Besides the uncomfortable bump, they can create permanent damage to vehicles. And left untended, potholes can evolve into sinkholes that endanger entire roadway systems.  The same is true of our lives. We all have potholes that have been formed by pain, trauma, or choices that we’ve made. What do we do? Usually we find a quick fix, filling the hole with activities and even addictions disguised as culturally acceptable life choices. But before long, the hole is back, waiting to catch us off-guard, which in the end creates even more permanent damage. In The Thing Beneath the Thing, former Willow Creek Community Church lead teaching pastor Steve Carter asks the simple question, “How is life working for you?” He knows that potholes exist and that the longer we live disconnected from answering this question, the more we will fill those holes with harmful choices. The solution? Allow God to fill them with His grace and love so that we can discover the beauty of grace, peace, and wholeness He has for us.The process lies in discovering ourtriggers: the setup that sets us offhideouts: where we go to escape the pain of our storyinsecurities: the false stories we create about ourselvesnarratives: the false stories we create about othersgrace: the place where we discover how to become whole, holy, and spiritually healthyJourney with a seasoned fellow traveler who has learned how to ask key questions that help unlock the places where we’ve buried things. Then dig deep, invite healing, and learn new ways to operate so that we may begin to experience the life of freedom Jesus has promised us.

    They are designed to be used along side the classic itself- either in individual study or in a study group. The faithful of all generations have found spiritual nourishment in the Scriptures and in the works of Christians of earlier generations. Martin Luther and John Calvin would not have become who they were apart from their reading Augustine. God used the writings of Martin Luther to move John Wesley from a religion of dead works to an experience at Aldersgate in which his "heart was strangely warmed." Shepherd's Notes will give pastors, laypersons, and students access to some of the treasures of Christian faith.

    Jacques Philippe develops themes relating to prayer, freedom, the Holy Eucharist, and man’s constant struggle for contentment amid the stresses of everyday life. Through spiritual insights of amazing women of the Church—Etty Hillesum, Thérèse of Lisieux, and Teresa of Avila—Fr. Jacque’s essays examine topics such as:Why look for interior peace?Knowing God through MaryTouching God through prayerThe theological virtues and the Eucharist

    The book touches both head and heart, educating every child of God as to who their Lord really is and inspiring them to love and follow Him like never before.

    They often set about trying to convert one another, considering the faith the other holds as defective in some critical way. Unfortunately, much of what they say about one another simply isn't true. False stereotypes abound on both sides, preventing genuine and helpful communication. Having discovered this sad state of affairs, Craig Blomberg, a committed evangelical scholar, and Stephen Robinson, a committed Mormon scholar, set out to listen to one another and to ferret out the real agreements and disagreements between them. In the conversation that develops, you will read what each believes about key theological issues--the nature and bounds of Scripture, the nature of God and deification, the person of Christ and the Trinity, and the essentials of salvation--and see how they interact with one another. What they agree on may surprise you. Though this book does not sweep differences under the rug, it is meant to help Mormons and evangelicals know and tell the truth about one another. It does not expect to end evangelistic efforts from either side. In fact, it may help to promote more effective communication because it can help to get rid of misrepresentations from both sides. In the end, however, you will be able to judge for yourself just how wide the divide between them is.

    For more than four-hundred years, Introduction to the Devout Life by Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales has been regarded as the essential guide to holiness and loving God. This spiritual classic takes on new life in Lift Up Your Heart, where Rev. John Burns has interpreted ten meditations for the modern reader and distilled them into a ten-day mini-retreat that can easily be completed in the midst of a busy life. This practical book goes right to the heart of helping you kick the habit of floating along on your spiritual journey to start actively pursuing holiness and devotion to God. During the course of the retreat, you'll learn the basics of forming a daily prayer routine, including how to offer yourself to God, meditate on his love, and maintain peace in the face of suffering and clarity in the midst of temptation. The meditations will help you:Adopt gratitude as a daily prayer practice.Examine and reorder your priorities and relationships to better reflect your love for God.Discern between good and evil in your life.Desire to love and serve as Jesus did.In a very real sense, Burns helps you take St. Francis de Sales as your spiritual director for ten days. As you do so, you’ll feel God’s fatherly love and restart your faith life, equipped with the tools to connect with God and live for heaven now.

    Boyd adds another counterintuitive and provocative thesis to his corpus. While conservative scholars and pastors have struggled for years to show that the Bible is without errors, Boyd considers this a fool's errand. Instead, he says, we should embrace the mistakes and contradictions in Scripture, for they show that God chose to use fallible humans to communicate timeless truths. Just as God ultimately came to save humanity in the form of a human, God chose to impart truth through the imperfect medium of human writing. Instead of the Bible's imperfections being a reason to attack its veracity, these "problems" actually support the trustworthiness of Christian Scripture. Inspired Imperfection is required reading for anyone who's questioned the Bible because of its contradictions.

    Do you want help figuring out who you are and why you're stuck in the same ruts? The Enneagram is an ancient personality typing system with an uncanny accuracy in describing how human beings are wired, both positively and negatively. In The Road Back to You Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile forge a unique approach―a practical, comprehensive way of accessing Enneagram wisdom and exploring its connections with Christian spirituality for a deeper knowledge of ourselves, compassion for others, and love for God. Witty and filled with stories, this book allows you to peek inside each of the nine Enneagram types, keeping you turning the pages long after you have read the chapter about your own number. Not only will you learn more about yourself, but you will also start to see the world through other people's eyes, understanding how and why people think, feel, and act the way they do. Beginning with changes you can start making today, the wisdom of the Enneagram can help take you further along into who you really are―leading you into places of spiritual discovery you would never have found on your own, and paving the way to the wiser, more compassionate person you want to become.

    But how have we come by our worldviews, and what impact did Christianity have on those that are common to Western civilization? This authoritative, accessible survey traces the development of the worldviews that underpin the Western world. It demonstrates the decisive impact that the growth of Christianity had in transforming the outlook of pagan Roman culture into one that, based on biblical concepts of humanity and its relationship with God, established virtually all the positive aspects of Western civilization. The two-pronged assault in our time on the biblically based worldview by postmodern philosophy and the writings of neo-atheists has made it even more crucial that we acknowledge and defend its historical roots. Unique among books on the topic, this work discusses Western worldviews as a continuous narrative rather than as simply a catalogue of ideas, and traces the effects changes in worldview had on society. It helps readers understand their own worldviews and those of other people and helps them recognize the consequences that worldviews hold. Professors, students, and armchair historians alike will profit from this book.

    Some appeal to mystery (“God’s ways are not our ways”). Others say God allows evil for some greater purpose. Still others say God punishes with evil. Not only are these answers unsatisfying, they fail to support the view that God loves everyone all the time.God Can't solves the problem of evil. Author Thomas Jay Oord says God’s love is inherently uncontrolling. Because God cannot control anyone or anything, God cannot prevent evil singlehandedly. This means God can’t stop evildoers, whether human, animal, organisms, or inanimate objects and forces.God Can't gives a plausible reason why some are healed but many are not. God always works to heal everyone, but sometimes our bodies, organisms, or other creatures do not cooperate with God's healing. Or the conditions of creation are simply not right for the healing God wants to do.Some people interpret suffering as God’s punishment. Or they think suffering is God's way of building our character. God Can't says God never punishes. But God squeezes good from the evil God didn’t want in the first place. In other words, God uses pain and suffering to build our character and other positive things without willing it.Most people think God can overcome evil singlehandedly. God Can't says God needs our cooperation for love to reign now and later. This leads to a unique view of the afterlife called, “relentless love.” This view rejects traditional ideas of heaven, hell, and annihilation. It holds to the possibility that all creatures and all creation will eventually respond to God’s relentless love.Thomas Jay Oord wrote God Can't in accessible prose. Oord's status as a world-renown theologian brings credibility to the book’s radical ideas. He relates these ideas in bite-size, understandable language with numerous illustrations, stories, and biblical support. The stories of victims and survivors illustrate the life-giving ideas of God Can't.God Can't is for those who want answers to tragedy, abuse, and other evils that make sense!

    Forty meditations on Great Lent based on liturgical, scriptural and patristic texts.

    Downs explores the difference you can make when you speak love to others, to God, and to yourself.Do you still remember a mean comment someone made about you online? Does something you said to your friend about your other friend haunt you sometimes? Has your day instantly gotten better because you received a compliment? That’s because everything we say has a lot of power—even the things we tell ourselves. Annie Downs has learned this lesson firsthand as both a reformed mean girl and the recipient of a lot of hurtful comments herself, and she knows we can break the cycle of harmful words and make a difference if we decide to focus on speaking love—positive, honest words—instead. Through truthful and very funny experiences from her own life, as well as examples from the Bible and every part of life, Annie shows the amazing changes that can happen when we send positive words out into the world and believe them about ourselves.Speak Love:Is the perfect gift for young women ages 13 and up who are ready to speak love and speak lifeLooks at the ways we speak to ourselves, to others, and to God—and how choosing to use positive words with each one can change our lives, and the lives of those around usPairs well with the companion devotional, Speak Love Revolution, that contains thirty days of encouragement and tips, as well as journaling space to record your Speak Love journey

    Nicholas Wolterstorff discusses what it is to have a right, and he locates rights in the respect due the worth of the rights-holder. After contending that socially-conferred rights require the existence of natural rights, he argues that no secular account of natural human rights is successful; he offers instead a theistic account. Wolterstorff prefaces his systematic account of justice as grounded in rights with an exploration of the common claim that rights-talk is inherently individualistic and possessive. He demonstrates that the idea of natural rights originated neither in the Enlightenment nor in the individualistic philosophy of the late Middle Ages, but was already employed by the canon lawyers of the twelfth century. He traces our intuitions about rights and justice back even further, to Hebrew and Christian scriptures. After extensively discussing justice in the Old Testament and the New, he goes on to show why ancient Greek and Roman philosophy could not serve as a framework for a theory of rights. Connecting rights and wrongs to God's relationship with humankind, Justice not only offers a rich and compelling philosophical account of justice, but also makes an important contribution to overcoming the present-day divide between religious discourse and human rights.

    --Publishers WeeklyEvery day, millions of people lament the loss of civility, respect, and hope, and they wonder if it's possible to cultivate a love big enough to overthrow hate and heal our hurts. With courage, authenticity, and relevance, Jacqueline A. Bussie proclaims, Yes! It's possible! and urges readers to widen love's wingspan and to love as God loves--without limits or exceptions.In Love Without Limits, Bussie imparts practical solutions for people of faith who yearn to love across division and difference in these troubled times. Through poignant personal memoir, engaging theological reflection, inspiring true stories of boundary-busting friendships, creative readings of scripture, and surprising shout-outs to some of love's unsung heroes, Bussie challenges readers to answer God's call to practice a love so deep, it subverts the social order; so radical, it scandalizes the powerful; so vast, it excludes no one.

    This highly principled and religiously minded bookshop owner gathered his large family together daily for reading God's Word, testing their knowledge by connecting the day's verses with other passages, and praying over how it could be applied. It was from this practice of worship that the Bagster family compiled the material for Daily Light on the Daily Path.It is said that this daily devotional book is the most popular of all time. It has touched hundreds of thousands of Christians to the remotest corners of the world with the biblical message of comfort and help. Originally printed in the 1800s, this work is timeless because each reading is a connection of Scripture verses centered around a theme. Crossway is delighted to re-release this classic book in the beautiful and clear language of the English Standard Version.