The greatest obstacle to friendship in middle age isn't that nobody wants friends. It's that everyone is waiting for someone else to go first. But here's the good news: Christ has already gone first for you. And because He has, you are free to go first for someone else.
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09/02/26
Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for everything under heaven. But God has also placed eternity in our hearts, and that makes us strange creatures: able to rejoice in this life yet always aching for a life that only Christ can give.
08/28/26
What does it take to draw near to God? It takes a perfect priest, a finished work, and a broken body to open the way. In short, it takes everything, which is exactly what Christ has given for you.
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03/31/19
Where contrition is evident, the conscience has already been prodded, piqued, finally terrified. More Law only serves to confirm the lie this person is already at risk of believing: that the last work of the conscience is also God’s last word. But God’s last word is the word of absolution, not the confirmation of the conscience’s testimony, but now its contradiction.
03/27/19
In our own lives, we might find that the Law is not an alien word, whether we call it our conscience or our values, our Holy Writ, or our municipality’s laws and regulations
03/26/19
Martin Luther knew something about economics. Well, God’s economics anyway.
03/26/19
No matter what happens, whether failure, pain, or discouragement, Jesus says, “Come to me... and I will give you rest"
03/24/19
Lenten meditation is the one time Luther might advise us to be turning in on ourselves--and taking a cold, honest glance. For only in the shadow of the Cross can we look honsetly into the cause of the death of the man from Nazareth, the second person of the Trinity.
03/12/19
This quest to justify my existence can end because I have been justified by God who gave up heaven to be with me!
02/27/19
The danger was not necessarily inside the city. Nor was it from an obvious source. Outside the walls of Thyatira, lay a small shrine of white stone.
02/27/19
God is used to working with colorful figures. One of the most colorful in the Bible is Balaam. Hailing from Mesopotamia, Balaam was what we might call a shaman or a soothsayer.
02/26/19
Holding to Jesus’ teaching while denying His divinity presents a host of complications that make it difficult to take one and leave the other.
02/25/19
Your eternal salvation isn’t dependent on performance or effort. Well, not your performance anyway...
02/22/19
The following is an excerpt from Law and Gospel in Action written by Mark Mattes (1517 Publishing, 2019).
02/19/19
Like the Pharisees, as well-meaning, contemporary Christians we too can often add fences to God’s Law.
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