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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With so many TV preachers, pastors, and Bible teachers claiming to be authoritative voices for God himself, how do you know who to listen to?
The gospel is his weapon that beats back the darkness — “I AM the Resurrection and the Life. Bow your head, bend the knee when I walk by.”
Symbols throw together a physical artifact we can see, hear, touch, taste, and/or smell, with a truth beyond the tangible.
God can never really be said to be ignoring us, even if our experience with God at any given moment is that he is.
When the historical importance of revivalism is understood, one can appreciate that the question, “Could America experience another revival?” is also a question about the fate of Christianity in America.
This week, when you go to church, take a moment to reflect that you are being summoned by a loving Father, hands full of gifts he wants to give.
This is an edited excerpt from Addendum A, “The Church Year,” On Any Given Sunday: The Story of Christ in the Divine Service, written by Michael Berg (1517 Publishing, 2023), pgs. 113-120.
A miracle happened right before our very eyes.
If your faith is rooted in the gospel of Zion, in the good news of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection on your behalf, you are already a member of the “heavenly Jerusalem”
With the Spirit we will get lost in the world. We are on a new track.
Success is emphatically not your primary identity.
In our catastrophes - whatever they may be, however large or small they are - we cry out for rescue, deliverance, and salvation.