This is an excerpt from the third chapter of By Water and the Word: God’s Gift of Baptism for You by Brian Thomas (1517 Publishing, 2026), pgs 52-60.
Even when the bitter places sink down deep into our bones, the Restorer never relinquishes his grip on you.
To Live Well is therefore not a general advice book, but a message suffused with the gospel.

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This week, we’ll take a closer look at what it means to have a God who remembers us. Today, 1517 Scholar in Residence Chad Bird first introduces the Old Testament meaning behind the word and the Hebrew way of remembering.
Jesus weeps because his heart pulses with furious rage and fierce love.
While midnight might seem long, the mercy of God assures us that the morning will come.
In the tumultuous sea of information, opinions, and ideologies that break over us each day, we hold fast to the anchor of our faith—Jesus, the true prophet.
Grace comes for every foolish, self-absorbed sinner, for every “Nabal,” and announces that there is one who has already taken it upon himself to shoulder all of our wrongdoing, paying the price for it through the sacrifice of himself.
Everything in Scripture is God revealing himself to his people, you and me.
The Parable of the Lost Sheep bursts through the confines of convention and demands that we embrace the messiness of life and the unpredictable ways in which God's grace and forgiveness operates.
When we forget that we live by promise, that's when the danger tends to creep in. Because failing to embrace promise means we usually fall back into notions of luck, or even worse--into works.
Tim wanted everyone to know to the deepest part of their being that they were justified by Christ alone.
In the sacrament, we receive an earnest of that future promise here and now in the body and blood of Jesus given and shed for us.
Jesus cries on the cross for us. He suffers and cries and dies in our place. He is forsaken by his father so we don’t have to be.
Jesus makes David’s words his own, because David’s words were Christ’s to begin with.