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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Many Christians (including preachers) have succumbed to the idea that good preaching must be about practical living, and so most sermons are geared to scratch this pragmatic itch.
Although I was too young to have mastered the skill of lying, I also knew that I couldn’t tell this woman the truth.
He lavishly pours out His rest in the waters of Baptism, in the spoken words of absolution from the pastor’s lips, in the preaching of the cross and resurrection, in the consumption of heavenly cuisine from the table at which He is host and meal.
He has wandered away into the darkness of his doubting, got lost in his grief, confused by the pains he’s suffered. It happens. Shepherds sometimes become lost sheep as well.
The chief verb of the liturgy is the gift of God’s forgiveness for the sake of Jesus Christ.
Brothers, the rich and diverse education you have received has more than adequately prepared you for the ministry of temptation to which you have been called.
But on the mountain in Galilee, where we encounter a very different side of God, doubts overtake us. Why?
If you want to find God, he’s hiding in plain sight. Christ is in the very things that we would never select as a vessel befitting divinity.
For many, there are days when they’re as excited about going to work on Sunday morning as you are about going to work on Monday morning.
What is really good for the soul is not so much confession as absolution. If confession is us telling the truth about ourselves to God, then absolution is God telling us a truer truth about ourselves.
All other subjects—even Biblical subjects—were subservient to an accurate view of the Person and work of Jesus Christ for sinners.
I know now that to “forgive yourself” is not only impossible; it is foolish, dangerous, and futile. It is the vain attempt of a soul plagued by guilt to seek relief in the very last place he should be looking: in himself.