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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Only by faith in Christ are we truly awake.
Being the baptized just may be the last, great resistance.
Our comfort in this seemingly endless age of crisis after crisis is the inexhaustible hope of Jesus’s reversal.
Faith is like a horse with blinders because it only beholds God’s promise. It is obsessed with what God has already said.
Finding the balance between indifferentism and obsessiveness has never been easy, and it’s especially difficult in our environment.
Whatever body part you are, the body of Christ is no pod person. Together, we’re a living, breathing, deathless whole.
Neomonasticism—that is, the idea that church work is more important than regular work—implies that God cares more about the spiritual than the physical.
Christian mercy should not seek its own. It must be round, and open its eyes and look at all alike, friend and foe, as our heavenly Father does.
How do we preach a text of exhortation while keeping the sermon Gospel-centered?
The only solution to free will is the announcement from a preacher that the Father forgives us for Christ's sake.
The question is, how are you going to live out your life as someone who has taken up the Robe of Freedom?
Our daily remembrance of baptism, our daily dying and rising, is a daily joining to Jesus and His death and resurrection for us.