God makes us pure saints by planting us back in the earth we imagined we needed to escape.
Salvation is not merely to be put in “safety” but to be put into Christ.
Bringing your family to church to receive “the one thing needful” (Luke 10:42) in Word and Sacrament honors and pleases God.

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When we own up to our sin, our Father is not scandalized, and his response is not to reconsider his calling us.
God is mercy. He was mercy then. He’s mercy now. God showed them His glory, if only a reflection, in the face of Moses.
Excerpt #3 from the new book “Withertongue Emails" by Donavon Riley.
I may feel today that the Lord has not found me, but in fact he has – he is intimately acquainted with all my ways.
Excerpt #2 from the new book “Withertongue Emails" by Donavon Riley.
I finally watched the film “Encanto” with my kids. I had heard many people say the subtext of this movie was deeper than most. So, we snuggled up on the couch and watched it to see what everyone was talking about.
Excerpt #1 from the new book “Withertongue Emails" by Donavon Riley.
If God ever forgives you, it is not just allowing you to start over and try harder the second time, but it is a whole, new, complete justification that is given as a free gift and without any work of our own—outside the law.
The world we inhabit is wrong in so many ways, and a holistic approach to this “wrongness” traces its cause both to sin itself and to the effects of sin.
Justification and regeneration are, therefore, necessarily connected and have profound implications upon the craft of preaching.
Grace remits sin, and peace quiets the conscience. Sin and conscience torment us, but Christ has overcome these fiends now and forever.
Is the serpent in Genesis 3 just a snake or Satan? Does the Hebrew refer to "the satan" or "Satan"? And does it make a difference? Let's take a look at the Old Testament, early Jewish literature, and the New Testament for the answers.