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 long as the church teaches the gospel, it will suffer persecution.
Baptism is always valid because no unrighteousness or faithlessness on our part could ify God’s faithfulness.
So many distractions—so many false and foreign gods—so many side paths and rabbit trails. What choice, what decision? Who will we follow?
God’s Word of forgiveness, new life in baptism, and life given in the Lord’s Supper direct our lives in this world of sin and cause us to follow Christ’s light through the darkness.
Jesus, the Son of God from all eternity, the agent of creation, the Savior of all people, promises to abide IN His people.
I am cognizant of the powerful lessons for life I owe to those nights in the air-raid shelter.
God will give you more than you can handle. But he doesn’t leave you alone. Not at all.
The reason the mind is endlessly troubled about God predestining everything is the vague generalization. Generalizations are cold as ice, without the warm Christ.
Instead of providing a way out, the LORD gave Elijah a way through, which included the calling of Elisha as his apprentice.
The baptized, those rescued and redeemed by God’s grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ alone, are given an entirely new life to live, an entirely new way to walk.
Jesus promises more than a disembodied “spiritual” existence after death. He has promised to raise our perishable, mortal bodies to immortality.
The Psalms aren’t the clandestine successes of a faithful soul, but are the journaled hopes of a desperate soul — of one teetering on the edge of oblivion.