"Do you feel as though God favors you? That He is on your side? That He is always with you?"

These are the questions Robert Blair asks in the first of 13 sermons in Luke Alive, Volume 1. They cut straight to the Christian heart. They address our greatest fear: that we might not be good enough for God.That we might not enjoy his favor.

Blair does not stop short at dismissing our fears with a casual overview of grace. He addresses where they come from, a natural drive to earn favor, to work toward something we can never fully attain ourselves. The Gospel of Luke shows us what we can "earn" with our actions and what we can't.

In Mary, the Mother of Jesus we have an image of what it means to be chosen, to be given the Lord's favor. In Jesus' proclamation of the year of the Lord's favor at Nazareth we see that, favored as we may be, there is a kind of favor we can earn when we seize the opportunity. In the story of Jesus and his disciples picking grain on the Sabbath we learn that we do not earn favor by following rules.

That's when it gets really exciting.