You're listening to the Ranch Church Podcast. For more information and service times, visit ranchchurch.com.

On this family Sunday, Dr. Rich Danson teaches the whole congregation, kids included, what it means that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. Starting in John 10, he traces the shepherd picture from Isaiah's prophecy of a coming Ruler through David the shepherd king, showing how sheep are helpless without a shepherd's guidance and protection, and how the Good Shepherd, unlike a hireling, lays down His life for the flock and never abandons it. He grounds our need for that shepherd in Isaiah's picture of sheep gone astray and Paul's word in Romans 3:23 that everyone has sinned, pointing to Jesus as the only way back to the Father.

The message then moves to John 21, where the resurrected Jesus restores Peter through a threefold question, do you love me, answered with a threefold charge, feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep. Danson uses this exchange to call every believer into active service rather than sitting on the sidelines, and closes with the promise that those who serve faithfully will be honored by the Father and will shine forever.

You're listening to the Ranch Church Podcast. For more information and service times, visit ranchchurch.com.

Continuing through Hebrews 11, Pastor Rick Soto asks the church a direct question: are you ready to grow? Preaching from verses 17 through 22, he walks through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, four men who all experienced God's discipline on the way to becoming heroes of faith. He grounds the theme in Romans 8:29 and Romans 12:2, God's will to conform and transform us into the image of Christ, then turns to Hebrews 12 for a fuller picture of discipline as fatherly love rather than punishment. Abraham had to release his hold on Isaac. Isaac blessed the wrong son. Jacob was chosen for a different kind of growth altogether, one that included wrestling with God and walking with a permanent limp. Joseph, despite betrayal by his own family, never forgot his true home. Rick's core encouragement: God disciplines those he loves in order to change them, and that discipline, while painful in the moment, is the very thing that produces strength, holiness, and abundant life.

Scriptures: Hebrews 11:17-22; Genesis 22:8; Romans 8:29; Romans 12:2; Hebrews 12:7-11; 2 Corinthians 12:10; John 10:10

You're listening to the Ranch Church Podcast. For more information and service times, go to ranchchurch.com.

John and Debby Wright, who are stepping into the role of global leaders of the Vineyard movement, join us at the Ranch while on sabbatical in the Santa Ynez Valley with their family. Debby opens with a greeting from the worldwide Vineyard family and a picture of churches gathering in every kind of place, open-air settings like ours, centuries-old buildings, shanty towns, and countries where worship is not permitted, so that around the clock the Lord is receiving worship somewhere. John then preaches from three consecutive stories in the book of Judges, built around a question most of us have asked at one time or another. Could God really use me?

He starts with his own story: a quiet, bullied, introverted boy who tested out as a perfectionist and a specialist, wired to be a jeweler, who has now spent almost 40 years in pastoral ministry. Then he walks through Judges 3, 4, and 6. Ehud was a left-handed man in a right-handed world, marked by a stigma that made him look expendable, and that same left hand is what God used to free Israel from 18 years under Moab. Jael was a woman in a man's world, not a leader and not a judge, a tent wife who knew how to drive a peg because she had done it a thousand times, and God used that ordinary skill to break 20 years of Canaanite oppression. Gideon was a timid man in a dangerous world, threshing wheat down in a winepress out of fear, calling himself the least in the weakest clan, and the Lord told him to go in the strength he had.

The thread running through all three is Paul's word in 2 Corinthians 12, that God's power is made perfect in weakness. God's pattern is to choose people who cannot do what he is calling them to do in their own strength. The message closes with John and Debby leading a time of ministry, welcoming the Holy Spirit, praying for those held back by fear, setbacks, or the sense that they do not quite fit, and calling the church forward for prayer.

Scriptures: Judges 3:12-30; Judges 4:1-24; Judges 5:24; Judges 6:1-16; Judges 7:7; 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

You're listening to the Ranch Church Podcast. For more information and service times, go to ranchchurch.com.

Guest speaker Pastor Lars Linton opens John 5 at the pools of Bethesda, where a great crowd of sick people waited for the water to stir and one man had been lying there thirty-eight years. Out of that entire crowd, Jesus walks straight to the one person nobody noticed. Around that single moment, Lars builds three truths: Jesus sees you, Jesus saves you, and Jesus is superior.

He traces the God who sees back to Genesis 16, where Hagar meets God in the wilderness and calls him El Roi. He shows that Bethesda means house of mercy, and that Jesus skipped the palaces during the feast and went to the hospital instead. He follows the healed man into the temple, where Jesus finds him a second time, because the word translated made well means whole, and Jesus came for the soul as well as the body. From there Lars teaches a practical pattern for biblical confession, a practice he believes the church has largely lost: regard the great love of Jesus, recognize your own responsibility, realize the seriousness of the offense, and receive forgiveness. The message closes in the Sabbath controversy of John 5:16-22, where Jesus answers his accusers by claiming equality with the Father in nature, power, and authority, and calls every knee to bow and every tongue to confess that he is Lord.

If you have been waiting a long time, or if you have wondered whether anyone notices, this message is for you.

Scriptures: John 5:1-22; John 5:39; John 9:1-3; Genesis 16:13; James 5:14-16; 1 John 1:8-9; Philippians 2:10-11

For more information and service times, visit ranchchurch.com.

You're listening to the Ranch Church Podcast. For more information and service times, go to ranchchurch.com.

Continuing through the hall of faith in Hebrews 11, Pastor Rick Soto turns to verses 13 through 16, where the saints of old are called strangers and exiles who died in faith while seeking a better country. His message begins with a simple charge: don't waste your life. Using the picture of packing luggage for a trip, he asks the question every traveler settles before zipping the bag. Where are you going? If heaven is the destination, pack accordingly. Rick gives five packing instructions for the journey. Pack God's story, letting God write and interpret the narrative of your life instead of the stories we tell ourselves, with the Beatitudes of Matthew 5 as the guide. Pack contentment, a harder discipline than it looks, commanded in Hebrews 13:5 and commended in 1 Timothy 6:6. Pack significance, giving your life away to what matters in Jesus, as Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Sarah did. Pack Sabbath, the stop that God built into creation before there was ever a tabernacle, temple, or church. And pack heaven, a real place of no pain and no decay, a great reunion, and a kingdom that cannot be shaken. The message closes with an invitation to let God become the author and interpreter of a brand-new story, and to take a step of faith toward prayer.

Scriptures: Hebrews 11:13-16; Matthew 5:1-9; Hebrews 13:5; 1 Timothy 6:6; Hebrews 12:1

Pastoral invitation: Come forward for prayer during the closing ministry time. The changing of a story needs a new beginning, a pivot, a new interpreter, and a new storyteller. Getting out of the seat, even when socially awkward, is itself framed as the step of faith.

Continuing in the book of Hebrews, Pastor Rick Soto opens what he calls the hall of faith in Hebrews 11 and walks through three lives: Noah, Abraham, and Sarah. He teaches that all of life revolves around faith, and that our faith is never in faith itself but in the person of Jesus Christ. Tracing David's confrontation with Goliath and his prayers in Psalm 18 and Psalm 62, he shows how God builds faith across our past, present, and future. From Noah comes the urgency of obeying God's warning and the promise of Genesis 7:16, that God himself shut the door. From Abraham, obedience without knowing where the road leads. From Sarah, trusting God's timing when the promise seems impossible. The message closes with what faith needs in order to grow, love, contentment, and simplicity, and an invitation to come out of hiding and let the Lord minister to the secret places of the heart.

Scriptures: Hebrews 11:7-12; 1 Samuel 17:36-37, 45; Psalm 18:1-3; Psalm 62:8; Genesis 7:16; John 10:10

Pastoral invitation: Stop hiding. Closing ministry time asked people to come forward for prayer, framing the step out of the seat as itself the act of faith, the same step Noah, Abraham, and Sarah took.

Show notes

You're listening to the Ranch Church Podcast. For more information and service times, go to ranchchurch.com.

In this interactive teaching, Pastor Rick Soto opens Psalm 23 as a school of prayer. He teaches two simple practices, praying scripture by agreement and praying scripture by application, and leads the church in praying the shepherd psalm together, line by line. Along the way he traces the shepherd heart of God from Psalm 28 and Isaiah 40 through John 10 and Revelation 7, names seven marks of a good sheep, and speaks honestly about rest, soul restoration, and fearing no evil because "you are with me." He also brings a direct challenge: to recover the bold, praying spirit that marked Ranch Church's earliest days, and to become a church genuinely devoted to prayer.

Scriptures: Psalm 23; Psalm 28:9; Isaiah 40:11; Matthew 9:36; John 10:2, 11-14; Revelation 7:17; Galatians 5:1

Pastoral invitation

Two layers. Personally: learn to pray scripture, agreeing with it and applying it to the specific places you carry fear, pain, and want. Corporately: step into a renewed culture of prayer, concretely a 24-hour prayer chain and ongoing prayer chapel, and receive prayer from the team for soul restoration.

Scripture references:

Message summary:

Major themes:

SERMON TITLE: Pray Our Father

SCRIPTURE: Matthew 6:9-13 (The Lord's Prayer)

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THE MESSAGE

Pastor Rick Soto teaches on prayer through the lens of relationship. The deepest truth about God is not a doctrine but a person: He is Father. The power of praying the Lord's Prayer lies not in repeating the words but in knowing God relationally. Rick emphasizes that through Jesus' blood, you have access to intimate relationship with God, who knows everything about you and loves you anyway.

The sermon works through the Lord's Prayer phrase by phrase:

Our Father in Heaven. God is actively Father toward you. He is not passive. His fatherhood is the foundation of everything else. Having the right Father changes everything. Rick illustrates this through Cherry Bentley's story from Ethiopia, where she realized that the only difference between her sitting in a nice restaurant and a woman begging on the street was her father. Through Christ, you have access to the right Father.

Hallowed Be Your Name. God's holiness is absolute purity, more pure than anything in creation. When you pray this, you are aligning yourself with His sacred character.

Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done on Earth as It Is in Heaven. Through Jesus' blood, you have been given power and authority. Heaven's economy is not distant; it is working in your heart now, so that earth can be blessed through you.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread. Jesus used a Greek word (epiousios) that did not exist before He spoke it. It means "upon substance and identity." He is saying: You need supernatural power and nourishment to face what you're facing right now. Not everything you want, but everything you need to live.

Forgive Us Our Debts as We Forgive Our Debtors. Unforgiveness is a lock that grabs hold of you. You must break that hold by forgiving others, so you can step into the abundance God has for you rather than clinging to pain, rejection, and loss.

Lead Us Not Into Temptation, but Deliver Us From Evil. God often answers prayers with "no" out of love. He is protecting you from paths that would harm you, not withholding blessing. Trust His judgment as a loving Father.

THE PASTORAL INVITATION

Step forward. Accept God's fatherhood. Let go of what has hurt you. Embrace the promises He has for you now. God is calling you to trust Him with both His yes and His no.

CONTINUITY WITH PREVIOUS SERMON

This continues the Hebrews series' focus on Jesus as the source of everything (following from Hebrews 5-6 on Jesus as High Priest and the call to maturity). Here, Jesus teaches us that intimacy with the Father through relationship is the substance of mature faith.

Show Notes: "Faith Is" (Hebrews 11:1-3)

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Scripture

Message

Pastor Jeff Clay defines Christian faith by starting with a simple but profound question: What is faith? While everyone exercises faith in some form, Christian faith is distinct because its object matters entirely. Faith without an object is worthless. True faith is connected to something solid, something that holds.

The Greek word hupostasis, translated "being sure," literally means that which stands under, like a foundation. Our hope rests on something firm and substantive. This is what separates Christian faith from every other worldview. We don't have faith in faith itself. We have faith in Christ.

Christian faith produces hope, and hope produces perseverance. When hard times hit, which they will, faith gives us somewhere to go and someone to trust. The ancients were commended by God precisely because they believed what they could not see and were absolutely certain of what they hoped for, even when circumstances suggested otherwise. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to worship an idol, knowing that God was able to deliver them, yet even willing to trust Him if He chose not to. That kind of faith honored God.

But Christian faith isn't merely historical or spiritual. It addresses the real needs we face now: loneliness, love, meaning, freedom, forgiveness, and hope. Jesus offers not a checklist but Himself. Through Him, we find purpose when life threatens to become trivial, love when we're isolated, forgiveness when we've fallen, and hope that extends beyond death.

Faith is both decisive and personal. It begins in a moment but must be maintained and sustained through community, discipleship, and intentional growth. Without maintenance, faith withers.

Main Themes