We are invited to entrust everything to the one who accomplished what we could not: living and bleeding and dying and rising again, so that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). To put it another way, when it comes to the kingdom of God, there’s no room for DIY’ers. Best leave it to the professionals.
We live in the “already” but “not yet”. Peace is already ours but not yet. The resurrection is already ours but not yet. Justice is already ours but not yet. Until then be comforted by the fact that you are reconciled in Christ on account of his life, death, and resurrection.
Luther neither removed the Apocrypha from the Bible nor discouraged its use. Rather, he received and preserved the ancient distinction inherited from the fathers: the Apocrypha is valuable, edifying, and worthy of reading, but it is not Holy Scripture and therefore cannot serve as the foundation of Christian doctrine.

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The God who abundantly restores is still in the business of total restoration, even today. Even now the God of heaven restores dead sinners to life.
On May 2nd, Cantate Sunday, in the year 1507, Luther celebrated his first Mass.
In the Church, the cry is, “He loves,” and it is that message which transforms our worldviews from taking to giving, from radical individualism to trans-demographic inclusivism, from selfishness to selflessness, from “tolerate my rights” to “loving rightly together.”
Our Judge (the one who can condemn us) has become our Advocate (the one who doesn’t condemn us) because he is also our Substitute (the one who takes our condemnation).
False holiness is always a possession and achievement of the individual in isolation from the good of others. And so it isn’t holiness at all.
Excerpt #3 from the new book “Withertongue Emails" by Donavon Riley.
Excerpt #2 from the new book “Withertongue Emails" by Donavon Riley.
I finally watched the film “Encanto” with my kids. I had heard many people say the subtext of this movie was deeper than most. So, we snuggled up on the couch and watched it to see what everyone was talking about.
Excerpt #1 from the new book “Withertongue Emails" by Donavon Riley.
Because Jesus has set us free, we enjoy a freedom of movement in His world, under His grace, that loosens our tongues to sing His praise.
The world we inhabit is wrong in so many ways, and a holistic approach to this “wrongness” traces its cause both to sin itself and to the effects of sin.
Is the serpent in Genesis 3 just a snake or Satan? Does the Hebrew refer to "the satan" or "Satan"? And does it make a difference? Let's take a look at the Old Testament, early Jewish literature, and the New Testament for the answers.