1. Tim wanted everyone to know to the deepest part of their being that they were justified by Christ alone.
  2. In the sacrament, we receive an earnest of that future promise here and now in the body and blood of Jesus given and shed for us.
  3. The story of salvation is the true story of God doing his unexpected work of salvation for us.
  4. If the season of Lent is a journey, Holy Week is the destination.
  5. 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.
  6. This is the message of Lent. We are not called to sacrifice for Jesus in order to earn our salvation. Rather, we are called to remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for us.
  7. A Christian is a man who desires to enter heaven not through his own goodness and works, but through the righteousness and works of Christ.
  8. Reading includes, on some level, striving. Hearing, on the other hand, remains passive.
  9. Love is pointing to Jesus who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
  10. The further up and further into the season of Epiphany we get, the bigger the grace of God in Christ is, the brighter the Light of Christ shines, and the more blessed we are in Jesus' epiphany for us.
  11. The good news of the Gospel is Jesus has come, and Jesus will come again.
  12. God the Father sent us – his wayward, sinful, and naughty children – his own series of Father Christmas Letters.