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.
We can willingly admit the fact that we're just like tax collectors and thieves.

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Although I was too young to have mastered the skill of lying, I also knew that I couldn’t tell this woman the truth.
Today, I almost died several times.
We want to know how God rules this world, how he is present in all things, how he exerts his control over the course of world events. We want to know why some get cancer and some don’t, why terrible things happen to the best of people, why volcanoes erupt and hurricanes strike and fires consume.
God’s desire that all be saved led him to pay the price by which all are saved, all are justified.
When we explain away God’s Word, we jettison the reality of our ominous diagnosis in the “Thou shall/shall nots” of the law, and with it the sweet cure in the, “This is My body/blood” of the Gospel.
We shrink away from God’s godness and almightiness, and so shrink down our prayers. Perhaps it is a lack of faith. We don’t trust God to give what He himself has promised to give.
In the classic musical, The Sound of Music, the storyline follows the main character, Maria, as she is sent from her life in an Abbey to become a governess over seven children.
Years ago a pastor friend of mine who felt betrayed by someone he trusted told me that he was under no biblical obligation to forgive his betrayer unless and until he asked for forgiveness.
Dear church, do not get sidetracked. This is about far more than terrorism, racism, gun ownership, and the like. This is about the evil of the human heart.
We treat the Scriptures as if they’re our literary property to toy with as we please.
It is worthwhile because Jesus Christ gave baptism to His disciples as a means for making disciples after He had suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified died and buried and rose again on the third day.
The authority God gives to men—to you and I as baptized believers in Christ—is to forgive sins, to free them from guilt, to free them from the power of sin.