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 unbeliever will search for relief from temptations in worldly prescriptions and pleasures. The believer searches for answers in the promises of the One who can bring true lasting peace in mind, body, and soul.
This is an excerpt adapted from “Let the Bird Fly” written by Wade Johnston (1517 Publishing, 2019).
As we live as the children of the Father of lights, the giver God, he will keep on pouring out his gifts, and they will overwhelm us more and more.
Lack of effort isn’t the sworn enemy of fruit-bearing. Self-sufficiency is.
By basing our assurance on the promises of God, which we not only hope for in the future but live in now, the Christian can finally rest in the comfort that they are both saved and not responsible for their own salvation.
The Earth itself, into which the blood of Christ seeped, will be redeemed and renewed, just like our spirits in Holy Baptism, just like our bodies on the day of the resurrection.
Our passage from Romans steers us between these two dangerous misconceptions: The mythical monster Scylla of believing the body to be evil on the one shore, and the beast Charybdis of believing the body constitutes all there is on the other.
If our churches are split along generational lines it's because we've turned our backs to the cross. We've shut our ears to the Good News about Jesus Christ, who judges the world with equity.
We're not called to be obedient consumers. We're free in Christ to love and serve our neighbor according to his need
The kingdom I seek is the lower-case realm ruled over by the almighty upper-case Me.
That is why we dance on graves. That is why we smile in the midst of sorrowful tears. That is why we retell old stories and share humorous memories.
Ultimately, you are not your problems. You are not your weaknesses. You are not your sins. You are sanctified. You are the recipient of God’s abundant, forgiving, amazing grace.