This is an excerpt from the sixth chapter of Fear Not: How the Gospel Disrupts Our Deepest Anxieties by Luke Kjolhaug (1517 Publishing, 2026).
We draw near because Christ our Mediator has gone where we never could, and he has brought us with him.
The Israelite God was different from all the other gods, thus, the worship of Yahweh differed from that of all other gods.

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The irony of our idolatry is that many of our idols could and would speak the gospel to us if we would listen.
The Holy Spirit is sent, not to talk about himself, but to point us to Jesus.
Faith isn’t something that needs to be done. It’s something to be enjoyed because faith is a gift bestowed by God’s word through the hearing of the Gospel.
We all know what I think (maybe) Rachel knows: Celebrating ourselves isn’t enough. It won’t ever be enough.
Absolution is the word God speaks to cause his sin-dead creation to live.
Those called out for their sins, who find themselves knee deep in their transgressions, always need grace.
It’s God’s love that sets us free to love in the first place.
God has a strange delivery system, the foolish preaching of the cross and foolish preachers for Christ’s sake delivering it.
Jesus rejects what we believe is most necessary and instead points us to his pain, suffering, death, and self-sacrifice.
You can’t bear your own sins, to say nothing of getting rid of them.
Repentance means to turn or change your mind. It is not a turn from sin to righteousness. It is a turn from sin to the righteous Son of God who has defeated all sin.
The truth is we’ve always mixed up the roles of penitent and priest.