Robert Kolb

Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours patience and hope into the way we think and the way we experience life.

Each day gives us occasion to die to our sinful identities of all kinds and to live out a life in Christ’s footsteps as children of God.

Golgotha is the point where not only Mary and John’s family life assumed a new character, but it is the point of orientation for all human community that uses the cross to straighten out the lives of individuals turned in upon themselves.

The cross does not remain on a hill far away. It pursues us into the valleys, the ravines, the crevices in which we get trapped as we wander in search of a fixed point for our lives.

Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance powers our ability to view the world with perceptive sensitivity and, therefore, to treat others fairly in the way we think and the way we experience life.

Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours generosity and hospitality into the way we think and the way we experience life.

Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours kindness and gentleness into the way we think and the way we experience life.

Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance breaks through sorrow and worry; such trust pours joy into the way we think and the way we experience life.

Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours the ability to abandon fixing our eyes only inwardly and lets us see ourselves as others see us.

Our trust in Jesus pours contentment into the way we think and the way we experience life.

Trusting in Christ’s promise of new life and deliverance pours gratitude into the way we think and the way we experience life.

God makes all things new. He refashions us from those turned in upon ourselves, turned to idols of our own choice and making, to experience the freedom He gives by pronouncing us His righteous children.

As we close out an old year, Saint Silvester can remind us God is the Lord of history and He has used and is using even people whose lives sink largely or totally into obscurity to keep the confession of our faith in Jesus Christ alive.

Imperatives are good for many things. Luther said the Law is good, but precisely because it is good, it has become poison and death to the bad. The Law does not give life but evaluates it, and we encounter day in and day out its negative evaluation of us.

As long as our illusions of control over storms and germs persist to govern our thinking, we will never be able to take the saving work of Christ as seriously we ought.

The Church's hymns help us see our own world from another—and perhaps not so different—vantage point that illuminates the impact of the work of Christ and the general providing and protecting activity of our Creator in our lives.

God does not take us out of a world of evils of various kinds, but He does stand beside us and accompany us, as a shepherd accompanies his sheep, through valleys of shadows of all kinds.

God’s goal in all this is that His call to repentance impacts our lives by turning us to find peace and joy in Christ.

New normals are always sneaking up on us. Preachers ignore them to their peril and the peril of our hearers.

Twenty-first century North American believers face challenges unique in the history of God’s people, for we have an abundance of the material gifts of God unparalleled in human history.

Those who occupy the pulpit will always be sensitive to various kinds of reactions, expected and unexpected, and eager for the feedback that helps evaluate whether the words from the pulpit have achieved their intended goal.

The gift of new life through His death and resurrection, creates Christ’s children, all of whom are being sent with beautiful feet and beautiful tongue and lips to serve as the Lord’s hitmen and midwives.

The Easter season is designed to cultivate our resurrection thinking throughout the year. When God looks at us each day, He sees us through the lens of Christ’s resurrection. We should look at our lives the same way.

The gospel of Jesus’ coming out of death and the tomb alive so that we might be restored to our identity as God’s children establishes the most enduring reality there is.

The devil is to be taken seriously, but we should also not give him more credit or more power than he has after being defanged by Christ’s resurrection.