The themes we'll explore are the timeless, foundational, core questions that people return to century after century. Delving into these topics will help fill holes in our spiritual foundations so that we have something firm to stand on when life gets shaky. A DVD series, Priorities complements the course. Immensely practical and encouraging, Opening Your Heart is the perfect starting point as you seek to grow closer to God.

    We know how it all turns out. But imagine if you were the people living it. If you didn't know He was coming back. If you were Mary and Martha after Lazarus died, you would have thought He came too late. If you were Peter, you would have been appalled that the Master would lower Himself into your mess to wash your feet. If you stood at the foot of the cross and heard it was finished, you would have believed it was.What shifted? What allowed them to discover hope within the hopelessness? The witness of their change in perspective teaches us of an unexpected Christ. One who shows up, turning defeat into victory, and despair into deliverance.If He did it for them, He will do it for you. The story of Easter teaches us the truth of Jesus in every unexpected season. Through Him, you can expect hope in unlikely places.

    

    Michael Gaitley, MIC gives you a brief and easy-to-understand introduction to the Divine Mercy message and devotion. You’ll read about the history and context of Divine Mercy, the essential elements of the devotion, and how you can live the message. Includes the full prayers of the Divine Mercy Novena and St. Faustina’s Litany to Divine Mercy, as well as two bonus appendices.

    Each day readers will enjoy a Scripture verse, a true first-person story told in an informal, conversational style, which shares the ways God speaks to us in the ordinary events of life, and a brief prayer to help focus the reader to apply the day’s message. For those who wish for more, “Digging Deeper” provides additional Bible references that relate to the day’s reading. Enjoy favorite writers like Debbie Macomber, Edward Grinnan, Elizabeth Sherrill, Patricia Lorenz, Julia Attaway, Karen Barber, Sabra Ciancanelli, Marion Bond West, Brian Doyle, and Rick Hamlin. In just five minutes a day, Daily Guideposts helps readers find the spiritual richness in their own lives and welcomes them into a remarkable family of over one million people brought together by a desire to grow every day of the year.

    He began his life as a simple fisherman who caught fish in the Sea of Galilea, but one day, this fisherman became a “fisher of men” instead. In good time, he would help to form one of the largest religious movements the world had ever known, eventually giving his life to the cause when he was sentenced to death by crucifixion.Here in this book, we discover the life of Saint Peter from beginning to end.Discover a plethora of topics such asA Fisher of MenThe Rock of the Christian ChurchThe Denial of PeterPeter, the LeaderArrests and PersecutionCrucified by NeroAnd much more!

    

    

    But are those a Christian’s only options? The Voting Booth presents a third path for a new generation of Christians seeking to love both God and their neighbor. Written as a fictional dialogue between Christian, a confused voter, and three spirits of cultural engagement—Exodus, Exile, and Incarnation—The Voting Booth addresses many of the questions being asked by those struggling to follow Christ in our post-Christian age like: -How do I respond to those who view Christian faith as oppressive? -Why has Christianity become so political? -What role does fear have in Christian cultural engagement? -How should I interact with neighbors of other faiths? -Have Christians lost the “Culture War”? -How should I think about voting as a Christian? -What is the role of the Church in the culture? With engaging writing and surprising twists, The Voting Booth will challenge your assumptions and leave you with a new way of imagining your place in the culture. What others are saying about "The Voting Booth" "As an immigrant-turned-citizen facing only my second chance to vote in a presidential election, I am troubled by the options presented. Opinions from Christians abound, complete with blogs and Bible verses, but no clear path emerges. Skye’s allegory tale succinctly— if also slightly simplistically— represents the two dominant paradigms of Christian response: the call to escape, and the call to engage. He then offers a third perspective rooted in the incarnation. While the tale stops short of instruction, it is abounding in wisdom. This is an accessible read that provides a thoughtful way to name and evaluate the subconscious grids that undergird our approach to political engagement or disengagement. Best of all, it offers us a way to reflect on our perspective, posture, and purpose in a Christ-shaped way." -Glenn Packiam, Pastor at New Life Downtown "Skye Jethani is one of the most clear-headed, sober voices writing on faith and culture today. The Voting Booth raises questions many Christians wrestle with and provides answers that challenge and delight. In a time of political unrest and cultural upheaval, we can't afford to ignore what this book has to say." - Jonathan Merritt, author of Jesus is Better Than You Imagined; contributing writer for The Atlantic “In a creative and compelling way, Skye Jethani has written yet another book that pushes the American church in the right direction. His uncanny ability to put his finger up to the wind and chart the right direction forward is a huge help to our community as we navigate the increasingly treacherous waters of the secular west.” - John Mark Comer, pastor for teaching and vision at Bridgetown Church and author of Loveology. "In The Voting Booth, Skye Jethani beautifully crafts a dialogue between ‘Christian' and three personified postures we can take toward our culture. Eye-opening and thought provoking, Skye clearly illuminates the dominant but destructive attitudes that have dominated the American church for the last 100 years, and then shines a light on a better way. Highly recommended!” - Phil Vischer, creator of VeggieTales, What’s In The Bible, and The Phil Vischer Podcast.

    They were pure ballplayers, sluggers and sweet fielders who played with unbridled joy and breathtaking skill. The national press converged on Crenshaw. So many scouts gravitated to their games that they took up most of the seats in the bleachers. Even the Crenshaw ballfield was a sight to behold -- groomed by the players themselves, picked clean of every pebble, it was the finest diamond in all of inner-city Los Angeles. On the outfield fences, the gates to the outside stayed locked against the danger and distraction of the streets. Baseball, for these boys, was hope itself. They had grown up with the notion that it could somehow set things right -- a vague, unexpressed, but persistent hope that even if life was rigged, baseball might be fair. And for a while it seemed they were right. Incredibly, most of of this team -- even several of the boys who sat on the bench -- were drafted into professional baseball. Two of them, Darryl Strawberry and Chris Brown, would reunite as teammates on a National League All-Star roster. But Michael Sokolove's The Ticket Out is more a story of promise denied than of dreams fulfilled. Because in Sokolove's brilliantly reported poignant and powerful tale, the lives of these gifted athletes intersect with the realities of being poor, urban, and black in America. What happened to these young men is a harsh reminder of the ways inspiration turns to frustration when the bats and balls are stowed and the crowd's applause dies down.

    

    Eyes fixed on a mysterious point in the air, they were mesmerized by something which was invisible to everyone else. What the girls said they saw--and heard--sent shock waves that are still reverberating today. The messages the four girls claimed to receive revealed a picture of a Catholic church in crisis and a world that faced an earth-shattering future that would unfold in their lifetime. The girls’ pronouncements about coming trouble in the church and world were met with fierce skepticism from the first. Some charged the girls with being possessed by demons (based on the girls’ strange physical poses and apparent levitation), and others claimed the girls were putting on an act (revealing their true colors when they chose ordinary married lives instead of the convent). There was also a third body of critics: those who believed that a group of girls on the cusp of adolescence in a remote and insular society conjured up a psychodrama which, fueled by the spotlight and mounting frenzy, gained a frightening life of its own. There was one other possibility--that the strange events in Garabandal, Spain actually did occur, and the girls received an apocalyptic warning for both the church and the modern world. The warning to the world included a prediction that a newly militant Russia would rise again. The prophecies of Garabandal also foretell a World-Wide Warning and a Global Miracle, whose purpose is to convince a world reeling from one catastrophe to the next that God exists. But the Warning and Miracle, dramatic as they sound, are not even the most unsettling of the messages. One night, the young girls dissolved into screams. During this so-called “Night of the Screams,” the girls say they were shown a tragic chastisement that would befall the entire world if the Warning and Miracle failed to trigger global change. As disquieting as those messages were, the most shocking message at Garabandal was for the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Why were the messages of Garabandal so effectively suppressed? Did it have to do with the fact that the messages presciently warned of coming scandal and turmoil in the Roman Catholic Church itself? Did a portal open between worlds on a Spanish mountaintop in that summer of 1961? And if so, who opened the door--an angel of God or an angel of darkness? Did a young girl's flight of fancy one summer night spin wildly out of control? Or was it a visitation from God? Now that the “girls” at the center of this drama are 60-year-old women, should their claims be discredited or re-examined? Are the apparitions bogus or fast-approaching their fulfillment? If the events are false, Garabandal is a fascinating and perhaps tragic human interest story with several explanations. If the events and warnings are true--then what do we do? By the end of this book, readers can judge whether the visions of four young seers on a mountaintop in Spain were historical fact, a devilish fraud, or the creative confusion of four girls who would spend the rest of their lives trying to escape a human tragicomedy that they themselves had produced.

    Philosopher Peter Kreeft explains in this book that the More includes "The Absolute Good, Platonic Forms, God, gods, angels, spirits, ghosts, souls, Brahman, Rta (the Hindu ontological basis for cosmological karma), Nirvana, Tao, 'the will of Heaven', The Meaning of It All, Something that deserves a capital letter."With razor-sharp reasoning and irrepressible joy, Kreeft helps us to find the doors in the walls of the world. Drawing on history, physical science, psychology, religion, philosophy, literature, and art, he invites us to welcome what lies on the other side of these doors, and to begin living the life of Heaven in the here and now.

    

    But for the new believer, these things can be difficult and confusing. To resolve this difficulty, I created The Story Bible. The idea was to remove from the text those things that are complicated and/or confusing for the new believer, or for anyone who is new to Bible reading. For example, the books of First and Second Chronicles contain some great stories. But they include so many numbers and lists that the narratives get lost in the shuffle. So in The Story Bible I simply removed the lists, while leaving the stories to be read and enjoyed. Another example is the book of Numbers, which also contains some fascinating stories. But the stories are interspersed with descriptions of sanctuary rituals and census data that can become boring or confusing to the new believer. So again, I simply removed the sanctuary ritual descriptions and the census data while leaving the stories in place to be enjoyed without frustration. What I have produced is a Bible that can be read by a new believer from cover to cover without getting stuck.After serving as a Christian pastor for many years, I not only recognize the problem of new believers getting stuck in genealogies, sanctuary rituals, etc., but I also recognize that what new believers need most is familiarity with Bible stories. The Bible narratives form the backbone for everything else in scripture. Prophecy, sanctuary rituals, pastoral letters, genealogies, and even census data find their place once the new believer becomes familiar with the stories.Keep in mind that I have not edited the narratives themselves. Every word of The Story Bible is from the text itself. I have only removed that which is not narrative, so that the narratives are no longer obscured and can more easily be enjoyed. Another way to put it is to say that The Story Bible is a compilation of all the stories of Scripture. Every portion of the Bible that is narrative was included. I did not edit, condense, or rewrite the narratives. I only compiled them.The translation I used for this project is the Bible in Basic English. It was translated by Professor Samuel Henry Hooke (1874-1968), an English scholar and Professor Emeritus of Old Testament Studies in the University of London. The BBE was printed in 1965 by Cambridge Press in England. Published without any copyright notice and distributed in America, this work fell immediately and irretrievably into the public domain in the United States. The BBE is easy to read, since it utilizes a 1000 word vocabulary. My hope is that new believers will be drawn in by the Bible stories and discover how relevant and practical the Bible is for us today.