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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However, right before I affirmed her proposal, it dawned on me, “Isn’t every worship service and Bible study for those struggling with faith, life, and fear?!”
"Are you Republican or Democrat?” “Liberal or conservative?” “Yankees or Red Sox?” “Star Wars or Star Trek?”
The love of God in Jesus is our confidence when the world seems to teeter on the brink of self-destruction.
Not afraid, Jesus decided to take a different mode of transportation across the rough waters—his feet.
A confessing church is a church more worried about souls than appearances, family lines, or institutional bottom-lines.
What do we do when Christians are more focused on their doing for God than God's doing for them?
One of the biggest challenges to the Christian faith is sorting through our question of “Where is God in the trials of our lives?”
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.
From a secret place deeper than the muscle tissue of her brain she spoke Jesus’ words. Words He planted there long ago.
Christianity isn’t about our faith. It’s about God’s faithfulness to His promises.
Likewise, when God says, "Do this and you will live," we go about under the illusion that we have the ability to accomplish what God demands of us.
He was providentially injecting streams of light into the darkness, that thereby he might lead them toward the true light of Christ.