Alligood is at pains to stress that glorification is not the result of our own efforts any more than sanctification or justification.
Forgiveness from Jesus is always surprising to us.
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.

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The season of Lent gives almost unparalleled opportunity for preachers to placard before their auditors the Cross of Christ and beckon Christians to take up their cross and follow Him.
This forty-day season of preparation for Easter is an opportunity for the people of God to rededicate themselves to hearing and responding to Jesus’ call to repent.
The paradoxical Puritan doctrines of an inability to convert oneself and the command to work out one’s salvation with fear and trembling placed would-be converts like Mather in quite a bind.
Our prayer confesses that God’s abode is beyond us, yet ever so near for the prayer presupposes that we are being heard, even in our sighs and whispers.
God’s plans and purposes for this world aren’t dependent upon us. They’re dependent upon him. This means our faith is liberated.
Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance breaks through sorrow and worry; such trust pours joy into the way we think and the way we experience life.
It is hard to see clearly these days. While we have never been able to see as much as we would like, today we are more aware of our inability to perceive things as they really are.
This is an excerpt from “A Lutheran Toolkit” written by Ken Sundet Jones (1517 Publishing, 2021), pgs. 23-25.
Bonhoeffer was in the unenviable position of trying to break a spell. The spell was the Nazi crisis, where the totalitarian state threatened the church, and yet to many, seemed to be saving the culture and nation from mortal dangers.
Regardless of my experience, my talents, or even my mood, it’s these gifts of Christ that I have to give away. They are all I have, and they are everything.
So, what do we pray? What do we say? In times of fear, in times of chaos, in unprecedented times, we pray and say the words that have been written on our hearts.
Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours the ability to abandon fixing our eyes only inwardly and lets us see ourselves as others see us.