The certainty of faith is utter assurance because it depends upon nothing of your own. It is entirely trusting that God is a propitious, pardoning God—the God who justifies sinners by forgiving them.
When standing in line, or when the commercial comes on, or when a moment of boredom comes, fast and pray instead of reaching for the screen. Be reminded that the world is not an oyster to be shucked, but a place where the gifts of redemption are already open.

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Lent isn't simply a season. It's the Christian life in microcosm.
Jesus satisfies, fills, and saves because he is the Son of God, who, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns forever.
This is the third installment in our Lenten series, Through the Tombs of the Kings, where Steve Kruschel explores God’s faithfulness to Judah’s kings—and to us—through life, death, and the burial of his Son.
You cannot sever the saint from the sinner. Christians remain both simultaneously.
God is a judge, but unlike you, God is just!
Jesus is very difficult to bring down. That’s the power of it.
This is an excerpt from Ditching the Checklist: Assurance of Salvation for Evangelicals (and Other Sinners) by Mark Mattes (1517 Publishing, 2025), pgs. 5-7.
I realized that no matter where I call "home," I won't be able to shake the feeling of homesickness.
There is no one — not now, not ever — who cannot be included in the family of God through the efficacy of Christ’s saving power.
It's a new year, and you are still the same you: a sinner who is simultaneously perfect in every way because Christ declares it to be so.
In Simeon's hands and Anna's gaze, we are reminded of God's promise—not distant, not fading, but alive.
It is impossible to live our lives in a way that would convince God of our value because he already knows our value. He is the one who gave it to us.