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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Lord, today we remember...
St. Paul extends to us the call to arms. In particular, there is one weapon which is effective against so elusive an enemy. The weapon is prayer.
God commands we serve only Him. We serve Him with all we have and all we are, including the 90% of our income which does not go in the plates. What does it look like to serve God above money?
Only by faith in Christ are we truly awake.
Increasingly, to forgive is seen as winking at evil, as shrugging one’s moral shoulders, and as being complicit.
The heart of your sermon is the promise that God, in Jesus, has sought and found each of us. He receives us sinners and invites us to eat with Him at His table.
The smallest amount of Holy Spirit-created faith defeats every antichrist belief we hold.
The power of the Word of God is the power of God himself, for he is always faithful to his Word.
A group of unassuming apostles was given a graphic illustration of how the Lord would use them to turn the world right-side-up through the upside-down logic of grace.
Being the baptized just may be the last, great resistance.
The reason nothing can come before Jesus is because nothing endures beyond the grave except for Jesus.
In the text, Jesus enters a Pharisee’s house for dinner. Between the invitation and the meal, however, Jesus transforms this man’s home into a place of God’s care.