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's lifted up above Calvary, abandoned and forsaken, should draw a more discerning crowd of followers.
Looking at our dining room table most days, you might think we were running a cartoon factory out of our house. Drawings. Everywhere.
If I'm honest, when I survey my life I don't exude much contentment.
Forgiveness of sin, righteousness, and eternal life aren't handed out by God because we deserve it.
One of my favorite shows in recent memory is the American law enforcement drama Law & Order.
In other words, they had too much religion and not enough Yahweh. Or, to put it in New Testament terms, they worked so hard at being religious that they put Jesus out of work.
But that’s the way he rolls, isn't it? By misquoting, manipulating, and ripping God’s word out of context, the devil wields it as a weapon to drive us to doubt and pride.
I don't remember the first time I heard the gospel, but I do remember the first time I began to understand it.
One of the common things I see my congregants struggle with is the concept of forgiveness. Contrary to what I had assumed would be the case, I find congregants don’t struggle so much with giving forgiveness as they do living with forgiveness.
We just can't stop ourselves from putting the brakes on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
God lit within these ashes the fire of a promise: whoever they touched, that person became clean.
On a recurring basis, Christians spot news headlines that signal yet one more moral collapse in society, the growing paganization of the cultures in which we live, the spread of antipathy toward the faith.