That’s exactly what happened to Lisa Brockman, a six-generation Mormon with lineage tracing back to the early church. In college, Lisa found herself challenged to defend her faith, and the beliefs she knew to be true began to unravel.  In Out of Zion, Lisa shares her journey of discovering the biblical Jesus and the key conversations that led her from the faith of her ancestors to conversion to Christianity. If you have reached a place of questioning what you believe, or you long for confidence to share your faith with others, Lisa provides the framework you need to…understand the nuances of the history and evolution of Mormon culturelearn to identify the vital differences between the Mormon and biblical plans of salvationcompassionately engage in conversation with your Mormon friends and neighborsAs you follow the evolution of Lisa’s faith, you will face the same challenge to defend what you believe and, ultimately, learn to share the gospel effectively with others.

    T. Wright offers a radical look at the apostle Paul, illuminating the humanity and remarkable achievements of this intellectual who invented Christian theology—transforming a faith and changing the world.For centuries, Paul, the apostle who "saw the light on the Road to Damascus" and made a miraculous conversion from zealous Pharisee persecutor to devoted follower of Christ, has been one of the church’s most widely cited saints. While his influence on Christianity has been profound, N. T. Wright argues that Bible scholars and pastors have focused so much attention on Paul’s letters and theology that they have too often overlooked the essence of the man’s life and the extreme unlikelihood of what he achieved.To Wright, "The problem is that Paul is central to any understanding of earliest Christianity, yet Paul was a Jew; for many generations Christians of all kinds have struggled to put this together." Wright contends that our knowledge of Paul and appreciation for his legacy cannot be complete without an understanding of his Jewish heritage. Giving us a thoughtful, in-depth exploration of the human and intellectual drama that shaped Paul, Wright provides greater clarity of the apostle’s writings, thoughts, and ideas and helps us see them in a fresh, innovative way.Paul is a compelling modern biography that reveals the apostle’s greater role in Christian history—as an inventor of new paradigms for how we understand Jesus and what he accomplished—and celebrates his stature as one of the most effective and influential intellectuals in human history.

    God-Sized Vision challenges us to pray expectantly to see his work in our own day. God can bring revival again to our community, our country, and our world. Our faith grows stronger when we learn how God worked in the past. The historical stories of worldwide revivals in this book enlarge our hearts and expand our minds as we see God at work in human history with a power that is still available to the faithful today. Here scholars Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge recount the fascinating details of world-changing revivals, beginning with biblical events and continuing through the Reformation, the Great Awakenings, the Welsh and Korean revivals, the East Africa Revival of the 1930s, and more recent revivals in North America and China. What did these revivals have in common? How can we prepare for and expect revival in our own culture? With accessible language and gripping examples, Hansen and Woodbridge explore these questions and more, strengthening our understanding of God s work while deepening our faith in the possibility of revival right where we are."

    Written in a beautiful and engaging style, Seven Men addresses what it means (or should mean) to be a man today, at a time when media and popular culture present images of masculinity that are not the picture presented in Scripture and historic civil life. What does it take to be a true exemplar as a father, brother, husband, leader, coach, counselor, change agent, and wise man? What does it mean to stand for honesty, courage, and charity, especially at times when the culture and the world run counter to those values?Each of the seven biographies represents the life of a man who experienced the struggles and challenges to be strong in the face of forces and circumstances that would have destroyed the resolve of lesser men. Each of the seven men profiled—George Washington, William Wilberforce, Eric Liddell, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jackie Robinson, John Paul II, and Charles Colson—call the reader to a more elevated walk and lifestyle, one that embodies the gospel in the world around us.

    Nearly two thousand years after this beloved and controversial young revolutionary was brutally killed by Roman soldiers, more than 2.2 billion human beings attempt to follow his teachings and believe he is God. Killing Jesus will take readers inside Jesus's life, recounting the seismic political and historical events that made his death inevitable - and changed the world forever.

    Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. He vows to follow the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love his neighbor. But also to obey the hundreds of less publicized rules: to avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibers; to play a ten-string harp; to stone adulterers.The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal and will make you see history's most influential book with new eyes.Jacobs's quest transforms his life even more radically than the year spent reading the entire "Encyclopedia Britannica" for "The Know-It-All." His beard grows so unruly that he is regularly mistaken for a member of ZZ Top. He immerses himself in prayer, tends sheep in the Israeli desert, battles idolatry, and tells the absolute truth in all situations - much to his wife's chagrin.Throughout the book, Jacobs also embeds himself in a cross-section of communities that take the Bible literally. He tours a Kentucky-based creationist museum and sings hymns with Pennsylvania Amish. He dances with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and does Scripture study with Jehovah's Witnesses. He discovers ancient biblical wisdom of startling relevance. And he wrestles with seemingly archaic rules that baffle the twenty-first-century brain.Jacobs's extraordinary undertaking yields unexpected epiphanies and challenges. A book that will charm readers both secular and religious, "The Year of Living Biblically" is part Cliff Notes to the Bible, part memoir, and part look into worlds unimaginable. Thou shalt not be able to put it down.

    Through this provocative project, the founder of PreachersNSneakers is helping thousands of Jesus followers wrestle with the inevitable dilemmas created by a culture obsessed with image and entertainment.In PreachersNSneakers: 9 Questions to Help You Live Your Faith in an Age of Capitalism, Consumerism, and (Wannabe) Celebrity, the author boldly confronts many of the difficult questions plaguing countless Christians’ minds, such as:Should pastors grow wealthy off of religion, and why do we get so angry when they do?Is it okay to stoke envy among others with curated “lifestyle” images on social media?Do we really believe that divine blessings are monetary, or is that just religious wallpaper to hide our own greed?Is there space in Christendom for celebrities like Kanye and Bieber to exist without distorting the good news?What about this: Is it wrong for someone like this author to call out faith leaders online and leverage “cancel culture” to affect change?PreachersNSneakers will navigate these challenging questions and many more with humor, wit, candor, and a few never-before-published hijinks. Each chapter will explore the various sides of the debate, holding space for readers to make up their own minds. The book will doubtlessly become a staple for church small groups, college ministries, and book clubs, emboldening struggling believers who want to live a more genuine faith.After all, the Lord works in mysterious colorways.

    Table of Contents: Introduction: Who Are the American Puritans? 1. William Bradford 2. John Winthrop 3. John Cotton 4. Thomas Hooker 5. Thomas Shepard 6. Anne Bradstreet 7. John Eliot 8. Samuel Willard 9. Cotton Mather

    She is barely an adult when the trials of motherhood and marriage put her on an unexpected collision course with Jesus. After finding her faith at a suburban megachurch, Jamie trades in the easy life on the cul-de-sac for the green fields of Costa Rica. There, along with her family, she earnestly hopes to serve God and change lives. But faced with a yawning culture gap and persistent shortcomings in herself and her fellow workers, she soon loses confidence in the missionary enterprise and falls into a funk of cynicism and despair.

Nearly paralyzed by depression, yet still wanting to make a difference, she decides to tell the whole, disenchanted truth: Missionaries suck and our work makes no sense at all! From her sofa in Central America, she launches a renegade blog, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary, and against all odds wins a large and passionate following. Which leads her to see that maybe a "bad" missionary--awkward, doubtful, and vocal—is exactly what the world and the throngs of American do-gooders need.

    "Ocean Star" is the story of how God found her in the midst of an abusive childhood, became the loving parent she never had, and revealed himself in tangible ways through her amazing life journey. Filled with insightful symbolism, "Ocean Star" will help Christians and non-Christians find hope, humor, and healing in a powerful true story of a broken life made new.

    Follow the faith journey of author and fellow disciplemaker Jen Hatmaker and rediscover Jesus among the least of us.

    Mamitu Gashe was close to death and horrifically injured during childbirth after an arranged marriage - at the age of just fourteen to a man she'd never met - in a remote mountain village.The Hamlins' Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital saved her and, in return, Mamitu dedicated her life to Catherine's mission. Under the iconic doctor's guidance, Mamitu went from mopping floors and comforting her fellow patients, to becoming one of the most acclaimed fistula surgeons in the world, despite never having had a day's schooling.This is the moving story of the friendship that saved the lives of over 60,000 of the poorest women on earth.

    As you turn the pages, you'll sense Paul's motives, his aims and priorities; what mattered to him; and what he was willing to die for.

    S. Lewis his thoughts on some of the most difficult questions of life? If you could, the result would be Dr. Alister McGrath’s provocative and perceptive book, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis. Best-selling author, prominent academic, and sought-after speaker, Dr. McGrath sees C. S. Lewis as the perfect conversation companion for the persistent meaning-of-life questions everyone asks.What makes Lewis a good dialogue partner is that his mind traveled through a wide and varied terrain: from atheism of his early life to his conversion later in life; from his rational skepticism to his appreciation of value of human desires and imagination; from his role as a Christian apologist during World War II to his growth as a celebrated author of classic children’s literature. The questions Lewis pondered persist today: Does life have meaning? Does God exist? Can reason and imagination be reconciled? Why does God allow suffering?Let McGrath be your insightful guide to an intriguing conversation with Lewis about the ultimate questions.

    Lewis, always “Jack” to family and friends, never shied from intellectual debate, and through his written works encouraged others to wrestle with the difficult questions of faith. A master of visual illustration and allegory, Lewis wrote with the intuitive understanding that his readers wrestled with the same questions about the Christian story, about pain, suffering, and notions of Heaven and Hell, as he himself had wrestled. He also understood that others found reason and imagination to be incompatible aspects of an understanding of God and the universe.