1. This feast is the Gospel, “the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.”
  2. In this article Amy Mantravadi give a short but helpful summary of the differences in Lutheran and Reformed thought regarding assurance.
  3. Confession and absolution offer more than assurance, they gift real and genuine Divine promises.
  4. Finding rest in God when the “what ifs”come calling
  5. We know that death does not have the last word in Christ.
  6. Lewis takes us to the planets to satisfy our cravings for spiritual adventure, which, as he says, “sends our imaginations off the Earth,” in the first place.
  7. This is an excerpt from “Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment” by Bradley Gray (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  8. We may not all be mass-murdering Nazis. But we all have the same root sin that causes the most egregious criminal activity on the face of the earth. We all have the desire to be our own God.
  9. If Jesus did not rise, then religion is just religion — a mere anthropological phenomenon.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.