We are invited to entrust everything to the one who accomplished what we could not: living and bleeding and dying and rising again, so that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). To put it another way, when it comes to the kingdom of God, there’s no room for DIY’ers. Best leave it to the professionals.
We live in the “already” but “not yet”. Peace is already ours but not yet. The resurrection is already ours but not yet. Justice is already ours but not yet. Until then be comforted by the fact that you are reconciled in Christ on account of his life, death, and resurrection.
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.

All Articles

This is an excerpt from the introduction of Ragged: Spiritual Disciplines for the Spiritually Exhausted written by Gretchen Ronnevik (1517 Publishing, 2021), 122-125. Now available for preorder.
Luther saw that God demands not that we become perfectly righteous like God but that we simply receive the gift of righteousness; a gift that actually makes us worthy.
Evangelism is hard work requiring lots of patience. Churches and mission boards are often too impatient and want to see numerical growth explode overnight.
Absolution is the word God speaks to cause his sin-dead creation to live.
Those called out for their sins, who find themselves knee deep in their transgressions, always need grace.
When we come to God with our faithful obedience to make a case for our just cause, we expect to hear his deliverance in the form of a "yes."
It’s God’s love that sets us free to love in the first place.
God has a strange delivery system, the foolish preaching of the cross and foolish preachers for Christ’s sake delivering it.
What kind of shepherd does God provide? The answer, of course, starts and ends with Christ.
The result of this day’s proceedings, in Luther’s mind, was likely to be a painful death at the stake.
Forde’s work testifies to the liveliness and vitality of confessional Lutheranism, and its promise for the continuing need to preach Christ crucified in this, and every, age until the Lord’s return.
I can look at all of my failings and foolishness because I know who Christ is for me. I rest in his wisdom and life not my own.