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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The conversation between four year-old Jackson and his mom in the car after dropping off his siblings at school was all-too-typical.
A confessing church is a church more worried about souls than appearances, family lines, or institutional bottom-lines.
What do we do when Christians are more focused on their doing for God than God's doing for them?
One of the biggest challenges to the Christian faith is sorting through our question of “Where is God in the trials of our lives?”
If affairs always begin by believing lies, then repentance always begins by believing the truth: the truth that you are in the wrong, the truth that you have a God who loves you in Jesus Christ, and the truth that he and he alone can save you not only from adultery but from every sin that seeks to lead you down the path of destruction.
That week, I began to doubt myself. Did I really believe?
What if I just hadn’t repented enough? Or prayed enough? Or really, really given my whole heart to Jesus? What if I just wasn’t ready?
From a secret place deeper than the muscle tissue of her brain she spoke Jesus’ words. Words He planted there long ago.
Christianity isn’t about our faith. It’s about God’s faithfulness to His promises.
Jesus is faithful even when we are faithless. He is our Strength, and Song, and Salvation. He's all this for us because He is God, and God is love.
Likewise, when God says, "Do this and you will live," we go about under the illusion that we have the ability to accomplish what God demands of us.
Beware the lament, dear readers, that is not soothed with the good-goods of Jesus.