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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The list of things our kids need to know when they leave the house is much simpler than we might believe.
In the face of abject evil, these two faithfully cling to the words and truths of he alone who is Good, Jehovah God.
If you want something empty, the tomb is the way to go. The point of the manger is that Jesus was in it. The point of the cross is that Jesus was on it.
I trust that because of the gospel, God will continue to mend what I, in my sin, continue to break.
There is someone outside of I, someone outside of you, that our faith and hope is in.
Jesus does not put us on trial and make us pay for our own sin, but he, himself, is put on trial in our place.
We worry about the fact our days are as grass – so we try to scratch out a place for ourselves, to make a permanent, lasting place, to climb to higher places and succeed, more often than not, only to hurt each other in the process.
The point Luther made, again and again, was that distance between God and sinners is collapsed when the crucified Christ himself comes to sinners through a preacher.
When Luther was in the pulpit, he was teaching, and when he was in the lecture hall at the podium, he was preaching. Linebaugh’s outstanding book will help contemporary pastors to do the same.
God’s gifts, in turn, conform our minds to the mind of Christ, and catechize our imagination in the image of God’s Son.
Both Paul and Martin Luther were Olympic champions when it came to ladder climbing.
God excludes our boasting out of his abundant mercy.