. .Why is life so frustrating?Is happiness within my reach?Is it too late for me?Dr. David Jeremiah takes a look at history’s wisest and most successful man, King Solomon, and challenges readers to find what really matters in life. Solomon tested life’s haunting questions head-on. Tasted the fullness of life’s riches. But found his answers in the last place he thought to look.If you thought happiness was only an empty hope, maybe you’ve simply been looking in all the wrong places. In this book Dr. Jeremiah reveals the way to the happiness you have longed for, the never-dimming light of your fondest dreams.

    Yet often our most deeply felt longings—for meaning, for love, for significance—end up leading us away from, instead of toward, our Creator and the person he made us to be.  Finding Your Way Back to God shows you how to understand and listen to your longings in a whole new way. It’s about waking up to who you really are, and daring to believe that God wants to be found even more than you want to find him. It’s about making the biggest wager of your life as you ask God to make himself known to you. And it’s about watching what happens next.

    They talked to them, had cook-outs with them, and went to church with them. In our time of unprecedented mobility and increasing isolationism, it's hard to make lasting connections with those who live right outside our front door. We have hundreds of "friends" through online social networking, but we often don't even know the full name of the person who lives right next door.This unique and inspiring book asks the question: What is the most loving thing I can do for the people who live on my street or in my apartment building? Through compelling true stories of lives impacted, the authors show readers how to create genuine friendships with the people who live in closest proximity to them. Discussion questions at the end of each chapter make this book perfect for small groups or individual study.

    This covenant has the power to release angels to assist you and forges a protective covenant around yourself and your family. It is important to discover how angels are involved in the lives of people on a personal and practical level. We will see biblical and current examples of angelic protection and will discover the steps to engaging in a covenant relationship with God that engages the help of His angels. Learn the kinds of assignments given to the angels, and discover five things that can offend angels and hinder their protection to man. We can be assured that God has commissioned His heavenly messengers to defend, keep, and protect His people.

    We are to incarnate Christ in our time, being conscious of the presence and power of God within us in all of our thoughts and actions. This is what pastor Steve Long wants his congregation to understand. When Long challenges his prominent but self-satisfied congregation to become a living force for Christ in their small North Georgia town, he is blindsided by personal trials. Responding to Christ’s command “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” Pastor Long tackles these difficult situations—and more—over a tumultuous week of trials and testing and ultimately learns (as he leads) what it means to walk In His Place.

    I expected to love the children who hung on my legs after Sunday morning services until they grew up and had children of their own. I even expected to be buried wearing the same red vestments in which I was ordained.Today those vestments are hanging in the sacristy of an Anglican church in Kenya, my church pension is frozen, and I am as likely to spend Sunday mornings with friendly Quakers, Presbyterians, or Congregationalists as I am with the Episcopalians who remain my closest kin. Some-times I even keep the Sabbath with a cup of steaming Assam tea on my front porch, watching towhees vie for the highest perch in the poplar tree while God watches me. These days I earn my living teaching school, not leading worship, and while I still dream of opening a small restaurant in Clarkesville or volunteering at an eye clinic in Nepal, there is no guarantee that I will not run off with the circus before I am through. This is not the life I planned, or the life I recommend to others. But it is the life that has turned out to be mine, and the central revelation in it for me -- that the call to serve God is first and last the call to be fully human -- seems important enough to witness to on paper. This book is my attempt to do that.After nine years serving on the staff of a big urban church in Atlanta, Barbara Brown Taylor arrives in rural Clarkesville, Georgia (population 1,500), following her dream to become the pastor of her own small congregation. The adjustment from city life to country dweller is something of a shock -- Taylor is one of the only professional women in the community -- but small-town life offers many of its own unique joys. Taylor has five successful years that see significant growth in the church she serves, but ultimately she finds herself experiencing "compassion fatigue" and wonders what exactly God has called her to do. She realizes that in order to keep her faith she may have to leave.Taylor describes a rich spiritual journey in which God has given her more questions than answers. As she becomes part of the flock instead of the shepherd, she describes her poignant and sincere struggle to regain her footing in the world without her defining collar. Taylor's realization that this may in fact be God's surprising path for her leads her to a refreshing search to find Him in new places. Leaving Church will remind even the most skeptical among us that life is about both disappointment and hope -- and ultimately, renewal.

    If we thinking. If we think wrong we believe wrong.

    Some are anxious and withdrawn, seeking to escape the notice of whatever scares them. Others mask their fear with fighting and quarrelsomeness. The root of all of this fear is the fear that we might lose our belonging in whatever tribe in which we seek safety, the fear that we might have to stand alone. The crisis we face is not a crisis of clarity but a crisis of courage. Our problem is not so much a lack of knowledge as a lack of nerve. And yet, Jesus told us that we are to stand with courage. That doesn’t mean that we will be fearless, but that we will know how to face our fear and keep walking toward the voice that calls us homeward. Gospel courage is nothing like the bravado of this anxious age. The call to courage is terrifying because the call to courage is a call to be crucified. In The Courage to Stand, bestselling and award-winning author Russell Moore calls readers to a Christ-empowered courage by pointing the way to real freedom from fear—the way of the cross. That way means integrity through brokenness, community through loneliness, power through weakness, and a future through irrelevance. On the other side of fear is freedom: the freedom to stand.

    Instead, something in our nature points beyond itself; something in us searches for and appeals to The Divine. We wrote this book to help you find language, shape and space for the basic, human, spiritual and beautiful need to pray. Yet, as natural as prayer is, the practice of it often seems to take place behind closed doors in exclusive clubs with language and imagery exclusive to that club. We have created a work that provides language and imagery accessible to people from a multitude of religious backgrounds as well as for those with no real religious background at all. - Justin McRoberts has written 40 guided prayers. - Scott Erickson has paired each prayer with beautiful, contemplative imagery. - Each of the book's seven sections is capped by reflections on the practice of prayer and each of those reflections points toward specific, suggested practices.

    What he doesn’t know is anything about grace.This year, when it comes time for the Christmas sermon, the congregation at Grace Cathedral will look to the pulpit, and Jack will not be there. Of course, they will have seen plenty of him already—on the news.After an evening of debauchery that leads to an affair with his beautiful assistant, Jack Chisholm finds himself deserted with chilling swiftness. The church elders remove him from his own pulpit. His publisher withholds the royalties from his books. Worst of all, his wife disappears with their eight-year-old daughter.But just as Jack is hitting bottom, hopeless and penniless, drinking his way to oblivion, who should appear but his long-estranged father, imploring his prodigal son: “Come home.”A true companion piece to The Ragamuffin Gospel, The Prodigal illustrates the power of grace through the story of a broken man who finally saw Jesus not because he preached his greatest sermon or wrote his most powerful book, but because he failed miserably. Jack Chisholm lost everything—his church, his family, his respect, and his old way of believing—but he found grace. It’s the same grace that Brennan Manning devoted his life to sharing: profound in nature and coming from a God who loves us just as we are, and not as we should be.“A wonderfully written story that is as entertaining as it is thought provoking.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review“. . . the consummate final tale. What they have created is the Ragamuffin at his best, full of hope, full of love, and finally, full of belief in the goodness of God.” —Phyllis Tickle, founding editor, Religion Department, Publishers Weekly“Brennan Manning’s last work continues the powerful message of grace and forgiveness that has transformed so many lives. The Prodigal will transform you too.” —Mark Batterson, New York Times best-selling author of The Circle Maker

    And they're all essential truths. But none of them were the theme of His teaching. The theme of Jesus' message was the kingdom of God. Wherever He went, Jesus preached about the kingdom. The irony is that the message of the kingdom is almost totally missing from the gospel that's preached today. As a result, a lot of Christians don't realize that the kingdom of God is a present reality on earth. In fact, they don't even know what the kingdom of God is. Consequently, they never make the kingdom commitment that Christ requires. In The Kingdom that Turned the World Upside Down, David Bercot takes the reader back to Jesus' teachings of the kingdom—teachings that have too often been forgotten. Bercot describes the radically new laws of the kingdom and its upside-down values. There's no room in Christ's kingdom for superficial Christianity, for this is a kingdom that has historically turned the world upside down. The Kingdom that Turned the World Upside Down will challenge you to the core in your Christian walk.

    Instead of clinging to grace, we strive for good and believe that the Christian life means hard work and a sweet disposition. As good girls, we focus on the things we can handle, our disciplined lives, and our unshakable good moods. When we fail to measure up to our own impossible standards, we hide behind our good girl masks, determined to keep our weakness a secret.In Grace for the Good Girl, Emily Freeman invites women to let go of the try-hard life and realize that in Christ we are free to receive from him rather than constantly try to achieve for him. With an open hand and a whimsical style, Emily uncovers the truth about the hiding, encouraging women to move from hiding behind girl-made masks and do-good performances to a life hidden with Christ in God.

    In this classic book, Madeleine L'Engle addresses the questions, What makes art Christian? What does it mean to be a Christian artist? What is the relationship between faith and art? Through L'Engle's beautiful and insightful essay, readers will find themselves called to what the author views as the prime tasks of an artist: to listen, to remain aware, and to respond to creation through one's own art.

    But while we may see the emptiness of our lives as our greatest problem, that's not how God sees it. When God looks into the empty places of our lives, He sees His greatest opportunity. God does His best work in the emptiness of our . . .Insatiable craving for things that don't satisfyRelational disappointments and lonelinessFrustrated search for purpose and meaningRelentless desire for comfort and securityOngoing struggle to live with loss and unfulfilled dreamsJoin Nancy Guthrie in discovering why emptiness has never been, and never will be, a problem to God. As Nancy pulls back the curtain on God's work to fill up emptiness as revealed throughout the Bible, you'll experience page after page of grace and hope that your emptiness can and will be filled. You'll begin to see that God really does do His best work with empty--as he fills it with Himself.

    We run into it every day and we all are susceptible to falling victim to its enticements. We're tempted to cheat on our taxes, milk the clock, lust after someone other than our spouse, dishonor our parents, lie to our friends, covet our neighbor's trip to Europe. But just because we must live with temptation doesn't mean we have to let it master us. In "Flirting with the Forbidden," bestselling author Steven James reminds readers that we are always just one step away from bowing to temptation, that we all share the same potential and propensity for evil. Combining powerful first-person narratives from Scripture with thought-provoking reflections on temptation, discipleship, and grace, James helps readers grow in discernment and reliance on the Holy Spirit and develop a deeper, more intimate walk with Christ.