Forgiveness from Jesus is always surprising to us.
The Christ who rescues does not wait for you to be clean. He comes to clean you. He does not need your strength. He brings his own.
When you remember your baptism, you're not recalling a ritual. You're standing under a current of divine action that has not ceased to flow since the moment those baptismal waters hit your skin.

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The resistance to rest has nothing to do with hatred of naps and has everything to do with wanting control, and wanting a safety net outside of God.
When Luther's barber, Peter Beskendorf, asked him how to pray, Luther wrote him an open letter that has become a classic expression of the "when, how, and what" of prayer. It is as instructive today as when it was first penned it in 1535.
Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. But if you pause the story...then it is not just about Jesus raising Lazarus.
In a variety of ways, even in these troubled and unusual times, we can follow the lead of our Savior, to do everything we can for the life, welfare, and health of our neighbor.
The people should find their lives in your sermon, and no one’s life is unaffected by the coronavirus right now. It is the very fact that I can make such a blanket statement, free of all caveats, which makes it so necessary for us to preach on it.
Shaking off our sleep, bright and clear, we will open our eyes and huge smiles will come over our faces as we see the familiar faces of so many friends.
The whole world's sin, the crushing horror of death's power, and even hell itself were unleashed on that hill outside Jerusalem where Jesus was executed.
Only God's Word of Gospel can permanently help and heal the addicted.
When the story begins in creation and ends in restoration, all the moments in between are filled with the working of God.
Is there, or should there be, a Christian response to COVID-19? I think the answer is yes, but not in the sense that Christians have a silver bullet or cure. Christianity and Christians do, however, have something to offer the world in an era of uncertainty. They have the sure promises of Christ.
The primary point of Joseph’s life (and every story in Scripture) is to point us to Christ. To tell us something about what God is like and how He interacts with His Creation.
What I have come to see is that while anyone can make a conscious decision to walk away from God or deny him, a person can’t accidentally lose his or her salvation.