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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Jesus' course led from death into life, as He had promised. And He promises to lead us on that same course from death to life, from lament to joy.
This is the patient love of God. He is stubborn about the salvation of sinners. He will not be rushed even if his name is mocked, and the trustworthiness of his promises are called into question.
Christ powerless on the Cross is where the false definitions of glory theologies are exposed and everything is turned upside down.
Lent is a gift to the Church from the Church. It belongs to all Christians who desire to be conformed to the likeness of our Lord.
The Promise Land's true value is in the gift of Jesus who will provide His blood and very life to endow all people with forgiveness and everlasting life for His children.
Nearly two thousand years after Paul scribbled out these lines, the only reason “we” are here, reading Paul’s magnum opus together, is that we are inheritors of the promise Paul sees in the paradox.
As the greater and more faithful Son of God, Jesus did what the Israelites could not do. Neither can we.
Excerpt #3 from the new book “Withertongue Emails" by Donavon Riley.
The firestorm of the Reformation which turned Europe upside-down was not Luther’s doing. It was the Word, and the Spirit working through it.
I may feel today that the Lord has not found me, but in fact he has – he is intimately acquainted with all my ways.
Luther’s confessions and writings during that time demonstrated the diagnosis of the problem he faced had always been the same.
The LORD God shows His favor and presence with Joshua in the parting of the Jordan and other signs which suggest Joshua is the new Moses… but he is not!