What Israel’s story makes painfully obvious is that following the Lord is a lifelong lesson in “I believe, but help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
Faith holds on to the truth of who Jesus is revealed to be, despite our sometimes incongruent experience with God.
This is an excerpt from the first chapter of A Reasoned Defense of the Faith by Adam Francisco (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 1-3.

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Pentecost is a flashback. It drives us back to the past. It also propels us forward into the future.
I trust that because of the gospel, God will continue to mend what I, in my sin, continue to break.
1517 would not exist without the leadership, friendship, and faithfulness of Pastor Ron Hodel.
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.
Jesus opens for us a way to walk through suffering and to sing our song of salvation as we talk to our heavenly Father.
Both Paul and Martin Luther were Olympic champions when it came to ladder climbing.
God excludes our boasting out of his abundant mercy.
What we have in our reading is a picture of how God deals with a lack of understanding.
The God who abundantly restores is still in the business of total restoration, even today. Even now the God of heaven restores dead sinners to life.
Today, Jesus comes as your Good Shepherd. You recognize His voice.
In the Church, the cry is, “He loves,” and it is that message which transforms our worldviews from taking to giving, from radical individualism to trans-demographic inclusivism, from selfishness to selflessness, from “tolerate my rights” to “loving rightly together.”
Our Judge (the one who can condemn us) has become our Advocate (the one who doesn’t condemn us) because he is also our Substitute (the one who takes our condemnation).