Living Stones Church, Red Deer, Alberta

June 28, 2026 - Learning to See Value in Your Unchanging & Painful Life Situations

In addressing the challenges at Corinth, Paul faced ongoing conflict with false teachers. Paul’s final presentation to the Corinthian church, aimed at persuading those who were being influenced and drawn away from a biblical understanding of Jesus and the gospel, addresses the sensationalism of the false teachers' visions and revelations. Even today, people are wowed by people retelling sensational and spiritual experiences. This can be a means to dupe people away from the truth. We know this was also true in the ancient world. Now, for some time, a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city, astounding all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, “This man is rightly called the Great Power of God.” They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his sorcery.  Paul, in 2 Corinthians 12, is answering criticisms levelled at him and his message from these false teachers. Their aim is to discredit Paul in the eyes of the Corinthians. Paul now speaks to the issue of visions and revelations. It is with reluctance that Paul relates his personal experience in this area of his life. This was so personal to Paul and was designed to possibly help him in the great challenges he would face in his ministry. What is interesting is that, until this point, he hadn’t conveyed these visions and revelations as he came to Corinth and established the church. Kent Hughes explains Paul’s hesitancy to speak of these personal experiences. “Paul’s use of the third person signals his discomfort and embarrassment in indulging in ecstatic biography, which he deems of little profit. The very fact that Paul had told no one about his rapture to paradise shows that he considered private experiences like this as unimportant to his gospel ministry.”

June 21, 2026 - Facing the Costs of Being an Effective Disciple Maker - Pastor Paul Vallee

The true measure of a person is not what they have acquired or achieved but what they have had to endure, struggle through, and suffer in their lives to fulfil God’s purposes and assignment for their lives. John Piper writes in “The Roots of Endurance,” “I have found myself in conversation with Christians for whom it is simply a given that you do not put yourself or your family at risk. The commitment to safety and comfort is an unquestioned absolute. The demands of being a Christian in the twenty-first century will probably prove to be a rude awakening for such folks. Since we have not embraced the Calvary road voluntarily, God may simply catapult us onto it as he did the home-loving saints in Acts 11:19: “Those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word.’  …Being a Christian should mean that our trajectory is toward need, regardless of danger and discomfort and stress. In other words, Christians characteristically will make life choices that involve putting themselves and their families at temporal risk while enjoying eternal security.” Recently, I read a book by my friend, Dean Merrill, entitled ‘Strong to the End.’ “When David and Alicia Lloyd opened a children’s home in Haiti, they had no idea how their hearts would soar, humbled by the way God was expanding and blessing the ministry. And they had no idea how much it would cost—their son, his young wife, and their dear friend. Strong to the End tells the story of Davy, Natalie, and Judes—their lives, dreams, love, faith, and deaths.” It’s the testimony of a missionary couple in their early twenties who gave their lives for the needy in Haiti and were killed by gang violence. Paul has been addressing the threat of false teachers who deceive and lead people away from the truth found in the gospel of Jesus. In defence of his ministry to keep the Corinthians from rejecting him and the true message of the gospel, he begins to explain what he has endured. In essence, he explains the cost of being an effective disciple maker. Paul is going to focus on the price he had paid to be an apostle of Jesus Christ. What does this mean for us today? What cost will we have to pay?

June 14, 2026 - The Critical Reason Why Evil Needs to be Exposed - Pastor Paul Vallee

Nearly forty years ago, one of the spiritual leaders in our church family attended a two-day event sponsored by a group that challenged the validity of his faith in Christ. He was told that he was not experiencing the totality of the gospel and that he needed to do certain things for it to occur in his life. The approach was fear-driven and moved him away from the ‘freedom that there is in Christ’ to a very legalistic bondage. When I went to visit him and his wife to see what was happening, they shared that we were not preaching the whole gospel. As he explained the nature of what he was taught, I tried to show them the folly of that understanding. However, I was unable to persuade them that what they were embracing was not the biblical position that believers have in Christ. In trying to understand what happened to this couple, I was preaching a series on Colossians when I came across a text that explained it very simply. Colossians 2:8 - See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. Colossians 2:8 (New Century Version) - Be sure that no one leads you away with false and empty teaching that is only human, which comes from the ruling spirits of this world, and not from Christ. The strength of evil is its deceptive nature. Paul is about to expose the insidious nature of what was transpiring and the underlying source of the conflict, evil, and divisiveness in the Corinthian church. There is a distortion of the gospel which Paul needs to address. Motivated out of a deep love and desire for the Corinthians to walk in holiness and purity, Paul, as a spiritual father, is jealous for his spiritual children to present them to Christ as a pure bride to their heavenly bridegroom.   Paul realizes that some of the Corinthians have tolerated the folly of these false teachers and their boastings. We now enter a polemic or an approach that Paul feels reluctant to do, but because of the self-aggrandizement of these false teachers, Paul states that he will use boasting in an ironic sense to depreciate the value of the false teacher’s message and boasts. His desire is to warn these believers of the duplicity and danger that they are currently experiencing. He is hoping to awaken them from the danger of this spiritual deception.  Paul is trying to expose these false messengers, who are propagating a false Jesus, Spirit, and gospel. We are going to examine his approach in dealing with this deception.

June 7, 2026 - How to Handle Criticism Directed to Undermine Our Effectiveness

How often do we take a text of Scripture and apply that truth personally in our lives, only to discover, once understood in its biblical context, an even greater reality? That’s exactly what happened to me this week. Since I had never studied 2 Corinthians in my undergraduate, graduate, or postgraduate courses, nor had I ever taught or preached from it, except for a few isolated texts, I was startled by a text I assumed I understood. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. I simply took this to mean that we needed to submit our thoughts that were contrary to the word of God and make them obedient to Christ. It seemed to me that spiritual warfare was primarily in our minds. It is certainly true that the battle we fight is primarily a spiritual battle in our minds, but understanding exactly what Paul meant by these texts in their context goes way beyond that premise.  In 2 Corinthians, Paul defends himself against criticisms of his life and ministry stemming from a distorted understanding of the gospel. This distortion led by outsiders had affected a minority group in the church who were being led astray. Two things come to mind. What were these false ideas that needed to be corrected? Secondly, when and how should we defend ourselves to others who are verbally attacking and criticizing us in regard to our understanding of the gospel? How does this idea fit into Jesus’ remarks on the Sermon on the Mount regarding ‘turning the other cheek '? Matthew 5:39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. Jesus is speaking against retaliation and in favour of the willingness to let God vindicate us. But is there ever a time that we need to stand up and speak against evil? Someone might argue that Jesus is speaking about not defending ourselves, but here Paul, in writing in 2 Corinthians, is dealing with the personal attacks in the form of criticisms directed at him to undermine his credibility and ministry among the Corinthians. So, one of the issues that we need to understand is: what is at stake? Paul is defending himself and his ministry because the very essence and nature of the gospel is being attacked and distorted. Outsiders are trying to discredit both Paul, the messengers, and his message. How does what was transpiring then affect what is happening today?

May 24, 2026 - How to Experience the Resurrected Life - Pastor Paul Vallee

All the arguments in the world cannot explain away the power of an experience with the living God. Unfortunately, for many, Christianity is strictly theory rather than reality. It is critical that our faith does not rest solely on what is in our heads. An encounter with Christ will do more to move our emotions and wills. Biblical faith affects the total personality: our minds, our emotions, and our wills. It is life-changing. Anything less is not the ‘real thing.’  Genuine spirituality, genuine Biblical Christianity is not only believing the right things but also being and becoming the right kind of person because of what God has and is doing for you and through you.  Maybe we wonder: after surrendering our lives to Jesus, where do we go from there? Like the disciples after the first Easter, we may, along with the original disciples, wonder now what?