Here are a number of links I've come across in my travels across the blogosphere this week that I thought I'd share with you all:
1) Pat K at New Reformation Press has a good post entitled "How the Confession of (My) Sins Kept Me in the Church." One of the things I find very refreshing about Lutheranism is its brutal honesty about our sins and its emphasis on confession and repentance. Right up front, at the beginning of the service, we confess that we are sinners in need of God's forgiveness. We confess before the world that we don't have it all together – far from it. But there is forgiveness found in Christ.
2) L.P. at Extra Nos talks about various ways in which different traditions speak of how we enter the faith and stay in the faith in the post "What Gets You 'In'." His conclusion was that the Gospel both gets us in and keeps us in. Anything else (even if it is our faith or even the idea of God's grace) points us inside of ourselves and cannot give us true assurance of salvation. We need to look outside of ourselves for that.
3) There is a good blog written by a Lutheran pastor entitled I Trust When Dark My Road. The post "Preaching the Resurrection to the Mentally Ill" was very encouraging to me as someone who deals with a mental illness and the frustration and pain that it brings.
4) Pastor Paul McCain at Cyberbrethren has a good Palm Sunday post that contains a beautiful and moving hymn, "O Dearest Jesus, What Law Hast Thou Broken?" Awesome, awesome stuff.
