The Joshua Victor Theory

  Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The Bible verse for our focus today will be Acts 2:21, “ And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved .” When you are in trouble or need help, who helps you? Who can you trust? Who are your phone contacts? Your parents or older sibling for advice. Your trusted mechanic for when the car breaks down. Your plumber for leaks, your pastor for spiritual guidance, your doctor for your health. Or in a life-or-death emergency, or when a crime is underway, you call 9-1-1 because they respond 24/7 to emergencies. Anything beyond our own wisdom, expertise, ability to care for ourselves, or above our emotional threshold—we reach out to others for help. We call upon our “helpers.” We take cell phones for granted and calling anyone in the world. It’s astonishing, when you remember that just 200 years ago, there was no such thing as a telephone, and the

    Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. What do you think of when you hear the word delight? Where does delight happen? What do we take delight in? We could give many different answers. A toddler delights in the cool sensations of splashing or running water. An older child delights in the colors and booms of a firework display. Young lovers delight in the warm emotions and tingling excitement of finding a person that shows mutual interest. A cowboy delights in the strength and speed of a horse. A race enthusiast delights in the roar and muscle of a stock car. An artist delights in a natural scene of beauty they can translate to the canvas. We can delight in people, relationships, sensations, beauty, power, wisdom, and a host of other things. God’s creation is full of wonders, knowledge and mysteries that spark our curiosity with delights both forbidden and blessed. Delight happens in our heart and our eyes. We might describe i

    Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. Last week in Psalm 28 we prayed with King David and felt the emotional tug of war waiting for God’s answer to prayers. Today Mark 9 is a lesson on mature discipleship, faith and prayer. A nameless father has a boy who is suffering terribly with epileptic seizures caused by a demon. The father’s faith is faltering; this has happened since childhood. The disciples’ faith appears absent, as Jesus rebukes them and the rest as a “faithless generation,” when they fail to heal him by failing to pray. Jesus seems harsh, as in several places in Mark. But the nameless father persists and his prayer is answered! Jesus lifts the nameless father and us, from faltering to faith. How do we get from faltering to faith? God will always strengthen faith when we ask for it. When it came to the power of prayer, Jesus shows the disciples failed to even use it! Before the disciples had success in casting out demons a

  Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. These are ordinary questions: “Do you read the Bible?” “How do you interpret that passage?” Now flip them around. What if I asked you: “Do you let the Bible read you?” “Are you letting this passage interpret you?” God’s living and active Word reads and interprets our lives. Sharper than any two-edged sword, God’s Word searches our hearts and minds (Heb. 4:12). The real question is how God’s Word is reading and interpreting our lives. How is God’s Word at work in us? So instead of us acting on God’s Word, God’s Word is acting on us. Let’s try this with Psalm 28, our Introit. On the one hand we could read the Psalms like a Bible study of the prayers and hymns and laments of Old Testament believers. But that wouldn’t let God’s Word “read us.” It keeps God’s Word at arm’s length. For God’s Word to “read and interpret us”, we must find ourselves, our unnamed fears and emotions in the Psal