This is an excerpt from the third chapter of By Water and the Word: God’s Gift of Baptism for You by Brian Thomas (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 52-60.
Even when the bitter places sink down deep into our bones, the Restorer never relinquishes his grip on you.
To Live Well is therefore not a general advice book, but a message suffused with the gospel.

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The Word seems like it is so little, like five barley loaves and two small fish, but it is all that God used to create the heavens and the earth.
Here is the true story, the one worth remembering: You are a gift.
Bitterness took root when he began approaching the Word merely as a burden he was called to carry rather than a balm that his soul needed, too.
Tetzel peddled righteousness for gold, but God gives it freely through faith in his promised Word, the person and work of Jesus Christ.
When you step into the Lord’s house, he gives you a liturgical imagination to see with eyes of faith all of his goodness and grace.
The thief is the prophetic picture of all of us, staring hopelessly hopeful at the Son of God, begging to hear the same words.
Chapter 3 of Habakkuk, which is often referred to as “the Psalm of Habakkuk,” is a song of catharsis, relief, faith, and profound emotion.
God doesn’t just simply give you all the things. He does so because his very own Son came down and earned all the things for you.
This is the third installment in the 1517 articles series, “What Makes a Saint?”
The doctrine of the Trinity is not so much the story of a “who-dunnit” as it is the story of the “who-is-it.”
You are a soul. Not an algorithm. Not a hashtag. A soul knit together by a God who does not mock, does not abandon, and does not lie.
So Christ is risen, but what now?