So began the most important week of the most important person who ever lived.Nearly 2,000 years later, the events that took place during Jesus's last days still reverberate through the ages. Designed as a day-by-day guide to Passion Week, The Final Days of Jesus leads us to re-examine and meditate on the history-making, earth-shaking significance of Jesus's arrest, trial, crucifixion, and empty tomb.Combining a chronological arrangement of the Gospel accounts with insightful commentary, charts, and maps, this book will help you better understand what actually happened all those years ago . . . and why it matters today.

    For too many of us, Christmas has lost its wonder. What if we stopped treating the Christmas story as something that happened a long time ago and started believing that it's a story that's still happening today?From celebrated artist and storyteller Scott Erickson comes Honest Advent, 25 days of illustrations and meditations that will help you rekindle the wonder of this season. Honest Advent creates a space for you to encounter the Incarnate Christ in unexpected places: like a pregnancy announcement in an era of political unrest and empirical bloodshed, the morning sickness of a Middle Eastern teenager, and the shocking biology of birth that goes far beyond the sanitized brand of Christmas as we know it today.Through powerful benedictions, prayers, and questions for honest reflection, you'll discover how the wonder of God-with-Us is still happening today: in your unexpected change of plans, your unaccomplished dreams, your overcrowded lodging, and your humble stories of new beginnings.Throughout Honest Advent, Erickson teaches us the valuable lessons he's learned about:Finding hope and light in the darkest wintersWhat it means to embrace the unexpectedHow God uses everyday vulnerability to help us understand ourselves, and our faith, betterIf you're looking for something to spark your faith and renew your relationship with the holiday season, Erickson invites you to experience a new way to celebrate this Christmas.

    Religion for Atheists suggests that rather than mocking religions, agnostics and atheists should instead steal from them – because they're packed with good ideas on how we might live and arrange our societies. Blending deep respect with total impiety, Alain (a non-believer himself) proposes that we should look to religions for insights into, among other concerns, how to:- build a sense of community- make our relationships last- overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy- escape the twenty-four hour media- go travelling- get more out of art, architecture and music- and create new businesses designed to address our emotional needs.For too long non-believers have faced a stark choice between either swallowing lots of peculiar doctrines or doing away with a range of consoling and beautiful rituals and ideas. At last, in Religion for Atheists, Alain has fashioned a far more interesting and truly helpful alternative.

    Promising to deepen and broaden the reader's perspective on his or her own life experiences, Moore draws on his own life as a therapist practicing "care of the soul," as well as his studies of the world's religions and his work in music and art, to create this inspirational guide that examines the connections between spirituality and the problems of individuals and society.

    Even our vacations have a panicky, task-like edge to them. "If I only had more time," is the mantra of our age. But is this the real problem?Widely acclaimed author Mark Buchanan states that what we've really lost is "the rest of God-the rest God bestows and, with it, that part of himself we can know only through stillness." Stillness as a virtue is a foreign concept in our society, but there is wisdom in God's own rhythm of work and rest. Sabbath is elixir and antidote. It is a gift for our sanity and wholeness--to prolong our lives, to enrich our relationships, to increase our fruitfulness, to make our joy complete. Jesus practiced Sabbath among those who had turned it into a dismal thing, a day for murmuring and finger-wagging, and he reminded them of the day's true purpose: liberation-to heal, to feed, to rescue, to celebrate, to lavish and relish life abundant.The gift of Sabbath is essential to our full humanity and faith, says Buchanan. Far from being some starched and dour day only to be endured, Sabbath is a day wide and bright, brimming with laughter, enough to lend beauty to all our other days. Readers will be changed forever by this pivotal book."It seems very unsabbath-like to describe a book about Sabbath with the adverb 'urgently'--but we urgently need this book. Mark Buchanan shows us that our busyness is killing us--killin us--and that Sabbath is our best cure, our best path for rest and reverence and discipleship."--LAUREN WINNER, Best-selling author of Girl Meets God and Mudhouse Sabbath"With the easiness of long intimacy and a very deft hand, Buchanan here braids together into one gracious and sustaining strand the beauty of Sabbath, the wisdom of its keeping, and the generosity of God in gifting us with it. These pages are not just a blessing, they are a psalm that cries out to be joyfully engaged."--PHYLLIS TICKLE, Religion editor (ret.) Publishers Weekly and compiler of The Divine Hours

    John Clarke's acclaimed translation, first published in 1975, is now accepted as the standard throughout the English-speaking world.

    Knowing and Doing the Will of GodA study of the Bible encouraging us to see God at work and join Him as He reveals

    In this compelling and heartfelt book, he sounds a rousing call for a Christianity based on critical thought rather than blind faith, on love rather than judgment, and that focuses on life more than religion.

    Respected author and theologian Scot McKnight and former Willow Creek member Laura Barringer wrote this book to paint a pathway forward for the church.We need a better way. The sad truth is that churches of all shapes and sizes are susceptible to abuses of power, sexual abuse, and spiritual abuse. Abuses occur most frequently when Christians neglect to create a culture that resists abuse and promotes healing, safety, and spiritual growth.How do we keep these devastating events from repeating themselves? We need a map to get us from where we are today to where we ought to be as the body of Christ. That map is in a mysterious and beautiful little Hebrew word in Scripture that we translate "good," the word tov.In this book, McKnight and Barringer explore the concept of tov--unpacking its richness and how it can help Christians and churches rise up to fulfill their true calling as imitators of Jesus.

    Now, in The Divine Hours Pocket EditionTM, Tickle has gathered one full week of fixed-hour prayers, providing an ideal companion for travelers, office-workers, people on retreat or pilgrimage, as well as newcomers to this age-old spiritual practice. As Tickle writes in her introduction, prayer isalways a place as well as an action, and the daily offices are like small chapels or wayside stations within the day's courses. Seven of these daily offices are offered for each day of the week, and each office contains the Call to Prayer, the Request for Presence, the Greeting, the Reading, theGloria, the Psalm, the Small Verse, the Lord's Prayer, the Petition, and the Final Thanksgiving. Tickle draws her texts primarily from the Book of Common Prayer and the writings of the Church Fathers, and includes memorable devotional and meditative poems by Cleland McAfee, Charles Wesley, andothers. Tickle also provides a chapter of Traditional, Seasonal, and Occasional Prayers in order to accommodate special dates like Advent, Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving; major life-changes such as marriage, birth, death, and illness; and moments of special petition or thanksgiving. For all those who want to carry a small chapel of prayers with them, The Divine Hours Pocket EditionTM offers a convenient, easy-to-use, and deeply spiritual guide to a devotional practice that extends all the way back to Christ and the twelve Apostles.

    This book remedies this spiritual disease in practical biblical ways.

    Ryle served the Lord in ministry in the Church of England for almost the entire length of the Victorian Age. Although Ryle was committed to all forms of evangelism, his heart beat strongest for mass evangelism in the cities. Much of his immediate influence on Victorian evangelism stemmed from his prolific number of tracts. Several million copies of his more than 200 different tracts were distributed in a variety of languages throughout the Land.Bishop Ryle's desire, and his answer to the issues of his day, was the pursuit of personal revival of Scriptural holiness. This holds just as true for today, as it was in his time.

    Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher and miracle worker walked across the Galilee, gathering followers to establish what he called the “Kingdom of God.” The revolutionary movement he launched was so threatening to the established order that he was captured, tortured, and executed as a state criminal. Within decades after his shameful death, his followers would call him God. Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most influential and enigmatic characters by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived: first-century Palestine, an age awash in apocalyptic fervor. Scores of Jewish prophets, preachers, and would-be messiahs wandered through the Holy Land, bearing messages from God. This was the age of zealotry—a fervent nationalism that made resistance to the Roman occupation a sacred duty incumbent on all Jews. And few figures better exemplified this principle than the charismatic Galilean who defied both the imperial authorities and their allies in the Jewish religious hierarchy. Balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against the historical sources, Aslan describes a man full of conviction and passion, yet rife with contradiction; a man of peace who exhorted his followers to arm themselves with swords; an exorcist and faith healer who urged his disciples to keep his identity a secret; and ultimately the seditious “King of the Jews” whose promise of liberation from Rome went unfulfilled in his brief lifetime. Aslan explores the reasons why the early Christian church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary. And he grapples with the riddle of how Jesus understood himself, the mystery that is at the heart of all subsequent claims about his divinity. Zealot yields a fresh perspective on one of the greatest stories ever told even as it affirms the radical and transformative nature of Jesus of Nazareth’s life and mission. The result is a thought-provoking, elegantly written biography with the pulse of a fast-paced novel: a singularly brilliant portrait of a man, a time, and the birth of a religion.

    Doing so will provide a richer, deeper understanding of his ministry, compelling us to live differently, to become more Christ-like. We’ll begin to understand why his first Jewish disciples abandoned everything to follow him, to live out his commands. Our modern society, with its individualism and materialism, is very different than the tight-knit, family-oriented setting Jesus lived and taught in. What wisdom can we glean from his Eastern, biblical attitude toward life? How can knowing Jesus within this context shed light on his teachings for us today? In Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus we’ll journey back in time to eavesdrop on the conversations that arose among the rabbis of Jesus’ day, and consider how hearing Rabbi Jesus with the ears of a first-century disciple can bring new meaning to our faith. And we’ll listen to Jewish thinkers through the ages, discovering how ideas that germinated in Jesus’ time have borne fruit. Doing so will yield fresh, practical insights for following our Rabbi’s teachings from a Jewish point of view.

    In a way, it's a book Augustine has written about each of us. Popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith has spent time on the road with Augustine, and he invites us to take this journey too, for this ancient African thinker knows far more about us than we might expect.Following Smith's successful You Are What You Love, this book shows how Augustine can be a pilgrim guide to a spirituality that meets the complicated world we live in. Augustine, says Smith, is the patron saint of restless hearts--a guide who has been there, asked our questions, and knows our frustrations and failed pursuits. Augustine spent a lifetime searching for his heart's true home and he can help us find our way. "What makes Augustine a guide worth considering," says Smith, "is that he knows where home is, where rest can be found, what peace feels like, even if it is sometimes ephemeral and elusive along the way." Addressing believers and skeptics alike, this book shows how Augustine's timeless wisdom speaks to the worries and struggles of contemporary life, covering topics such as ambition, sex, friendship, freedom, parenthood, and death. As Smith vividly and colorfully brings Augustine to life for 21st-century readers, he also offers a fresh articulation of Christianity that speaks to our deepest hungers, fears, and hopes.