1. This is an excerpt from part two of “On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service” by Mike Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  2. By mandating the promise, Christ states something stronger than just an invitation.
  3. Maundy Thursday is your big night. For the Passover Lamb is given for you, given to you.
  4. This is an excerpt from the prologue of “On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service” by Mike Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  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. We don't make Church "happen." Only Christ can do so. It's his happening.
  7. I hate to break it to you, but "are" is not an action verb. "Are" is a being verb.
  8. Even if the numbers are bad, the news about Jesus crucified for sinners and raised to new life hasn’t become any less good.
  9. There is a revival, no less real and even more definitive, taking place in every church, every weekend, where God’s people gather around his gifts.
  10. We too are God’s baptized, beloved, blood-bought believers. And no one can ever take that away from us.
  11. Hidden beneath the sinner is a glorious saint. Jesus has declared it to be so in your baptism.
  12. The sign of the cross, according to the earliest centuries of Christians, is “the sign of the Lord,” and every baptized Christian was “marked” with it.