The gospel isn’t for the strong but people who know they aren’t.
One great thing about our post-denominational age is that it has opened up opportunities to make common cause with other Lutherans who, despite their differences and eccentricities, can agree on some of the most important things.
Pride builds identities that leave no room for grace.

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Scattered throughout all denominations are moms and dads whose greatest disappointment in life is that their children have seemingly abandoned the faith.
I thought I had it all together. I had my life figured out. Even though outwardly I was serving God, inwardly I served only the god named Ego. My heart was the shrine at which I bowed the knee.
That’s what I mean when I say that I’ve struggled with atheism. And still do. The suffering me becomes the questioning me who becomes the doubting me who becoming the unbelieving me.
Ultimately, however, I fell in love with traditions—and specifically, traditional worship—for a single, overarching reason: its components, to varying degrees, are all in the service of the Gospel.
Yet as we mourn, but unlike those who have no hope, so also we repent, but unlike those who have no absolution. For we though we weep, there is a hand that dries all tears.
O little flock, fear not the foe, for at your head is the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for you.
From creator to priest, our God now moves, from forming animals to slaying them, all so that His Adam and His Eve might remain truly His.
I didn’t know it, in fact I consciously rejected it, but the truth is that throughout those years, both in times of success and failure, God was up to something.
That all being said, come to think of it, I’ve never gone 24 seconds without sinning.
Whatever numbers you want to plug in, ours must be greater than zero. We’re in a partnership with God, after all. We both do our part. We’ve got to meet the Lord halfway. If only he does all the giving, and we do all the receiving, the relationship is doomed to fail.
Because I do care now, and will care even after I’m with the Lord, here are some things I hope and pray are not said at my funeral. I care about those who will be there, about what they will hear.
In an American evangelical landscape that emphasizes the importance of an individual’s personal decision to follow Jesus—as if that were the basis for God’s grace towards a man or woman—Lutherans and Reformed Christians insist that justification before God is based solely on Jesus’ work, two millennia ago.