What Israel’s story makes painfully obvious is that following the Lord is a lifelong lesson in “I believe, but help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
Faith holds on to the truth of who Jesus is revealed to be, despite our sometimes incongruent experience with God.
This is an excerpt from the first chapter of A Reasoned Defense of the Faith by Adam Francisco (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 1-3.

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The “mystery of faith” entails the article of faith: Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and, finally, his Parousia.
Children are not meant to carry crowns. They are not meant to rule. The burden crushes them in slow, invisible ways.
Protestants, in my view, don’t suffer from a Goldilocks problem. They have an arrogance problem.
Just as each servant was sent to bring back the Master’s fruit, so did God send his prophets to bring back the fruits of a life shaped by the Word.
Why reflect on these three men — MacArthur, Ozzy, and Hulk Hogan — in the same breath?
The thief is the prophetic picture of all of us, staring hopelessly hopeful at the Son of God, begging to hear the same words.
The way of the cross is the actual way of victory. Jesus absorbs the worst of what humanity and even the devil can do to him, and he spurns the shame of it all.
Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
As soon as people understand what crucifixion means, the cross becomes offensive.
How many times in our lifetime must we sigh, floundering through this world with our sins, sorrows, struggles, frustrations, fears, and foes?
This is the second installment in the 1517 articles series, “What Makes a Saint?”