Stearns' journey there took much more than a long flight to Africa. It took answering God's call on his life, a call that tore him out of his corner office at one of America's most prestigious corporations--to walk with the poorest of the poor in our world."The Hole in Our Gospel" is the compelling true story of a corporate CEO who setaside worldly success for something far more significant, and discovered the full power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to change his own life. He uses his journey to demonstrate how the gospel--the whole gospel--was always meant to be a world changing social revolution, a revolution that begins with us.ECPA 2010 Christian Book of the Year Award Winner!"Read this compelling story and urgent call for change--Richard Stearns is a contemporary Amos crying 'let justice roll down like waters....' Justice is a serious gospel-prophetic mandate. Far too many American Christians for too long a time have left the cause to 'others.' Read it as an altar call." --Eugene H. Peterson, translator of The Message, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology, Regent College, Vancouver, BC"Rich Stearns calls us to exhilarating obedience to God's life-altering, world-changing command to reflect his love to our neighbors at home and globally. The Hole in Our Gospel is imbued with the hope of what is possible when God's people are transformed to live radically in light of his great love." --Gary Haugen, President & CEO, International Justice Mission"Richard Stearns is quite simply one of the finest leaders I have ever known.... When he became president of World Vision I had a front row seat to witness the way God used his mind and heart to inspire thousands.... His new book, The Hole In Our Gospel will call you to a higher level of discipleship.... Now is the time...Richard Stearns has the strategy...your move!" --Bill Hybels, Founding and Senior Pastor, Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, IL"Rich Stearns has given us a book that makes absolutely clear what God hopes for and expects from each of us.... He reminded me of my personal responsibilities and the priority I must give them and also where life's true rewards and fulfillment are to be found." --Jim Morris, former executive director, United Nations World Food Program"World Vision plays a strategic role on our globe. As the largest relief organization in the history of the world, they initiate care and respond to crisis. Rich Stearns navigates this mercy mission with great skill. His book urges us to think again about the opportunity to love our neighbor and comfort the afflicted. His message is timely and needed. May God bless him, the mission of World Vision and all who embrace it." --Max Lucado, author of 3:16--The Numbers of Hope, Minister of Writing and Preaching, Oak Hills Church, San Antonio, TX"With passionate urging and earnestness, Rich Stearns challenges Christians to embrace the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ by embracing the neediest and most vulnerable among us. After reading the moving stories, the compelling facts and figures, and Stearns' excellent application of scripture and his own experiences at World Vision, you will no doubt be asking yourself: What should I do?" --Chuck Colson, Founder, Prison Fellowship

    Jesus came to set us free to serve Him in the freshness and spontaneity of the Spirit, and to receive the ABUNDANT blessing God has for us. Let your life be transformed as you learn to see Jesus, who is both the blessing and the way to that blessing - the menas and the end.

    Amy Carmichael remained faithful to God through times of material need, physical danger, pain, debilitating illness, disappointment, and attack by friends. From this crucible she guides readers into a deeper friendship with the Father who is always trustworthy. Formerly released as You Are My Hiding Place.

    For missing it. For succumbing to the danger and idolatry of forcing God into preconceived ideals. What if there were a better way? What if Jesus came not to help people escape the world but rather to restore it? Best-selling author and spoken word artist Jefferson Bethke says that Christians have the greatest story ever told but we aren t telling it. So in this new book, Bethke tells that story anew, presenting God s truths from the Old and the New Testaments as the challenging and compelling story that it is a grand narrative with God at the center. And in doing so, Bethke reminds readers of the life-changing message of Jesus that turned the world upside-down, a world that God is putting back together."

    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.

    Winner--a leading writer at the crossroads of culture and spirituality and author of Still and Girl Meets God--joins the ranks of luminaries such as Anne Lamott and Barbara Brown Taylor with this exploration of little known--and, so, little used--biblical metaphors for God, metaphors which can open new doorways for our lives and spiritualities.There are hundreds of metaphors for God, but the church only uses a few familiar images: creator, judge, savior, father. In Wearing God, Lauren Winner gathers a number of lesser-known tropes, reflecting on how they work biblically and culturally, and reveals how they can deepen our spiritual lives.Exploring the notion of God as clothing, Winner reflects on how we are "clothed with Christ" or how "God fits us like a garment." She then analyzes how clothing functions culturally to shape our ideals and identify our community, and ruminates on how this new metaphor can function to create new possibilities for our lives. For each biblical metaphor--God as the vine/vintner who animates life; the lactation consultant; and the comedian, showing us our follies, for example--Winner surveys the historical, literary, and cultural landscapes in order to revive and heal our souls.

    Most of us are clueless at praying. Why is that? And how come we've never done anything about it? In Confessions of a Prayer Slacker, author Diane Moody traces her own personal prayer journey with a touch of humor and a healthy dose of transparency. ''I want my readers to stop the merry-go-round of prayerlessness, quit acting like a bunch of spiritual babies, and get serious about this thing called prayer. Without it, we'll never experience the warm, one-on-one relationship God desires to have with each one of us.''

    We exist to worship God. For years we have been basking in God's love and worshiping Him with uplifted hands and hearts. Now we need to go deeper and see that God is also an awesome, mysterious being that should engender our silent, even dumbstruck-reverence for His holiness, His "otherness". Until we are undone by the knowledge of who God is in all His glory, we will only touch the edges of true worship. Matt Redman says, "When we face up to the glory of God, we find oursleves face down in worship." This book shows the biblical record of those who found themselves prostrate before God.

    Lettie Cowman (who published under the name: Mrs. Charles E. Cowman) worked alongside her husband as missionary in Japan. In the years leading up to the death of her husband in 1924, the Lord gave her the “streams in her desert”. Its strength lies in its nature: it is a compilation of the devotional insights from some of the most spiritual people of the last 400 years. This feature makes the book both timeless and up-to-date, both challenging and comforting, both inspiring and convicting. In one word, by God’s grace, the prayerful reading of this book will be life-changing! The book is not an easy read. If you are looking for excitement or superficial encouragement, look elsewhere! But if you desire to follow the lamb wherever he goes (Rev 14:4), then you will find comfort, strength and joy in feasting on these pages. May the Lord meet with you daily as you use this book!

    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.

    In this practice the spirit of prayer was regarded as of first importance and the best form of prayer, for living prayer is the characteristic of genuine spirituality. Yet prayer is also vocal and may therefore on occasions be written. Consequently in the Puritan tradition there are many written prayers and meditations which constitute an important corpus of inspiring devotional literature. Too often ex tempore prayer lacks variety, order and definiteness. The reason for this lies partly in a neglect of due preparation. It is here that the care and scriptural thoroughness which others found necessary in their approach to God may be of help. This book has been prepared not to 'supply' prayers but to prompt and encourage the Christian as he treads the path on which others have gone before.

    In this moving tale, follow Much-Afraid on her spiritual journey as she overcomes many dangers and mounts at last to the High Places. There she gains a new name and is transformed by her union with the loving Shepherd. Included in this special edition (February 2009 release) is Hannah Hurnard’s own account of the circumstances that led her to write Hinds’ Feet, and a brief autobiography. Special edition also features a new cover design.

    You would sell your belongings. You would become a missionary and move to another country.” Matthew B. Redmond has preached the gospel of doing more for God, and he wants out. In this collection of essays, he asks a simple question: what about the rest of us? Is there a God for our often-mundane lives?This is a book about pastors, plumbers, dental hygienists, and stay-at-home moms. It finds grace and mercy in chicken fingers, smiles from strangers, and classic films, and ultimately convicts us of something Matt Redmond has learned himself: there is a God of the mundane, and it’s not about what we do for him. It’s about what he does for us.

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

    But what are we like when no one's looking? That's where character comes in--being consistent even when it doesn't seem to matter.Courage. Discipline. Vis