The certainty of faith is utter assurance because it depends upon nothing of your own. It is entirely trusting that God is a propitious, pardoning God—the God who justifies sinners by forgiving them.
Sinners get faith as a gift when Christ takes their captivity captive.

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The cross does not remain on a hill far away. It pursues us into the valleys, the ravines, the crevices in which we get trapped as we wander in search of a fixed point for our lives.
Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance powers our ability to view the world with perceptive sensitivity and, therefore, to treat others fairly in the way we think and the way we experience life.
Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours generosity and hospitality into the way we think and the way we experience life.
Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours kindness and gentleness into the way we think and the way we experience life.
Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance breaks through sorrow and worry; such trust pours joy into the way we think and the way we experience life.
Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours the ability to abandon fixing our eyes only inwardly and lets us see ourselves as others see us.
God makes all things new. He refashions us from those turned in upon ourselves, turned to idols of our own choice and making, to experience the freedom He gives by pronouncing us His righteous children.
What more could God do to prove to us that he is for us and not against us than to give his own Son into this fallen world to take the cross in our place, exchanging his righteousness for our many sins.
As we close out an old year, Saint Silvester can remind us God is the Lord of history and He has used and is using even people whose lives sink largely or totally into obscurity to keep the confession of our faith in Jesus Christ alive.
As Simeon sang, you might lead your hearers in a song of defiant and hopeful confidence to close out a year characterized by death and despair.
Like Luther and like Hannah, we also receive God’s promise.
Imperatives are good for many things. Luther said the Law is good, but precisely because it is good, it has become poison and death to the bad. The Law does not give life but evaluates it, and we encounter day in and day out its negative evaluation of us.