Sermon - 10/19/25

LUKE 18:1-8 This is the holy gospel according to Luke. Glory to you, O Lord. Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and to not lose heart. He said, in a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, grant me justice for my accuser. For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice so she may not wear me out by continually coming. And the Lord said, listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth? This is the gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, O Christ. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Jesse. I am the program innovator for Living Water Ministries. I've been working year round for Living Water for three years. Actually, last week I just celebrated my three year anniversary. So I've been on staff for three years, but camp has long been a part of my life. I was a camper through my whole childhood. I worked on summer staff. And now I am so blessed to be able to be part of the work that we do all year round. Before I talk about the gospel, I want to extend my gratitude to all of you. Faith and the people here have long been a part of camp and our programs. You have kids who come to camp, volunteers who can't come to camp and work with U.S. donors. Your pastor comes to camp every year. Camp is a really big part of this faith community. I also want to share with you a little bit about Living Water. For those of you who don't know us, the first thing that we do is summer camp. That's our main thing that we do. And during our typical weeks of camp, we have campers who are grades one through 12. And we do worship in the morning and we sing songs and we create this really, really special community for kids of all these ages. We have a couple of specialized programs. We have a week of camp for adults with developmental disabilities. We have a week of camp called Bridge Builders for high schoolers. And this is anti racism and leadership training. And new this year, we are launching a new program called In God's Image, which is a week of camp for LGBTQ high school youth. And coming up next Month we have Charge. Charge is a youth gathering for middle school and high schoolers, and this is at the Great Wolf Lodge. And Charge is an event that provides a powerful faith community where students get to develop leadership skills and grow in faith, all while having fun at the water park at Great Wolf Lodge. And because the love of Christ is abundant and freely given, Living Water believes that money should never be a barrier that stops a child from having a camp experience. So during COVID camp was closed for two summers, but this gave us the ability to give camp away for free in the summer of 2022. So every kid who came to camp in 2022 did so at no cost. And so since then, we have offered a tier pricing system to keep this equity going. So when families register their camper, they have the choice of paying full price, half price, or no price, no questions asked. It's just something that they get to select when they are registering their camper. So this and all of our ministry is made possible through generous individuals and congregations sharing their gifts with campers. Every year we hold our Run the Race campaign where runners and non runners alike come together and everybody commits to raising $2,000 and running a 200 mile relay race from Traverse City to Muskegon. So last month, we held our Run the Race event, and. And we raised over $131,000, which is so cool. And all of that gets to go to making camp the best place that it can be. And so why all this matters to you, why I'm telling this to you, is because of the people sitting in the pews with you. You have kids who come to camp. You have people who volunteer. Those campers become summer staffers. And your pastor is part of camp. The people at Faith sitting with you are super involved in the work that God does at camp. And we do all this because of the gospel. We do all of this work because of Jesus. So in the parable today, Jesus asks, asks us that if the people cry out to God, will he delay long in helping them? So if we cry out, will God help us? And honestly, sometimes it seems like God's not like he is delaying, like we've been crying out for quite some time and not hearing anything back. Because how long must we cry out until we finally see justice? How long must we cry out until we see an end of genocide? How long must we cry out until our black and brown siblings stop being kidnapped and murdered? How long until our children are safe in their schools? How long? Because sometimes it ...