This is an excerpt from the third chapter of By Water and the Word: God’s Gift of Baptism for You by Brian Thomas (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 52-60.
Even when the bitter places sink down deep into our bones, the Restorer never relinquishes his grip on you.
To Live Well is therefore not a general advice book, but a message suffused with the gospel.

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What God created, God will grow. We don’t add a few stitches onto his creation.
Green is the color for “ordinary time” in the liturgical church year. It's the regular time of year that always gets overshadowed by other seasons such as Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter.
The new life Christ opened for us in His justifying resurrection, the new life into which we were baptized is a life of faith.
Baptism is always valid because no unrighteousness or faithlessness on our part could ify God’s faithfulness.
The title “peacemakers” is not ours except as we tell and retell his peacemaking story.
Luther's response to Erasmus was not meant to be a polite contribution to an academic duel.
It isn’t that God struggles to believe our repeated cries of “wolf.” Rather, we struggle to believe God when he repeatedly comes to us with forgiveness and mercy on his lips.
The Psalms aren’t the clandestine successes of a faithful soul, but are the journaled hopes of a desperate soul — of one teetering on the edge of oblivion.
Luther’s allies and opponents also would not allow him to put off responding to Erasmus indefinitely. They badgered him constantly to write a response.
Faith is a living, bold trust in God’s grace, so certain of God’s favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.
Jesus did not need a single act of mercy to get him started on the road to mercy, his essence was by nature merciful.
Through the often abominable and lamentable and occasional commendable season, there is one who remains unmoved by it all.