The certainty of faith is utter assurance because it depends upon nothing of your own. It is entirely trusting that God is a propitious, pardoning God—the God who justifies sinners by forgiving them.
Sinners get faith as a gift when Christ takes their captivity captive.

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God’s published will offers us anchorage, the anchorage of Jesus Christ, in the midst of chaos, reminding us that there is a greater purpose to our lives than the pursuit of worldly success or fleeting pleasures.
While we wait in tribulation for our white robes (or pants) to be washed in the blood of the Lamb, we confess to one another our seen and unseen stains.
Grace comes for every foolish, self-absorbed sinner, for every “Nabal,” and announces that there is one who has already taken it upon himself to shoulder all of our wrongdoing, paying the price for it through the sacrifice of himself.
When properly distinguishing law and gospel in the Word of God, it is important to use the God-given gift and abilities of the imagination as your ears.
As Luther said, “Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection not in books alone, but in every leaf of spring.”
Christ Jesus brings his word and presence to where you are and he is even willing to do so through the likes of your personally present pastor.
The Parable of the Lost Sheep bursts through the confines of convention and demands that we embrace the messiness of life and the unpredictable ways in which God's grace and forgiveness operates.
We live for the most part, on the strength of our moral fiber, under the law, by our zeal for God and all that which tickles our proud fancy.
His successes were not the result of his brilliance, might, and ability as an apostle. They were the result of the all-sufficient grace of God.
What I desperately needed was not to preach to myself, but to listen to a preacher—not to take myself in hand, but to be taken in the hands of the Almighty.
Just like for Mordecai and Esther, our lives are also sustained by the hand of God in the ordinary, in events begging to be seen as the work of Christ in our lives.
When we forget that we live by promise, that's when the danger tends to creep in. Because failing to embrace promise means we usually fall back into notions of luck, or even worse--into works.