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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God Meets is the rare cancer book (and as above, I use that term advisedly) that addresses both the judgment God places on human creatures in the Garden (death) and the hard road anyone walks toward that end (100% of us).
In spite of the pain, Sasse exudes a peace from above that is quite literally impossible to explain apart from the assurance he has in Christ.
Faith holds on to the truth of who Jesus is revealed to be, despite our sometimes incongruent experience with God.
Lent exists because we are forgetful creatures. We forget how hungry we really are.
Worship never existed as escape from the world, but preparation for life within it.
Christian faith is never a solitary possession. When the congregation confesses, the old speak for the young, the strong for the weak, and the clear-voiced for the trembling.
The entire history of Protestantism is downstream of a goldsmith in Mainz figuring out how to cast identical pieces of lead type in less than a minute.
Baptism does not promise us chocolates or flowers, but something far greater: life in Christ.
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.
This is the first in a series meant to let the Christian tradition speak for itself, the way it has carried Christians through long winters, confusion, and joy for centuries.
The crisis is not merely that people are leaving. The crisis is that we have relinquished what is uniquely Lutheran and deeply needed.
Below is a list of our favorite theological books - across all categories - from 2025. A special thanks to our contributors who submitted titles, wrote summaries and full reviews for these books and more throughout the year.