One might say that the first statement of the Reformation was that a saint never stops repenting.
Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).

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Pentecost is a flashback. It drives us back to the past. It also propels us forward into the future.
The glimpse of this final vision of healing has healed us before, it heals us here and now, and it will heal us again.
Just as the disciples on the road to Emmaus recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread, so we, through the working of the Holy Spirit, recognize our Lord in the Word and Sacraments.
Now, in the New Testament, the number for the Church remains twelve as Jesus calls twelve Apostles to be trained by Him to carry out the ministry following His ascension.
So, we pray. Not just in times of need, but we pray at all times. Because this is part of what it means to be saved.
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.
There were no discussions, no committee meetings, no master planning, he and his group simply went to Macedonia.
What you are doing for your hearers is sparking their imagination to live in, to dwell in, the images you are conjuring in their mind’s eye.
Jesus opens for us a way to walk through suffering and to sing our song of salvation as we talk to our heavenly Father.
In the Old Testament all the world is narrowed down to the people of Israel, which is eventually narrowed down to One—Jesus! Jesus is Israel reduced to one in order that all the world might be saved through Him.
What we have in our reading is a picture of how God deals with a lack of understanding.
This voice of Jesus is the same voice which now beckons us to see anew how God in Christ is at work anywhere and everywhere.