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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All other wonderful teachings of Holy Scripture from creation to Christ’s coming again are absolutely worthless without being understood in light of Jesus, death, and resurrection for sinners.
No matter which side, it’s easy for all of us to build Bible verses into grenades aimed at obliterating the political other.
The Law gets a bad rap. There is certainly a negative component to the Law. The work of the Law is very different than the work of the Gospel.
Jesus is in the business of proclaiming such a beautiful redundancy.
At times, evangelical Christianity can be a paradox. For as much as Protestants have spurned Roman Catholicism, they’re much more Catholic than they’d ever like to admit.
There is a difference between preaching about Christ and preaching Christ.
Many Christians are worried—perhaps legitimately—that the state is a short step away from turning the Law of God into hate speech and silencing the legal preaching of God’s Word.
Nicodemus, like us, does not really have phantoms and dragons in his head. He has just one demon, one virus, one malady: he lives in fear.
The miracle of Pentecost is not obvious; it is the miracle of faith created through the preaching of the word of the cross.
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.
“Standing firm in the confession we share should not exclude us from inviting others into it.”