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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We love those who enable us to see our love for ourselves reflected back at us.
Where Erasmus saw fear and collapse, Luther saw the never-ending comfort of Christ and his gospel.
David and Job both know that prayer puts a cigarette lighter to all prim and proper books of religious etiquette. It is honest. Heated. Emotional. Raw. And the psalms are packed with it.
A new life in Christ Jesus is our hope. Not only that, Jesus is our access to God.
His kingdom is not one of force and might for our exploitation and his gain, but one of his patience and long-suffering for our benefit.
I would like to tell you all that I have learned this discipline that I am like a weaned child living in full quietness, confident in God’s love and care for me. I cannot.
Humility kills pride. So “humble yourself before the Lord,” as James writes (Jas 4:10). Kill your pride before it kills the things you love. Subdue it before it gets you into the kind of trouble that may even kill you. Conquer your pride before it defeats you. It’s that simple, but we all know it’s not that easy.
We would be utterly miserable if we could not find somebody less than ourselves, somebody to look down on, somebody to make us more pleased with ourselves.
We show up to this crowded sacred shindig on Sundays, all wings and halos and blue jeans, and shimmy our way into the sanctuary, late to church but not late to church, for how can we be late to a service that never ends?
God broke into the midst of our pain and allows us to bring our requests to him as those who are counted as “godly.”
When I hear my brother’s name, I will grieve a little. But I will also rejoice, for I know that he is with his Savior.
So long as we entrust death to Jesus, new life is ours. He has lunch ready and he is waiting for us in the power of his resurrection.