The Joshua Victor Theory

  Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed, Alleluia! This is the end of 1 John. A letter of faith and love. Re-read the whole letter once or twice this week and reflect on its resurrection messages and the new life we’re given. There’s always more there than we can unpack. Mine the Bible for those precious jewels. God’s Word is a treasure trove for your life! Today we’re mining the word “testimony.” In chapter 5, John compares the testimony of God to the testimony of man. Testimony is a borrowed word from the courtrooms. Witnesses give their testimony to what they’ve seen or heard. “Martyr” is Greek for “witness” and later came to mean someone who died for their testimony, because so many early Christians were put to death because they wouldn’t deny, change, or surrender their testimony to Jesus Christ and His resurrection. A “testimony” or “witness” has a certain “weight” to it. A court weighs whether they can trust the witnesses. That takes discernment. We talked two weeks ago ab...

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In Matthew 10 Jesus sends out His apostles on the mission of His kingdom. Life in His kingdom is not an easy mission—quite the opposite—He promises it will be hard. Expect it. Thinking of quitting or surrendering? Jesus speaks courage to your heart! He transforms fear into courage in His kingdom. Let’s see how. In verses 26-33, Jesus uses the word “fear” four times. Three times it’s: “ Don’t fear ”; and once it’s to “ fear God .” What’s there to be afraid of? When you stand up and live for Jesus, you will be misunderstood and rejected, like Him. You can potentially face mockery, hatred, persecution, and in the worst cases, death. Many fears in life are exaggerated and blown out of proportion. But some are perfectly real. But whatever the fear, Jesus calls: “ Fear not.” Virtually no one is trying to kill us because we are Christian. We live in a free country. But that kind of extreme persec...

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. As we’ve gone through the chapters of Mark these last weeks, it continues to hit me how the experiences of the community in Jesus’ day mirrors in many ways our present day world. Even the grisly executions done by ISIS echo and multiply the violent death of John the Baptist for standing for the truth. This Gospel reading is marked by rejection and misidentification of Jesus—so that right from the first verse, King Herod and the community are mistaking the miracles and works of Jesus and His disciples, for John the Baptist risen from the dead. With misidentification, superstition, scandal, incest, a prophet speaking the truth and righteousness, a conflicted conscience, a murderous grudge, rash vow, persecution, and gory ending, this story has all the elements of a modern movie drama. The reading explains through a flashback, that Herod had recently killed John, and he and the peop...