Let us live by walking with Jesus, so that our Neo-Pagan neighbors, the witch, and frankly a lot of us Christians, can put down our crystals, our superstitions, our vision boards, and our bound sage in order to live out a liturgy of life, with rituals, practices, and behaviors that reflect who we are as followers of Christ.
As Jesus hung on the cross there would be no last second escape. No Greek goddess would swoop in to rescue him. He suffered alone. And yet even in that suffering he declared his victory on the spiritual battlefield to be your victory.
God can handle grief, rage, and cries for justice. God can handle the victim who cannot yet forgive. God can handle the prayer that comes out jagged and wounded. The good news is that God is holy and merciful enough to handle all our prayers.

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At the core of Luther’s advice is the proclamation that we are free to hand over our pain, our sin, and our inabilities to our Savior.
Forgiveness. Reconciliation. They are beautiful notions until we have some reconciling and forgiving to do. It is easy to say we believe in forgiveness.
To be lukewarm is to take refuge in your own works apart from the works of God.
Seasons of prolonged suffering have a way of beating your spirit down into the dust. Relational suffering. Physical suffering. Emotional suffering. Financial suffering.
The Lord is your Shepherd, your Good Shepherd. And all He wants is you.
The wizard stares into Billy Batson’s eyes. “Speak my name so my powers may flow through you.”
“Our “good destruction” happened about 2,000 years ago as Jesus Christ arose from the tomb and crushed the head of Satan, broke the jawbones of death, and snapped the chains of sin. ”
Do you really believe with all the saints that the church is one in Christ? Or are you the pragmatist who teaches your people that the church is broken, filled with sinners and false doctrine, and only in heaven will things be perfect? Have you complained that your people are not as holy as they ought to be or reverent as they should be?
Jesus makes two extraordinary claims in this text. One has to do with His relationship to the Father. The other has to do with His relationship to His followers. The preacher on this text would do well to recognize the magnitude of these two claims, and then choose one (or both) to proclaim without apology or reservation.
We do not, as followers of Jesus, put any hope or place any trust in “princes, in mortal man, in whom there is no salvation” (Ps. 146:3).
One of the great themes of the Game of Thrones is the personification of Death, most concretely in the form of the Night King, supreme commander of the blue-eyed nightwalkers.
I love the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. So much is communicated in those few verses.