The greatest obstacle to friendship in middle age isn't that nobody wants friends. It's that everyone is waiting for someone else to go first. But here's the good news: Christ has already gone first for you. And because He has, you are free to go first for someone else.
Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for everything under heaven. But God has also placed eternity in our hearts, and that makes us strange creatures: able to rejoice in this life yet always aching for a life that only Christ can give.
What does it take to draw near to God? It takes a perfect priest, a finished work, and a broken body to open the way. In short, it takes everything, which is exactly what Christ has given for you.

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Celebrate the 4th Year of the 1517 Podcast Network with a Special Gift.
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.
There is someone outside of I, someone outside of you, that our faith and hope is in.
Jesus does not put us on trial and make us pay for our own sin, but he, himself, is put on trial in our place.
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.
We worry about the fact our days are as grass – so we try to scratch out a place for ourselves, to make a permanent, lasting place, to climb to higher places and succeed, more often than not, only to hurt each other in the process.
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.
Make no mistake, sinners are in fact being pursued by a most hideous beast called sin, death, and the devil, unleashed and striking continuously.