Making Peace with Change: Navigating Life's Messy Transitions with Honesty and Grace


Gina Brenna Butz - 2020
    Whether it’s a good transition like a job promotion or a bad disruption like a devastating health diagnosis, it’s stressful. Gina Brenna Butz shares her personal stories of struggling with change and encourages you to trust God. She writes with compassion as she urges you to rely on God’s goodness, lean on Him for strength, rejoice that He is constant, and ultimately to find satisfaction in Him rather than in circumstances. Scripture helps you see change from the viewpoint of your heavenly Father. You can rest knowing He works all things together for the good of His children, even in seasons of stress-inducing change.

Understanding World Religions in 15 Minutes a Day


Garry R. Morgan - 2012
    What once seemed like the religions of exotic faraway lands are now practiced by families next door. These short, easily digestible readings give an overview of the beliefs, histories, and practices of dozens of religions, including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, and many more. Garry Morgan blends the knowledge of a college professor with real-world experience and an accessible style. Broken into forty brief chapters, this book can be used as a reference for those who need quick and clear answers or read straight through by curious readers.

Sexperiment: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy with Your Spouse


Ed B. Young - 2012
    Sex has become just sex. But while society has taken sex too far, the church hasn't taken it far enough.God wants couples to make love in marriage-with passion, with purpose, and with pleasure. Marriages aren't experiencing all the benefits that come from a healthy sex life. Couples are facing a barrage of influences that keep them from connecting with each other regularly-the kids, the career, the house, the errands, etc.SEXPERIMENT shows people that sex in marriage is more than just sex, and it's more than a chore. The Youngs believe it's time to get back to understanding the context of sex in marriage and that it's time for couples to break the barriers keeping them from a healthy sexual relationship. Couples ought to experience the benefits of having sex regularly, intentionally, and creatively. SEXPERIMENT will allow couples to discover that the intersection of God and sex can lead to a life punctuated by exclamation marks!

Delivered: Experiencing God's Power in Your Pain


Beth Moore - 2019
    Based on her bestselling book, Get Out of That Pit, Beth Moore delivers a stirring message of sheer hope, utter deliverance, and glorious freedom of God. God is in the deliverance business.  He longs for you to be free, to know the love and presence that are better than life—and the power of His Word that defies all darkness.  In Delivered, Beth Moore shares her own journey out of the pit and the way the poetic expressions of Psalm 40 rewarded her with a new song for her soul—given by her Savior and offered to you here in this soul-stirring book.  You also can be free from the worst life has to offer and learn to take Christ’s mighty arm when he reaches into the depths, and says in a way you can finally hear, Need a hand?

Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible & Why We Don't Know About Them


Bart D. Ehrman - 2009
    Here Ehrman reveals what scholars have unearthed:•The authors of the New Testament have diverging views about who Jesus was & how salvation works•The New Testament contains books that were forged in the names of the apostles by Christian writers who lived decades later•Jesus, Paul, Matthew & John all represented fundamentally different religions•Established Christian doctrines—such as the suffering messiah, the divinity of Jesus & the trinity—were the inventions of still later theologiansThese aren't idiosyncratic perspectives of just one scholar. They've been the standard widespread views of scholars across a full spectrum of denominations & traditions. Why is it most people have never heard such things? This is the book that pastors, educators & anyone interested in the Bible have been waiting for—a compelling account of the central challenges faced when attempting to reconstruct Jesus' life & message.

Transforming Your Thought Life: Christian Meditation in Focus


Sarah Geringer - 2019
    And Satan knows how susceptible we are to these negative thoughts that leave us frustrated and feeling defeated. However, the time-honored practice of Christian meditation can help us find victory in these spiritual battles."Transforming Your Thought Life" offers guided meditations and personal examples that will help you train your mind to stay grounded in God's Word. Each chapter examines a particular kind of negative thought pattern and provides key Bible verses and prayers for standing strong against it. Day by day, as you hide God's Word in your heart and mind, you will move closer to the heart and mind of God.

The Light of His Presence: Prayers to Draw You Near to the Heart of God


Anne Graham Lotz - 2020
    Over the years, she discovered that writing out her prayers draws her into deeper, more intimate conversations with God. The Light of His Presence offers forty of these tender, honest prayers for real-life situations as an invitation to deepen your own prayer life through worship, confession, thanksgiving, and intercession. You'll be encouraged to lean more fully into God's promises through this power-packed devotional resource, which includes inspiring quotes from Christians throughout the ages and also has space to journal your own words to God.As Anne writes, "My prayer for you . . . is that God will use my struggle with prayer to help you overcome yours. And that, as a result, you will be drawn nearer to the heart of God."

The Great American Divorce: Why Our Country Is Coming Apart—And Why It Might Be for the Best


David Austin French - 2020
    

Straw Bale Gardening


Joel Karsten - 2013
    He has perfected the perfect way for anyone to have a garden without weeding, bending over, or using chemicals. If you follow his step by step methods and suggestions you will be assured to grow a beautiful and productive garden this year, even if you have never gardened before. The best part is that if the soil in your backyard is less than productive it doesn't matter at all. If you have sunlight and water, you will have a great garden this year. From the Arctic Circle in Northern Alaska to the heat of the desert in Saudi Arabia, people are using this method, and having great success. The booklet is full color with 78 pages, and has a perfect bind booklet binding.

Jesus: An Intimate Portrait of the Man, His Land, and His People


Leith Anderson - 2005
    Here is a great introduction to the greatest man who ever lived for those who donbt know much about Him, and a fascinating read for those who have grown up in the church and are very familiar with the Gospel accounts. Leith Anderson's conversational storytelling style makes the book appealing to a wide range of audiences and ages.

Wide Open Spaces: Beyond Paint-by-Number Christianity


Jim Palmer - 2007
    In his next book, Jim takes the reader along into the wide open spaces of exploring and experiencing God beyond religion. Jim writes, "It is no secret that God can be lost beneath the waving banner of religion. Divine Nobodies is my story of how this happened to me. Sometimes you have to disentangle God from religion, even Christ from Christianity, to find the truth. With the help of some unsuspecting nobodies, I uncovered a new starting line with God. As I've put one foot in front of another, I've experienced God in ways that are deeply transforming."Each chapter revolves around a central question related to knowing God on fresh terms: Is God a belief system? Is the Bible a landing strip or launching pad? Can what we're feeling inside be God? Are we too religiously minded to be any earthly good?Brian McLaren wrote, "I am tempted to say that Jim Palmer could well be the next Don Miller, but what they have in common, along with an honest spirituality and extraordinary skill as storytellers, is a unique voice."The Library Reviews said of him, "Jim Palmer's casual, yet compelling writing style cuts through the religious rhetoric and gets to the real issues…readers will love this author! His sense of humor is alternately mixed with shocking sentences and poignant moments. Laced throughout is a refreshing honesty that ties his ideas together with a ribbon of reality…each turn of the page strips away a little more of the contrived mystery of Christianity until the simplicity and sincerity of it stands in realistic splendor."More and more people seek a deeper spirituality beyond status-quo religion. Others are left empty and weary from a shallow and narrow pop-Christianity. Palmer says that God's kingdom of love, peace, and freedom can be a present reality in any person's life. He proclaims that God is indeed in the process of birthing something deep and wide among unlikely people in unconventional ways, which is changing the world...one "nobody" at a time.

The Lost Message of Paul


Steve Chalke - 2019
    We need to begin with the ideas that informed Paul’s worldview and culture. Our goal is simple – to see things the way he saw them rather than the way we see them.· What if the whole idea of ‘original sin’ was never part of Paul’s thinking at all? · What if the idea that we are saved by faith in Christ, as Luther so strongly argued, was based on a mistranslation of Paul’s words, and even more seriously on a misunderstanding of Paul’s thinking? Was Luther – and Calvin who followed him – simply terribly wrong?‘The tragedy,’ writes Steve Chalke, ‘is that over the centuries the Church has time and again failed to communicate, or even to understand, the core of Paul’s message. Although Paul has often been presented as the champion of exclusion, he was the very opposite. He was the great includer; a revolutionary who saw a new inclusive world dawning and gave his life to help bring it in.’ Steve Chalke MBE is a Baptist minister, founder and leader of the Oasis Charitable Trust, and author of more than 50 books.

Evangelical, Sacramental, and Pentecostal: Why the Church Should Be All Three


Gordon T. Smith - 2017
    Sacramental. Pentecostal. Christian communities tend to identify with one of these labels over the other two. Evangelical churches emphasize the importance of Scripture and preaching. Sacramental churches emphasize the importance of the eucharistic table. And pentecostal churches emphasize the immediate presence and power of the Holy Spirit. But must we choose between them? Could the church be all three? Drawing on his reading of the New Testament, the witness of Christian history, and years of experience in Christian ministry and leadership, Gordon T. Smith argues that the church not onlycan be all three, but in fact must be all three in order to truly be the church. As the church navigates the unique global challenges of pluralism, secularism, and fundamentalism, the need for an integrated vision of the community as evangelical, sacramental, and pentecostal becomes ever more pressing. If Jesus and the apostles saw no tension between these characteristics, why should we?

God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament


Richard Bauckham - 1998
    Using the latest scholarly discussion about the nature of Jewish monotheism as his starting point, Richard Bauckham builds a convincing argument that the early Christian view of Jesus' divinity is fully consistent with the Jewish understanding of God.Bauckham first shows that early Judaism had clear ways of distinguishing God absolutely from all other reality. When New Testament Christology is read with this Jewish context in mind, it becomes clear that early Christians did not break with Jewish monotheism; rather, they simply included Jesus within the unique identity of Israel's God. In the final part of the book Bauckham shows that God's own identity, in turn, is also revealed in the life, death, and exaltation of Jesus.Originating as the prestigious 1996 Didsbury Lectures, this volume makes a contribution to biblical studies that will be of interest to Jews and Christians alike.

Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering


Ronald E. Osborn - 2014
    He challenges one-dimensional reading of Scripture and shines a sobering light on the evangelical dogma responsible for advancing viewpoints long ago dismantled by science.Always acknowledging the traditionalist viewpoint, Osborn demonstrates with a wealth of exegetical and theological insight how orthodox Christianity can embrace evolutionary concepts without contradiction. Osborn forces us to ask hard questions, not only of the Bible and church tradition, but also and especially of ourselves.