Forget the bucket lists that have us escaping our everyday lives for exotic experiences. How, Ann wondered, do we find joy in the midst of deadlines, debt, drama, and daily duties? What does the Christ-life really look like when your days are gritty, long and sometimes even dark? How is God even here? In One Thousand Gifts, Ann invites you to embrace everyday blessings and embark on the transformative spiritual discipline of chronicling God's gifts. It s only in this expressing of gratitude for the life we already have, we discover the life we've always wanted, a life we can take, give thanks for, and break for others. We come to feel and know the impossible right down in our bones: we are wildly loved by God.Let Ann's beautiful, heart-aching stories of the everyday give you a way of seeing that opens your eyes to ordinary amazing grace, a way of being present to God that makes you deeply happy, and a way of living that is finally fully alive. Come live the best dare of all!

    Despite all the affirming memes and self-reflections that dominate social media feeds, approval and worth often seem assigned to what we do rather than who we are. And we end up constantly feeling behind, lacking, and like we're failing--at home, at work, with friends, with God.Ruth Chou Simons knows something of feeling measured by achievement, performance, and the approval of others. As a Taiwanese immigrant growing up between two cultures, Ruth was always on a mission to prove her worth. Until she came to truly understand the one thing that changes everything: the extravagant, undeserved gift of grace from a merciful God. In When Strivings Cease, Ruth guides us all on a journey to find freedom from the never-ending quest for self-improvement. She shows us how to examine the ways we look to superficial means of acceptance and belonging, and find relief in realizing we can't be so amazing that we won't need grace; stop seeing God as someone we perform for and start finding delight in responding to God's welcome; and find relief from running the hamster wheel of relying on our own strength, our own abilities, and our own savvy--and always coming up short--by truly understanding the freedom Jesus purchased.With personal story, biblical insights, practical applications, and original artwork by Ruth, this book helps us see the truth that God's favor is the only currency we need, because in Christ we are enough.

    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.

    These inspirational reflections byHenri Nouwen succeed in convincing us thatGod’s presence is reliable.

    However, popular Bible teacher Jen Wilkin is concerned that sometimes we let our emotions rule our study of Scripture and forget that the Bible is primarily about God, not us. Challenging hungry women to go deeper in their study of Scripture, this book will help you refocus your efforts on feeding your mind first and foremost. Whether you're young or old, married or single, this accessible volume will energize and equip you for Bible study aimed at transforming both the heart and mind.

    Reprint.

    While these are elements of popular culture, they aren’t all it has to offer. Pop culture may not cure diseases, topple political regimes, or make scientific breakthroughs, but it does play a vital role in the story of humanity.In fact, it’s pretty hard to define the human experience without it. And it’s impossible to create pop culture without the human experience. Popular podcaster Knox McCoy understands this, and so do the tens of thousands of listeners who tune in to hear him talk about pop culture every week on his wildly popular podcast, The Popcast with Knox and Jamie.In The Wondering Years, Knox explores this idea of connecting popular culture to his own experiences. Through hilarious yet poignant stories, he reflects on how pop culture has helped shape his life and carve out the foundation of his faith. While the three cultural tentpoles—the South, the Church, and Sports—defined many aspects of his East Tennessee upbringing, it was pop culture that most definitively influenced Knox and his sense of the world at large. Through books, television, music, and movies, Knox found many of the answers he was searching for about God and the universe and why we are all here. The Wondering Years is a hilarious look back at the key influences that shaped Knox’s formative years and his faith, a reminder of our own encounters with pop culture that have shaped each of our formative years and continue to influence us today.

    Isn't wanting sinful and selfish? Aren't we supposed to find and follow God's will rather than insisting upon our own? The story of each person is a story of want desires unmet, hopes dashed, passions pursued and ambitions fulfilled. Our wants cannot be ignored. But when desire is informed by Scripture and re-formed by our spiritual practices, it can root us more deeply in the fundamental belief that God is good and generous and can invite us into active kingdom participation. Jen Pollock Michel guides us on a journey of understanding who we are when we want, and reintroduces us to a God who gives us the desires of our hearts. That same good God calls us into a new reality in which we seek first his kingdom and righteousness, and we discover our disordered desires burned away while our truest longings are happily fulfilled and purified. The disciples asked Jesus to "Teach us to pray." This book asks, "Teach us to want.""

    Kissing Fish presents a Postmodern systematic theology of Progressive Christianity, a growing movement that reclaims the radical message of the Gospel. This informative, contemplative, and entertaining book will guide you through the beliefs that inspire us to love one another in the transformative way that Jesus proclaimed, including practices that will take your faith to a new level. Kissing Fish is a scholarly yet thoroughly accessible introduction to Progressive Christianity. While the intended target audience for this work would seem to be those who have either left the Christian faith or never adopted it at all; the work is filled with pearls of wisdom for all of us, whether associated with Christianity or not. Kissing Fish is a truly remarkable work, serving both as a reminder of the beauty and grace that form the central tenets of the faith, while offering a graceful yet prophetic rebuttal to its more exclusionary tendencies. - Roger McClellan, Progressive Christian Alliance

    Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America is part memoir and part investigative analysis that explores the explosive and confusing intersection of faith, politics, and sexuality in Christian America.The quest to find an answer is at the heart of Does Jesus Really Love Me?—a personal journey of belief, an investigation, and a portrait of a faith and a nation at odds by award-winning reporter Jeff Chu.From Brooklyn to Nashville to California, from Westboro Baptist Church and their “God Hates Fags” protest signs, to the pioneering Episcopalian bishop Mary Glasspool—who proclaims a message of liberation and divine love, Chu captures spiritual snapshots of Christian America at a remarkable moment, when tensions between both sides in the culture wars have rarely been higher.Funny and heartbreaking, perplexing and wise, Does Jesus Really Love Me? is an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual pilgrimage that reveals a nation in crisis.

    Through the author's honest (and sometimes funny) examination of these sins in her own life, as well as Church teaching, she gives us the tools to kick these bad habits before they kick us.

    Integrating new findings in neuroscience and attachment with Christian spirituality, Dr. Thompson reveals how it is possible to rewire your mind, altering your brain patterns and literally making you more like the person God intended you to be. Explaining discoveries about the brain in layman's terms, he shows how you can be mentally transformed through spiritual practices, interaction with Scripture, and connections with other people. He also provides practical exercises to help you experience healing in areas where you've been struggling. Insightful and challenging, Anatomy of the Soul illustrates how learning about one of God's most miraculous creations--your brain--can enrich your life, your relationships, and your impact on the world around you.

    Teaching pastor and dynamic communicator liberates Christians from running themselves ragged trying to gain God's favour and invites them into a vibrant and joyful relationship with God.

    One of the most important theologians of the twentieth century illuminates the relationship between ourselves and the teachings of Jesus in this classic text on ethics, humanism, and civic duty.What can the call to discipleship, the adherence to the word of Jesus, mean today to the businessman, the soldier, the laborer, or the aristocrat? What did Jesus mean to say to us? What is his will for us today? Drawing on the Sermon on the Mount, Dietrich Bonhoeffer answers these timeless questions by providing a seminal reading of the dichotomy between "cheap grace" and "costly grace." "Cheap grace," Bonhoeffer wrote, "is the grace we bestow on ourselves...grace without discipleship....Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the girl which must be asked for, the door at which a man must know....It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life."The Cost of Discipleship is a compelling statement of the demands of sacrifice and ethical consistency from a man whose life and thought were exemplary articulations of a new type of leadership inspired by the Gospel, and imbued with the spirit of Christian humanism and a creative sense of civic duty.

    Tozer illuminates God’s attributes—from wisdom, to grace, to mercy—and in doing so, attempts to restore the majesty and wonder of God in the hearts and minds of all Christians. A modern classic of Christian testimony and devotion, The Knowledge of the Holy shows us how we can rejuvenate our prayer life, meditate more reverently, understand God more deeply, and experience God’s presence in our daily lives.