When standing in line, or when the commercial comes on, or when a moment of boredom comes, fast and pray instead of reaching for the screen. Be reminded that the world is not an oyster to be shucked, but a place where the gifts of redemption are already open.
Prayer is only possible because Jesus has given you access to the Father through His shed blood. Prayer is a gift purchased for you by Christ.

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The Christian does not meditate because life is calm. The Christian meditates because life is anything but calm. Trials teach us that we cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
“Where is Christ in this section of Scripture? What does this have to do with the ultimate purpose of Scripture: that I may know Him and Him crucified?” If you ask and answer that question, you have been spiritually disciplined in the right way. And it won’t matter if you got through one verse or a hundred.
Luther neither removed the Apocrypha from the Bible nor discouraged its use. Rather, he received and preserved the ancient distinction inherited from the fathers: the Apocrypha is valuable, edifying, and worthy of reading, but it is not Holy Scripture and therefore cannot serve as the foundation of Christian doctrine.
Christianity does not ultimately rest on the assertion that God delivered a perfectly dictated text whose divine origin can be demonstrated by claims of flawless transmission.
I pray my children see God’s faithfulness not in the riches of this world, but in the riches of grace through Christ Jesus.
From the very beginning, the community that God was forming was going to be much more inclusive than anyone could have imagined.
The same words of hope and peace that were entrusted to Israel are available to all, to “everyone who believes” (Acts 10:43).
No one is harder to convert than a religious expert.
Jeremiah’s prophetic call isn’t a one-off moment. Unique though it was, it wasn’t wholly exclusive.
Do not disregard Luther’s early disputations, but appreciate their specificity and recognize their pastoral and theological continuity with his later works.
This is an excerpt from the third chapter of By Water and the Word: God’s Gift of Baptism for You by Brian Thomas (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 52-60.
Even when the bitter places sink down deep into our bones, the Restorer never relinquishes his grip on you.