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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This is the message of Lent. We are not called to sacrifice for Jesus in order to earn our salvation. Rather, we are called to remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for us.
A Christian is a man who desires to enter heaven not through his own goodness and works, but through the righteousness and works of Christ.
Reading includes, on some level, striving. Hearing, on the other hand, remains passive.
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).
The further up and further into the season of Epiphany we get, the bigger the grace of God in Christ is, the brighter the Light of Christ shines, and the more blessed we are in Jesus' epiphany for us.
The good news of the Gospel is Jesus has come, and Jesus will come again.
Even though All Saints is a day for remembering the dead, it is not a day of mourning.
There is no true life and meaningful community apart from forgiveness.
Do you confess Christ as God in the flesh, born, died, and raised to new life for you? Any answer of yes will do
My words are peanuts compared to the porterhouse of God’s Word.
Increasingly, to forgive is seen as winking at evil, as shrugging one’s moral shoulders, and as being complicit.
Good, we tend to think, is the absence of evil. But this reversal of the formula can only have disastrous consequences.