Forgiveness from Jesus is always surprising to us.
The Christ who rescues does not wait for you to be clean. He comes to clean you. He does not need your strength. He brings his own.
When you remember your baptism, you're not recalling a ritual. You're standing under a current of divine action that has not ceased to flow since the moment those baptismal waters hit your skin.

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Could it be that the root of not asking is not believing, either in the power, or worse, the graciousness of the Lord to address the issue that lies before us?
“I forgive you,” must be said and it must be said often in a marriage.
We love those who enable us to see our love for ourselves reflected back at us.
Where Erasmus saw fear and collapse, Luther saw the never-ending comfort of Christ and his gospel.
We were lost. We didn’t know where we were going or which way to turn. We had been driving around in circles for hours with nothing to show for it. And now we weren’t sure how to find our way home - and losing hope by the minute.
A new life in Christ Jesus is our hope. Not only that, Jesus is our access to God.
His kingdom is not one of force and might for our exploitation and his gain, but one of his patience and long-suffering for our benefit.
When we hear freedom, we have to ask about its opposite, bondage.
The devil knows our name and labels us by our sin. The devil breathes out death as he names us for what we are, sinners.
All major and minor reformations happen not because people react but because God acts. He reforms. He looks down from heaven, has mercy upon his starving children, and ends the famine of the Word by sending the rain of the Gospel.
We would be utterly miserable if we could not find somebody less than ourselves, somebody to look down on, somebody to make us more pleased with ourselves.
Like the younger son, we can return to our Father every time our sinful hearts rebel against him. Like the older brother, we can complain and lament to our Father without fear of being destroyed.