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 seeks us out and desires to give us more than a friendly smile or an understanding look. He seeks us out to embrace us and converse with us.
One could reason that God might, at least, give the church a little worldly power.
Trust may risk, but trust produces a sense of assurance letting us rest easy and enjoy peace while it drives us to ventures which may seem dangerous but are possible to do because trust defies the dangers.
The LORD your God is one—He is your LORD. Therefore, you may/can/shall live as His child, and this is what that looks like!
Are we still haunted by God? Do our sins bother us to the point that we worry about God’s righteous wrath? Does the concept of justification, how one can be right in the eyes of God, even cross our minds?
Grace is God’s caring disposition toward His human creatures. And it is shown fully and purely in the work of Jesus for us.
Forty-five seconds is about how long I have as a pastor leading a Sunday morning service to sit at the feet of the cross and receive Jesus’ body and blood given to me by the hands of another at the Lord’s Table.
The full effect of the Law had been visited upon God's people, but now the LORD will remember His people and return them to the land of promise and to Holy Jerusalem.
Hebrews proclaims you absolutely need a priest and you have one. This priest is Jesus!
Today, Jesus' road to Jerusalem turns into your congregation. He calls you and your hearers to follow Him all the way home.
A little or a lot, great is the joy of the child of God for the meaning of life is not defined by stuff, but rather by the cross.
Honor would be shown to the least. Power would be shown by its opposite. The way of glory was marked with humility.