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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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.
Don’t let anyone tell you the academy denies the concept of truth...good gracious, I hope by the end of the semester they are still alive.
I don't remember the first time I heard the gospel, but I do remember the first time I began to understand it.
We just can't stop ourselves from putting the brakes on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
On a recurring basis, Christians spot news headlines that signal yet one more moral collapse in society, the growing paganization of the cultures in which we live, the spread of antipathy toward the faith.
A Christian is justified—saved from sin, death, and hell—by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously. The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.
The question is not can I lose my salvation, but can salvation lose me? No, it can’t.
Can one still find a church that teaches that Christianity, and the Christian life, can be summed up as: "We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone?"
Sometimes we try be the bad god, sometimes the good god, oftentimes a freaky hybrid of both. The result is the same: Jesus the savior just gets in our way.
A while back, my wife and I attended the wake and memorial service of a friend from a prior church we attended.