Crazy. Transformative and restless. Every word we read these days seems to suggest there’s a “next-best-thing,” if only we would change our comfortable, compromising lives. In fact, the greatest fear most Christians have is boredom—the sense that they are missing out on the radical life Jesus promised. One thing is certain. No one wants to be “ordinary.”Yet pastor and author Michael Horton believes that our attempts to measure our spiritual growth by our experiences, constantly seeking after the next big breakthrough, have left many Christians disillusioned and disappointed. There’s nothing wrong with an energetic faith; the danger is that we can burn ourselves out on restless anxieties and unrealistic expectations. What’s needed is not another program or a fresh approach to spiritual growth; it’s a renewed appreciation for the commonplace.Far from a call to low expectations and passivity, Horton invites readers to recover their sense of joy in the ordinary. He provides a guide to a sustainable discipleship that happens over the long haul—not a quick fix that leaves readers empty with unfulfilled promises. Convicting and ultimately empowering, Ordinary is not a call to do less; it’s an invitation to experience the elusive joy of the ordinary Christian life.

    In addition to inspiring the public prayer of the church, the Psalms are an indispensable part of the private devotions of all who seek a closer relationship with God. Most important, however, the Psalms point toward the ultimate liberation of humanity from sin, death and despair through Jesus Christ. Father Pat Reardon, drawing on his long experience as an Episcopal minister, and then as a priest in the Orthodox Church (Antiochene), has produced a work of depth and devotion. He tightly understands that one cannot truly probe the deep meaning of the Psalms unless one understands them in the light of the redemption brought by Christ. Fr. Reardon beautifully relates each Psalm to its place within the Divine Liturgy and shows us how they reveal Our Lord to us, if we prayerfully study the Psalm text.

    Doesn’t God work in the nighttime as well? In Learning to Walk in the Dark, Taylor asks us to put aside our fears and anxieties and to explore all that God has to teach us “in the dark.” She argues that we need to move away from our “solar spirituality” and ease our way into appreciating “lunar spirituality” (since, like the moon, our experience of the light waxes and wanes). Through darkness we find courage, we understand the world in new ways, and we feel God’s presence around us, guiding us through things seen and unseen. Often, it is while we are in the dark that we grow the most.With her characteristic charm and literary wisdom, Taylor is our guide through a spirituality of the nighttime, teaching us how to find our footing in times of uncertainty and giving us strength and hope to face all of life’s challenging moments.

    He soon afterwards became a Roman Catholic. He describes Evangelicalism with great sympathy and then examines more formal, liturgical worship with the freshness of someone discovering for the first time what his soul had always hungered for. This is a book of apologetics without polemics. Non-Catholics will gain an appreciation of the formal and liturgical side of Catholicism. Catholics will see with fresh eyes the beauty of their tradition. Worship, prayer, the Blessed Virgin, the Mass, and the liturgical year are taken one after the other, and what may have seemed routine and repetitive suddenly comes to life under the enchanting wand of Howard's beautiful prose. Howard unfolds for us just what occurs in the vision and imagination of a Christian who, nurtured in the earnestness of Protestant Evangelicalism, finds himself yearning for "whatever-it-is" that has been there in the Church for 2000 years. It traces Howard's soul-searching and shows why he believes the practices of the liturgical Church are an invaluable aid for any Christian's spiritual life. Reminiscent of the style and scope of Newman, Lewis and Knox, this book is destined to become a classic.   Thomas Howard is a professor of English at St. John's Seminary, Brighton, Massachusetts, and formerly taught at Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts. Among his many books are Chance or the Dance?, The Achievement of C.S. Lewis, The Novels of Charles Williams.

    Stop Living Your Life Under, Over, From and For God and Start Living in Communion With Him.

    Translation of J'entre dans la vie, originally issued under title: Novissima verba.

    With its unchanging prayers, the Mass fits Catholics like their favorite clothes. Yet most Catholics sitting in the pews on Sundays fail to see the powerful supernatural drama that enfolds them. Pope John Paul II described the Mass as Heaven on Earth, explaining that what we celebrate on Earth is a mysterious participation in the heavenly liturgy.The Lamb's Supper reveals a long-lost secret of the Church: The early Christians' key to understanding the mysteries of the Mass was the New Testament Book of Revelation. With its bizarre imagery, its mystic visions of heaven, and its end-of-time prophecies, Revelation mirrors the sacrifice and celebration of the Eucharist.Beautifully written, in clear direct language, bestselling Catholic author Scott Hahn's new book will help readers see the Mass with new eyes, pray the liturgy with a renewed heart, and enter into the Mass more fully, enthusiastically, intelligently, and powerfully than ever before.

    Newman compared the early history of the Church to the opening chords of a symphony when the subjects that will later be brought out one

    In this fascinating book, Father Schouppe presents the ancient Catholic tradition on Purgatory, explaining how its pains are excruciating—greater than any suffering known on earth, how they are adapted to the past sins of each individual soul, how they can vary in duration from less than one minute to a period of several centuries, and how they manifest the infinite mercy of God no less than His justice. On many occasions God has allowed souls in Purgatory to appear on earth to plead for prayers, sacrifices, and Masses for their relief; in Purgatory Explained the reader will find scores of true stories of apparitions and revelations on Purgatory taken from the lives of St. Margaret Mary, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Bridget of Sweden, St. Gertrude the Great, St. Francis de Sales, St. Catherine of Genoa, St. Magdalen de Pazzi, St. Lidwina of Schiedam, St. Margaret of Cortona, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Curé of Ars. These amazing revelations all emphasize the wonderful relief which the souls in Purgatory receive from prayers, penance, almsgiving, and especially from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered for them. Moreover, these stories describe the measureless gratitude of the souls in Purgatory, and the priceless benefits which they obtain for their benefactors in return.Purgatory Explained is a book which goes to the very heart of the Faith and should be read by every Catholic—by everyone who has deceased relatives or friends, by everyone who has sins to make up for, and by everyone who wants to make a spiritual investment that will return to him a hundredfold.

    There are no verse references, and Scripture segments are seamlessly woven together with transition text into a single grand narrative. For those intimidated or overwhelmed by the unabridged Bible, The Story helps people understand God’s Word more fully and engage with it more easily.Simple, accessible, and easy to use, churches are finding The Story a powerful way to engage their people in Bible reading like never before. As The Story brings the Bible to life, the broad scope of God’s message will penetrate hearts. People of all ages will be swept up in the story of God’s love and God’s plan for their lives.God goes to great lengths to rescue lost and hurting people. That is what The Story is all about: the story of the Bible, God’s great love affair with humanity. Condensed into 31 accessible chapters, The Story sweeps you into the unfolding progression of Bible characters and events from Genesis to Revelation. Using the clear, accessible text of the NIV Bible, it allows the stories, poems, and teachings of the Bible to read like a novel. And like any good story, The Story is filled with intrigue, drama, conflict, romance, and redemption; and this story’s true! “This book tells the grandest, most compelling story of all time: the story of a true God who loves his children, who established for them a way of salvation and provided a route to eternity. Each story in these 31 chapters reveals the God of grace---the God who speaks; the God who acts; the God who listens; the God whose love for his people culminated in his sacrifice of Jesus, his only Son, to atone for the sins of humanity.”

    And in her new book, Help, Thanks, Wow, she has coalesced everything she knows about prayer to these fundamentals.It is these three prayers – asking for assistance from a higher power, appreciating what we have that is good, and feeling awe at the world around us – that can get us through the day and can show us the way forward. In Help, Thanks, Wow, Lamott recounts how she came to these insights, explains what they mean to her and how they have helped, and explores how others have embraced these same ideas.

    The Brooklyn Tabernacle pastor discusses how he built up a broken-down church to a membership of six thousand.

    Visions of Glory is a mesmerizing and fascinating read that you will not be able to put down.

    Many are his delusions, and, unfortunately, many more people willingly allow themselves to be deceived by his lies, ignoring the divine truth and believing that transgressions are justifiable and good. Satan orders legions of demons to unleash their wrath upon us humans, for he detests the fact that God created us in His Image and Likeness. He envies us and whispers lies into our hearts, but do you know what his greatest trickery is? In the first book of The Patristic Heritage Series entitled How Satan Deceives People , Elder Cleopa exposes the Devil's most wicked and cunning methods used to trick people into sinning, and thus losing their salvation. An eye opener and a must read for people who suffer of spiritual procrastination. The Patristic Heritage Series Book 1 - How Satan Deceives People Book 2 - How God Judges People

    For Halík, patience is the main difference between faith and atheism. Faith, hope, and love are three aspects of patience in the face of God’s silence, which is interpreted as “the death of God” by atheists and is not taken seriously enough by fundamentalists.Using the gospel story of Jesus’s encounter with Zacchaeus, Halík issues an invitation to all people who stand (like Zacchaeus did) on the sideline—curious but noncommittal. The fact that Jesus gravitated to the poor and the marginalized means that he also has a special place in his heart for diligent seekers on the margins of the community of believers.