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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Press on, church. Yours is the victory through Jesus Christ your Lord.
As both law and gospel are proclaimed, judgment and deliverance are miraculously pronounced over the hearer.
The one who delights in the law of the Lord learns to fear his own good works and trust God outside of them.
Free speech isn't dead yet, and when it comes to the proclamation of the gospel, it never will be.
God can never really be said to be ignoring us, even if our experience with God at any given moment is that he is.
Despite the fact that this could sound strange to modern ears, Luther has an important reason for saying what he does about the Commandments.
The Christian must always remember that personal piety and liturgical uniformity are by no means the marks of true religion.
We don't associate the word "regret" with anything "good," but God does.
In Christ, this world’s never-children are his always-children, because he isn’t a God of death, after all.
If your faith is rooted in the gospel of Zion, in the good news of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection on your behalf, you are already a member of the “heavenly Jerusalem”
This is an excerpt from “Confession and Absolution” by John T. Pless in Common Places in Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly, edited by Mark Mattes, (1517 Publishing 2023).
Success is emphatically not your primary identity.