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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The love of God in Christ Jesus never changes. That love is for you.
We can interpret "be the Church" as either law or gospel.
Jesus has gone ahead of you on the road, and promises to be with you still.
We are not pursuing dragons; we are the dragons. We are, all of us, Eustace Scrubb.
A truly Lenten mindset sees the season as preparatory for the resurrection life of Easter as opposed to the mortification of Good Friday.
Your champion steps forward.
The number forty calls to remembrance narratives of God’s great acts of redemption, but also our conformity to and participation in those narratives.
What if the dissonance in this calendrical coincidence can be harmonized into a deeper melody?
The driving impulse of Lent isn’t so much “giving up” things as it is “putting on” something.
At the Transfiguration, we say farewell to alleluia and hello to the horrific reality of our lost condition.
God gives his church a story that helps to make sense of this life.
It would serve us well to embrace the beauty of our diversity within the unity of the body of Christ.