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.

All Articles

Few smells are as pervasive as the smell of smoke. Anyone who’s sat around a campfire can attest.
What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with God? And what words, then, do I pray?
Exemplified here are two misunderstandings about the forgiveness and graciousness of God among some Christians.
Assurance of salvation may be the single greatest struggle people have confessed to me. It isn't surprising.
The Church of Jesus Christ is and stays Jesus' Church whether we decide it is or not.
There were pictures of her bathed in the sun of South Padre, sand between her toes, arm-in-arm with beautiful friends
If we get past Sunday School moralizing what do we discover in the Old Testament?
When it comes to this world, our beds are most often a mess even when we do our best to make them in the morning.
There in that moment, the waters of baptism reached down deep into the forsaken path of the grave with a man whose body and mind could no longer hold onto any reality otherwise.
I don’t know about you, but I am perpetually of the mind that God is disappointed in me.
An introduction to Bo Giertz's, Romans: A Devotional Commentary
Some lie and tell us that to sin is to be ourselves. But it is not. Sin is not natural to humanity.