This is an excerpt from the introduction of Stretched: A Study for Lent and the Entire Christian Life by Christopher Richmann (1517 Publishing, 2026).
We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.

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Apart from the confession that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of God who suffered and died for the forgiveness of sins and rose again to justify the ungodly, there is no Christian faith.
The great lie of addiction is that suffering must be fled, must be numbed, must be drowned out by any means necessary.
Repentance is not limited to a season.
To be happy is to be the object of God’s love in Christ and to love God and others with the love of Christ.
Despite the mathematical incongruity, the church confesses that Christ is one hundred percent human and one hundred percent divine.
In the upside-down wisdom of God, the place of the cross becomes the place of life, absolution, and triumph.
Christians don’t need a bucket list. We’ve got the whole bucket: the Word fulfilled, life fulfilled, and life in full.
The wrong god means love remains frail, fickle, or a fiction. The right God means love is the most reliable thing in all the world.
Jesus, the true Bridegroom, erases that mistake by his own compassionate, saving act. Isn’t this also a picture of the gospel?
Wisdom lurks in the outer places. Rich gratitude sprouts from the impoverished and forgotten.
Huff did not stop there, though. Towards the end of the interview, he asked Rogan, "What do you think of Jesus?"
It is impossible to live our lives in a way that would convince God of our value because he already knows our value. He is the one who gave it to us.