Book picks similar to
Lent Is Not Rocket Science: An Exploration of God, Creation and the Cosmos by W. Nicholas Knisely
christianity
religion
mini-books
spirit-sherpas
Jezebel's War With America: The Plot to Destroy Our Country and What We Can Do to Turn the Tide
Michael L. Brown - 2019
But her spirit lives today.Jezebel was the most wicked woman in the Bible, a powerful seductress who killed the prophets, led Israel into idolatry and immorality, and emasculated men. She was seductive and determined to snuff out the voices coming against her, because these voices were calling out for repentance.In twenty-first-century America, Jezebel is not a person. But it’s as if the spirit of Jezebel is alive again today. The influence of the same demonic force is being felt in the massive increase of pornography and sexual temptation, the militant spirit of abortion, the rise of radical feminism, and most importantly, in the attempt to silence prophetic voices. Just as Jezebel clashed with strong men almost three thousand years ago, the demonic spirit of Jezebel is powerful in America, and it is going after the church.This eye-opening book not only unveils the satanic plot to destroy America, beginning with an all-out assault on the church, but it will equip every believer with tools to defeat the enemy in their own personal lives as well as in the nation. This book will show you how the spirit of Jezebel is active in America today and teach you how to protect the church.OTHER BOOKS BY MICHAEL L. BROWN, PHD:Playing With Holy Fire (2018) ISBN-13: 978-1629994987The Power of Music (2019)ISBN-13: 978-1629995953Breaking the Stronghold of Food (2017) ISBN-13: 978-1629990996
Pope Awesome and Other Stories
Cari Donaldson - 2013
Catholic homeschooler Cari Donaldson here relates how her friend’s newborn baby, a portrait of the Virgin Mary, and the words of the Miraculous Medal called her forth from a selfish, small way of life into the welcoming arms of the Church.
Welcome: A Unitarian Universalist Primer
Patricia Frevert - 2008
Plus introductions to UU history, religious education and social justice.Praise for Welcome: A Unitarian Universalist Primer:"A thoughtful and spirit-filled introduction to our liberating and nourishing faith." Rob M. Hardies, senior minister, All Souls Church, Unitarian, Washington, DC“This Primer is precisely what a newcomer needs: a brief, lucid history; commonly used readings and prayers; and inspirational quotations that indicate something of our theological diversity and devotion to justice.” Marilyn Sewell, senior minister, First Unitarian Church, Portland, Oregon
The Four Last Things: A Catechetical Guide to Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell
Fr Wade Menezes - 2017
Every person, even the atheist, will admit that death is certain. Death, however, is not the last event in this life of ours. Immediately after death, we shall be judged and then again on the Day of Judgment when all humanity will know us for what we are. Too often the reality of Heaven and salvation are highlighted at the expense of the Church's teachings on Death, Judgment, Purgatory, and Hell. Yet, these important doctrines of the Church hold the truths of salvation truths that can lead us to Heaven or can pull us away from it. In these pages, Fr. Wade Menezes, EWTN television host and Assistant General of the Fathers of Mercy, shows us that God has not called us to His wrath, but to salvation. He shows us that Heaven and Hell, salvation and damnation, eternal life and eternal punishment are all complementary doctrines. They need each other to be complete and we must understand the Church's teachings on all of these doctrines in order to have a balanced view of the world. Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell these are the Four Last Things toward which we are moving each hour of the day and night. Read this book, and you'll have a firm grasp of one of the most important doctrines of Holy Mother Church that holds the truths of Heaven and our own salvation.
The Breath of the Soul: Reflections on Prayer
Joan D. Chittister - 2009
It is an examination of what we ourselves must bring to the discipline of prayer--whatever form it takes--in order to make prayer authentic and real, a deep and profound part of our lives. None of the brief reflections in this book are ever finished, ever closed, ever fulled resolved. They are all ongoing steps along the way, steps we retrace over and over again as we do all the other parts of life, until they become the very breath we breathe, the vision and energy of our souls.
Spirit Walk: The Extraordinary Power of Acts for Ordinary People
Steve Smith - 2018
Though we know the Bible says to walk in the Spirit, the majority of Christians are illiterate (and even nervous) about how to practically live in His power. The result is lives marred by continued brokenness and ministries plagued by fruitlessness. In contrast, believers from Acts understood the ancient path of the Spirit Walk. That extraordinary power was not just for them, but for us also.Gleaning insights from implementation in dozens of Acts-like movements around the world, Spirit Walk "lifts the hood and shows us the real secret behind apostolic, disciple-multiplying movements" (Neil Cole, author of Organic Church). Whether you need a movement of God in your personal life or in your ministry, this book takes you through the timeless principles of the Bible.The Spirit Walk path has helped thousands of ordinary people shift from a fundamental reliance upon methods and self-helps to the essential reliance upon the Spirit who empowers these. Spirit Walk reminds us of the ancient path and explains it in a practical discipline that you can remember daily.Discover how to start on the journey of being filled again and again by the Spirit. But more importantly, learn how to stay full of the Spirit as you abide in Christ throughout the day, and your life.
The Truth Rundown: Stories of violence, intimidation and control in the world of Scientology
The Tampa Bay Times - 2015
Rathbun told Times reporters the story of his years in Scientology and what led to his leaving. That resulted in interviews with scores of other people in the Scientology world, including former staffers, disaffected parishioners and current church members.Thus began the Times' ongoing series, "Inside Scientology," which launched with an installment called "The Truth Rundown," published in June of 2009. That initial work — the focus of this book — shed unprecedented light on the internal workings of a secretive church that generates interest around the world.
Becoming Reverend: A diary
Matt Woodcock - 2016
Obviously. Matt Woodcock's frank, funny real-life diaries reveal what it was like for him to train as a vicar while struggling against all odds to become a father. In them he lays bare his joys and struggles as he attempts to reconcile his calling as a vicar with his life as a party-loving journalist, footie-freak and incorrigible extrovert. Becoming Reverend is a compelling and original account of how faith can work in the midst of a messy life, combining family, fertility, faith and friendship with the story of a divine - but unlikely - calling.
A Mind at Peace
Christopher O. Blum - 2017
We’re experiencing a worldwide crisis of attention in which information overwhelms us, corrodes true communion with others, and leaves us anxious, unsettled, bored, isolated, and lonely. These pages provide the time-tested antidote that enables you to regain an ordered and peaceful mind in a technologically advanced world. Drawing on the wisdom of the world’s greatest thinkers, including Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, these pages help you identify – and show you how to cultivate – the qualities of character you need to survive in our media-saturated environment. This book offers a calm, measured, yet forthright and effective approach to regaining interior peace. Here you’ll find no argument for retreat from the modern world; instead these pages provide you with a practical guide to recovering self-mastery and interior peace through wise choices and ordered activity in the midst of the world’s communication chaos. Are you increasingly frustrated and perplexed in this digital age? Do you yearn for a mind that is more focused and a soul able to put down that IPhone and simply rejoice in the good and the true? It’s not hard to do. The saints and the wise can show you how; this book makes their counsel available to you.
Take Hold of the Faith You Long for: Let Go, Move Forward, Live Bold
Sharon Jaynes - 2016
On the inside, those same women are little girls cowering at the edge of the playground, hoping no one notices them, yet still wishing they could join in. They've professed faith and know the right things, but they struggle to truly take hold of the "life more abundant" that Jesus offers. Instead they settle for a life that's less than what God has promised them. In this liberating book, Sharon Jaynes reveals the most common reasons women get stuck with a mediocre, mundane faith. Then she shows women how to break free and move forward, leaving behind the feelings of inferiority, inadequacy, and insecurity that are holding them hostage. She uncovers untapped sources of confidence and courage, equipping women to move from knowing the truth to actually believing it--and living it out boldly in a life marked by true freedom.
Integral Christianity: The Spirit's Call to Evolve
Paul R. Smith - 2011
The perspectives of integral theory and practice, articulated by Ken Wilber, help uncover the integral approach that Jesus advocated and demonstrated in the metaphors of his time and that traditional Christianity has largely been unable to see. Smith incorporates elements of traditional, modern, and postmodern theological viewpoints, including progressive, New Thought, and emerging/emergent ones. However, he goes beyond all of them and moves to a Christianity that is devoted to following both the historical Jesus and the Risen Christ whose Spirit beckons to us from the future. Smith says, "The oldest thing you can say about God is that God is always doing something new. Jesus pushed his own religion to newness by including the best of its past, and transcending the worst of its present. He calls us to do the same, whatever our religion is today."
Why Everything Matters: The Gospel in Ecclesiastes
Philip Graham Ryken - 2015
The author of Ecclesiastes had his doubts, too, and these have enabled him to speak to skeptics as well as believers down through the centuries.Ecclesiastes is a book rich in literary artistry and multi-layered depths of spiritual meaning. Philip G. Ryken explores this wonderful Old Testament book, and reminds us again of the need to trust God with the questions, even when we do not have all the answers.
One-Minute Aquinas: The Doctor's Quick Answers to Fundamental Questions
Kevin Vost - 2014
Thomas wrote, then turn to The One-Minute Aquinas, the fast-paced book that provides busy readers with simple, readable explanations of the truths that, for 750 years now, have caused the works of St. Thomas to be sought out by kings and popes, scholars and saints, as well as by ordinary souls like you — hungry to know God and to love him more and more.In this book’s lucid pages, author Kevin Vost gives you small, digestible portions of St. Thomas’s life-giving wisdom that you can enjoy one minute at a time. Tables and graphics will help you grasp and remember St. Thomas’s key ideas with a minimum of time and effort.Best of all, in The One-Minute Aquinas you’ll find quick, sure refutations of the countless relativistic, secular, and pseudoscientific ideas that are so influential in our culture today — and so shallow, contradictory, and wrong!Pope John Paul II declared that “the Church has been justified in consistently proposing St. Thomas as a master of thought and a model of the right way to do theology.” Now The One-Minute Aquinas enables even those with limited time and only a modest education to benefit from the wisdom of this great saint.Here, with minimal effort and among scores of other things, you’ll finally come to know and understand:--Why God permits evil--Heaven: what it is (and is not)--Five simple proofs that God exists--Why God became man--Why Jesus let himself be tempted--How you can grow quickly in virtue--Why all souls need the sacraments--Why Jesus let himself be crucified--The causes of lust--The natural law and the Commandments--The soul, free will, sin, and damnation--The angels, their ranks, and their powers--How God governs (and refrains from governing)--God’s power and its limits--The Bible: why didn’t Jesus just write it himself?--The surprising qualities of our resurrected bodies
Jesus Behaving Badly: The Puzzling Paradoxes of the Man from Galilee
Mark L. Strauss - 2015
Don't they? We overlook that Jesus wasJudgmental?preaching hellfire far more than the apostle PaulUncompromising?telling people to hate their familiesChauvinistic?excluding women from leadershipRacist?insulting people from other ethnic groupsAnti-environmental?cursing a fig tree and affirming animal sacrificeAngry?overturning tables and chasing moneychangers in the templeHe demanded moral perfection, told people to cut off body parts, made prophecies that haven't come true, and defied religious and political authorities. While we tend to ignore this troubling behavior, the people around Jesus didn't. Some believed him so dangerous that they found a way to have him killed. The Jesus everybody likes, says Mark Strauss, is not the Jesus found in the Gospels. He's a figure we've created in our own minds. Strauss believes that when we unpack the puzzling paradoxes of the man from Galilee, we find greater insight into his countercultural message and mission than we could ever have imagined.
The Domestic Church: Room by Room: A Study Guide for Mothers
Donna-Marie Cooper O'Boyle - 2008
Transcend it. Pope John Paul II wrote that the little domestic Church, like the greater Church, needs to be constantly and intensely evangelized: hence its duty regarding permanent education in the faith. That s a tall order for busy Catholic mothers. You might even say it s as big as a house. You wouldn t want to clean the whole thing in one fell swoop, but if you take it one room at a time you ll get the job done. In a systematic course that s equally useful for groups as for individuals, this talented author shows how to remodel a home and form a family after the spiritual design of Holy Mother Church.