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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Isaiah invokes beautiful imagery of the Good Shepherd who tends His flock, gathers His lambs in His arms, carries them in His bosom, and gently leads.
Even when you’re praying and you feel like you’re not getting what you want, God loves you. God hears you.
Advent is something of a liturgical speed bump that slows us down lest we rush to Christmas but forget that the baby born in Bethlehem will return with glory and power to judge the living and the dead.
The LORD God had promised He was coming, and they were certain there could be no better time for Him to fulfill His promise.
Human history and especially the Christian life have a shape and Jesus is its shaper at every point.
Jesus desires for us to watch. The question, however, is, “How do we watch for the return of Jesus?”
We stand before God with a unique set of problems, diseases, and sins. The comforting truth of the Incarnation is that Jesus took my flesh. All of it.
Jesus overcame sin, death, and Satan on the cross. His bloody suffering and death marked this sinful world's defeat.
If you get out your red-letter bible and just read the red letters, as I did today, you're in for a shock. When you read just his words, Jesus seems harsh and pretty ticked off most of the time!
Love continues to gently but endlessly pursue the narrator, despite his persistence in pulling away in the opposite direction.
Heaven is Miller Time. Heaven is the party in the streaming sunlight of the world’s final afternoon.
What does the return of the Lord Jesus in judgment mean for me now in the face of all the real-life verdicts that I have to face?