You'll treasure their insight, still fresh and vital. And you'll discover what it means to offer God your very best for His greatest purpose--to truly offer Him your utmost for His highest. This edition includes Chambers's text, updated by editor James Reimann, along with helpful subject and scripture indexes.

    Alter takes the old yet simple step of reading the Bible as a literary creation.

    The NIV First-Century Study Bible is designed to give you an overview of the cultures that influenced those living in Biblical times in order to help you engage the text with more understanding--even if you are not a full time scholar. The Jewish Contextual Bible allows you to understand God’s Word in its original cultural context, bringing Scripture to life by providing fresh understanding to familiar passages, beloved stories and all the Scripture in between. The Jewish Contextual Bible will introduce you to a world vastly different from your own, and as a result, you'll truly experience all the Bible has to say to you.

    It combines authoritative research with a captivating style to bring our heritage home to us.

    I will show you how to waste your life. Consider this story from the February 1998 Reader's Digest: A couple 'took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells. . . .' Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: 'Look, Lord. See my shells.' That is a tragedy."God created us to live with a single passion to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion. God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives."Most people slip by in life without a passion for God, spending their lives on trivial diversions, living for comfort and pleasure, and perhaps trying to avoid sin. This book will warn you not to get caught up in a life that counts for nothing. It will challenge you to live and die boasting in the cross of Christ and making the glory of God your singular passion. If you believe that to live is Christ and to die is gain, read this book, learn to live for Christ, and don't waste your life!

    Though originally published nearly seventy years ago, the book maintains its relevance today.

    Wayne Grudem's bestselling Systematic Theology has several distinctive features:A strong emphasis on the scriptural basis for each doctrineClear writing, with technical terms kept to a minimumA contemporary approach, treating subjects of special interest to the church todayA friendly tone, appealing to the emotions and the spirit as well as the intellectFrequent application to lifeResources for worship within each chapter Bibliographies in each chapter that cross-reference subjects to a wide range of other systematic theologies.

    From Abraham wandering in the desert to Jesus teaching the multitudes on a Judean hillside, this award-winning bestseller follows the biblical story from start to finish.Priests and kings, apostles and prophets, common folk and charismatic leaders—individual stories offer glimpses into an unfolding revelation that reaches across the centuries to touch us today. The Book of God:Follows the biblical story in chronological orderFilled with carefully researched cultural and historical background Includes biblical events viewed through the eyes of minor charactersMaster storyteller Walter Wangerin Jr. shares the story of the Bible from beginning to end as you've never read it before, retold with exciting detail and passionate energy. Experience the Bible in a beautiful new way!

    In I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Joshua Harris exposes the "Seven Habits of Highly Defective Dating" and offers a realistic outline of how to have a biblical vision of marriage. Harris contends that one must begin with a new attitude, viewing love, purity, and singleness from God's perspective rather than thinking that love and romance are to be enjoyed "solely for recreation." In such well-named chapters as "Guarding Your Heart" and "What Matters at Fifty," Harris encourages the reader to look at one's character rather than reveling in infatuation, to regard love as a truly selfless, biblical act rather than a feeling. He refutes the concept that we are victims of "falling in love" (that it is beyond our control), saying that "God wants us to seek guidance from scriptural truth, not feeling. Smart love looks beyond personal desires and the gratification of the moment. It looks at the big picture: serving others and glorifying God." Before you roll your eyes, moaning that this sounds terribly unromantic, know that Harris does a superb job of couching his convictions in the sincere belief that if we are purposeful in our singleness and date with integrity, a fulfilled marriage awaits us--in God's timing. --Jill Heatherly

    This meditation on the spiritual life has inspired readers from Thomas More and St. Ignatius Loyola to Thomas Merton and Pope John Paul I. Written by the Augustinian monk Thomas à Kempis between 1420 and 1427, it contains clear instructions for renouncing wordly vanities and locating eternal truths. No book has more explicitly and movingly described the Christian ideal:

    One group claims that the King James Version is the only Bible that Christians should be using. Appealing with both emotional fervor and scholastic debate, churches have divided over this issue, and believers are left in confusion.

    They've asked the same questions. Like you, sometimes they just don't want to believe in hell. But as they write, "We cannot afford to be wrong on this issue."This is not a book about who is saying what. It's a book about what God says. It's not a book about impersonal theological issues. It's a book about people who God loves. It's not a book about arguments, doctrine, or being right. It's a book about the character of God.Erasing Hell will immerse you in the truth of Scripture as, together with the authors, you find not only the truth but the courage to live it out.

    A fresh, creative look at the underlying meaning of the Gospels that stresses the many dimensions of God's relationship to humanity.

    Everybody loves a good story. We have been reading, listening to, or watching stories all of our lives, so we intuitively know a lot about how they work. Yet, more and more, Christians are unfamiliar with the stories of the Bible and how the grand narrative of God's Word fits together. Indeed, God gave us the stories of the Bible to reveal great truth about Himself and about our lives, and He wants to draw us into the ongoing story of what He is doing in the world. By focusing on the narrative framework of Scripture we can better understand what the Bible teaches and live out its instruction more effectively. Reading God's Story takes that clear narrative approach to the Bible, arranging the complete text into a fresh chronological reading plan developed for the Read the Bible for Life biblical literacy initiative. In this plan the books, chapters, and verses of the Bible are thoughtfully arranged so readers can track the story of Scripture, day by day, from beginning to end, understanding the flow of events and how all the different parts fit together to make sense. Reading God's Story features two-color interior page layout and is organized into 52 weeks of readings (six readings per week). It presents Scripture in three main acts (God's Plan for All People; God's Covenant People; God's New Covenant People) and seventeen total scenes, providing an introduction for each act and scene to orient the reader to its importance in the grand story. Unlike other chronological Bibles, this arrangement is not date specific (e.g. "January 1"), so a person can begin using this edition at any point in the calendar year.

    Every day we are confronted with cloudy moral issues that once seemed clear. When did the simple things get so complicated? But instead of wondering how we got here, maybe we should revisit how we got started. And there's no better place to start than the beginning of God's Word, the book of Genesis.Part of Dr. Warren W. Wiersbe's best-selling "BE" commentary series, Be Basic has now been updated with study questions and a new introduction by Ken Baugh. A respected pastor and Bible teacher, Dr. Wiersbe takes an insightful look at the fundamentals for a life well lived. Return to the beginning and discover life-changing truths about relationships, faith, sin, and spiritual fulfillment. Because in life, the key to a happy ending is found at the beginning.