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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What makes a meal more than food? We all have important meals in our lives; birthday meals; anniversary meals; traditional holiday meals.
Perhaps you’ve had a pastor or “Bible teacher” ask you these questions. If not, consider yourself blessed.
In an age when families are already fractured beyond comprehension, are we seriously going to separate parents from children in the one service in which God himself is present to unite us to himself and one another?
God’s grace and freedom announces the truth to us about ourselves. We need a real Savior.
Christ’s flesh and blood is light that the darkness cannot comprehend.
Whenever I read the Genesis account of Abraham, I’m more impressed that he’s often a clumsy, mess of a man than that it’s “faith that’s accounted to him as righteousness.”
God is for us in His foolish, scarred Word and Wisdom. Nothing is against us, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
The absence of a feeling is not the absence of Christ, but as emotional, rational, and spiritual beings, we cannot say that the presence of Christ necessitates the absence of emotion.
In God’s eyes, we cannot be too fat or ugly, mean or selfish, shamed or abused, corrupted or inadequate for him not to love us.
Jesus went on ahead and took our cross, our sins of poor discipleship, our weak faith, our rebellion against God’s command.
Some have built an entire theology on the false assumption that when God commands us to obey or believe, we have the ability to obey or believe.
Only Jesus’ absolute absolution can satisfy a troubled conscience.