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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Sometimes it’s important to go far away to learn of holy places back home.
The Word of the Lord is sure. The enemy is defeated. Salvation is waiting for you.
God is often hidden in history, even as we make it now, but He is always manifest where He has promised to be.
Lent means that we do not have to look to ourselves but can look to our neighbor in love as Christ has loved us.
You can die now, you can let go, and because that is true, you can begin to live!
God is not a preoccupied parent, he’s an invested and interested tender loving Father. He values what perplexes us.
When we own up to our sin, our Father is not scandalized, and his response is not to reconsider his calling us.
God is mercy. He was mercy then. He’s mercy now. God showed them His glory, if only a reflection, in the face of Moses.
This world of unbearable grief and accidental calamity is being renewed and, soon, will be completely bereft of every pernicious foe.
There is perhaps no better observation about the nature of anxiety and depression than its fundamental desire for avoidance.
I may feel today that the Lord has not found me, but in fact he has – he is intimately acquainted with all my ways.
God saves us through people. He saves us through means. He puts a voice on the gospel.