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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I hate driving. I am more of a “pew-pew” guy than a “vroom-vroom” guy. I battle my own heart every day in Atlanta traffic.
His consolation will accompany us in the midst of sickness and death. He will strengthen us, even strengthen us to carry the cross of old age.
Through this promise, God does not let us escape death because in and through Jesus He overcame death.
God’s grace and freedom announces the truth to us about ourselves. We need a real Savior.
Whenever I read the Genesis account of Abraham, I’m more impressed that he’s often a clumsy, mess of a man than that it’s “faith that’s accounted to him as righteousness.”
God is for us in His foolish, scarred Word and Wisdom. Nothing is against us, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
The absence of a feeling is not the absence of Christ, but as emotional, rational, and spiritual beings, we cannot say that the presence of Christ necessitates the absence of emotion.
We are no longer controlled by sin as He moves our lips to speak love and forgiveness. We are passive as He acts out His words and His salvation for us.
As sinful humans, we are adept at taking what God gives as gift and making it into a work. Nowhere is this made more evident than in the universally misunderstood doctrine of sanctification.
I cannot recall how many times I sang along to this theme song, punching and kicking as a kid in the 80s. But much of my desire to join the Marine Corps had its genesis in the 80s cartoon “G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero.”
Jesus is our food and drink, our home and property, our all in all.
Jesus is our food and drink, our home and property, our all in all.