Where do we even begin?Shannan Martin offers a surprisingly simple answer: uncover the hidden corners of our cities and neighborhoods and invest deeply in the lives of people around us. She walks us through her own discoveries about the vital importance of paying attention, as well as the hard but rewarding truth about showing up and committing for the long haul, despite the inevitable encounters with brokenness and uncertainty. With transparency, humor, heart-tugging storytelling, and more than a little personal confession, Martin shows us that no matter where we live or how much we have, as we learn what it is to be with people as Jesus was, we'll find our very lives. The details will look quiet and ordinary, and the call will both exhaust and exhilarate us. But it will be the most worth-it adventure we will ever take.

    But what if books like that seem a little too “out there” for you? Enter Deanna Davis, whose down-to-earth approach stems from her own change of heart (it happened at the Olive Garden). In this fun, quirky, and decidedly straightforward guide, Deanna shares the science, strategy, and stories of how to create your ideal life using a universal key to success called the Law of Attraction, whether you seek health, wealth, happiness, success, or anything else, large or small. The book blends cutting-edge research, practical techniques, and a conversational, light, funny tone to make the information both meaningful and memorable. Like a talk by your favorite college professor, it provides brilliant concepts in a downto- earth manner—an uncommon blend of wisdom, creativity, inspiration, and practical strategies that work.

    Humans looking for wholeness, looking for Jesus.Painting beauty where it seems none exists, Midnight Jesus helps readers transcend their own struggles, showing how truth can come from the strangest places. They will meet people like• Skeeter and Wookie, two homeless guys who show that community happens wherever there is shared need and a willingness to give• Pastor Ponder who holds an altar call after his sermon at the psych ward and says it's the best church service he’s ever had• Kat, the tattooed hairdresser who dreams about Jesus and longs for spiritual connection, who shows that you can’t judge a book by its cover• Jesus, who makes an invisible cameo in every storyAs Blaine writes, “I am one wrecked and dirty treasure, but God still decides I am worth the effort to save.” Jamie Blaine is the kind of writer whose view of the commonplace transforms life into the transcendent.

    This is the surprise that physician-mother Beth Ricanati learned when she started baking challah almost a decade ago: that simply stopping and baking bread was the best medicine she could prescribe for women in a fast-paced world. Braided chronicles a journey of a thousand challahs and one woman’s quest for wellness and peace.

    It is about God, and about life, and about the thousands of daily ways in which an awareness of God changes and infuses everything. It is about spiritual life, and about all the things that we have called nonspiritual life that might be spiritual after all. It is the snapshots of a young woman making peace with herself and her life, and trying to craft a life that captures the energy and exuberance we long for in the midst of the fear and regret and envy we all carry with us. It is both a voice of challenge and song of comfort, calling us upward to the best possible life, and giving us room to breathe, to rest, to break down and break through. Cold Tangerines offers bright and varied glimpses of hope and redemption, in and among the heartbreak And boredom and broken glass.

    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.

    As a father he took his kids on a world tour to eat ice cream with heads of state. He made friends in Uganda, and they liked him so much he became the Ugandan consul. He pursued his wife for three years before she agreed to date him. His grades weren't good enough to get into law school, so he sat on a bench outside the Dean's office for seven days until they finally let him enroll.Bob Goff has become something of a legend, and his friends consider him the world's best-kept secret. Those same friends have long insisted he write a book. What follows are paradigm shifts, musings, and stories from one of the world's most delightfully engaging and winsome people. What fuels his impact? Love. But it's not the kind of love that stops at thoughts and feelings. Bob's love takes action. Bob believes Love Does.When Love Does, life gets interesting. Each day turns into a hilarious, whimsical, meaningful chance that makes faith simple and real. Each chapter is a story that forms a book, a life. And this is one life you don't want to miss.Light and fun, unique and profound, the lessons drawn from Bob's life and attitude just might inspire you to be secretly incredible, too.

    Rabbi Bradley Artson, one of the truly inspirational and knowledgeable teachers of Torah of our time, weaves together the insights of ancient rabbis and sages, medieval commentators and philosophers, and modern scholars and religious leaders. The reflections in this collection offer three different commentaries on each of the 50 Torah portions, enlightening you into the Torah's infinite layers of meaning and offering opportunities to discover interpretations of your own.The Bedside Torah is an introduction to Jewish text study that is both learned and engaging . . . The language is conversational, the insights provocative, and the chapters are just the right length for reading before an inspired night's sleep. --Anita Diamant, author of The New Jewish Wedding, Choosing a Jewish Life, How to Be a Jewish Parent, The Red Tent, and Good HarborBradley Artson is one of the most insightful and articulate rabbis of his generation, as this volume clearly attests.--Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good PeopleIn The Bedside Torah, Rabbi Artson combines wisdom garnered from traditional Jewish sources and commentaries with anecdotes and insights drawn from his own life as well as the lives of all those he has served. In so doing, he has turned each weekly Torah portion into a series of revelations for the reader. The Bedside Torah is a treasure that will surely enrich the religious life of Jews as well as all those who seek comfort and guidance from Jewish scriptures.--Rabbi David Ellenson, Ph.D., president, Hebrew Union College--Jewish Institute of Religion

    By helping them understand the Bible as Jesus and his first-century listeners would have, she bridges the gaps of time and culture in order to open the Bible to readers today.Combining careful research with engaging prose, Tverberg leads us on a journey back in time to shed light on how this Middle Eastern people approached life, God, and each other. She explains age-old imagery that we often misinterpret, allowing us to approach God and the stories and teachings of Scripture with new eyes. By helping readers grasp the perspective of its original audience, she equips them to read the Bible in ways that will enrich their lives and deepen their understanding.

    . . and he’s dead set on destroying all you hold dear and keeping you from experiencing abundant life in Christ. What’s more, his approach to disrupting your life and discrediting your faith isn’t general or generic, not a one-size-fits-all. It’s specific. Personalized. Targeted.   So this book is your chance to strike back. With prayer. With a weapon that really works. Each chapter will guide you in crafting prayer strategies that hit the enemy where it hurts, letting him know you’re on to him and that you won’t back down. Because with every new strategy you build, you’re turning the fiercest battles of life into precise strikes against him and his handiwork, each one infused with the power of God’s Spirit.  New York Times bestselling author Priscilla Shirer, widely known for her international speaking, teaching, and writing ministries, brings her new role from the 2015 film War Room into the real lives of today’s women, addressing the topics that affect them most: renewing their passion , refocusing their identity , negotiating family strife, dealing with relentless regrets , navigating impossible schedules , succeeding against temptation , weathering their worst fears , uprooting bitterness , and more. Each chapter exposes the enemy’s cruel, crafty intentions in all kinds of these areas, then equips and encourages you to write out your own personalized prayer strategies on tear-out sheets you can post and pray over yourself and your loved ones on a regular basis.  Fervent is a hands-on, knees-down, don’t-give-up action guide to practical, purposeful praying.

    In addition to surveying the nature and development of Judaism, this Very Short Introduction outlines the basics of practical Judaism -- its festivals, prayers, customs, and various sects. Modern concerns and debates of the Jewish people are also addressed, such as the impact of the Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel, the status of women, and medical and commercial ethics. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam

    Thomas has written a book that may become the liberal Christian answer to The Purpose Driven Life. He weaves a Christian theology for today that people can embrace as a guide to sensible, modern living.

    Written with striking familiarity and uncanny understanding, this book will open your heart and touch your soul by putting into words the things that are both deeply rooted and hidden in us that we miss them even when they are most transparent. The human element is the thing that binds us, the thing we have to overcome, how we have to stop standing in our own way and let everything unfold. It is a philosophical take on what it means to overcome humanness by acceptance, initially realized through the experiences of sleep paralysis and other awakenings.

    Even cats believe in suppertime. As much as we love certainty, we are often shaped by the invisible, the unexplainable—something we call faith. We are inclined to acknowledge the holy. Even if it is only a paper heart we find in an old suitcase.” My Adventures with God is a series of short stories exploring the idea that most people’s lives seem to fit into the template of the Old Testament. We all have powerful creation myths: tales of our childhood and family, our first battles won and lost. It is our Genesis. Then, like in the Book of Exodus, we go into slavery. Rather than building pyramids, we lose ourselves in fear and ambition—in first loves, first jobs, too many dreams mixed with too much beer. We eventually become free, only to wander in the wilderness. At some point we stop and proclaim to the universe who we are. This is our Leviticus moment. We reconcile what we thought we would be with what we have become. We often attempt a mid-course correction. Then, as in the Book of Numbers, we are shaped by mortality as we bear the loss of family and friends. Finally, we retell our stories to our children hoping to make sense of the journey, as Moses did in Deuteronomy. Tobolowsky’s stories tell of a boy growing up in the wilds of Texas, finding and losing love, losing and finding himself—all told through the prism of the Torah and Talmud, mixed with insights from science, and refined through a child’s sense of wonder. My Adventures with God not only shines a light into the life of one of America’s most beloved actors, but also provides a structure to evaluate our own lives and relationship with God.

    Instead of clinging to grace, we strive for good and believe that the Christian life means hard work and a sweet disposition. As good girls, we focus on the things we can handle, our disciplined lives, and our unshakable good moods. When we fail to measure up to our own impossible standards, we hide behind our good girl masks, determined to keep our weakness a secret.In Grace for the Good Girl, Emily Freeman invites women to let go of the try-hard life and realize that in Christ we are free to receive from him rather than constantly try to achieve for him. With an open hand and a whimsical style, Emily uncovers the truth about the hiding, encouraging women to move from hiding behind girl-made masks and do-good performances to a life hidden with Christ in God.