The temptation for many believers is either despair or outrage: despair that Christendom is fading, or outrage at the civilization replacing it.
Through baptism, absolution, and the Lord’s Supper, Christ meets you with his radical forgiveness which changes everything, even the self!
Do not disregard Luther’s early disputations, but appreciate their specificity and recognize their pastoral and theological continuity with his later works.

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When we say, “I’ve screwed up big time. I’ve betrayed my spouse, my family, my friends. I’ve hurt lots of people,” we don’t need to hear, “Yes, you have. You need to make that right, learn to walk the talk, and act like a Christian next time."
Jesus is the "because" and "therefore" of our salvation because He died for our sin
There is a mirror that we Christians look into with daily repentance.
Being a run-of-the-mill, mediocre parent is a gift to your children. It models for them what life is all about: the little things, the overlooked things, the minuscule elements of daily life that—in various ways—are God’s gifts to us.
When the Holy Spirit is at work in the office of the holy ministry, the man is ridden by the Spirit and so his only concern is for preaching the Gospel, baptizing, absolving, and feeding sinners in the Name of Christ Jesus.
That image of the “godly woman” haunted me from examples in the Bible of honorable women.
"Are you Republican or Democrat?” “Liberal or conservative?” “Yankees or Red Sox?” “Star Wars or Star Trek?”
Proper preaching of good works is never for our encouragement.
The love of God in Jesus is our confidence when the world seems to teeter on the brink of self-destruction.
The accusations of the voices we hear on a daily basis are deafening. There is no shortage of voices that will remind us of our failures.
I walk in the local mall for exercise several times a week. I purposely avoid weekends and hours when the mall is likely to be crowded because, while I am not a racewalker, I do like to keep up a steady pace as opposed to stopping, starting and inching and this is difficult to achieve even when there are few people around.
The idea is that Jesus has called His church to make disciples, and since the church doesn’t look much like the One they are following, the people need to be changed.