you to do? God called Gideon to step out of his comfort zone and gather an army to defeat the Midianites. After much doubt and deliberation, Gideon said yes to God. At some point or another, God calls all of us to take a step of faith into the unknown. It is often scary, but it is through prayer that we find ourselves growing more and more confident in doing what God has asked of us.

Do you ever look at contemporary art that is worth millions of dollars and think “I don’t get it”? It’s interesting how what some consider masterpieces leave others bewildered, much like the most famous prayer in the Bible: The Lord’s Prayer. However, hidden within it lies a profound message that causes our hearts to answer questions that have the potential to lead us into greater conversation with God and reveals the masterpiece it really is.

A simple 4-word prayer that we can choose to pray either with a passive, one day in the future sentiment or an active, heaven invading earth activistic earnestness. Together we explore just what picture is painted for us in the last words of our Bible found in Revelation 22 and how a powerful prayer emerges for us should we have the courage to embrace it!

Do you feel weak these days? Do you doubt God’s love? Are you missing life & power in your day-to-day experiences? The Apostle Paul guides us through a prayer that he prayed for a group of people in the 1st century who were most likely experiencing these very things. Listen to what he prayed for them. It’s a prayer that we should regularly pray today.

Two words to describe Elijah would be ‘Effective Pray-er’! Wow! This guy had a track record of praying fiery, bold prayers that seemed to move heaven to act on earth! So, what made Elijah’s prayers so effective? Well, this message digs into Elijah’s life from 1 Kings 17-19 to reveal seven ways to make prayer effective!

Of the 222 prayers recorded in the Bible, Peter’s 15-word prayer, recorded in Matthew 14, was the one that excited me the least! However, what it lacks in length, poise, grandeur, and nobility it makes up for in raw passion, authenticity, and results! There is a lot to learn from this little prayer, especially if you happen to be experiencing a storm of your own right now!

Unmet desires and unanswered prayers can bring a significant amount of pain to our lives, yet Hannah’s life in 1 Samuel demonstrates a way to express our pain to God, be persistent in our requests, and stay faithful in our promises. Along the way, we might just find that not only our future changes but our own lives are transformed.

Prayer should be the lifeline of every Christian, nevertheless, in life there are conflicts that occur that affect our prayer life, making prayer a struggle! We will explore the details in Jonah’s life that made him struggle to pray and the relentless pursuit of God for his prayers to find out why prayer is so valuable within our daily lives!

This message takes one of the most overused, confused, misused, and abused words: ‘love’, explores its origins, its place in our current culture, and the reason human love is so limited. It then examines the unique properties and power of a different kind of love: agape!

If relationship phrases like ‘synthetic-relationships’, ‘a knife-in-the-back-of-our-own-selfishness’, ‘out-honouring-others’, and ‘taking-a-relational-laxative’ are unfamiliar to you, then this message from 2 Peter 1:6, Romans 12:10 and 1 Peter 1:22 may be just what you need!

As we attempt to understand the 5th element in Peter’s ‘formula for godly living’, we quickly realize that this idea of ‘godliness’ is somewhat nebulous, antiquated, and difficult to define! In this message, we take on the challenge of defining and taking a firm grip on what it means to be godly as we continue our study in 2 Peter 1:5-9!

Most of us would define ‘perseverance’ as ‘enduring the unpleasant’ with a side of ‘putting up with the painful’. However, as you’re about to discover in this message from 2 Peter 1:6, God’s definition of perseverance is so much more than simply grinning and bearing it! With stories and examples of perseverance, this message will take you from Japan to your laundry room, over to Barcelona and right back to your own heart!

To grasp the value and role “self-control” plays within our everyday lives we need to have a clear picture of what God desires for us. This weekend we will dive deeper into 2 Peter 1:3-4 to create a formula to help us understand God’s plan and our role in it! With the formula, we will also have a better understanding of our need to develop self-control.

If you were to sit down to test your knowledge of God, how well do you think you would do? Many of us would panic thinking, I can’t recite the books of the Bible or name the attributes of God or explain ‘the abomination of desolation’! But that is not the kind of ‘knowledge’ God is calling us to! This message, based on 2 Peter 1:6, explores what ‘knowledge’ means and the difference knowledge of God makes in our lives!

In 2 Peter 1, the apostle Peter lets us know that floating and bobbing in our faith will only lead to us being carried away by the currents of culture, so he provided us with a formula! It’s a formula for following. A formula for a godly life. However, before we can actually learn the formula, we need to lay a foundation. Join us as we do a deep dive into 2 Peter 1:5-9 for the next seven weeks!

This weekend our middle school and high school students took over leading the service! Leading everything from tech, to worship, to preaching, they explore how to cultivate hearts of thankfulness for who God is, how he works in our lives, and challenge us to make praises to him known to our world.

Are you a ‘royal watcher’? Do you enjoy watching ‘The Crown’ and catching up on the latest news of the King, princes, princesses, dukes, and duchesses? Well, this message visits the coronation of King Charles, Queen Elizabeth, and most importantly, Jesus Christ. It asks the question: what is the significance of the Palm Sunday coronation and what are we to learn from it?

One of the proven ways to conduct a thorough investigation is by challenging the problem with the 6-W’s: who, what, where, when, why & how? In this teaching, we will investigate the meaning, function, and significance of ‘surrendering to God’ with the 6-W method, resulting in what will prove to be a better understanding of what surrender actually means!