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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God the Father sent us – his wayward, sinful, and naughty children – his own series of Father Christmas Letters.
Psalm 8 is a trailer for the entire biblical movie, and the entire biblical movie centers on Christ.
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.
If you are going to lose your life for the gospel’s sake, you must begin by hearing it.
God is consistently rooting us in reality—both what is seen and unseen—because that is where he is.
Our challenge today is to inspire trust and curiosity so this generation will openly ask the question, who speaks the words of truth?
With every bone in our bodies, we declare war on grace. We declare war on the gift.