1. This is an excerpt from the prologue of “On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service” by Mike Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  2. We can’t predict the harvest. We can only sow.
  3. We don't make Church "happen." Only Christ can do so. It's his happening.
  4. Even if the numbers are bad, the news about Jesus crucified for sinners and raised to new life hasn’t become any less good.
  5. There is a revival, no less real and even more definitive, taking place in every church, every weekend, where God’s people gather around his gifts.
  6. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
  7. His love for you is so deep that in his mercy, while you were yet a sinner, God sent his only begotten Son to die for you.
  8. “So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
  9. Love is pointing to Jesus who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
  10. Forty days after giving birth, Mary, along with her husband Joseph, presented their firstborn Son at the temple and "bought" him back with a sacrifice of two small birds. This is known as the "Presentation of Our Lord."
  11. Rightly distinguishing between law and gospel, as Paul helps us see in 2 Corinthians 3, is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
  12. The sign of the cross, according to the earliest centuries of Christians, is “the sign of the Lord,” and every baptized Christian was “marked” with it.