Luther's signature insight on the sacraments was that God’s word of promise doesn’t just symbolize an absent reality but that it gives and bestows God’s real favor.
Nothing promotes good preaching quite like actually knowing the Word of Truth and delivering it from a disposition of passionate care, commitment through the long-haul, and life spent together with the people of God.
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.
Christians have the rare faculty, above all other people on earth, of knowing where to place their care, while others vex and torture themselves and at length must despair.
A truly Christian work is it that we descend and get mixed up in the mire of the sinner, taking his sin upon ourselves and floundering out of it with him, not acting otherwise than as if his sin were our own.
Saying the words of the prayer together meant that if my voice became too weak or shaky, other voices would be around to support and continue the message.