1. Faith sees your neighbor not as a means to an end, not as a way to score points, but as an object of love: Christ's love and yours.
  2. This is an excerpt is from Chapter 1 of Let the Bird Fly: Life in a World Given Back to Us written by Wade Johnston (1517 Publishing, 2019).
  3. In that moment of greatest despair, we find the antidote for all our fears. We know we are beloved of God and there is salvation in Christ’s atoning death.
  4. Jesus weeps because his heart pulses with furious rage and fierce love.
  5. Honest confession brings us into the fatherly care of God where we are always greeted with grace, mercy, peace, love, and forgiveness in Jesus Christ.
  6. Lewis takes us to the planets to satisfy our cravings for spiritual adventure, which, as he says, “sends our imaginations off the Earth,” in the first place.
  7. While midnight might seem long, the mercy of God assures us that the morning will come.
  8. This is an excerpt from “Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment” by Bradley Gray (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  9. A pastor is sent to proclaim the unconditional grace of God, reminding us again and again that it is our Heavenly Father who reaches out to us in love through his Christ-won forgiveness, and not the other way around.
  10. We may not all be mass-murdering Nazis. But we all have the same root sin that causes the most egregious criminal activity on the face of the earth. We all have the desire to be our own God.
  11. While we wait in tribulation for our white robes (or pants) to be washed in the blood of the Lamb, we confess to one another our seen and unseen stains.
  12. The Bible not only calls us to remember God’s past acts of deliverance; it also invites us to recognize that God in Christ is still in the business of delivering sinners from bondage.