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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God always keeps his promises even if/when we don’t. God is always faithful even if/when we aren’t.
Yes, Christ has come and delivered us, but He will come again in glory to judge the world in righteousness and the people with equity.
People are searching for connection, direction, and hope in a troubled world, and we can use their star-shaped questions to point them to the shape of the cross.
The expectation of the Old Testament is NOT first and foremost obedience, but rather adoration!
The biblical shepherd leads his sheep. He provides for their needs. He protects them from enemies, and he does not leave his sheep unattended.
The Light of the LORD, Jesus Christ, has risen upon us and set us apart as the chosen people of God.
Jesus is proclaiming the good news that he has come to put an end to laboring to be loved by God.
The cross is not some mystic metaphor for the change we must undergo before our self-realization, but the earth-shattering event that changed the course of eternity.
We will always need comfort until the reign of God, his kingdom, comes in full with Christ’s return, and our suffering and the sin that causes it is no more.
You have this Shepherd who knows your voice, your cry, your incessant baaing.
Jesus offers to the anxious soul the one thing it ironically wants: certainty of the good.
God loves you no matter what. Loves you no matter how many times you have screwed up. Loves you to death, he does.