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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For most of my Christian experience I was taught and I taught others that church was primarily a place to go to serve, to use your gifts, to bless others.
God’s Law is a death sentence for us sinners. There is no winning beneath the Law of God.
The Gospel predominates when hearers receive the saving gifts of Christ as God’s final word to them.
Whatever we call “god,” how we act out our “religion,” what we call “living,” if its name isn’t Jesus, it’s a sham.
Bring your black eyes and bruised hearts. Bring your criminal records and soiled pasts. Bring your same sex attraction and internet history. Jesus isn't afraid of your sin or your righteousness.
We are called to proclaim the life, death, and resurrection of the Answer incarnate, Jesus Christ, and in love respond to the questions that inevitably arise against it.
Pictures of God’s grace for us in and through His Son, Jesus, can be found in the most unlikely places. Recently, I witnessed one such picture of God’s grace during WrestleMania 34.
The law demands love, and love has no limits, no end, it is never done.
Our gods expect us to be perfect, pure, and in constant control of our feelings and thoughts.
“Standing firm in the confession we share should not exclude us from inviting others into it.”
Come to the feast where evil and good, wise and foolish, shameful and shaming are welcomed as citizens of the kingdom.
This is the first of seven words of Christ from the cross.