The temptation for many believers is either despair or outrage: despair that Christendom is fading, or outrage at the civilization replacing it.
Through baptism, absolution, and the Lord’s Supper, Christ meets you with his radical forgiveness which changes everything, even the self!
Do not disregard Luther’s early disputations, but appreciate their specificity and recognize their pastoral and theological continuity with his later works.

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Before long I was deeply involved in the trilogy (the reader is invariably "drawn into" the story in a unique way, and for a good reason as we shall see).
In happiness, we dare never forget that it is Christ, and Christ alone, who has restored our joy.
Today, I almost died several times.
We want people to notice us, know us, like us, or even hate us. Just please don’t ignore us. Social media is the ego’s dream come true.
We want to know how God rules this world, how he is present in all things, how he exerts his control over the course of world events. We want to know why some get cancer and some don’t, why terrible things happen to the best of people, why volcanoes erupt and hurricanes strike and fires consume.
God’s desire that all be saved led him to pay the price by which all are saved, all are justified.
When we explain away God’s Word, we jettison the reality of our ominous diagnosis in the “Thou shall/shall nots” of the law, and with it the sweet cure in the, “This is My body/blood” of the Gospel.
We shrink away from God’s godness and almightiness, and so shrink down our prayers. Perhaps it is a lack of faith. We don’t trust God to give what He himself has promised to give.
One thing is for certain: my day was heaven compared to his. My minor headaches nothing compared to whatever he was going through.
Looking back, I see that the biggest problem (besides heresy) was that my faith was first about what I did or didn’t do, but it was also intangible and spiritual.
When Dorothy, Toto and her 3 new friends finally arrived in Oz, they were met with a staggering disappointment. The Great and Powerful is Oz was not so great and powerful.
There are many funeral songs I wouldn’t be caught dead singing. Why? Because my funeral will not be about me.