The confessors at Augsburg remind us that every generation of Christians is called to bear witness to the gospel amid the challenges and pressures of its own age. As they confessed Christ before emperors and kingdoms, so the Church continues to confess Him before the world today.
When Jesus washes you with baptismal water, you can rest assured that the Lion of Judah is on the move.
The life we are trying to manage, improve, and secure is not something to be mastered. It is something to be surrendered. And this is where everything changes. Because in Christ, the approval we are seeking has already been spoken.

All Articles

"Ragged" written by Gretchen Ronnevik is now available for purchase from 1517 Publishing
From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture echoes with the great songs of salvation that fill our ears, hearts, minds, and mouths with the good news of salvation in Jesus.
This is an excerpt from the introduction of Ragged: Spiritual Disciplines for the Spiritually Exhausted written by Gretchen Ronnevik (1517 Publishing, 2021), 122-125. Now available for preorder.
God leads us to the refuge that’s more secure and safe than any man-made thing, more than anything we own, more than anything that owns us.
Now, if there were another way to heaven, doubtless, he would have made it known to us.
It’s God’s love that sets us free to love in the first place.
We will always need comfort until the reign of God, his kingdom, comes in full with Christ’s return, and our suffering and the sin that causes it is no more.
God loves you no matter what. Loves you no matter how many times you have screwed up. Loves you to death, he does.
This is not a plea for us to be given the strength to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. It is our helpless cry when boots – straps and all - slip off the edge of temptation’s cliff.
The petition not to be led into temptation is found in just the right place within the seven petitions.
Though envy whispers to us that peace can only be found by “keeping up,” Jesus whispers to us a better word: “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.”
If we want to see evidence of our Father’s answer to the fifth petition, we need only to look at the cross and the empty tomb.