But the story of the baby in the manger is the culmination of a thousand other stories. It is the focus of the story of the Bible and the story of human history. The book has 24 short meditative readings working through Bible stories from Genesis to Jesus. Each day ideas for reflection, prayer and application, designed to excite you about the Gospel message in the run up to Christmas Day. As you prepare for Christmas, get a fresh insight into the full script of the nativity, the story of our world, and the plotline for the rest of your life...

    All four of these good things are guaranteed to happen if you but promise to go onto your porch tomorrow with your pad or other device, light your pipe, and Tolle Lege.

    But God can become present to us in surprising ways through our everyday routines. Framed around one ordinary day, this book explores daily life through the lens of liturgy, small practices and habits that form us. Each chapter looks at something making the bed, brushing her teeth, losing her keys that the author does in the day. Drawing from the diversity of her life as a campus minister, Anglican priest, friend, wife, and mother, Tish Harrison Warren opens up a practical theology of the everyday. Each activity is related to a spiritual practice as well as an aspect of our Sunday worship. Come and discover the holiness of your every day."

    This pursuit involves a deeply meaningful relationship with God through a selfless preoccupation with the spiritual disciplines.The Lost Virtue of Happiness takes a fresh, meaningful look at the spiritual disciplines, offering concrete examples of ways you can make them practical and life-transforming.

    You may have carefully reviewed boxes of personality profiles, stories, and videos, but does that qualify as a relationship?What about your relationship with God?Reframe challenges you to reframe yourself, God and the relationship that connects you--and, from there, to embrace irreversible spiritual change. You are created in God's image; you have His DNA embedded into your very core. The world and your life are engineered so that they will not work without Him. Come and be ruined for anything else but a life-giving collaborative adventure with the Almighty God.

    Everything else can be made, bought or created. Our life is made up of around 600,000 hours and every second is of infinite value. We live in an attention economy where corporations are fighting for our time with the goal of monetizing our every second. The money we use loses value and devalues our time through inflation. When we work, we are exchanging our limited time for money whose quantity increases every year. It hasn’t always been this way. People used gold as money for a reason; it was also a limited resource. Now, what does the future hold?Valuing your time is the first step to improving your life. Knowing that your time is the only limited resource makes you more selective about the things you do, the people you spend your time with and the assets you choose to store your wealth in. Once you learn to appreciate your time, you will get busy doing the things you love and start making better financial choices.

    Both success and failure have a limited lifespan. Successis neither a miracle nor a mystery. It does not depend upon special skills, formaleducation or superior intelligence. It is the natural outcome of consistently applyingcertain principles on an ongoing basis. The ultimate goal is to sustain success andeliminate failure. Acquiring facts is knowledge, understanding facts is comprehension, and the properapplication of facts is wisdom. The principles in this book can help you to: 1. Live by design, not by default2. Gain confidence and optimize your potential3. Become proactive and develop a winning attitude4. Balance your health, wealth and relationships5. Overcome day-to-day problems and make better decisions6. Make positive choices and avoid pitfalls The secret to a meaningful life is in your hands. Through inspiring ideasand basic values, this book will help empower you to Achieve More andbecome unstoppable.

    Mind-Body techniques that will help a patient: feel calmer before surgery, recover faster, have less pain after surgery, strengthen the immune system, use less pain medication, and save money on medical bills.

    It is an ache for the homecoming. The Greeks called it nostalgia.  Post-modern man, homeless almost by definition, cannot understand nostalgia. If he is a progressive, dreaming of a utopia to come, he dismisses it contemptuously, eager to bury a past he despises. If he is a reactionary, he sentimentalizes it, dreaming of a lost golden age. In this profound reflection, Anthony Esolen explores the true meaning of nostalgia and its place in the human heart. Drawing on the great works of Western literature from the Odyssey to Flannery O'Connor, he traces the development of this fundamental longing from the pagan's desire for his earthly home, which most famously inspired Odysseys' heroic return to Ithaca, to its transformation under Christianity. The doctrine of the fall of man forestalls sentimental traditionalism by insisting that there has been no Eden since Eden. And the revelation of heaven as our true and final home, directing man's longing to the next world, paradoxically strengthens and ennobles the pilgrim's devotion to his home in this world. In our own day, Christian nostalgia stands in frank opposition to the secular usurpation of this longing. Looking for a city that does not exist, the progressive treats original sin, which afflicts everyone, as mere political error, which afflicts only his opponents. To him, history is a long tale of misery with nothing to teach us. Despising his fathers, he lives in a world without piety. Only the future, which no one can know, is real to him. It is an idol that justifies all manner of evil and folly. Nostalgia rightly understood is not an invitation to repeat the sins of the past or to repudiate what experience and reflection have taught us, but to hear the call of sanity and sweetness again. Perhaps we will shake our heads as if awaking from a bad and feverish dream and, coming to ourselves, resolve, like the Prodigal, to "arise and go to my father's house."

    Through the challenges of raising those five young children, Susan realized the need for an honest, practical book that helps parents through that time of life. This new edition of the best-selling And Then I Had Kids contains guidance for dealing with common struggles such as discipline, priorities, and fatigue. Susan is honest about the frustrations of parenting, yet encourages parents through her own experiences. She offers a biblical perspective on family life, inspiring mothers (and fathers!) to create a loving atmosphere, find good role models, and shape a Christian home.

    Our much-cherished humorist opens her heart with a story that shines with the hope of restoration in the wake of pain and tragedy.

    Thomas wrote, then turn to The One-Minute Aquinas, the fast-paced book that provides busy readers with simple, readable explanations of the truths that, for 750 years now, have caused the works of St. Thomas to be sought out by kings and popes, scholars and saints, as well as by ordinary souls like you — hungry to know God and to love him more and more.In this book’s lucid pages, author Kevin Vost gives you small, digestible portions of St. Thomas’s life-giving wisdom that you can enjoy one minute at a time. Tables and graphics will help you grasp and remember St. Thomas’s key ideas with a minimum of time and effort.Best of all, in The One-Minute Aquinas you’ll find quick, sure refutations of the countless relativistic, secular, and pseudoscientific ideas that are so influential in our culture today — and so shallow, contradictory, and wrong!Pope John Paul II declared that “the Church has been justified in consistently proposing St. Thomas as a master of thought and a model of the right way to do theology.” Now The One-Minute Aquinas enables even those with limited time and only a modest education to benefit from the wisdom of this great saint.Here, with minimal effort and among scores of other things, you’ll finally come to know and understand:--Why God permits evil--Heaven: what it is (and is not)--Five simple proofs that God exists--Why God became man--Why Jesus let himself be tempted--How you can grow quickly in virtue--Why all souls need the sacraments--Why Jesus let himself be crucified--The causes of lust--The natural law and the Commandments--The soul, free will, sin, and damnation--The angels, their ranks, and their powers--How God governs (and refrains from governing)--God’s power and its limits--The Bible: why didn’t Jesus just write it himself?--The surprising qualities of our resurrected bodies

    When God Doesn't Listen by Francis Chan- Prayer should not be taken lightly in connection with individual and communal sin. Submission through Prayer by James MacDonald - Prayerful submission enables us to experience God’s grace and peace. Waiting On God by John Ortberg- Waiting on the Lord is the hardest work of hope.Why We Shouldn't Give Up On Prayer by Bill Hybels- We must persevere through hindrances to prayer.

    For Christians who are struggling to understand what it means to be pious and how to embrace the classic Christian practices of piety, Thank, Praise, Serve, and Obey shows that acts of piety are not simply rules to keep in order to be a "good" Christian, but how the new life in Christ is lived out in day-to-day life.

    For those who want a more foundational look at this contested theological discipline, this book examines Christian apologetics in its nature, history, approaches, objections and practice. What is apologetics? How has apologetics developed? What are the basic apologetic approaches? Why should we practice apologetics? Countless Christians today are seeking a responsibe way to defend and commend their faith. If you are one them, Thinking About Christian Apologetics is the place to start.