We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.
American religion did not become optional because the gospel failed. It became optional because religion slowly redefined itself around usefulness.

All Articles

When we pray, we should have in mind His name and His provision and His forgiveness. In other words, we ask God to do what God promises to do.
Believers are reminded—and the preacher is to remind them—baptism marks the forgiveness of sins, the end of legal demands, justification and regeneration, and the ultimate triumph over rulers and powers.
In this religious Sodom, we had a Jesus with the heart of Moses whose gospel was a new and improved law.
Baptized believers are in Christ and of Christ. Once they were alienated from and hostile to God, now they have been reconciled through the work of Christ. This forgiveness is not unconditional. Christ is the condition and, indeed, He fulfills all the conditions.
Like Mary, they (with you) are at Jesus’ feet to learn and hear from the Lord of all Creation. It is a privileged place to be if there ever was one!
The Father, then, “has qualified you” through the work of Christ to share in the family inheritance. This inheritance is the Family of God itself and the family of the triune God Himself.
The whole Reformation, and the reason for Lutheran theology at all, is to improve preaching.
According to the Law, everyone will be judged by their own deeds, on his own work. So, before the judgment of God we only have our own works to boast in and not our neighbor’s. But the Gospel shows us a wonderful exception.
[This text] describes a journey to a foreign region where Jesus engages in a confrontational conversation with a legion of demons, performs a violent and scandalous exorcism, and leaves behind a community gripped by terror. Apparently, the only thing more frightening than a naked, graveyard-dwelling demoniac is this visitor from Nazareth who reigns over everything.
All I need to know about your spiritual condition, I can discover by watching you drive your car. What I’ve learned is that everyone is a lawbreaker, including me. It’s as simple as asking a few short questions about your driving habits...
The minister’s clothing represents his office of service, derived from the ministry of Christ, and never himself.
Our stories are decidedly unserious when viewed through the lens of the seriousness of God’s affairs. Jesus put the matter succinctly: “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36). Human affairs are not serious in and of themselves. Rather, they are consequential because they garner meaning and significance within the overarching story of God and man.