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.

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Fred Rogers did not teach children how to live through a pandemic, but he had many profound things to say about loving our neighbors and finding our identity in that calling.
Christian peace is not the absence of problems, but it is the presence of God amid our pain and sorrows.
The way through loneliness will lie in the blessing of solitude and the care of God.
The well-meaning advice “time heals all wounds” is offensively false when we confront the overwhelming evidence that the constants in our lives are death, taxes, and suffering.
The proclamation of Christ's coming is for all people, at all times.
To a world enslaved to time (because it has no future), the Church's disregard for clocks and calendars is ridiculous.
The resurrection of Jesus was the moment when the one true God appointed the Man through whom the whole cosmos would be brought back into its proper order. A man got us into this mess; the Man would get it out again.
Although theirs is an impressive show of faith, the display of God’s faithfulness to them is far greater. After all, faith is only as strong as the object in which it is placed.
God's justice is marked and measured by sacrificial love, not power as the world defines it.
Faithful preachers should remain steadfast in the biblical categories and terminology and preach the reality of death.
Mindful that the pagans’ understanding of death is a finality, Paul says, “NO!” Death is not the end of humanity in God’s new world.
From mountain to mountain, from meal to meal the LORD God points us to His banquet, already prepared; the marriage feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom which shall have no end!