Paradoxes hold everything together, not just in Inception’s plot, but in your life and mine.
We don’t flinch at sin. We speak Christ into it.
One might say that the first statement of the Reformation was that a saint never stops repenting.

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This is an edited excerpt from Addendum A, “The Church Year,” On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service, written by Michael Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023), pgs. 113-120.
It is Jesus himself who is the ladder by which sinners get to God, not by them climbing up but by God climbing down.
This is an excerpt from the introduction of Hitchhiking with Prophets: A Ride Through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament written by Chad Bird (1517 Publishing, 2024). Now available for preorder.
With the Spirit we will get lost in the world. We are on a new track.
Like Jacob, sinners approach the Heavenly Father wearing the clothes of their older brother, Jesus.
Instead of a death sentence, those brothers hear the words of deliverance.
Five promises were seemingly all those apostles, staring into the sky, had to go on. Five promises that were more than enough.
Don’t get in the habit (or, if you already do it, get out of the habit) of saying, “I could never talk about these things the way my pastor does.”
Are you on the receiving end of freedom? Or are you trying to make yourself free?
He shows up when we are at our worst to usher us back to his side, lead us to repentance, rescue us, and reclaim us as his own.
Sometimes, we get prayer dementia. We can’t remember what we were going to pray for, we can’t put the words together, and, frustrated, there is nothing we can do but sigh and groan.
The number forty calls to remembrance narratives of God’s great acts of redemption, but also our conformity to and participation in those narratives.