This is an excerpt from the introduction of Stretched: A Study for Lent and the Entire Christian Life by Christopher Richmann (1517 Publishing, 2026).
We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.

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Your church is not healthy. If they were healthy, they wouldn’t need someone to heal them.
Week after week, I read through this women’s Bible study for the sake of my friends.
Christianity is not a solo endeavor. Not a private relationship between Jesus and me.
Quid pro quo, you scratch my back and I will scratch yours. It tends to be the way we humans operate.
If he was not flesh, who was hung on the cross? And if he was not God, who shook the earth from its foundations?
He reminds them how his love is truly marvelous and unconditional, but then, he looks them in the eyes, and says they ought to do better because of his love.
What is your fight club? Who is your Tyler Durden?
What on God’s green earth does dynamite, a chemical explosive, have to do with the Gospel of Christ?
Who was this Jesus, who could do such things?
True faith, saving faith that receives the good news about the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is a faith created in us by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel (Eph 2:8-9).
There’s some wild and untamed prayers in the psalms. But they’re fenced in by order, symmetry, predictability. They organize chaos. And they bring order and hope and stability to our chaotic lives.
Forgiveness of sin, righteousness, and eternal life aren't handed out by God because we deserve it.