1. Your champion steps forward.
  2. He shows up when we are at our worst to usher us back to his side, lead us to repentance, rescue us, and reclaim us as his own.
  3. The number forty calls to remembrance narratives of God’s great acts of redemption, but also our conformity to and participation in those narratives.
  4. We are the fruit that grows from the branch, which extends from the trunk of the tree, which is rooted in the soil that it grows out of, which is all Christ.
  5. What if the dissonance in this calendrical coincidence can be harmonized into a deeper melody?
  6. The driving impulse of Lent isn’t so much “giving up” things as it is “putting on” something.
  7. At the Transfiguration, we say farewell to alleluia and hello to the horrific reality of our lost condition.
  8. Christ's resurrection does not merely negate the bitterness of sin; it changes it into a source of divine sweetness, embodying the promise of a new life for us and a restored existence overshadowed by heavenly hope.
  9. My goal here isn’t to selfishly reflect on all the reasons I will miss Rod because I know that if you are reading this, you may miss this man, too.
  10. God demonstrates his great love for us in the actions of Jesus, who came down into the flesh and soaked up all our sin.
  11. When the Savior gets on our trail, nothing, not even the grave and hell, can stop him.
  12. When we believe in Jesus as the true and better fulfillment of every promise made to Abraham, we, too, are counted as righteous in the same way that he was — by faith.