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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Lent exists because we are forgetful creatures. We forget how hungry we really are.
Pride builds identities that leave no room for grace.
Worship never existed as escape from the world, but preparation for life within it.
A rightly-oriented heart and a rightly-oriented love will consistently do what is best for God and best for our neighbor, which is why St. Augustine speaks of sin as a disordered love.
Christian faith is never a solitary possession. When the congregation confesses, the old speak for the young, the strong for the weak, and the clear-voiced for the trembling.
The entire history of Protestantism is downstream of a goldsmith in Mainz figuring out how to cast identical pieces of lead type in less than a minute.
Baptism does not promise us chocolates or flowers, but something far greater: life in Christ.
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.
This is the first in a series meant to let the Christian tradition speak for itself, the way it has carried Christians through long winters, confusion, and joy for centuries.
The crisis is not merely that people are leaving. The crisis is that we have relinquished what is uniquely Lutheran and deeply needed.
This ancient “tale of two mothers” concerns far more than theological semantics—it is the difference between a God who sends and a God who comes.
The unity of God’s people is grounded not in lineage nor land but in the promise of the coming Christ.