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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The essential Christian claim is that God came to earth in Christ and died for men to take care of their problem of sin and evil.
It is often the case that when dealing Divine, we find ourselves befuddled. For as relatable and surprisingly vulnerable God is as the man Jesus, he seems, at times, to retain a certain aloofness, a type of distance.
Before long I was deeply involved in the trilogy (the reader is invariably "drawn into" the story in a unique way, and for a good reason as we shall see).
One thing is for certain: my day was heaven compared to his. My minor headaches nothing compared to whatever he was going through.
The most powerless person in this story is the key to it all. God uses her who is nothing to effect everything.
We all began by hearing the truth, and then speaking the truth and believing the truth. That truth came to us on the lips of another.
God cannot love me unconditionally without prerequisites, especially after all I’ve done, can He?
Faith does not require that we always Hoorah what the Lord does. God wants children, not brown-nosers.
He has wandered away into the darkness of his doubting, got lost in his grief, confused by the pains he’s suffered. It happens. Shepherds sometimes become lost sheep as well.
Hus was burned at the stake in his early 40s, Luther lived to a fairly ripe, old age, but why?
O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus he says to these bones. Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.
But on the mountain in Galilee, where we encounter a very different side of God, doubts overtake us. Why?