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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When we genuinely measure ourselves, we will find ourselves dreadfully lacking.
The tragedy of this parable is not the failure to serve. It is the failure to truly know your Savior.
Good works do not make a Christian, do not secure the grace of God and blot out our sins, they do not merit heaven.
The parable is harsh. It judges. If you do not believe, you will not be saved. But let us pause for a moment and think about why Jesus is telling the parable.
Jesus breaks through our barriers in His beatitudes. He shatters our conceptions of the blessed life and opens the Kingdom of God to all people.
The Gospel is gift, pure and simple. It is backwards. It is upside down. It is foolish. And as long as people are sinners, it is as relevant as ever.
The command to love those nearby is as challenging as it is simple. Jesus took the initiative to come near to us in loving sacrifice.
The Gospel is a precious and comforting word. It comforts and refreshes the sad heart. It wrestles it out of the jaws of death and hell and transports it to the certain hope of eternal life, through faith in Christ.
What is it that the 13th session actually has to say about the Eucharist, and how does it compare to what Luther and the reformers confessed about the Lord’s Supper?
Imperatives are good for many things. Luther said the Law is good, but precisely because it is good, it has become poison and death to the bad. The Law does not give life but evaluates it, and we encounter day in and day out its negative evaluation of us.
In other words, preachers need to help Christians navigate election season faithfully. This text can help.
As God in his mercy enacted his plan to redeem his loved ones, he took them step by step. In the process of redeeming every part of us, he sent us prophets like Moses.