1. Dear hearers of the word of God, you are finished. You cannot be the same now. All that is ended, over.
  2. If the season of Lent is a journey, Holy Week is the destination.
  3. Today I would like to share The Legend of the Dogwood, inspired by the words of Stoney Cooper.
  4. The needs of the people remain the same, but now the people are you and me. We still sin, and that sin causes so many challenges in our lives.
  5. It’s scary to share my struggle and to show that I have cracks because once I’ve shown my cards, I open myself up for judgment.
  6. This is an excerpt from the introduction of “Common Places in Christian Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly,” edited by Mark Mattes (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  7. 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.
  8. We can’t predict the harvest. We can only sow.
  9. I hate to break it to you, but "are" is not an action verb. "Are" is a being verb.
  10. As disciples of Jesus, our righteousness cannot be performed before others, because our righteousness was already performed by Jesus.
  11. If you interpret James, as most do, as an encouragement toward proving your faith by your works and then say it is your "favorite" then you are proclaiming that your favorite thing about the Christian faith is the practical outworking, the proving your faith by your works.
  12. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.