The greatest obstacle to friendship in middle age isn't that nobody wants friends. It's that everyone is waiting for someone else to go first. But here's the good news: Christ has already gone first for you. And because He has, you are free to go first for someone else.
Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for everything under heaven. But God has also placed eternity in our hearts, and that makes us strange creatures: able to rejoice in this life yet always aching for a life that only Christ can give.
What does it take to draw near to God? It takes a perfect priest, a finished work, and a broken body to open the way. In short, it takes everything, which is exactly what Christ has given for you.

All Articles

This is an excerpt from “God’s Devil” written by John Warwick Montgomery (1517 Publishing, 2020).
We’ve become experts at making deals with God.
He will plead guilty on our behalf, and suffer the death sentence in our place.
Who are we if neither vice nor virtue will make us whole?
Apart from God's word, we will judge the right to be wrong and evil people as good.
God created humanity in his image and then inhabited that image. Not just for 33 years, but for eternity thereafter.
The good news of Jesus Christ guides us into godly worship, not self-worship.
The Earth itself, into which the blood of Christ seeped, will be redeemed and renewed, just like our spirits in Holy Baptism, just like our bodies on the day of the resurrection.
That is the good news that ifies all hand wringing and wipes away every tear from every eye.
Our passage from Romans steers us between these two dangerous misconceptions: The mythical monster Scylla of believing the body to be evil on the one shore, and the beast Charybdis of believing the body constitutes all there is on the other.
That is why we dance on graves. That is why we smile in the midst of sorrowful tears. That is why we retell old stories and share humorous memories.
Ultimately, you are not your problems. You are not your weaknesses. You are not your sins. You are sanctified. You are the recipient of God’s abundant, forgiving, amazing grace.