1. The Holy Spirit unleashes his power through us, his vines, and we then get to watch as his fruits blossom and ripen.
  2. Everything in Scripture is God revealing himself to his people, you and me.
  3. It’s not our eloquence or persuasive rhetoric that changes hearts, but the Word of God that pierces through the hardened shells of unbelief and breathes life into the dead bones of sinners.
  4. Church historians attempt to determine why Melanchthon made those controversial decisions.
  5. God's faithfulness is constant and consistent. It knows no season. His love for us doesn't fade with the summer sun.
  6. When we forget that we live by promise, that's when the danger tends to creep in. Because failing to embrace promise means we usually fall back into notions of luck, or even worse--into works.
  7. The Holy Spirit isn’t so much the one you look at, as he is the one who turns you from looking at yourself and your sin to your Savior, Jesus.
  8. Luther's emphasis on the need for sinners to have preachers who can provide them with the comfort and support they need for their faith in Jesus Christ and life is as relevant today as it was in his time.
  9. The drama of Scripture is about God renaming us by bringing us into his image-bearing family once again. And it would take “a name above all names” to accomplish it.
  10. This is an excerpt from part two of “On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service” by Mike Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  11. This is an excerpt from the introduction of “Common Places in Christian Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly,” edited by Mark Mattes (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  12. What we discover in O’Connor’s stories and Martin Luther’s theology is that God’s grace is elusive because the human heart is resistant to it.