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.
To Live Well is therefore not a general advice book, but a message suffused with the gospel.

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May we, as preachers, rise and proclaim that Jesus Christ is sufficient for all our spiritual hunger.
Job needs a savior, and he knows it. And in Jesus, he gets one.
Spy Wednesday asks us to look inward. It's the day the liturgical calendar acknowledges what we already know: we are not the best version of ourselves.
Lent exists because we are forgetful creatures. We forget how hungry we really are.
God is not a tool in our hands. He does not exist to serve our goals, our metrics, or our platforms.
The Church’s unity is not uniformity in every matter of her well-being. It is faithfulness in what constitutes her being.
For many years, I held piety as my god.
The Supper doesn’t depend on the faithfulness of the Church. It depends on the faithfulness of Christ.
When we despair of ourselves, we repent of these self-justifying schemes and allow ourselves to be shaped by God, covered in Christ’s righteousness, and reborn with a new heart.
When Dostoevsky died on February 9, 1881, he left behind novels that refuse to flatter the reader or simplify the human condition.
The Scriptures consistently speak about sanctification as a sure gift for the Christian.
We believe in a Savior who raises the dead: this is why the church is the one place on earth that can speak plainly about abortion without collapsing into despair.