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.

All Articles

Jesus isn't Superman. He's not from another planet. He's from Earth.
He created us with an eye on recreating us. He made humanity in his image because one day he would assume that image. The Creator would become a creature while remaining Creator.
So it is with my little garden as well; dead, so it would seem. Nothing. Barren.
Have you ever grown despondent from trying so hard to stop behaving in certain destructive ways, but always failing?
Sometimes we try be the bad god, sometimes the good god, oftentimes a freaky hybrid of both. The result is the same: Jesus the savior just gets in our way.
I have the easiest time remembering all the good things I have done. How I was kind in the face of anger.
As an avid movie-goer, one of the ways Scripture comes alive for me is to picture the stories as if they were scenes and beats from a live-action movie.
It's easy to forget that today, just like then, most people who laud Luther publicly as a reformer, revolutionary, and so on, secretly reject his teaching because it's too much to take.
This evening we will together take a very abbreviated look at what led Luther down the long road to the discovery of the Gospel.
Lose trust in the free grace of the righteousness of Christ alone, and the holiness of the Church and all in her is lost.
True freedom, Luther discovered, is found in Jesus crucified who sets us free.
Over and over, generation after generation, sinners repeat the same mistake. "How is it possible that God can be a man," we ask.