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

The notion that your goodness is “good enough” to make you right with God is a lie straight from the father of lies himself.
When Jesus appeared again to his disciples on that first Easter evening and again a week later with Thomas and the Emmaus disciples, what did Jesus show them? His hands.
Applying the pressure of law to ensure you do not to take grace for granted squeezes the life and power out of the gospel.
Like the serpent on the pole, God still puts real-life things up for us to look to for salvation.
Bathed in the waters of baptism, you are placed in God's path of totality, a path he won for each and every one of us.
Jonah’s biggest blunder was a failure to understand that God’s grace is always undeserved and always falls on those who are unworthy of it.
Paul knew that, without the resurrection, the Christian life was a “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video.
Don’t get in the habit (or, if you already do it, get out of the habit) of saying, “I could never talk about these things the way my pastor does.”
Heaven is yours now.
You are the baptized, for in Christ we are all wet. The demographic dividers are washed away.
What is faith to believe? The simple words of promise that Jesus Himself gives to us in Scripture: “This is My body. This is My blood.”
This day and its meaning provided the opportunity for an anonymous author to write a poem for Sheer Thursday about Judas' betrayal of Jesus.