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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In Christ we are already dead to sin and the eternal consequences of sin. “There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus,” writes Paul (Romans 8:1).
One of my favorite things to do in the summer is read out under the shade of my backyard tree. There, I have a reclining chair and small little side table.
If it's not Christ Jesus "for you" they're not delivering the Gospel to you.
It’s a subject that for some comes up every 4th of July. How does the American Revolution square with Romans 13?
God in Jesus takes off your shirt of shame, your bitterness, your anger, your guilt, your hopelessness, and drapes these rags on himself.
If affairs always begin by believing lies, then repentance always begins by believing the truth: the truth that you are in the wrong, the truth that you have a God who loves you in Jesus Christ, and the truth that he and he alone can save you not only from adultery but from every sin that seeks to lead you down the path of destruction.
If we are saved by faith, if it is by faith that we have life in His name, what do the sacraments have to do with it? The answer is: everything.
The only recourse we have is to die before we die. To give up on a fake-life. To acknowledge that this stupid, selfish game we’re playing with our immortality projects has zero success.
I believe it’s no small charge to assert that there’s a massive problem in the majority of America’s pulpits.
That week, I began to doubt myself. Did I really believe?
What if I just hadn’t repented enough? Or prayed enough? Or really, really given my whole heart to Jesus? What if I just wasn’t ready?
The world doesn’t need dads who are more stressed than they already are. It needs fathers who care for their families, not in heroic ways, but in common, everyday ways.