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.
I walk in the local mall for exercise several times a week. I purposely avoid weekends and hours when the mall is likely to be crowded because, while I am not a racewalker, I do like to keep up a steady pace as opposed to stopping, starting and inching and this is difficult to achieve even when there are few people around.
In Christ we are already dead to sin and the eternal consequences of sin. “There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus,” writes Paul (Romans 8:1).
Abraham didn’t understand God very well (at least not early on). I don’t say that as a dig against the Patriarch. I don’t think any of us understand God very well either.
God in Jesus takes off your shirt of shame, your bitterness, your anger, your guilt, your hopelessness, and drapes these rags on himself.
I’ve seen many Christians attempt to wear the world’s hatred as a badge of honor. They count it a huge win if they can get some atheist to rip them up on Twitter or in the comments on Facebook, blogs, or on YouTube.
The only recourse we have is to die before we die. To give up on a fake-life. To acknowledge that this stupid, selfish game we’re playing with our immortality projects has zero success.
I recently began seeing a chiropractor for what turned out to be a compressed disc. He took routine x-rays to facilitate his diagnosis, and on the day he was to go over the results with me, I was placed in a conference room to wait for our consultation.
Have you ever heard of Spanx? Although they’ve only been around since 2010, their predecessors have been around for centuries.
The common knock against “grace people” (or to put it another way, “Christians”) is that preaching too much grace will encourage licentious living.
True faith, saving faith that receives the good news about the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is a faith created in us by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel.
Your church is not healthy. If they were healthy, they wouldn’t need someone to heal them.