Every time someone is baptized, every time bread is broken and wine poured, every time a sinner hears, “Your sins are forgiven in Christ,” Pentecost happens again.
They were still praying, trusting, and hoping. Why? Because they knew who was with them and who was for them: the risen Christ.
So Christ is risen, but what now?

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Our enoughness before God cannot be earned by our piety or bestowed by our neighbor. Our righteousness and our justification come from Christ and His work for us
Is there ever a time in a Christian’s life when there is less need for grace? Think about it.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy works for me, not because it substitutes a temporal and flimsy antidote to my problems but because it points me to the God who has adopted and baptized me
“There is no obedience that does not have its eyes on either God or neighbor. An obedience that is motivated by what we will get out of it is no obedience at all.”
I was once asked why I thought young people were leaving the church in droves after they graduated high school.
Our church doesn’t talk a lot about giving up things for Lent. Lent seasons means we have Sunday night services as well, where we bring in speakers who talk about a different theme each year.
The following is an excerpt from Law and Gospel in Action written by Mark Mattes (1517 Publishing, 2019).
We’ve all been there, waiting in line to check out, and the person ahead of us questions the price of something that was just rung up.
When we say “forgiveness,” we mean, “Jesus.” When we say, “righteousness,” we mean, “Jesus.”
Did the Apostle Paul just say that “he fills up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ?" That seems a little at odds with Jesus’ statement, "It is finished."
To be human is to be preoccupied with averting pain and despair. But despair gets a bad rap.
Many sit and wait for judgment day to come, running through their performance in this life, hoping that the electing Judge found some reason to love them like Jacob.