We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.
American religion did not become optional because the gospel failed. It became optional because religion slowly redefined itself around usefulness.

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What do you think of when you hear the term “self-esteem”?
It’s by no means an ivory-tower theological question. It’s as real as the weight we’ve lost from the stress of our divorce. As real as the bottle of antidepressants on our nightstand. We believe in him. We love him. But every voice inside us and every shred of evidence outside us points to his abandonment of us in our hour of deepest need.
The devil isn’t a popular subject nowadays. The argument is made that we’ve progressed as a culture.
The biblical response to suffering, to recognizing that things are not as they ought to be, is lament.
In the last two decades U.S. Americans have given way to fear of many things: economic decline, loss of values, limits on our personal rights, to name a few. Too many of us live with some sense of threat and menace hanging over our heads and haunting our hearts.
The following is an excerpt from the introduction to Theology of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation written by Steve Paulson and edited by Kelsi Klembara and Caleb Keith (1517 Publishing, 2018).
Jesus’ forgiveness will not collapse. Jesus’ forgiveness will take us places our legs can’t take us.
Here is a lament I’ve written especially for victims of hurricanes. May it be for you, for your family, or for your church, a way to put into prayer the anguish of your souls.
But these good works aren’t done under compulsion. They’re done freely. They aren’t done so that God will love us. They’re done because He loves us.
They say girls in our society should have nothing to worry about. They should have the opportunity for education and choices far beyond generations before.
From Our Series on Luthers, Heidelberg Disputation.
Have you ever received a gift for which you were less than thrilled, but you had to pretend you really liked it so as not to offend the giver?