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.
“The fear of the Lord” is our heart’s awakening to and recognition of God’s outrageous goodness.

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The promise of Advent is the promise of the lamb slain, who is born and given for us so that we don’t have to fear sin, death, and hell.
Should we really be surprised that it would happen this way, that the servant would suffer for our salvation and die for our forgiveness?
While we do not have an answer, we do have a promise. A promise given to us by a God whose one and only Son was himself slaughtered by those terrified of losing their power.
The following is an excerpt from “A Year of Grace: Collected Sermons of Advent through Pentecost” written by Bo Giertz and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2019).
While we are promised that God will always be with us, we are also told of the benefits that can come to us even in our pain.
Abraham knew that this was a God who kept his promises.
The Holy Spirit is fixated on Jesus and it is the Spirit’s mission to bring us to faith in Him for He is the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
God does not combat the impending armies of Satan with might and power, but with the weakness of a babe.
The Son of Eve disarmed Satan’s hold on humanity, not with an earthquake, atomic bomb, or brilliant essay, but with his dead body and final words, “It is finished.”
I can only disbelieve you or believe you. If I disbelieve you, I go on being a miserable bore.
Under the lordship of the crucified and risen Emmanuel, our existence is one of blessedness. Blessedness means we are not under the condemnation of the Law, but the benediction of God’s favor here in time and, hereafter, in eternity.
Instead of defining the true church in the way of the law, Augustine approaches the issue pastorally in the way of the gospel.