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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As disciples of Jesus, our righteousness cannot be performed before others, because our righteousness was already performed by Jesus.
If you interpret James, as most do, as an encouragement toward proving your faith by your works and then say it is your "favorite" then you are proclaiming that your favorite thing about the Christian faith is the practical outworking, the proving your faith by your works.
When I finished this book, I loved the Bible, and the Bible’s author, even more. And I can’t imagine a better endorsement than that.
To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
I think the problem with the idea of eternity is that we do not have any direct experience of it, but we encounter enough of its possibility to be unsettling.
All of Scripture, every last syllable of it, is meant to drive us to "consider Jesus," the One who comes to "make us right" by gifting us his righteousness.
Jesus not only healed her daughter, but he also gave himself to her. Wherever she went from then on, he was with her.
We assert, we herald, the truth about God becoming King of the world in and through Jesus of Nazareth alone. It is our public announcement.
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.
The law had to have its way with the expert to bring him around (and back) to Abraham's response.
The answer to our messages is God's "yes," Jesus, who sends his preachers to proclaim that there's no place for us now other than in the grip of our God and Savior.