Luther neither removed the Apocrypha from the Bible nor discouraged its use. Rather, he received and preserved the ancient distinction inherited from the fathers: the Apocrypha is valuable, edifying, and worthy of reading, but it is not Holy Scripture and therefore cannot serve as the foundation of Christian doctrine.
The confessors at Augsburg remind us that every generation of Christians is called to bear witness to the gospel amid the challenges and pressures of its own age. As they confessed Christ before emperors and kingdoms, so the Church continues to confess Him before the world today.
When Jesus washes you with baptismal water, you can rest assured that the Lion of Judah is on the move.

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It is often the case that when dealing Divine, we find ourselves befuddled. For as relatable and surprisingly vulnerable God is as the man Jesus, he seems, at times, to retain a certain aloofness, a type of distance.
The flower of youth, as lovely as it is, cannot withstand the hot winds of time. There is a beauty, however, that remains.
Before long I was deeply involved in the trilogy (the reader is invariably "drawn into" the story in a unique way, and for a good reason as we shall see).
We want to know how God rules this world, how he is present in all things, how he exerts his control over the course of world events. We want to know why some get cancer and some don’t, why terrible things happen to the best of people, why volcanoes erupt and hurricanes strike and fires consume.
We shrink away from God’s godness and almightiness, and so shrink down our prayers. Perhaps it is a lack of faith. We don’t trust God to give what He himself has promised to give.
We all began by hearing the truth, and then speaking the truth and believing the truth. That truth came to us on the lips of another.
God cannot love me unconditionally without prerequisites, especially after all I’ve done, can He?
We're of little faith. Or rather, we have big faith, but it’s in something else. Our faith is in our ability to control situations, manipulate them to our advantage.
When Simon the Pharisee got his holier-than-thou panties in a wad over what this woman was doing, Jesus insulted him by pointing out how much a better host this prostitute was than he was.
He has wandered away into the darkness of his doubting, got lost in his grief, confused by the pains he’s suffered. It happens. Shepherds sometimes become lost sheep as well.
Hus was burned at the stake in his early 40s, Luther lived to a fairly ripe, old age, but why?
The reason that anyone would choose a heaven without Jesus, or happiness without Jesus, or healing without Jesus, is because he doesn’t mean that much to them to begin with.