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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To pray that God’s name is hallowed among us is to pray for the continual proclamation of the gospel in truth and purity that we would hear the word about Christ crucified for sinners.
JFK was not the only national figure who died on November 11, 1963. Though his death certainly took up most of the headlines, the acclaimed writers C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley also died that day as well.
If someone confesses their sins into my ears, I have no options but to forgive them in the name of Christ.
God comes to fix what is broken by being broken himself. He abolishes death by dying. He subsumes sin by being made sin itself.
Professor John T. Pless has organized an incredible Advent series on the Apostles' Creed for you! Included here are texts, themes, and an order of service for your midweek Advent services.
God invites us to have intimate conversations in a world filled with mockery and hate. To trust Jesus reigns whenever and wherever He extends a word of promise to the displaced and the disfavored, welcoming them home.
Our smartphones, tablets, and laptops tempt us to enter into a virtual world without flesh and blood. A world without concrete, real consequences. No real pain or suffering, and no actual death.
Jesus offer us this vision of violence not so we might be drawn into it but so we might be drawn through it to come closer to Him.
If the resurrection were just a repetition of this world, then it would be ridiculous, indeed. But the resurrection is different. It is a world without death.
On All Saints Day, the beatitudes remind us how God in Christ claims people, frail, humble, poor, mourning, and makes them His own.
Any conception that contends that Jesus only died for some sinners turns the gospel into an uncertain message for everyone.
Faithful celebration of the Reformation is possible only for those who understand they have nothing. Whose incapability and insufficiency are obvious and owned. Who recognize their dependence on God for all things. In other words, Reformation is for children.