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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As the greater and more faithful Son of God, Jesus did what the Israelites could not do. Neither can we.
I may feel today that the Lord has not found me, but in fact he has – he is intimately acquainted with all my ways.
It is precisely from the cross that the glory of God shines most brightly into our lives, as dark and sinister as Golgotha appears from a sinful distance. Cross trumps crisis.
If God ever forgives you, it is not just allowing you to start over and try harder the second time, but it is a whole, new, complete justification that is given as a free gift and without any work of our own—outside the law.
You might not know it, but every Christian hopes for the day when their faith will die. Really. I promise. Faith’s death is our celebration.
If we think God’s power, love and beauty are reserved merely for the glories of Transfiguration, then we have not understood the Father; we have not understood divine revelation.
I write this as someone who’s genuinely concerned that American congregants are getting bamboozled by preachers who are giving them less than what they need Sunday after Sunday.
At its heart, this is what Deacon King Kong is all about: the paradox of Jesus carving his victory out of the last thing we expect, not our triumphs but our defeats.
Viewing the Word as a unified theological narrative prevents us from treating the Scriptures like a cage match between competing theological systems, with prophets duking it out with apostles, and psalmists with evangelists, all supposedly fighting for their voice to be heard.
Isaiah speaks to our time. He speaks to our rejoicing now and an anticipated joy-filled future. Christ’s coming, Christmas, brings them both.
The Advents of Christ (past, present, and future) elicit faith in the word of Christ, confirmed by his presence.
Your Christian faith is a bloody faith, and that ought not make you fearful or scared or embarrassed.