titus on Renouncing Faith

I grew up as a Christmas and Easter Methodist. Our family called ourselves Christians, but it was not an important part of our lives. I found church boring. When I turned eighteen, something happened ...

Christianity has suffered more casualties from faux faith than from honest doubt.

Faith cannot but pour forth from all creatures in most eager service to God as a dutiful son serves a godly father. The efficacy of faith is such that from its fruits it is very evident in whose heart...

Faith is nothing else than trust in the divine mercy promised in Christ…. This trust in the goodwill or mercy of God first calms our hearts and then inflames us to give thanks to God for his mercy so ...

Merciful God, you have given us the gift of life. We confess the uncaring ways we have treated others. We have been impatient with those growing old. We have been inattentive to the curiosities of the...

Pastor: Peter calls on believers in exile to rid themselves of those things that would point themselves and others away from Christ.  Like the early church, we too are to rid ourselves of all mali...

A living faith is that which pours itself out in works.

In the story of Jesus and the demon-possessed man in Mark 5:14-20, Jesus gives new life to that man. When the townspeople saw the result of Jesus’ healing – an entirely new man, almost unrecognizable ...

To tell someone what you believe may be to answer the wrong question—better to say, instead, what the church believes, better to use the language the church has bequeathed to us to shape our experienc...

If you’ve read or watched any of the biographies of Martin Luther, you will already know that he struggled at times with bouts of anxiety, self-loathing, and perhaps even depression. Shortly after his...

For although faith alone justifies, love is also demanded…. A living faith is that efficacious, burning trust in the mercy of God which never fails to bring forth good fruits.

But we must add at once that the pious will not cease from good works simply because it is impossible to gain any merit by them. Rather, the greater our faith, the more and greater our works…. For sin...

You don’t turn from sin to get saved. You get saved to turn from sin.

Trusting in God’s tender mercy, let us confess our sin to God with one another. Gracious God, We confess the the dead and fruitless branches in our lives, shriveled by the wintery storms of...

In his book The Mystery of Christ , a series of fictionalized pastoral counseling sessions (based on actual events), the Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon shares a number of helpful ways of unde...

In the novel, Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley, Buddy Crawford, a horse trainer, has a “born again experience but things don’t go according to plan. This is his prayer: “One night, when he was praying...

Gracious Father, too often we base our worth on our performance. We believe if we do well, your love grows, and if we falter, your love lessens. Our God, how far this is from the truth. We confess our...

In a way, the Reformation began in one monk's overwhelming guilt. Martin Luther was riddled with guilt and filled with anxiety because he could see that he could not live up to God's standard ...

Leader: Since we have a great high priest who can sympathize with our weakness, let us boldly approach the throne of grace, confident that there we will receive God’s mercy and grace in our time of ne...

Gracious God, we ask for Your forgiveness and receive it with joyful hearts. Renew our minds so that we may discern what is good. Fill us with Your Spirit so that we may be Your witnesses in the world...

Heavenly Father, we come before Your throne of grace to confess our sin. We have been selfish instead of generous; we have been proud instead of humble; we have held grudges instead of forgiving; we h...

In his insightful book, Delighting in the Trinity , Michael Reeves shares an interesting point of connection between the Protestant understanding of sola grati discovered by Francis Xavier during...

Almighty God, by our baptism into the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ, you turn us from the old life of sin:Grant that we, being reborn to new life in him, may live in righteousness a...

Faith and good works are both necessary. But one is the root and the other the fruit.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present ag...

Pastor: Our help is in the name of the Lord, People: who made heaven and earth. Pastor: If You, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? People: But with Yo...

At the core of every project of self-salvation is the staunch unwillingness to believe that God’s love and forgiveness can be unmerited. Those who would try and save themselves prefer work to rest, ef...

There is something profoundly hypocritical about praising God for God’s mighty deeds of salvation and cooperating at the same time with the demons of destruction, whether by neglecting to do good or b...

We shall now have a full definition of faith if we say that it is a firm and sure knowledge of the divine favor toward us, founded on the truth of a free promise in Christ, and revealed to our minds, ...

Speaking on aging, the Catholic nun Joan Chittister has this to say: One thing this period is not about is diminishment, though physical diminishment is surely a natural part of it. It is, instead, ...