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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May we, as preachers, rise and proclaim that Jesus Christ is sufficient for all our spiritual hunger.
Job needs a savior, and he knows it. And in Jesus, he gets one.
Lent exists because we are forgetful creatures. We forget how hungry we really are.
God is not a tool in our hands. He does not exist to serve our goals, our metrics, or our platforms.
We can willingly admit the fact that we're just like tax collectors and thieves.
The Church’s unity is not uniformity in every matter of her well-being. It is faithfulness in what constitutes her being.
Although the outcome has been decided by Jesus victory, the devil won’t give up without a fight.
When we despair of ourselves, we repent of these self-justifying schemes and allow ourselves to be shaped by God, covered in Christ’s righteousness, and reborn with a new heart.
We believe in a Savior who raises the dead: this is why the church is the one place on earth that can speak plainly about abortion without collapsing into despair.
American religion did not become optional because the gospel failed. It became optional because religion slowly redefined itself around usefulness.
There’s a difference between refusing revenge and refusing responsibility.
The crisis is not merely that people are leaving. The crisis is that we have relinquished what is uniquely Lutheran and deeply needed.