This is an excerpt from the third chapter of By Water and the Word: God’s Gift of Baptism for You by Brian Thomas (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 52-60.
Even when the bitter places sink down deep into our bones, the Restorer never relinquishes his grip on you.
To Live Well is therefore not a general advice book, but a message suffused with the gospel.

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Only a god could be wise. We are seekers, lovers of divine wisdom, but it is forever beyond our grasp due to human limitation.
You say: Since forgiveness depends on faith alone, why must one nonetheless do good works? Answer: If faith is of the true sort, it cannot be without good works, just as no good work can be where unbelief dwells.
Faith does not distinguish between worthy and unworthy, saint and sinner, great faith and anemic faith, it only focuses on Christ Jesus.
“Putting hope in the cross of Christ means putting hope outside of anything – mentally, physically or even spiritually – you do.”
We are all sojourners in a perilous cosmos, what is sometimes conceptualized as the theology of the pilgrim.
You are made new by the eternal satisfaction for sin in Christ, by the precious treasure at God’s right hand.
We practice infant baptism because that is the ancient practice, following the command of Scripture.
When we are unsure of who God is, it’s to Christ that He tells us to look.
God created Israel to be the vessel into which he would place both his Law and his Son.
These teachings are the heart of the Reformation…If it is about you, it isn’t about Jesus.
The power and the purpose of the Reformation was to bring the full force of the Law and the Gospel to the ears of sinners.
Samson knew what he wanted when he saw it, and most of the time, living by sight, he walked like a blind man straight into an ambush.