1. Lutherans have a unique heritage that makes teaching predestination doubly difficult.
  2. This is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of Your God is Too Glorious: Finding God in the Most Unexpected Places by Chad Bird (1517 Publishing, 2023).
  3. The gospel is for sinners – both the tax collector and Pharisee, both in need of the Great Physician.
  4. For you who are struggling to navigate grief, to cope with pain, or breathe through anxiety, the gospel announces that there is a person whose heart throbs for you.
  5. It's easy to have courage when things go well.
  6. The Good Shepherd doesn’t leave the sheep to fend for themselves.
  7. A Christian story untethered from the reality of Christ and his mercy toward sinners becomes a mere fable, while a sermon disconnected from the hearts of its listeners remains a hollow oratory.
  8. Applying the pressure of law to ensure you do not to take grace for granted squeezes the life and power out of the gospel.
  9. Jesus continues to do the same for me and for you as he did for his disciples. He still shows up for us. He still speaks his peace to us.
  10. Jonah’s biggest blunder was a failure to understand that God’s grace is always undeserved and always falls on those who are unworthy of it.
  11. Don’t get in the habit (or, if you already do it, get out of the habit) of saying, “I could never talk about these things the way my pastor does.”
  12. Patrick's breakthrough came when he began to leverage his knowledge of the native language and customs to build a bridge between Irish lore and the Christian mythos.