This is an excerpt from the sixth chapter of Fear Not: How the Gospel Disrupts Our Deepest Anxieties by Luke Kjolhaug (1517 Publishing, 2026).
We draw near because Christ our Mediator has gone where we never could, and he has brought us with him.
The Israelite God was different from all the other gods, thus, the worship of Yahweh differed from that of all other gods.

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In the midst of the Word of God being spoken, she felt for the first time God had revealed Himself to her, not as the terrifying judge she feared, but as the loving and tender father He is.
God cares for us because we’re created in his image, but he also cares for us because the second person of the Trinity, the Son, became one of us.
The real power of his hymn comes from the fact that Bonhoeffer does not offer a rosy picture of life or any of the tropes so typical of cheap piety that tell us that everything is always right, that things happen for a reason, and that we should try to stay positive.
As Christians, we are not cold ascetics, depriving ourselves in the here and hereafter. We are given good things from our heavenly Father in heaven, and even a foretaste of the things to come.
The promise of Advent is the promise of the lamb slain, who is born and given for us so that we don’t have to fear sin, death, and hell.
On the other side of Christmas, we find (1) senseless suffering and (2) unstoppable salvation. A sermon on these verses should be honest about both.
Should we really be surprised that it would happen this way, that the servant would suffer for our salvation and die for our forgiveness?
In some measure, if Luther had any success during his last two decades, it happened because of the woman who’d insisted on him as her bridegroom.
Our regrets and anxiety, self-abuse and addictions, violence and endless lists are signs that we don’t have an answer to the question: "Why am I here right now, alive, existing?"
While we do not have an answer, we do have a promise. A promise given to us by a God whose one and only Son was himself slaughtered by those terrified of losing their power.
By every conceivable category, grace shouldn't exist. It shouldn't have been bestowed. It's the card in God's trick we never saw coming.
Her importance goes beyond simply managing the reformer’s household.