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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Jesus didn’t lie. He was called to preach to Israel. He would send His disciples out into the world. But that didn’t mean His message wasn’t for all.
To see faith as a noun in Christianity, one must ask the question of what is faith and whence does it come?
Yes, when we die, we believe that we go to be with Jesus in a paradise called heaven. But that’s only a vacation destination, as it were.
Put to death by God's Word of Law, we are then raised to new life by God's Word of Gospel.
Quid pro quo, you scratch my back and I will scratch yours. It tends to be the way we humans operate.
Have you ever wondered, of all the adjectives we could use to describe this day why in the world we chose the word “good?” Yeah, me too.
The story of Christ crucified has a happy ending. Jesus has conquered the grave. He beat the death rap.
What is your fight club? Who is your Tyler Durden?
Apart from bare, naked faith in Jesus' atoning work for us, no sinner is, or ever can be, holy.
Sacrifice is the beating heart of the Scriptures, but also of our Christian faith.
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 (Eph 2:8-9).
If you don’t believe Jesus Christ—that is, God in the man born of the Virgin Mary—died for the sins of the world, then you can’t evangelize.