The certainty of faith is utter assurance because it depends upon nothing of your own. It is entirely trusting that God is a propitious, pardoning God—the God who justifies sinners by forgiving them.
When standing in line, or when the commercial comes on, or when a moment of boredom comes, fast and pray instead of reaching for the screen. Be reminded that the world is not an oyster to be shucked, but a place where the gifts of redemption are already open.

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Even if the numbers are bad, the news about Jesus crucified for sinners and raised to new life hasn’t become any less good.
There is a revival, no less real and even more definitive, taking place in every church, every weekend, where God’s people gather around his gifts.
Reading includes, on some level, striving. Hearing, on the other hand, remains passive.
Forty days after giving birth, Mary, along with her husband Joseph, presented their firstborn Son at the temple and "bought" him back with a sacrifice of two small birds. This is known as the "Presentation of Our Lord."
Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
Authentic proclamation, then, is the love of Christ for our souls, which we have seen and experienced through the under-shepherd’s pastoral care put into the words of Christ Himself.
The further up and further into the season of Epiphany we get, the bigger the grace of God in Christ is, the brighter the Light of Christ shines, and the more blessed we are in Jesus' epiphany for us.
God gives us the power and authority to proclaim the forgiveness of sins to burdened sinners who entrust us with their pain, guilt, and defeat.
The sign of the cross, according to the earliest centuries of Christians, is “the sign of the Lord,” and every baptized Christian was “marked” with it.
Repentance is meaningless unless we are willing to acknowledge who we are: sinners needing mercy.
The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
The sermon takes place in the context of a multi-facetted set of relationships experienced through the weeks and months of being together in congregation and community. Those relationships shape the credibility of the preacher in the pulpit.