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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This coming Sunday churches around the world will celebrate the big, splashy day of Pentecost. As well they should.
Your church is not healthy. If they were healthy, they wouldn’t need someone to heal them.
He reminds them how his love is truly marvelous and unconditional, but then, he looks them in the eyes, and says they ought to do better because of his love.
Last night was one of those nights when I had an unscheduled 3:00 a.m. Life Assessment session.
The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously. The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.
Old Testament narratives foreshadowed the gifts that our Father gives us in baptism.
I don’t care why you left the ministry—moral failure, congregational politics, burnout, whatever—the Christ whom you proclaimed has not left you.
The Word of God wrecked the room. The wise and seasoned pastor along with the smart mouth vicar were all silenced in the fear and awe of a God who can seem so absent at times.
Many Christians (including preachers) have succumbed to the idea that good preaching must be about practical living, and so most sermons are geared to scratch this pragmatic itch.
Read your life like a Hebrew, from the end to the beginning, and you will see that the last is first. The dead are alive, the cursed are blessed, the humble are exalted.
To forget ourselves is to remember another, that is, to act in such a way that benefits them. That’s the problem: we don’t.
I became like God’s child David, whom the Lord pardoned of his adultery and murder. I became like Noah, Abraham, Judah, Aaron, Gideon, and so many more wayward children.