The certainty of faith is utter assurance because it depends upon nothing of your own. It is entirely trusting that God is a propitious, pardoning God—the God who justifies sinners by forgiving them.
Sinners get faith as a gift when Christ takes their captivity captive.

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Thanksgiving utters a confession of dependence, an acknowledgement of the gift of something not earned or deserved.
God seeks us out and desires to give us more than a friendly smile or an understanding look. He seeks us out to embrace us and converse with us.
Trust may risk, but trust produces a sense of assurance letting us rest easy and enjoy peace while it drives us to ventures which may seem dangerous but are possible to do because trust defies the dangers.
Are we still haunted by God? Do our sins bother us to the point that we worry about God’s righteous wrath? Does the concept of justification, how one can be right in the eyes of God, even cross our minds?
The homiletical task of diminishing and debilitating mistrust begins, at every part of preaching, with the preacher.
Undershepherds of our shepherd go rejoicing as sheep among the lambs entrusted to us into God’s everlasting sheep pen, no shabby place to spend forever.
The Second Edition of “The Christian Life: Cross or Glory?” by Steven Hein is now available from 1517 Publishing.
Sermons begin with an audience of one, me. But, preaching to oneself is always dangerous.
Do we honestly believe what we tell our hearers really makes any significant difference in the coming week for them?
Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours patience and hope into the way we think and the way we experience life.
Each day gives us occasion to die to our sinful identities of all kinds and to live out a life in Christ’s footsteps as children of God.
Golgotha is the point where not only Mary and John’s family life assumed a new character, but it is the point of orientation for all human community that uses the cross to straighten out the lives of individuals turned in upon themselves.