This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.
On its journey from Byzantium to Constantinople to Istanbul, this special place helps us understand the broader arc of Christian history, which goes on until Christ's return.
We needn’t fear statistics and studies as palm readings into a certain future. God is God, and his Spirit is alive through his Word.

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While they speak on various aspects of the preaching task, these essays share a unity in their authors’ commitment to the fact that the preaching of Jesus Christ is not simply motivational, informational, or inspirational; it is the delivery of God’s promise into the ears of those who if left to themselves are deaf to the Creator’s voice.
To trust in the Lord, the Messiah, the Deliverer, is our salvation and our only hope. Yet he does not trust us to have this “trust” on our own or of our own will.
Who would ever want all these screamers and haters? It turns out that Christ does.
For with God we look not for the order of nature, but rest our faith in the power of him who works.
For Christians, Advent is the time when the Church patiently prepares for the coming of the Great King, Jesus the Christ.
The Church stands firm on the word of promise that Christ will one day return to change what we know by faith into sight.
We live again, not so that we will now pay our debt, but to proclaim that we live because our debt was paid!
The epistle text from Colossians 1 declares how the great drama of redemption and human history ends.
Weak faith in a strong Christ is still saving faith.
We don’t start with behavior and work toward Christ. We start with Christ and everything works out from there.
Whatever else may be said about the Last Day it consists of these two inseparable things: Christ’s coming and His kingdom people being gathered to Him.
The name of God invites us on a journey to see how God will remain present with his people, listen to their cries for salvation, know their sufferings in such an intimate way so as to incarnate them in Christ.