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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When we stop looking to Christ in faith, we are walking in sin. Anything (including our supposed law-keeping) that does not proceed from faith is sin.
Jesus Christ is our peace because he doesn't criticize us. He declares us freed from our perceptions to accept the truth about ourselves.
The season of Lent gives almost unparalleled opportunity for preachers to placard before their auditors the Cross of Christ and beckon Christians to take up their cross and follow Him.
Since the law is our mother-tongue, we naturally assume it’s the only language that exists; this ceaseless, damning voice reminding us that we are not all that we should be.
God is not what we experience him to be, what our emotions narrate him to be, or what our intuition thinks he might be. God is what and who he says he is.
Bonhoeffer was in the unenviable position of trying to break a spell. The spell was the Nazi crisis, where the totalitarian state threatened the church, and yet to many, seemed to be saving the culture and nation from mortal dangers.
Our anxiety about the future is a consequence of our old self’s attempts to achieve freedom for himself apart from Christ Jesus.
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.
When God cancels you, it is an occasion for all of the canceled who are in heaven and earth to rejoice in that one more is added to our number.
Has the modern world taken too strong a dose of the gospel as its inheritance from the Reformation?
Freedom and reconciliation were significant themes for both of the Martin Luthers.
The kingdom of Christ consists in finding all our praise and boast in grace. Other works should be free, not to be urged, nor should we wish by them to become Christians, but condescend with them to our neighbor.