We are invited to entrust everything to the one who accomplished what we could not: living and bleeding and dying and rising again, so that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). To put it another way, when it comes to the kingdom of God, there’s no room for DIY’ers. Best leave it to the professionals.
We live in the “already” but “not yet”. Peace is already ours but not yet. The resurrection is already ours but not yet. Justice is already ours but not yet. Until then be comforted by the fact that you are reconciled in Christ on account of his life, death, and resurrection.
Luther neither removed the Apocrypha from the Bible nor discouraged its use. Rather, he received and preserved the ancient distinction inherited from the fathers: the Apocrypha is valuable, edifying, and worthy of reading, but it is not Holy Scripture and therefore cannot serve as the foundation of Christian doctrine.

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Assurance of salvation may be the single greatest struggle people have confessed to me. It isn't surprising.
There were pictures of her bathed in the sun of South Padre, sand between her toes, arm-in-arm with beautiful friends
This Jesus healed the blind and the lame and the mute and the barren and raised the dead.
If we get past Sunday School moralizing what do we discover in the Old Testament?
Our Father works through us to meet the needs of others and to meet our need for Savior Jesus.
There in that moment, the waters of baptism reached down deep into the forsaken path of the grave with a man whose body and mind could no longer hold onto any reality otherwise.
Some lie and tell us that to sin is to be ourselves. But it is not. Sin is not natural to humanity.
Following him will also mean keeping our eyes locked on him so unswervingly that we don’t have the time or energy to be standing on tiptoes, peeping over fences into other people’s troubles and struggles.
In Martin Luther's Small Catechism he borrows a line from St. Augustine about what defines a "god."
Whatever we call “god,” how we act out our “religion,” what we call “living,” if its name isn’t Jesus, it’s a sham.
When we focus on God's self-giving Word, when we turn our attention to Golgotha, we are shown a wholly different way of viewing the Commandments.
From the untouchable living on the streets of India to the millionaire in Manhattan; from the farmer in Germany to the escort in Vegas; from the missionary in Argentina to the bartender in Ireland—they are all in the love zone of the Lord. Every. Single. One.