This ancient “tale of two mothers” concerns far more than theological semantics—it is the difference between a God who sends and a God who comes.
This story points us from our unlikely heroes to the even more unlikely, and joyous, good news that Jesus’ birth for us was just as unlikely and unexpected.
Was Jesus ambitious or unambitious? We have to say that the answer is…yes.

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He will never leave you nor forsake you. Your faith is not fragile glass.
This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of Clothed with Christ written by Brian W. Thomas (1517 Publishing, 2024). Now available!
The one who delights in the law of the Lord learns to fear his own good works and trust God outside of them.
With so many TV preachers, pastors, and Bible teachers claiming to be authoritative voices for God himself, how do you know who to listen to?
God can never really be said to be ignoring us, even if our experience with God at any given moment is that he is.
The good news for Jacob is that God humbled himself so that he could lose a wrestling match to a man with a dislocated hip so that he could give him a new name.
This is an excerpt from the Chapter 12 of Hitchhiking with the Prophets: A Ride Through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament written by Chad Bird (1517 Publishing, 2024). Now available!
It is Jesus himself who is the ladder by which sinners get to God, not by them climbing up but by God climbing down.
If your faith is rooted in the gospel of Zion, in the good news of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection on your behalf, you are already a member of the “heavenly Jerusalem”
This is an excerpt from the introduction of Hitchhiking with Prophets: A Ride Through the Salvation Story of the Old Testament written by Chad Bird (1517 Publishing, 2024). Now available for preorder.
Success is emphatically not your primary identity.
Like Jacob, sinners approach the Heavenly Father wearing the clothes of their older brother, Jesus.