Jeffrey Williams
The central message of the Church is salvation by grace through faith for the sake ofChrist. We are assured of this salvation through the means of grace, word andsacrament. Therefore the most important article of the Augsburg Confession isArticle IV - On Justification.Also they teach that men cannot be justified before God by theirown strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ’s sake,through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor, andthat their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who, by His death, hasmade satisfaction for our sins. This faith God imputes for righteousnessin His sight. Rom. 3 and 4.1Six years ago, when I accepted the call to serve as pastor at Trinity LutheranChurch (LCMS) in Slayton, Minnesota, I didn’t realize how difficult it is to writeshort, daily devotions. Books, dissertations, papers, sermons, those are all very easycompared to writing a good Law / Gospel summary for 120 seconds or less ofbroadcast time.The sainted Doctor Donald Deffner used to say, 'I didn’t have time to write youa short letter, so I wrote you a long one.' How true. If the page count is no object,your language may be a bit more imprecise. This is not to say you are sloppy inyour doctrine, by any means, but that you may restate a given idea in several ways.For the 2025 series of devotions I chose, for the most part, to focus on theGospel reading for the previous Sunday.I started placing the daily devotions on the church website in 2024, includingboth the manuscript and the recording which I send to KJOE, our local FM radiostation. These devotions are also emailed to various people each morning for theirenjoyment.I hope you find these daily devotions usable.May our Lord bless you richly with the comfort that comes from knowing yoursins are forgiven for the sake of Christ Jesus.
