For Bonhoeffer, Christ crucified, and the cross of the Christian life were not of peripheral importance, but foundational.
While we often talk about our growth, our progress, and what we are doing for the kingdom of God, the reality is that any goodness in a Christian does not originate in us.
Your exhaustion may not be a sign of weakness of faith. It may be the fruit of enthusiasm. It is Lent. Fast from your fever. Embrace the exhaustion. Curb your inner enthusiast and cling to Christ.

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It's one thing to hope for a new reality; it's quite another to stand before it, no matter how wonderful.
This is the fourth installment in our series, From Eden to Easter: Life and Death in the Garden. Each day throughout Holy Week, we will take a special look at the gardens and wildernesses of Scripture, and in particular, these scenes' connections to Christ's redemption won for us on the cross.
This is the first installment in our series, From Eden to Easter: Life and Death in the Garden. Each day throughout Holy Week, we will take a special look at the gardens and wildernesses of Scripture, and in particular, these scenes' connections to Christ's redemption won for us on the cross.
No matter how stringent one's "regulations" — "Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch" (Col. 2:21) — the sinful nature that resides in everyone's heart is untamable by self-effort alone.
God’s people get the warm feast of victory, while God’s meal is prepared cold.
Jesus satisfies, fills, and saves because he is the Son of God, who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns forever.
You cannot sever the saint from the sinner. Christians remain both simultaneously.
This is an excerpt from Ditching the Checklist: Assurance of Salvation for Evangelicals (and Other Sinners) by Mark Mattes (1517 Publishing, 2025), pgs. 5-7.
The wrong god means love remains frail, fickle, or a fiction. The right God means love is the most reliable thing in all the world.
There is no one — not now, not ever — who cannot be included in the family of God through the efficacy of Christ’s saving power.
Wisdom lurks in the outer places. Rich gratitude sprouts from the impoverished and forgotten.
It's a new year, and you are still the same you: a sinner who is simultaneously perfect in every way because Christ declares it to be so.