God makes us pure saints by planting us back in the earth we imagined we needed to escape.
Salvation is not merely to be put in “safety” but to be put into Christ.
Bringing your family to church to receive “the one thing needful” (Luke 10:42) in Word and Sacrament honors and pleases God.

All Articles

The Advents of Christ (past, present, and future) elicit faith in the word of Christ, confirmed by his presence.
Pastor Craft: Essays and Sermons is now available through 1517 Publishing
Big or small, potential or certain, the despair we may grapple with during this time of year tends to find its end in the fact that things are not as they should be.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 27 in “Pastor Craft: Essays and Sermons” written by John T. Pless (1517 Publishing, 2021). Now Available for Preorder
Preparing for Advent? Discover Seven Ways to Better Know the Christ of Christmas in this free guide.
Getting ready for Christ’s coming is a practice in humility.
Each week during this year’s Advent series, we will take a look at a specific implication of Christ’s incarnation. This week, we will discover how God reaffirms the goodness of his creation by making all things new in the incarnation.
“The days are coming,” and God said it. God, who kept his promise that Christ would come at Christmas.
If Jesus is indeed the same yesterday, today, and forever, everything his enfleshment brings is already assured: life, salvation, and forgiveness.
In Genesis 1-2, the Lord reveals—or, at a bare minimum, starts dropping some big hints—that he will be quite comfortable becoming a human being himself someday.
Forgiveness of sins does not come in bits and pieces. There are no levels of forgiveness.
What I like about Giertz’s approach is the devotional nature of these commentaries. He’s a pastor concerned with what these texts have to say to us today.